ParanoydStyle
Peace Among Worlds
My mistake. : )
Most of my complaints are the same as ones I've read online recently although I probably have a new one or two to add. For starters, the fact that neither the keep nor any of the many NPCs that live there have names is pretty off-putting.
ParanoydStyle said:A complaint I haven't heard from others that I'll throw in is that the "Keep On The Borderlands" is actually a medium sized town. See, on my initial skim of the module years ago, I kind of got the impression from the text about the PCs using the Keep as a base of operations that it would be mostly deserted except for the PCs and the PCs could customize the keep as they saw fit but of course once I got into translating it was clear that that was REALLY REALLY not the case. With a bank and a guild hall and an inn and a tavern and multiple shops along with a seriously sizable army of defenders, the "Keep On The Borderlands" is actually a medium-sized or large town by D&D standards. Which actually makes it even weirder that it doesn't have a name.
ParanoydStyle said:And finally, and this is a complaint I've seen before, it feels like a nonsensical quagmire of anti-logic how literally 8-10 tribes of demi-humans/monstrous humanoids have chosen to live right on top of each other tenement slum style in the Caves of Chaos when they have the entire surrounding wilderness to find lairs in where they're not tripping over each other. Then there's the fact that they are all completely passive: largely, each tribe of humanoids is just there in their caves waiting for the PCs to come in and try to kill them.
ParanoydStyle said:The two semi-warring orc tribes are a baby step in the right direction but the fact that neither the tribes or their leaders have names is sort of a roadblock to the roleplaying possibilities. There's a real lack of enemy variety as while there are at least five or six varieties of monstrous humanoids to fight, there really isn't much difference between fighting orcs and hobgoblins, between hobgoblins and gnolls, between gnolls and orcs, between kobolds and goblins, etcetera.
ParanoydStyle said:And finally, yes, it really does seem to amplify some of the gross and racist underpinnings of early D&D, explicitly stocking these caves with non-combatant females and children, and then encouraging you to go in and make widows and orphans of them which is perfectly okay because they look different than you do.
Another one that I've used more than a few times in that way is actually B3 - Palace of the Silver Princess. Most recently for 4th edition - I took the basic idea but turned it into a battle between two of the Archfey - with the assault and occupation of the palace and the kidnapping of the Princess and her consort as "political" maneuvers between them. It worked out really well, even if I did basically have to scrap the lower level nonsense map and replace it with something more sane, the basic framework was solid enough to use it as a basis for the adventure.
That's the sort of thing that (as per my post upthread) I've not worked out how to do!
Another possible difference, but may be not - with B2 I've always been able to (re)work it during the actual course of play. Did your treatment of X2 require preparation? It sounds like it did, but maybe not.
Thinning out the number of occupants or combatants in the Keep, which honestly a medieval keep should not have too many retainers anyway, seems like an easy fix though.I never liked KotB much - the Keep is good except for lack of names, but with a couple hundred soldiers it doesn't make sense as a low level base; it should have cleared out the Caves of Chaos long ago. set it up as on the Borderland of a mid-high level zone, with eg G1 Against the Giants as the threat (at least 2 days' travel away), and it makes a lot more sense. I always found the Caves a bit lame anyway; the endless hordes of humanoids are a bit boring - the 'specials' like the owlbear minotaur & evil priests are ok.
By contrast I like orange cover B3 Palace of the Silver Princess a lot, in fact this is making me think about adapting it to Primeval Thule...!