Keep On The Borderline

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lowkey13 said:

List of Greatest Modules of All Time, Ranking of B2:

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I think there is a very simple explanation for that.

Most people haven't been exposed to very many modules.

B2 is I believe the most printed module of all time, owing that status to the fact that it was included in the Basic Red Box. As such it was the module the most people of all time were exposed to, and for a great many people probably the only module they were ever exposed to. Further, they were probably exposed to it at a fairly young and impressionable age - if I was exposed to the GI Joe or Transformers cartoon now, I probably wouldn't have the good feelings I feel about them now, that I have because I was exposed to them when I much younger and less discerning of their flaws. So when you take a survey of people, you are going to end up with B2 high ranking on any survey simply by the fact that most people you survey don't have 20 different modules they are really familiar with. The data set is inherently skewed.

Is it an important module? Sure. It's importance to the history of the game is undeniable, and not just as its importance to the history of gaming but to the history of a huge percentage of individual players (including myself). But being important isn't the same as being good, as even some of your own evidence suggests:

"Yes, trash was also talked about The Keep on the Borderlands. Yes, this is still a pretty archaic module, and it’s still one that isn’t a ton of fun to read. It’s a history book, if nothing else, and one that probably isn’t going to be for everyone." - LitRPG Reads

Incidently, I do partially disagree with that. I think TKotB is a reasonably fun module to read with its cunning demihumans and their clever plans for massing to fight the PCs or otherwise outwit them, and it's obscurely hidden treasures. I just don't think the sum is as remotely as good as its parts.

I love B2.

A fair amount of my love is based on nostalgia.

I have run it numerous times, but I have never emphasized the keep. It is always just a homebase to rest between delves.

It's always about diving in and killing monsters.

It's just a fun dungeon crawl. <-- Those words don't go together for a lot of groups these days, and that's OK.

When I run an adventure for new players I throw lots of action at them. That may not be the right approach these days with loads of people coming from streamed shows like Critical Role that emphasizes character motivations and adventure story.

I can certainly see why the nonsensical set-up and lack of hooks turn a lot of folks off. It does not match a lot of current playstyles - arguably, more mature playstyles.

X2 is one of my favorite modules too! Talk about nonsense!

jgsugden said:

But, generally speaking, as one of the first adventures, ever, it doesn't hold up by modern standards, but was great for the time.

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I'm not even sure I agree with that. "Tomb of Horrors", "Dark Tower", and "Caverns of Thracia" were great modules for their time, but I wasn't exposed to them to later or in some cases much later. And that's true of a pretty much everyone of my age whose first D&D product that they owned was the Basic Set. If Dark Tower or Caverns of Thracia was included in that Red Box and Keep on the Borderlands was obscure, we'd almost certainly find their positions on popularity contest lists switched.

Keep on the Borderlands was a module Gygax rushed together to meet a deadline using the limited content available to him in the basic set and is really one of the most straightforward applications of that material you could create. It's an uber-primitive module.

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lowkey13 said:

Dude, you can't just cherrypick some quotes from some sources.

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Did you read you links? They are your sources. I can quote them further. For example:

"By later standards (the mid-’80s and beyond), the Caves of Chaos seem almost like a videogame, in that there is no story behind the caves’ inhabitants, no over-arching motivations behind the priest in the evil shrine… they’re all just there, sitting in their rooms, as if obligingly awaiting D&D adventurers who want to fight them, take their treasure, and gain experience points." - The Busybody

"To this day their is a copy of this module among my collection of books and while I don’t think its a particularly extraordinary module even for its time, what it lacked as a module, it made up in the purity of its D&D’ness." - Gamer's Dungeon

It's not necessarily just me saying, "It's not all that." It's the same authors you are citing. One of them picks "Morricks Mansion" as the #1 module of all time. I've never even heard of it, despite a collection of 50 or so adventures on my shelf and very wide exposure to the literature of gaming. For all I know, it is the best module of all time. But given it's obscurity how many top 10 lists do you think it shows up on, and how unfairly do you think it is excluded simple because of its low exposure? How many of these list composers do you think have played it? How well do you think a module like that does on a survey? As for me having trouble acknowledging things, how about you acknowledge that even among the writer's that ranked it highly, there is wide agreement that the module isn't all that, and that they are self-admittedly ranking it highly in large part for reasons of nostalgia, familiarity and historical importance.

There is widespread agreement by the authors of the links that you listed that while the module isn't very good, it's place in history is cemented by its early role as the game's introductory module. Yes, there is also agreement by these same authors that the module is laudably open-ended and that DMs and players can make of it what they will, but one thing that we've also seen discussed in this thread is that you can say pretty much the same of any module. As I recall, there is a DM on this board that ran the DL modules as an open ended sandbox naval campaign. We've seen DMs in this thread discuss reimagining X2, something another DM insisted wasn't something you can't do. So I argue, that the justification for this module being considered great is nostalgia, and the weak excuse that the module can be repurposed and expanded and fleshed out is simply justifying both the nostalgia and what people did with the module over time as, for nostalgia reasons, they returned to it as a go to pivot in their sandboxed games. There is little to nothing that makes B2 particularly easier to flesh out than other modules, and in fact I'd suggest in many ways it is harder to flesh out because unlike a module like B4 or B5 or L1 or T1, there are fundamental problems with the structure of the module that need to be addressed before you can expand upon it. (For example, as written, the monsters are besieging each other and soon should have a Stalingrad like death toll even if you just left them to their own devices.)

I think [MENTION=6588]pogre[/MENTION] is more on to something when he declares that: "It's always about diving in and killing monsters. It's just a fun dungeon crawl."

That I can agree with. I think it plays pretty well as a kick the door down dungeon crawl, which is how it was played by me and my players back in the days I could have been cast as Mike from "Stranger Things". What it doesn't do is provide an easy structure to expand on, or provide a good template for expanding on. It doesn't lend itself to other gaming aesthetics easily, and while I agree an experienced DM could add or enhance other aesthetics of play using B2 as a base, I could say that about literally every other module including laughably bad efforts like N2: "The Forest Oracle". These extraordinary stories about play involving B2 say more about the DM than they do about the text of B2.

You don't have to like it or enjoy it; that's cool; it's probably a good idea to try and understand why other people think it's good...

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I think I have. And the citations you provided only reinforced my beliefs as to why other people think it is good: early exposure, historical importance, forced them to use their imagination, nostalgia and "a good dungeon crawl".

If S1 didn't exist and you published it today to modern publishing standards, say the S1 adaptations for 3e or 5e were the first time it was ever published, it would be hailed as a good module - maybe even a classic, certainly something that had accomplished something few other modules had accomplished. Even the intellectual property in S1 has been highly influential, with the mysterious figure of Aceserak proving to be the most popular passive NPC probably of all time. If you tried to publish B2 today to modern publishing standards, it most likely wouldn't even get accepted for publication. It's not particularly remarkable except for its age, its mass exposure, and the fact that so many DMs and groups cut their teeth on it. And there is really no good reason to make it a starting point of your play today except nostalgia, which is ultimately what this thread was about - is it really worth it to put in the effort to adapt B2 to modern mature play styles with their multiple aesthetics of play, coherent setting, and so forth.

And I would say, "No." There are just much better choices available, and unlike back in the early 1980's when access to material was really limited, there is no reason to be stuck with this module just because it's the only thing you got.

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lowkey13 said:

In response to a complaint that you cherrypick quotes and ignore the larger issue (that B2 is universally seen as one of the top modules of all time, including in the Dungeon ranking which includes most of the top names that you probably recognize, and is on pretty much every top 10 list of modules, ever), you continue to take some out-of-context quotes! Awesome!

And then you just ignore everything else.

TLDR; I am done. Thanks.

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And you will continue to pretend that I'm cherry picking quotes and taking those quotes out of context (how?) despite the fact that I've now quoted nearly everyone on your self-selected list that is supposed to justify how great the module is, and there is a consistent theme of apologizing to some extent for the selection based on the self-evident problems of the module.

And further more, you will pretend to claim that I'm the one ignoring you and failing to engage with your ideas, and not you ignoring me and failing to engage with my ideas, despite the fact that your posts have a notable lack of question marks in them, that my posts notably do address your content while you pointedly ignore mine, and that to a large extent your not even discussing this - you think that it's sufficient to dismiss what I'm saying by simply being insulting.

You claim that I just don't get "preferences" and that I just don't get how this is all subjective, but you don't apply that same idea as rigorously to your own thinking.

There has been a consistent attack on me from the beginning by pretty much everyone defending this module that the problem is that I'm just not a very good DM, or at the least, that I'm just not the sort of DM that can appreciate this module because I'm not creative enough, or I lack the ability to flesh out ideas, or that I require an adventure to hold my hand and I can't improvise, or some general such nonsense as that, as if there was any one style of module that I preferred in the first place and I didn't praise open ended modules as highly as sandboxes or what not. The general approach to engaging with me is to say that it just takes a different sort of DM that I am to appreciate the module, with the considerable implication being that this is a "thinking man's module" and that old school players appreciated it more because they were better able to improvise their own content, and that I just don't "get" B2.

Ok, so this is 14 year old me's take on the module, back in the mid 80's. The reason that everyone is fighting over the "Caves of Chaos" is that there is a gold mine controlled by the evil cult. The Castallan is charged with recovering that gold mine, and being a good commander what he really wants is scouting information regarding the caves before he goes in with his troops. He's willing to let mercenaries haul treasure out of the caves, because he knows that his boss is going to make a fortune once control of the caves is returned to the forces of Law. Meanwhile, the Cult has been encouraging tribes to 'audition' for membership in the inner circle of the cult by promising gold to tribes that most prove their worth, cause a plethora of small bandit tribes of various to come try their fortune. The Cult has been essentially running gladiatorial games where champions of the tribes test their mettle in bloodsport to prove they are worthy of entering the Cult's inner sanctum. The victors are then promoted and rewarded while the losing tribes become slaves in the Cult's gold mines. What the victors don't know is that this is mostly a deception. The Cult could always use more slaves, but already has plenty of overseers for its slaves. The truth is the inner sanctum is lead by a mad wizard tainted by the forces of chaos who is by foul magic selectively breeding a race of supergoons. It's this race of mutants in the depths (down that corridor that is blocked on the map) that is the true threat to the Keep, not the pathetic bands found in the surface caves (which even collectively are no real threat to the Keep). Once enough of these monstrosities have been created, they'll emerge through the secret entrance in the Caves of the Unknown (I had no access to B1) and assault the Keep with the battering ram and siege towers that the Bandits (actually cult members) have been secretly preparing while watching the Keep.

Cool enough? The problem that I had with this, even as a 14 year old, is that I didn't really have access to any mass combat rules, and I was beginning to question if not the Gygaxian dungeon then at least the Gygaxian "fortification", and all this work to make the scenario make sense, and all the additional work implied by it to modify the existing map and add two whole new levels to it, just felt a whole lot less worthwhile than writing my new and original stuff for myself or to run out of the box some of the new exciting content that just seemed to need less reworking that I was now being exposed to. And every time I've thought of reworking B2 into something that meets my own standards, I've found myself running into the same thoughts - this might work but its just not worth it.

One area of Gygaxian design that for me has just not aged well at all are these scenarios involving masses of poorly coordinated foes that restrict themselves in a confined area, and then the PC's are supposed to wade through masses of near identical opponents using hit and run tactics and their superior tactical flexibility and ability to recover to wear down the opponent through attrition.

And the problem I have with that it's not just not that fun more than once, and certainly not back to back to back.

By comparison, at 12 we didn't really engage with the women and children problem much at all. If they fought us, we fought them, and if they didn't they were free to leave as long as they didn't take the treasure. When I ran B2, I ran combatants as combatants and the player's let noncombatants skirt out the door. I don't think we had any sense that this was a problem of some sort nor did the players feel like they needed to kill everything. I don't really understand why that of all things hasn't aged well. It wasn't until we were like 15 that it occurred to anyone, "Yeah, we just slaughtered their mates and fathers right in front of their eyes, and now what do we do?", and when that happened it wasn't "problematic", it felt like we'd grown up and were playing a more mature game. And that didn't happen running B2, but running an admittedly primitive dungeon scenario of my own invention.

But if you are done, please be done.

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