Mörk, stämningsfull setting och enkla regler. Rekommenderas verkligen!

I ran this for my kids to introduce them to the game and it was great. A little hex crawl, a little dungeon, some good ways that the ending can lead to more adventures.

This is a very nice Pay What You Want D&D B/X clone. Which means its a great OSR engine, at minimal cost. Relics & Ruins differs from B/X in a small handful of ways, such as Race and Class being separate, Thieves using a d6 hit die, player characters getting Feats as they level, along with a d20 skill/task check system that takes the place of mechanics such as rolling percentile dice for Thief skills. PC XP charts are low compared to B/X, making leveling up much quicker. I like most of the changes, but low level play is a fun and challenging part of old school games, so I would definitely swap out these XP charts for the ones in B/X. Looking through the rules, I found a few other things that I would houserule here and there, but I would say the same for pretty much any RPG out there. Including B/X. Old School fans should definitely check this product out, as this could be your next go-to game for running all the great OSR material out there. Definitely worth a look.

Short adventure suitable for a regular company of low level adventurers, or a larger group of zero level types. Quick rules are included for the latter (funnel). Familiar themes of cannibal cultists and necromancy, but carried off with some style, supported by a nice clear map. Good clue to a pit trap. Variety in the encounters as some will start with dialogue; good use of horror. Could be clearer about who has keys to which door: who holds keys for the locked door to area 6?

Recommended.

PERFECT TO PLAY IN ONE EVENING! WHEN I PLAYED IT, 5 CHARACTERS ENTERED THE DUNGEON AND I THINK 1 OR 2 SURVIVED. LOVED THE CAT!

„Guests for Dinner“ weighs in at 10 pages, 7 of them including the little OSR run-in-dungeon it is, as well as a quick guide to a nearby town, how and why the dungeon is what it is, and a small (half page) primer on „character-funnel-type play“.

The dungeon itself pretty much what one has to expect from such a limited format: it includes a total of elven encounter areas, each with its own (rather) brief description. The map is functional and not a bad one, but I miss a scale or a size description. Not that it is overly important (there is a grid and every GM can easily decided upon the measures that fit his or her needs), but when sizes have been mentioned somewhere in the module, I missed them.

That being said, the module has a horror touch to it that keeps it from being „just vanilla“. While me, as a „horror-film-friend“, had a lot „deja-vu“ during the read, I guess that this icing on the cake takes „Guests for Dinner“ one nodge above the middle ground. You will for sure get a „been there, done that“ feeling if you are accustomed to contemporary horror, but the fact that you have eaten a steak before will not change the fact that a nice piece of steak is a nice piece of steak. And the meat that is there is nice. Of course, the format means that you only get the general ideas and have to work on the rest of it, but the ideas are good and they are all -linked- into the background/synopsis of the adventure. A GM who wants to build up on what is there will have an easy time doing so.

The modul may be used as a one-shot, as the start of a campaign or adventure group, or as a „one on the side“ thing that just happens to a group between other adventures. It seems to be excellent as a one shoot for one evening, as it literally drops the characters into the action right from the start.

All in all, I say give it a look and if you actually use it for an evening of entertaining, give the some money.