Oathbound: Wrack and Ruin is a supplement for the Oathbound: Domains of the Forge D20 setting- which is, in and of itself, a good D20 setting. Wrack and Ruin is a good supplement that is about as average as you get when it comes to rpg supplements.
Wrack and Ruin is the Oathbound supplement that focuses on the sprawling city of Penance, the heart of the setting. Penence is a lot like Planescape's Sigil in function (if not form)- it is a huge city that encompasses a number of different and varied factions. Penance is a haven for renegades and refugees from across the multiverse (kinda like the D20 version of New York City). The real centers of power in Penenace are the bloodholds- the neighborhood strongholds of the most powerful lords in the city. Wrack and Ruin is about the large and intimidating areas between (and underneath) the bloodholds. The "Wrack" is the wild frontier areas of the city of Penance while the "Ruin" are the dark depths of the city.
Wrack and Ruin is a very thorough book. It goes into deep detail regarding the ruins and abandoned parts of Penance discussing the people, the flora and fauna, the regions, notable events and assorted and sundry other tidbits of information. All in all, the book is a veritable mine of information and plot nuggets. However, despite all this information I feel the book is not terribly exciting. Wrack and Ruin, like the rest of the Oathbound setting has a tendency to add in some really goofy aspects for no identifiable reason. Because Oathbound is all about collecting very diverse characters it seems like the authors take that as a license to add in things to the supplements that make absolutely no sense in the greater setting. The Gifts (special powers granted to new arrival to Penance and the Oathbound setting) are the best example since they seem to be an assortment of random powers that have nothing to do with the rest of the supplement (for example: the ability to shrug off the need to blink, judging other's emotions, and being slippery. Or the ability for someone communing with a chameleon spirit to run fast- when did chameleons start to run fast?). Still, there is certainly more good than bad in this book, with character options for playing exiles, a couple new races that make their lives out of the confines of the bloodholds, and a whole slew of information on how the bloodholds deal with creatures from the Wrack and Ruin.
Wrack and Ruin is divided into five chapters with three appendices. There is not a whole lot of art, but what art is there is solid all the way through, though with nothing exceptional. Some of the art pertains to the text and some of it does not. The margins are reasonable and the text size is fine. So, the mechanics of the book are fine.
Chapter One is the introduction and general description of the rack and Ruin. Herein is a discussion of a general mapping system (requiring three dimensions due to the Ruin going into the ground). Chapter one also discusses how the existing races and bloodholds react to the Wrack and Ruin, creating a nice (if brief) bridge to the core book. At the end of the short chapter is a discussion of some of the weired hazards of the Rack and Ruin- magical fields, time distortion, and gravity anomalies (why Gravity anomalies? I have no idea.)
Chapter Two gets into the Character options for PCs wandering around in the Rack and Ruin. In this chapter are new PC races, PrCs, new gifts (as I discussed briefly, above), and new Prestige Races. This is a solid chapter, if plagued a bit by the random goofiness of the setting (which, as you can guess, I don't like so much). There are three new races that frequent the Rack and Ruin. In particular I really like the Scar, a race of symbiotic underdwellers with a penchant for survival. There is a template for "the Lost" which allows a GM (or palyer) to create a character more suited to living underground. The new PrCs are the Rafter and the Spellwarden. The rafter focuses on being able to traverse the dangers of the Wrack and Ruin and the Spellwarden allows access to a slew of new spell modifying powers. Quite honestly, the Spellwarden seems a bit convoluted and difficult to implement. I've read the Spellwarden entry twice now and am not sure I would feel comfortable having them in a game I was running. I think the powers of the Spellwarden, which focus on basically creating rune type spells, would have been better handled through a series of feats. I am not a huge fan of the Prestige Races of Oathbound, but the five new ones in Wrack and Ruin seem fine and mostly appropriate to the topic of the book (Arachnid, Chameleon, Cockroach, Exile, and Mole). Though, like I said before, I still find the "fast-running" ability of the chameleon a bit strange considering the propensities of the real animal. The Focus of the Exile is a good Prestige Race, better than most, and is particularly well suited for adventuring in the Forge (and would be a good port over to a Planescape D20 game).
Chapters three and four are the setting guide proper. In chapter three we get the full discussion of the Wrack, "the lost city." Inside is information on travel, the environment, places of note, and major npcs running around. There is a detailed discussion of how the established bloodholds expand into the Wrack- which is a good source of campaign ideas. There is also a goodly amount of discussion on the major non-affiliated groups running around in the Wrack, including the Band of the Red Sun (a criminal network), the Ragemaidens (amazons), and Exilium (a new bloodhold). Of all the new groups, the Exilim is the best by far (since the Band and the Ragemaidens are a bit formulaic). The Exilium, ruled by Lord Lothar, actively work to improve their situation which presents a nice juxtaposition to some of the more fatalistic bloodholds. The only problem is that there really should be more information on the Exilium, for a potentially powerful group we only get a page and a half. In fact, this whole section could have done with a bit more detail rather than the large number of cursory examinations about the Wrack. Exilium is a great idea, and I really wanted to see more.
Chapter four is the discussion of the Undercity (the "ruin"). This chapter is detailed in the exact same way as chapter three- flora/fauna, sites of interest, etc. This chapter is probably the strongest of the book due to the level of detail we get regarding the areas of interest and the different ruined bloodholds buried deep beneath Penance. There are a number of new bloodholds, Khulzak (dominated by the Faust and quite evil), the Lightless Wilderness (barbarians), Sarissar (populated by a new outcast race, the N'knoll, snakes with tentacle arms), and Ulderach (all too similar to the Byzantine house politics of the Drow in Forgotten realms). There is a large number of important sites detailed and the requisite NPCs (with some good legends associated with them). All in all, a very strong chapter that fills out the Undercity very nicely.
The final chapter is "Black and Black" a large adventure that ranges across the Rack and the Undercity. It starts with a plot to kill the Queen of Penance and meanders through six episodes. The adventure really tries to focus on the political structure of Penance and offer the PCs some heavy roleplaying. I have not run Black on Black, but it seems awfully convoluted and details a couple of NPCs functioning under multiple agendas (possibly making it difficult for a prospective GM to keep up with everything that is supposed to happen) plus, there really is very little discussion of what the GM can do if the players do not want to follow the script (a big negative in my opinion) Black on Black is going to be best run using the previous adventures from Bastion press as a lead-in, some of which are found on their website and others are found in previous Oathbound products. My biggest problem with Black on Black is the amount of room it takes, for a supplement that is supposed to detail two important and vast regions of Penance the adventure ends up taking over 20 pages (about a quarter of the book). The space that Black on Black takes up could really have been more useful filling out chapters three and four.
The final portions of the book, the appendices, gives some new spells and items, monsters, and a basic chart for creating mazes.
So is it a good book?
Yes. It is a fine, if not really exciting, book. It does what it sets out to do- to detail the Wrack and Ruin and allow for adventuring in those environs. The writing is solid and there are a number of good ideas- especially in chapter four. However, I really think the use of space is really poor in this book- Black on Black is too long, there are some editing gaffes (a picture of a new monster, the Slag, blocks out an unfortunate amount of its associated text), and there are some random Bastion Press advertisements in the middle of the book that seem, well, odd.
The good? Well, there is a a lot of information about the Wrack and the Undercity and any GM that cannot find an adventure idea in this book is not doing their job. There is a lot of information covered in this book, and almost all of it points directly to its use in an Oathbound campaign. The art is solid and the new character options are always welcome.
So, all in all, Wrack and Ruin is a fine book. Do note that this book is going to be most useful to GMs and players running a game in the Forge setting. Thus, if you have a hankering for exploring the areas outside of the Bloodholds, then this is going to be a useful book. If you are not involved in an Oathbound campaign, you can take a pass.
Review Summary