Retrospective: The Ruins of Myth Drannor

I know that, for many fans of old-school Dungeons & Dragons, Ed Greenwood’s Forgotten Realms represents a decisive (and unwelcome) break from the game’s early days, both in content and especially in presentation. I don’t agree with that assessment, though this isn’t the place to rehearse that entire argument. What I will say is that revisiting TSR’s Forgotten Realms products from the late 1980s through the 1990s, I find a body of work that is not the betrayal its detractors claim, but is instead a mixed bag – occasionally frustrating, frequently ambitious, and at times genuinely impressive.

A good case in point is The Ruins of Myth Drannor, a 1993 boxed set detailing the fabled elven “City of Song.” Myth Drannor had long loomed large in the background of the setting. For years prior to this set’s release, Greenwood referenced it repeatedly as a shining example of magical harmony undone by hubris and catastrophe. Consequently, when the boxed set finally appeared, I eagerly snapped it up.

From the first time I read about it, I imagined Myth Drannor as one of the great fallen cities of the Realms. Its destruction defined much of the Forgotten Realms’ melancholy grandeur. The Realms, at least as I understood them, were not a setting on the ascent but a world in decline, a place of fading glories and lingering ruins, closer in spirit to pulp fantasy than to high heroic triumphalism. Myth Drannor is where this comes into sharp focus. 

Transforming such a mythic ruin into a playable location was no doubt a challenge. Myth Drannor is not a megadungeon in the traditional sense. Rather, it is a shattered metropolis sprawled across the forest of Cormanthyr. Its districts, academies, towers, temples, vaults, and magical zones warped by a magic effect that once protected the city. TSR had previously attempted little else on this scale. One might point to Dwellers of the Forbidden City as an early precursor, though the comparison only goes so far. In spirit, its closest analog may be Chaosium’s Big Rubble for RuneQuest, which is still, in my opinion, the gold standard for “ruin crawl” locales.

In many respects, The Ruins of Myth Drannor succeeds admirably in its goals. Greenwood presents the city as an environment. It is effectively a mini-sandbox, a vast urban wilderness suitable for exploration, salvage, factional conflict, and long-term campaigns built around survival amid arcane devastation. The conceptual foundation is solid. The boxed set offers history, factions, current inhabitants, and numerous adventure hooks. This is all good stuff. Where it falters is in execution.

The set does not consistently provide the Dungeon Master with the tools necessary to bring so large a space to life in play. The maps are expansive and the descriptions evocative, but there is surprisingly little in the way of random encounter tables, stocking guidelines, event generators, or even name lists to help a referee improvise within such a vast environment. Instead, we are given several more fully fleshed-out adventures and a handful of small, somewhat uninspired mini-dungeons that can be dropped in as needed. Those adventures are serviceable, but they do not quite match the promise implied by the scale of the city itself. 

This absence of these kinds of referee tools is all the more striking because the physical presentation of the boxed set is impressive. The poster maps are sweeping, delineating districts and geography. They convey scale beautifully. One can easily imagine months of play wandering the overgrown avenues and shattered towers. Yet, that same scale exposes a weakness. Much of the city is described in broad strokes. The maps suggest more than the text delivers or indeed could deliver.

The background material is quintessentially Greenwoodian, dense with names, lineages, magic, and history. For readers invested in the Realms as a setting, this lore is rich and rewarding. For referees seeking immediately usable material, however, it can feel overwhelming. Even as someone who once delighted in “Realmslore,” I occasionally found myself wishing that some of the word count devoted to ancient history had instead gone toward practical game tools.

One element the boxed set gets absolutely right is its intended level range. The Ruins of Myth Drannor is not for novice characters. The ruins teem with formidable threats, like elven and mind flayer liches, demons, devils, magical constructs, and strange, magic-eating abominations. These are adversaries suited to mid and high-level characters. For referees who enjoy high-level play – and who know how difficult it can be to challenge powerful characters – Myth Drannor fills a genuine need. It offers a compelling and dangerous playground for experienced adventurers.

In the end, I think The Ruins of Myth Drannor exemplifies much of TSR’s output during this period. It is ambitious, atmospheric, and lavishly presented. It's also frustrating. It gestures toward an open-ended and exploratory style of play that strongly matches old school sensibilities, but it stops short of fully embracing the procedural support such play demands.

Even so, I still very much like this boxed set. When it was released, I used it and mined it for material to use in my campaign. Its flaws required work on my part as referee, of course, but the raw material was there, waiting to be shaped. Perhaps that is the most old-school aspect of it after all: not a perfectly engineered product, but a rich, uneven trove of ideas demanding engagement.

Myth Drannor, both as a fictional city and as a boxed set, stands as a monument to a fallen age – within the Realms and within TSR itself. Imperfect, excessive, occasionally exasperating, yet grand in conception, it reminds us that decline and greatness are not mutually exclusive. Sometimes they are, in fact, the same thing viewed from different angles.