Keep On The Borderline

Every time I see the thread title, I get Madonna's song stuck in my head (with only slight modifications to lyrics needed):

Borderline,
Feels like I'm going to lose my mind
You just keep on pushing my thief
Over the borderline
(Borderline)
Keep on pushing me, baby
Don't you know you drive me crazy
You just keep on pushing my thief
Over the borderline
Something in your room is makin' such a fool of me
When I hold your loot in my arms, I love it 'til I just can't see
But then you let me down, when I look around
Baby, owlbears can be found
Stop driving me away, I just want to stay
There's something I just got to say
Just try to understand (understand)
I've given all I can
'Cause you got the best of me
Borderline,
Feels like I'm going to lose my mind
You just keep on pushing my thief
Over the borderline
Borderline,
Feels like I'm going to lose my mind
You just keep on pushing my thief
Over the borderline
(Borderline)
Keep on pushing me baby
Don't you know you drive me crazy
You just keep on pushing my thief
Over the borderline
Look what your traps have done to me
Come on baby, set me free
You just keep on pushing my thief
Over the borderline
(Borderline)
You cause me so much pain, I think I'm going insane
What does it take to make you see?
You just keep on pushing my theif
Over the borderline
Keep pushing me baby
Keep pushing me baby
Keep pushing my thief
Come on baby
Come on darling, yeah

*Deleted by user*

lowkey13 said:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...erline/page3&p=7586597&viewfull=1#post7586597

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Hmm...you must have linked to a post who has me on ignore, because I don't see anything unusual

*Deleted by user*

I had to get in on this...

Borderlands
— as sung by Gary "Madonna" Gygax

Something in the rumors I'm hearing won't let me be
A fair maiden is imprisoned, so baby, won't you set her free

The goblins say, "Bree-yark"
The tiny dog-men bark
When the big dog-men come down

If you're chaotic, let me know
Baby, let it show
Honey, don't you fool around

Just try to understand (understand)
The priest is a con-man
Guess that's why he's so jolly

Borderlands,
The forces of Law got to take a stand
You just keep on spreading Chaos
Over the borderlands

Borderlands,
The forces of Law got to take a stand
You just keep on spreading Chaos
Over the borderlands
(Borderlands)

Keep on the Borderlands, baby
Don't you know you drive me crazy
You just keep on spreading Chaos
Over the borderlands

Something in your gaze is makin' a statue of me
When you drain me with your touch, you turn me into your zombie

But then you let me down, when I look around
A wand of fireball can't be found

The bandits they waylay, the priest he does betray
I'm standing here in ooze that's grey

Just try to understand (understand)
The priest is a con-man
Guess that's why he's so jolly

Borderlands,
The forces of Law got to take a stand
You just keep on spreading Chaos
Over the borderlands

Borderlands,
The forces of Law got to take a stand
You just keep on spreading Chaos
Over the borderlands
(Borderlands)

Keep on the Borderlands baby
Don't you know you drive me crazy
You just keep on spreading Chaos
Over the borderlands

Look what your altar has done to me
Come on Elder Elemental Eye, set me free
You just keep on spreading Chaos
Over the borderlands
(Borderlands)

You cause me so much pain, I think I'm going insane
What does it take to make you see?
You just keep on spreading Chaos
Over the borderlands

Keep on the Border
Keep on the Border
Keep on the Borderlands
Come on baby
Come on darling, yeah

[MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION], while I agree with a lot of your points, I do disagree about S1. I think that if S1 were published today, it would be panned as a terrible module, bereft of virtually any redeeming qualities. Acerak is important to the game because they added stuff AFTER the fact, retconning in all this background material because the module, like B2, holds a place in gaming history, due mostly to nostalgia and ubiquity.

As far as quality goes? Naw, both modules are barely adventures. As was mentioned, gimme B4 or X1 long before either of these two.

Hussar said:

[MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION], while I agree with a lot of your points, I do disagree about S1. I think that if S1 were published today, it would be panned as a terrible module, bereft of virtually any redeeming qualities. Acerak is important to the game because they added stuff AFTER the fact, retconning in all this background material because the module, like B2, holds a place in gaming history, due mostly to nostalgia and ubiquity.

As far as quality goes? Naw, both modules are barely adventures. As was mentioned, gimme B4 or X1 long before either of these two.

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So, I'll grant you this much - S1 has an extremely narrow aesthetic of play, and if your priorities in play fall outside of what S1 has on offer, then tough, because it's not even going to offer much of a sop toward it. Most modules, even if your aesthetics of play are somewhat narrow, you just have to wait an hour or two and you'll be catered to. But S1 has one thing its doing and that's it - Challenge. I suppose you could make an argument for discovery, but most of the module you don't actually want to discover. And an argument could be made that it does a decent job of offering up Sensation, which is unusual in an adventure, on account of its evocative illustrations being so much an element of play. But generally speaking, if you don't like facing difficult puzzles with few clues and almost merciless consequences, than this module is not for you. And because of that, this module isn't really meant to be a normal part of any long running play.

But the reason that I think that while all that criticism is valid it's still one of the best modules ever made is that ever since it was published, there has been many - perhaps dozens - of attempts to replicate or improve on the experience and the design, and they've all in my opinion failed. So you have a module that has been copied so much that trap filled tomb is practically a subgenera all its own, and here we are 40 years later and no one has made a better one. And to me, the secret here is that everyone that tries to replicate the experience tends to create something that is much more a test of character ability than a test of player ability and which kills you both less fairly and less surely.

Tomb of Horrors isn't even the worst meat grinder that's been published. Plenty of modules out there will kill more PC's than Tomb of Horrors simply by forcing you to flip a coin X times in a row and always get heads. Tomb of Horrors largely dispenses with issues of chance and offers to kill you only if you make a choice. You compare it with modules like Return to the Tomb of Horrors or Mud Sorcerer's Tomb, and it pretty much never proactively or actively kills you. You have to be doing something. It's never got a boogey man that's got a 65% chance of grabbing you, and if it does you die. You have to make the decision to touch the boogey man, or otherwise decide to do something. And that creates a singularly unique and, at least for me, very compelling gaming experience. No published adventure I've ever played was as memorable in every detail, or as tense, or so regularly made you feel elation.

Tomb of Horrors is a masterpiece. I'm notorious about redoing everything I encounter. I'd leave Tomb of Horrors basically untouched.

B4 and X1 are excellent choices as well. X1 has been revisited as a setting probably more times than any other module. Heck, my player's PC's are currently in the forbidden city on the Isle of Dread, having just slaughtered the cannibals in the 'Temple'. Granted, pretty much everything else in the dungeon is different than the one presented in the module, which was I think X1's weakest point, and the Island has been reworked to my preferences, but it's a great setting.

ToH isn't bad IMHO but yeah it's not for everyone. It's not really meant for a long term campaign IMHO.

My problem with ToH, as written, is that virtually none of the "puzzles" can actually be solved without basically just brute forcing your way through the possible combinations. And many of them rely on really out of character meta gaming stuff like knowing how a slot machine works. That sort of thing.

But, yeah, mostly my issue is that very many of the "puzzles" are not really puzzles in the sense of something to be solved using the information at hand, but are rather just exercises similar to those old text computer games where you just had to keep bashing away at the keyboard until some fairly random conglomeration of keys allowed you to get to the next point.
[MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] talks about the module being lethal if you make a choice. My issue is, without prior knowledge, I cannot see how any group actually made those choices without relying on either the DM to allow them to find "clues" or simply bypassing the situation entirely.

To be fair though, ToH was the one and only time I had ever seen Snakes to Sticks (the reverse of Sticks to Snakes) cast.

An old post by user [MENTION=16786]Stoat[/MENTION] goes through the module rather line by line, explaining my point much better than I ever could.

Hussar said:

My problem with ToH, as written, is that virtually none of the "puzzles" can actually be solved without basically just brute forcing your way through the possible combinations. And many of them rely on really out of character meta gaming stuff like knowing how a slot machine works. That sort of thing.

But, yeah, mostly my issue is that very many of the "puzzles" are not really puzzles in the sense of something to be solved using the information at hand, but are rather just exercises similar to those old text computer games where you just had to keep bashing away at the keyboard until some fairly random conglomeration of keys allowed you to get to the next point.

[MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] talks about the module being lethal if you make a choice. My issue is, without prior knowledge, I cannot see how any group actually made those choices without relying on either the DM to allow them to find "clues" or simply bypassing the situation entirely.

To be fair though, ToH was the one and only time I had ever seen Snakes to Sticks (the reverse of Sticks to Snakes) cast.

An old post by user [MENTION=16786]Stoat[/MENTION] goes through the module rather line by line, explaining my point much better than I ever could.

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Context it's not supposed to be a normal adventure
It's basically a F you designed to kill power gamers and munchkins. Gary used it on people who came up to him with Uber powerful PC or Monty haul type DMs and players. Your +5 weapons and armor won't help much.

It's not a bad adventure at all, it's designed to kill you and be unfair.

Also with players like Kuntz and Ernest they used slaves and summoned critters as cannon fodder it makes sense.

Modern players won't really get it unless they know the context of why it was designed.