(Commercial) Forgotten Ruin - The Adventure Wargame from Modiphius

[zemjw]

I'm really not sure if this belongs here or in the Fantasy forum...

https://modiphius.net/products/forgotten-ruin-the-adventure-wargame

£35.00, pdf available immediately, book expected end of February 2025.

The battlefield has never looked like this!

A time of danger, a secret mission, mysterious tech, and now you and your platoon of rangers are in a strange world inhabited by orcs, sorcerers, and dragons!

Forgotten Ruin: The Adventure Wargame takes you to the strangest battlefield yet, pitting state-of-the-art firepower against fantastical monsters. Just hope the orc horde runs out before the ammunition does!

Based on the Forgotten Ruin book series, the rules are powered by the ‘Five X’ game system from Five Leagues from the Borderlands and Five Parsecs from Home, unleashing the same solo adventuring thrills. Command your squad while the game rules control your enemies as they move and fight. You can even play with a friend by splitting your squad into two fire teams or designating one of you to control the enemy like a Game Master.

This adventure wargame offers an exciting mix of tabletop tactics for miniature figures and randomly generated campaign play, providing a unique, story-rich experience.

Inside this 160-page full colour royal-sized (15.6cm x 23.4cm) hardback book you will find:

    Full rules for miniatures combat on strange battlefields including powerful heavy weapons, leadership tactics to customise your squad, spells, and off-map fire support.
    Stats for an array of foes to fight: 20 enemy forces with 6 different types (such as Assassins or Archers) as well as 20 huge monsters to challenge your firepower.
    Rules to turn enemy champions into recurring villains.
    Campaign rules, objectives, and rewards, including magical treasures, advancements, and, best of all...
    Transformations! Ever wanted to be a centaur with a machine gun? An elf sniper? Or just a squad leader with a spell book? Your soldiers will not remain the way they were, and the changes can be quite unpredictable!

[Ultravanillasmurf]

Interesting.

[Storm Wolf]

Thanks for the heads up that may make a nice birthday present to myself in the new year 

I like it because I am mainly a sci-fi player, but I have definite fantasy leanings but not enough for whole armies.

Reminds me a little bit of call of duty meets Shadowrun.

Interesting oh yes!

[Inkpaduta]

This sounds like my type of game.

[zemjw]

So, I'm blaming Christmas, but I went ahead and bought the rules. I'm just paging through them, but, like Inkpaduta, this is my sort of game.

It needs 9 figures in the squad, 2 fireteams of 4 and a squad leader.

It isn't tied to modern figures, and they say anything from ww2 to science fiction is okay, basically rifles and heavy weapons like bazookas.

A campaign seems more contained than Five Parsecs, in that it lasts for 12 turns and then has a final battle. However, there still seems to be a lot going on.

I'm guessing there will be more comprehensive reviews out there soon enough, but I'm happy with my purchase, even though it should have gone under the digital Christmas tree until Wednesday

[Ultravanillasmurf]

A campaign seems more contained than Five Parsecs, in that it lasts for 12 turns and then has a final battle. However, there still seems to be a lot going on.

Sounds a bit like Bug Hunt.

Useful information, hopefully North Star will be doing something with it (I have not checked my emails for the newsletter this week).

[Ultravanillasmurf]

Has anyone read the source books or know anything about the authors?

A quick search of the Waterstones site picks up 68 books by Jason Anspach,  the one with the same cover art as the rulebook by Modiphius is £24 in paperback!

[Spinal Tap]

Has anyone read the source books or know anything about the authors?

A quick search of the Waterstones site picks up 68 books by Jason Anspach,  the one with the same cover art as the rulebook by Modiphius is £24 in paperback!

I suspect that might be the novel.

[zemjw]

The novel is £18.99 on Amazon, but £3.59 on kindle - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Forgotten-Ruin-Military-Fantasy-Thriller-ebook/dp/B08R6KGWF4/ref=sr_1_1

It's been a while since I've bought a paperback novel, but that seems excessive 

There are indeed a whole stack of them

[Rick]

Save your money, buy the game if you want - it's a cool idea and Modiphius do a good job with their games - but buy books that are far better written. I struggle to read badly written books; friends recommended several 40K or Warhammer books and some I just couldn't finish. These look to be the same - 10 or so books cranked out in quick succession, with poor writing and execution; according to most reviews I've read, they seem to get the military aspects about right (they may have served or known people who did) but the rest is just dire pap. I won't be buying any of the books - there may be worse books out there but I don't intend to read them.
If you want better written books that start with a similar idea then try 'Janissaries' by Jerry Pournelle or 'Grunts' by Mary Gentle - it's a cool idea but hardly original.

[mikedemana]

I struggle to read badly written books

Yeah, me too. I blame my Minor in English: Fiction Writing for making me unable to stomach badly written fictional! 

Mike Demana

[Inkpaduta]

I got the book a while back. It wasn't very good. Did not develop the characters.
Gave you know understanding of the world that they ended up with. Constant action
with no time to develop the story. Oh, and did you know they were rangers. If you didn't the
author had to mention it two or three times a page. I didn't finish it.

[Rick]

Another good series I forgot to mention is Myke Cole's 'Shadow Ops' series - a very good trilogy by an author who writes well and knows his stuff; it mixes modern military with fantasy, magic and mythological elements very well. Well worth a look.

[Ultravanillasmurf]

I'm really not sure if this belongs here or in the Fantasy forum...

https://modiphius.net/products/forgotten-ruin-the-adventure-wargame

£35.00, pdf available immediately, book expected end of February 2025.

February came late....
Available from North Star (as well as direct).
https://www.northstarfigures.com/prod.php?prod=19336
https://modiphius.net/collections/five-leagues-from-the-borderlands/products/forgotten-ruin-the-adventure-wargame

Still, not sure (still reading 5PFH:Tactics I got this week), I like the campaign systems, not sure if I need another variation on the same set of rules.

[Psychopomp]

I picked it up with Amazon points to mine for Five Parsecs/Leagues ideas/missions/subsystems; and I've given it a skim-through.

Sornenson did a great job of being handed a license for what looks like - I haven't read them and I'm certainly not going to - some lackluster military porn novels with a 'versus the fantasy hordes' twist...and delivering the interesting basic concept without any kruft from the novel's storytelling.  The game has you follow a squad split off from the novels' platoon on arrival to Fantasyland, and it's basically a decent little Five Increments from Place narrative campaign for taking a modern (of any era from roughly WWII to now) military squad through a small patrol/reestablish-contact campaign verses The Weird Shit. 

There's a helpful box explaining that the weapons are fairly generalized, as in every Five Increments game, to make things easier to track for a solo game.  While the basic troopers are armed with "Assault Rifle" that's basically the name given in the default setting for "Basic Infantry Rifle", so you could swap this in for WWI, near future, whatever, as long as you've got grenades, squad automatic weapons, squad anti-tank weapons, and maybe something to fill the "Submachine Gun" slot. 

The game differs from Five Parsecs Bug Hunt or Salvage Missions in the assumption that you'll be playing one squad with limited support, split off from the main force.  Unlike Salvage Missions (a subset of basic Five Parsecs play), you have limited off-field assets you could call in, and your basic soldiers could advance or just be replaced in the next round.  Unlike Bug Hunt, the enemies come in units called 'mobs' and some are ranged weapon mobs.  Also, you have a fairly standard squad loadout with limited resources for adjusting it, rather than having your central characters and rolling to see who tags along this episode.  There's also rules for some members of your warband adapting and incorporating The Weird Shit as they're exposed to it - in the default, this takes the form of some squaddies morphing into orcs, elves, centaurs, etc; or learning magic and becoming the squad support wizard.

Finally, the game has the novel-to-Five-Increments approach that you're playing a 13-game limited campaign with an end goal that you build towards.  Some enemy champions will, on defeat, return as recurring Villains in later games, tougher and having learned from their defeat (ie, they 'level up' to an enemy hero status), and the 13th game will be a big boss fight versus a tougher-than-what's-come-before monster.  But, if you've undertaken optional missions to quest for artifacts, you might have some aces up your sleeve against the boss.

As always, Sorenson's written up a toolbox, and the default game is basically and extended explanation of how to use it to do whatever you want as a solo player.  Whether or not there's enough new stuff in it to justify the price is going to be purely subjective to what a gamer wants to use it for, but the base game seems different and interesting enough to warrant a playthrough if you have a decent modern military collection and a supply of fantasy mooks.  You can also EASILY reskin the base game to play a WWII squad versus Fantasy Forces, or even play out an alien invasion with the fantasy forces reskinned as different alien species and magic is, of course, called psionics.  (I find myself on pins and needles for the release of Five Parsecs: Planetfall, as I'm hoping the colony-building rules can be easily adapted to fill in as X-COM base building...the last piece of a personal gaming goal with all these books.)

I'm absolutely happy with having spent the equivalent in Amazon points on the book, and, as cash if fungible, I guess that means I'd have been happy if I'd spent the money.