The Keep on the Borderlands, 1 Zillion Years Later...

[Wik]

Lost Soul - Except Mike Mearls, last I checked, still works for WotC? And I'm pretty sure Mearls' knows all about the Keep.

I find it hard to believe that ANYONE who worked for wotc would be unaware of the Keep. Except for maybe that Shelley chick (but that's kind of why they hired her?).

And Theo - yeah, it's a very useful article. And it's informed every dungeon I've made since then.

 

[Nikosandros]

Lost Soul - Except Mike Mearls, last I checked, still works for WotC? And I'm pretty sure Mearls' knows all about the Keep.

Back when he still wasn't working at WotC, he wrote a negative review (I think on rpg.net) of KotB. I think that's what the others are referring to.

As for the OP, I ran B2 for my AD&D group a year ago and we had a blast... I consider it a far superior adventure to many modern ones, including for example, H1 and H2 for 4e.

 

[Crothian]

Back when he still wasn't working at WotC he wrote a negative review (I think on rpg.net) of KotB. I think that's what the others are referring to.

The Inside Scoop on Gaming - RPGnet

There's that review

 

[Nikosandros]

The Inside Scoop on Gaming - RPGnet

There's that review

I had forgotten how awful that review was...

 

[Wik]

Oh, I have no problem with the fact that some gamers may not LIKE borderlands. That's not my problem.

What I was sayign was there was no way the scenario, as put forward by the poster, had happened. I sincerely doubt there are wotc employees who are unfamiliar with the adventure, is all.

 

[Tervin]

The Keep on the Borderlands was the first module I read, the first module I DMed. Even as we played through it, way back then, I started to wonder if something like that was really good enough to publish. I added a few things here and there, as I felt that my players would otherwise never be able to see that roleplaying and D&D could be anything worthwhile. And yes, the players did enjoy themsleves - with my added bits - and never mentioned any of the original content again, when reminiscing.

So I heartily agree with Mr Mearls. In fact, KotB has since the 80s been something that people I play with have been calling the worst roleplaying adventure ever published, and saddest way possible to introduce the game to new players.

It is not that we don't do sandboxes. It is not that we want bigger and more complex dungeons. It is just that KotB is really really bad at what it tries to do. At least in my opinion.

 

[gizmo33]

I remember KotB fondly, and IMO it did what it was supposed to do. We played it when we were new to the game. Anything more complicated would have made it too difficult to run. (In fact, I attempted Expedition to Barrier Peaks and it was just too hard to be interesting). It was easier to add NPCs with names and other details that grew out of the game, rather than start with a complicated encyclopedia of all sorts of trivia about the Keep and have to remember it all during the game. We didn't have an internet at the time to tell us how much fun we weren't having.

B4 was the next module I ran, and I don't recall the NPCs having names in that one either. If they did, they didn't matter to the way we played - NPCs in dungeons weren't to be trusted, and among the things you'd ask them, the name was not at the top of the list. It was a dungeon crawl IIRC, with rooms of monsters living next to each other. A more advanced DM would have probably made more of the various religious factions, but that was not me at the time and I appreciated not being bombarded with detail that I couldn't have used.

Yes, this isn't thespianism or great Tolkien-esque myth-making, but I find many of the criticisms of KotB to be anachronistic. The module was labeled "B" for a reason, I think.

 

[haakon1]

I find many of the criticisms of KotB to be anachronistic.

QFT. At the time, it was what I needed. The criticisms seem a little bit like saying "DOS 1.0 was lame because it didn't include an internet browser" or "Model T Fords were lame because they didn't even have automatic transmissions". Somebody has to create the market before others can be better . . . and I still think KoBT is great with a good DM, even now.