D&D (2024) Heroes of the Borderlands

[Demetrios1453]

I wouldn’t really describe them as “boar-like”. My impression is the good aliens are really quite Lovecraftian in appearance.

Yeah, they don't have a particularly close resemblance to anything. "Boar" is about the closest real-life comparison I could come up with.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

You don't think people found and perhaps still find KotB a fun introduction to the mechanics of whatever game for which it is written?

You don't think they won't unless they get to murder children?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Yeah, they don't have a particularly close resemblance to anything. "Boar" is about the closest real-life comparison I could come up with.

Doing a bit of internet search, it appears that they were actually sluglike, rather like Jabba the Hutt. But they benefited from being seen through fog and tiny windows!

Clearly, they were trying to make them as ugly and alien as they could though.

Completely untrue fact: Those episodes are not missing. They were deliberately destroyed because people seeing the rill went insane.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

LotR Orcs? Nightmare fuel for sure.

In the book LotR orcs are characterised as a: too dumb to be threatening, and b: working class northerners (the product of Blake's "dark satanic mills").

It was Peter Jackson (no doubt with his horror background) who managed to make them nightmarish. And that was long after B2 was written. The art from the D&D books of the time was more likely to cause laughter than fear.

But I should probably mention again: orcs are a core PC species in 2024 D&D. This version of the adventure has to be written to take into account that the adventurers who turn up at the keep may be orcs.

 

[Li Shenron]

Using a classic vanilla adventure like KotB in a starter set is a great idea! I don't know if the starter set is supposed to cover only level 1 or at least a few levels, but I hope KotB doesn't get reduced too much to fit.

seriously, this art is a big step up.

I haven't read the whole thread to see if others already mentioned it, but my first though was that it is AI-generated. What is the 'video buffering' symbol doing in the middle of the second picture? What about the bicycle handle sprouting from the tablet in the third?

 

[Nikosandros]

I haven't read the whole thread to see if others already mentioned it, but my first though was that it is AI-generated. What is the 'video buffering' symbol doing in the middle of the second picture?

I think that those are freeze frames from a video.

What about the bicycle handle sprouting from the tablet in the third?

It looks like a table lamp to me and it seems that it is closer to the table's edge.

 

[Parmandur]

Using a classic vanilla adventure like KotB in a starter set is a great idea! I don't know if the starter set is supposed to cover only level 1 or at least a few levels, but I hope KotB doesn't get reduced too much to fit.

On the contrary, it sounds like it is being expanded, into a three booklet adventure: a module fot the Keep, a module for the wilderness, and another module for the Caves of Chaos.

 

[DEFCON 1]

On the contrary, it sounds like it is being expanded, into a three booklet adventure: a module fot the Keep, a module for the wilderness, and another module for the Caves of Chaos.

Which pretty much matches the Phandelver starter sets. Those has their town of Phandalin (and its series of encounter sites), the wilderness areas around the Triboar Trail (with their encounter sites) and then their large final dungeon of Wave Echo Cave.

So I expect the only real difference with the Borderlands one will be it not specifically tied to Faerun, and instead remain a generic area so that DMs can slot it into any campaign world they want.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Well, not in 5e.

Why is that an issue for you? You don’t play 5e anyway.

 

[Parmandur]

Which pretty much matches the Phandelver start sets. Those has their town of Phandalin (and its series of encounter sites), the wilderness areas around the Triboar Trail (with their encounter sites) and then their large final dungeon of Wave Echo Cave.

So I expect the only real difference with the Borderlands one will be it not specifically tied to Faerun, and instead remain a generic area so that DMs can slot it into any campaign world they want.

Yup to all of that: the interesting thing to me is that this sounds like it may be significantly more expansive than either B2 or Phandelver, depending on the size of the 3 Adventure booklets. The video also suggested there will be "components" to help play, so this might be more like the Essentials Kit than the Starter Set in terms of box content.