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<blockquote data-quote="ParanoydStyle" data-source="post: 7584359" data-attributes="member: 6984451"><p>Like a lot of D&D fans, I spent most of the 4th Edition era either playing 3.5 or not playing D&D, so I would never have known about this if not for you. Thanks! I'll try to check it out.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Apparently nothing has changed between 1980 and 2019 because THE SECOND the PCs heard there was a bank, they wanted to rob it. Fortunately, we'd decided ahead of time that one of the PCs was already in the keep, but I hadn't had a chance to establish why she was there, so since she was a wizard I replaced the magic user guarding the bank with her and explained to everyone that it was actually her job to guard the bank. Fortunately, this headed the bank-robbery off at the pass...</p><p></p><p>Incidentally, the Keep's defenses and defenders are written up in SO MUCH DETAIL that one almost gets the impression that Gary WANTED the PCs to fight/rob/raid the Keep. "Assault On The Keep On The Borderlands" might be a better module. Hmm...and if the party were demi-humans coming from the Caves of Chaos...that might be interesting to write some day.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>This, so much this. I tried when I was DMing to somehow make it into a positive thing, trying to double down on the fact that the PCs had just come here "to adventure", for adventure's own sake, and the sake of being adventurers and this wasn't like the 5E AL games they'd played where an NPC was going to come up to them and give them an errand to run, that they were free agents out for themselves, but yes...there is no motivation or hook whatsoever for the PCs to a) go to the keep in the first place, b) leave the keep once they're there, or c) fight the monsters in the caves of chaos.</p><p></p><p>I also REALLY don't know how Gary wanted or expected the wilderness crawl leading up to the keep to work. Like, I had no idea how to play that section so as soon as I found an excuse to fastrack the PCs to the caves I took it (they met a pegasus in the woods that took the ranger above the tree cover so they could see where the Caves wee in relation to them, at which point I just gave the party the wilderness map).</p><p></p><p>Since I've been DMing this for playtest purposes, I tried to give the PCs an out last night to take the campaign elsewhere (namely the free city of Greyhawk), but they opted almost unanimously to stay in the caves. Fortunately, I have made the caves more interesting: there's a barrier on the door to the temple of evil chaos that can only be opened by finding three mcguffins hidden throughout the rest of the caves, all of the bugbears in the bugbear cave are bugbear statues now because a mated pair of basilisks moved in, the labyrinth of the minotaur is now a young black dragon's lair, and I changed the hobgoblin complex into a svirnfeblin community (because I don't know why EVERY SINGLE kind of non-human living in the caves has to be evil, and because I like deep gnomes and have never gotten to use them before).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="ParanoydStyle, post: 7584359, member: 6984451"] Like a lot of D&D fans, I spent most of the 4th Edition era either playing 3.5 or not playing D&D, so I would never have known about this if not for you. Thanks! I'll try to check it out. Apparently nothing has changed between 1980 and 2019 because THE SECOND the PCs heard there was a bank, they wanted to rob it. Fortunately, we'd decided ahead of time that one of the PCs was already in the keep, but I hadn't had a chance to establish why she was there, so since she was a wizard I replaced the magic user guarding the bank with her and explained to everyone that it was actually her job to guard the bank. Fortunately, this headed the bank-robbery off at the pass... Incidentally, the Keep's defenses and defenders are written up in SO MUCH DETAIL that one almost gets the impression that Gary WANTED the PCs to fight/rob/raid the Keep. "Assault On The Keep On The Borderlands" might be a better module. Hmm...and if the party were demi-humans coming from the Caves of Chaos...that might be interesting to write some day. This, so much this. I tried when I was DMing to somehow make it into a positive thing, trying to double down on the fact that the PCs had just come here "to adventure", for adventure's own sake, and the sake of being adventurers and this wasn't like the 5E AL games they'd played where an NPC was going to come up to them and give them an errand to run, that they were free agents out for themselves, but yes...there is no motivation or hook whatsoever for the PCs to a) go to the keep in the first place, b) leave the keep once they're there, or c) fight the monsters in the caves of chaos. I also REALLY don't know how Gary wanted or expected the wilderness crawl leading up to the keep to work. Like, I had no idea how to play that section so as soon as I found an excuse to fastrack the PCs to the caves I took it (they met a pegasus in the woods that took the ranger above the tree cover so they could see where the Caves wee in relation to them, at which point I just gave the party the wilderness map). Since I've been DMing this for playtest purposes, I tried to give the PCs an out last night to take the campaign elsewhere (namely the free city of Greyhawk), but they opted almost unanimously to stay in the caves. Fortunately, I have made the caves more interesting: there's a barrier on the door to the temple of evil chaos that can only be opened by finding three mcguffins hidden throughout the rest of the caves, all of the bugbears in the bugbear cave are bugbear statues now because a mated pair of basilisks moved in, the labyrinth of the minotaur is now a young black dragon's lair, and I changed the hobgoblin complex into a svirnfeblin community (because I don't know why EVERY SINGLE kind of non-human living in the caves has to be evil, and because I like deep gnomes and have never gotten to use them before). [/QUOTE]
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