Ringworld is such a weird book. It reads like a TTRPG group's novelized adventure. The setting is immensely interesting, with this long weird history and pre-history and pre-pre-history and tech and aliens...but the actual story is just so random.
These utterly bizarre paranoid coward aliens discovered the Ringworld so they send one of their less-wimpy members, main explorer guy, an ambassador from tiger warrior people, and a hot chick who all happened to be at the same party to investigate and bring them whatever tech they can. The team arrives, they crash, stuff happens and we get more weird backstory of the characters because they are all actually weirdos.
They pretty much are sent to murder hobo their way through Ringworld and the book kind of reads like the flavor text of a TTRPG sourcebook. Niven did other stuff for the universe (the Known Space universe) that were much better stories, but Ringworld is his most influential and his worst as a novel.
