Impressions: Geoffrey C. Grabowski's "The Dreams of Ruin"

Earlier this year, Geoffrey C. Grabowski, writer of the Exalted RPG, released The Dreams of Ruin.  This free module is nominally as a Labyrinth Lord product but compatible with a great many retroclones and the games that inspired them.  At the time it first came out, I took a look with an eye to review and got bogged down in the text.  The recent publication of The Dreams of Ruin in print format inspired a second look.

In my defence, this module is a fairly massive work coming in at 236 pages including the art work, plus handouts and supplementary materials.  Frankly, I think it could have been shorter and better if it wasn't for Grabowski's writing style.  The author doesn't make his points directly and seems to have little regard for the reader's time.  Nowhere is this clearer than in the pages and pages of house rules.  He spends seven paragraphs on "Deathlessness and Bane effects".  What are these esoteric notions?  Deathlessness is the ability to regenerate like a troll.  Bane effects inflict damage that cannot be regenerated.  That's all, and yet Grabowski drones on and on.  He also has an annoying habit of advertising the module in its own text.  I'm reading the book already, stop telling me that it's useful and give me something to use!  Yet by page 41 he's still telling me that the material is novel and full of possibilities and - I've lost interest.  There might be good ideas here, but the writing keeps burning me out.

Aside from antipathy, my main impression is that the document spent a good part of its development life as a product for use with Exalted.  This isn't just a comment on Grabowski's past.  The emphasis on magi-tech, artistic style, and to large extent the themes all call to mind Exalted more than they really do D&D.  This isn't a problem as such, and I can understand the financial incentives to repackage, but I feel that many of the rules additions that were entirely appropriate for Exalted were simply translated 1:1 (i.e. if there was a fit mechanic for The Dreams of Ruin in Exalted, then Grabowski found a way to put that mechanic into The Dreams of Ruin for Labyrinth Lord).  Again, the psychological incentives to do so are easy to understand, but I feel very strongly that this was a mistake.

I don't recommend sinking time or money into The Dreams of Ruin - but if you do, please consider creating an abridged version and putting it under my nose.