Tabletop Review - The Ruins of Symbaroum: The Throne of Thorns I

Publisher: Free League Publishing

Available on: https://freeleaguepublishing.com/shop/ruins-of-symbaroum-5e/

Hardcover and PDF versions and, as always, support your friendly local game store

Review system: 5E DnD OGL ruleset

Risk Corruption for Riches

Welcome Adventurers, to the Ruins of Symbaroum, a dark fantasy 5E setting from Free League Publishing, full of mythical treasures, social challenges, and the ever-present threat of Corruption. What follows here covers two of the books in the series: The World of Symbaroum and the accompanying campaign The Throne of Thorns I. Read on at your own peril and watch your Shadow.

The World of Symbaroum

Twenty years ago the Ambrians fled their ancestral lands after a devastating war. The forest of Davokar covers the ruins of the Empire of Symbaroum, which fell hundreds of years ago. Davokar, with its natural and mythical resources, beckons to be explored. However, the forest is full of danger from monsters, the elves of the Iron Pact, and the Corruption.

What You See

The world and lore of Symbaroum have many layers. In this book, the What You See section takes you through important locales and details the day-to-day, what-most-people-who-have-been-to-this-place know information. Everything is covered in each of the main locations: Thistle Hold, The Hunter’s Harbor, Karvosti, The Explorer’s Haven, Clan Lands, and more. Each place has (where available) unique taverns, inns, trade posts, entertainment, and lore regarding first impressions, memorable events, and local knowledge and information. Each place feels fully fleshed out and offers Players of all incomes and experience levels places to stay, eat, and relax before heading out on adventures.

The entire What You See section helps Players and Game Masters (GMs) navigate each place with relative ease. It contains large maps of the world, city maps, and all the important nonplayer characters found in the world. As a GM, I always appreciate well-crafted places as they cuts down on prep time. When it comes time for us GMs to really challenge our Players, we turn to What Lies Beneath.

What Lies Beneath

This section is purely for GMs. Players, you can go shop for new dice or try and figure out how to min-max your next character. Send this article to your GM and have a nice day. Anyway, GMs, here are the bones of the World of Symbaroum. Thistle Hold, Karvosti, Yndaros, and the noble houses of Ambria all contain secret histories and uncommon knowledge that has either been lost to time or buried for the benefit of some faction or other. Now, there is plenty of room for changing things around as this book was designed to help GMs adapt to Player antics. In fact, an entire chapter called “In the Shadow of the Beacon” addresses how to integrate lore that may seem at odds with established reality, ideas for homebrew, and tools to craft your own adventures. As with any good guide, there are plot hooks galore and rumors that enable your Players to explore everything Symbaroum has to offer. Sprinkled throughout are unique items, spells, enemies, diseases, and tables to help with setting the difficulty for various checks,

This section uses a tree symbol to connect knowledge and plot hooks that are integral to the Throne of Thorns campaign, further reducing the amount of time spent preparing and allowing for quick reference. Speaking of reducing prep time, both books are full of maps, battle maps, dungeon layouts, and even notes and journals that help facilitate various plot points and bring immersion to your game. Free League Publishing even has free downloads of the above materials on their website!

The Throne of Thorns I

The Throne of Thorns opens presuming the Players are level seven (5e DnD) and have some experience with the Ruins of Symbaroum. If this isn’t the case, I would highly suggest a strong session zero while creating characters to help ease the Players into the world. There is a “backgrounds” section at the beginning of each adventure to bring everyone up to speed to help with world integration. The entirety of The Throne of Thorns understands that Players are chaos and it has been written in a mostly open structure format. This is an amazing thing for the authors to have done and it shows a deep knowledge of the game and of those who play and run it.

Wrath of the Warden

The Wrath of the Warden picks up after the events of The Mark of the Beast. Again, Players don’t have to play that module, but it makes a little more work for us Game Masters to set them on the right track. This module does an amazing job of providing GMs with motivations for the Players and provides an adventure timeline that covers the major events in the campaign. The timeline helps keep the campaign rolling should there be a lull and is broken down by session. It spans 53 sessions (your results may vary) if you follow the whole thing and provides a lot of adventure to dollar ratio for this book. The adventure itself is divided up into three acts that give Players intriguing plots to follow, a very open-formatted second act, and the thrilling conclusion in the third act. The entire module is filled with more battle maps, custom enemies, NPCs, items, and more handouts for Players. Everything is well written and organized into a complete and interesting adventure.

The Witch Hammer

The second part of this adventure sends Players deep into the woods of Davokar on a plot thick with political intrigue, suspense, action, and epic locations. This adventure is also three acts and is preceded by a chapter of background information if you have decided to jump straight to this module. In it, Players are charged with finding the map to Symbar while keeping competing factions from finding it first. The first act takes Players and continuously escalates the situation on the plateau. The second act takes Players to three different locales and groups involved in a manhunt. The final act leads the Players to the cliffs of Karvosti and through to the conclusion of the adventure and includes an epilogue.

Conclusion

The Ruins of Symbaroum as represented here by The World of Symbaroum and adventured through using The Throne of Thorns I are great examples of a multifaceted and more gritty campaign setting that still has room for Player shenanigans. The overall attention to detail and balancing found in these books coupled with color maps and handouts makes running the modules an absolute joy. It must be noted that to fully immerse yourself in the Ruins of Symbaroum, you should have access to the Core Books: The Gamemaster’s Guide, Player’s Guide, and Bestiary. I was able to run these modules without them, but it was a little more work to make sure all monsters felt setting-appropriate. Overall though, I really enjoyed running the Ruins of Symbaroum and I look forward to seeing what Free League Publishing comes out with next.

THE WORLD OF SYMBAROUM AND THE THRONE OF THORNS I IS HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

I’d like to thank Free League Publishing for providing these books free of charge for this review.