Hiya!
OK, Celebrim, don't take this the wrong way. What I'm noticing is that with older style modules, like this one, it fits with the older style DM'ing...and it flies in the face of most/many of the newer style DM'ing ways. Basically, it's a comment on just how different your ideas of what is a "good DM'ing adventure" and what my ideas of what is a "good DM'ing adventure".
I think others reading this thread may want a different take on it...so here I am!
Don't?
I've ran B2 twice, once at about age 11 and once at about age 15, and I'd never do it again - or at least not in anything remotely like its written form. Your assessment of the adventure is perfectly correct. It's fairly boring and redundant, and it tends to devolve into a series of mass combats involving entire tribes versus the party. And those combats tend to devolve into the fact that plate armor wearing PC's can be nigh impossible for most foes to hit, resulting in lots of tedious rolling and very little cinematic combat.
Do! Definitely DO!
The fact that plate armour wearing PC's can be nigh impossible for most foes to hit is not a flaw. When you buy/get plate mail (as it is called in the game), you are trading off movement/weight for protection. From my experience with B/X or BECMI D&D (and even 1e), one or two 'front line' fighters should try and get some plate mail. Everyone else should stick to medium or light. I can't tell you how many times I've had one fighter in Plate go down next to his buddy, also in Plate, and then have the buddy have to leave his friend to die because he can't just pick up 350 lb's and run away. Moral of the story: If you are in plate mail and go down...don't expect to be surviving if the bad guy/s are still up.
As for cinematic...BECMI and 1e aren't really based around "cinematic" combat. They are more based on "very rough approximation of realism...with a heroic sprinkling". In 1e, a Fighter could attack a number of less-than-1HD creatures per round equal to his level. So a 7th level fighter against a bunch of goblins would get 7 attacks PER ROUND against them. Add another fighter, stick them both in plate mail and, well, there's your "heroic sprinkling".
But this doesn't really pertain directly to B2, and more to the systems in question. Lets continue.
Celebrim said:
The real irony of B2 is it that it is an adventure that only can come to life in the hands of a very experienced and competent DM who is capable and willing to add a ton to the text that doesn't really appear in it. It's an absolutely lousy module for a beginning DM. I've heard of mini-campaigns around B2 that sounded like they might have worked, that involved inventing massive backstories for the castle, surrounding towns and wilderness lairs, an evil warlord, an insidious cult of chaos, spies, assassins, fleshing out the interior of the keeps and the NPCs there in, and the merchants that visit it, and adding additional dungeons and so on and so forth. But at that point, B2 itself is only a tiny and partially irrelevant launching point for the DM's imagination.
Ahhh! Here is the crux of diversion between your style and mine.
Y'see, IMHO and IME, a "very experienced and competent DM" is one who learned how to add tones to a module. He/She is one who DID add massive backstories, evil bad guys, insidious cults, spies, assassins, and spent ample hours fleshing out all that "boring stuff the PC's may never encounter". Again, IMHO, B2 is the
perfect module for beginning DM's as it encourages them to do just that. And, in doing that over the course of weeks, months and years...they become those very same "experienced and competent" DM's.
With my style, B2 is what I put up as the best, most 'perfect' adventure module for D&D ever written (although Kenzer & Co's "Little Keep on the Borderlands" gives it a VERY good run for it's money!). Back in ye olden days, a DM was
required to do all that adding, tweaking, and adjusting. That was the core "job" of being a DM. So, where you see B2's, shall we say, "sparce" detailings as a failure, I see them as a rousing success!
Celebrim said:
And at that point that the scenario has become logical depends on nothing actually in the text of the adventure. Examining the text alone, you have to ask why in the world any of these tribes are even there. They've got no apparent loyalty to the cult, and the cult has no apparent means of imposing control on the tribes. The tribes hate each other and their are no resources that would tie the tribes to the caves. Nothing in the text suggests what they are vying over in the first place, and only the goblins seem to have any sort of economic activity (and that not very much). There are no workshops, no mines, no really anything, to suggest what this is all about. Moreover, the supposed threat represented by the tribes is ridiculous, since the keep is quite capable of repelling any attack that the tiny poorly equipped tribes could mount even if they did work together. And, the keeps soldiers and officers are vastly better equipped to assault the caves than the PC's are, so if it really came to that, why is it the PC's job to deal with the caves? And if the cult actually had a goal, why do they passively allow the PC's to disrupt it. Like, the second time the PC's show up, why doesn't every tribe and all the undead and the cultists attack the PC's together? If they can't manage to do that, why does the cult imagine it can arrange an assault on the keep?
Back to style preference...and, seeing the small paragraph below, maybe how we both learned to DM. Again, the DM is the one who gets to decide whatever he/she wants to be the "logical goal" of the caves inhabitants. I've run no less than 3 entire campaigns using B2. Each campaign lasted between one and almost three years. Yes, YEARS of actual time. Basically, I've spent roughly 5 years of my DM'ing career running campaigns using B2 (I've been DM'ing for about...hmmm...38'ish years I guess). In fact, B2 was my "learning module" back in '81.
Celebrim said:
(The DM who trained me told me that his PC party had concluded that the real goal of the module was to rob the keep, and his group had treated the module like a heist game. That's a good example of making lemonade out of lemons, but not evidence of the module not being boring as written.)
Ahhh...I didn't learn from anyone. I was self-taught....like pretty much every single DM at that time (1981). There was no internet in those days, and most people didn't have a PC. It was read, trial, error, read, fix/adjust, rinse and repeat. So with that in mind, B2 was perfect for beginning DM's as it gave us SOMETHING to start with. It gave us a small safe area, some NPC's for more RP'ing sessions, a small but varied wilderness area to wander around in and hide "long lost temples" or "ruined towers" or whatever. It gave us a multitude of dungeons, roughly linked together in that dreadful box canyon. It gave us hints at what some of the caves inhabitants might be up to or wanting (or what they didn't want). It gave us nudges towards developing more in-depth plots, story lines and all that 'behind the scenes' stuff that a DM could either happily ignore, or run with and embellish.
Basically, B2 taught you how to DM by making you DM...not by telling you exactly what to do and having everything planned out for you.
Perfect module, imnsho.
Celebrim said:
Briefly, I considered rewriting B2 to suit my current standards of play, and to me that involves mostly dealing with its problematic but iconic map and its lack of compelling hooks or obvious purpose of play beyond kicking down the doors and taking their stuff. But it's too much work for too little effort.
I'd argue that what you get out of B2 is exactly what you put into it. Kind of like virtually everything else in life.
I put LOTS of work into it...three different times. Each of those 1 to 3 year campaigns was different from the other. Each one could be transcribed into a novel (or novels), and other than names and the general layout of the area, each would be a unique and interesting story.
Taking B2, delving up to your elbows in it and making it your own is
exactly the kind of modules we need nowadays. Too many young'ish DM's, imho, get rattled when the players do something completely unusual simply because most adventures (and almost all Adventure Paths) expect a logical progression of the prescribed 'story'. If more modules were "skeletons" and less "fully formed personas", I think we'd have a lot more DM's who don't get the cold sweats when they are DM'ing "The Savage Tide" and hear the PC's say "Hey! Why doesn't Brad the Beautiful Bard run for Mayor of Farshore? He's a shoe in! With a Charisma of 20 and all his skill focuses and what not...it'd be OUR town then! Lets do that!". ( <--- actually happened when we played Savage Tide; DM had to totally and unabashedly cheat us...because the adventure assumes that someone else becomes Mayor).
At any rate...style and preference here I think.
I LOVE B2 and, as we just started a new B/X D&D campaign a couple weeks ago, I'm pretty sure yet ANOTHER B2 campaign is in the very near future! Who knows what I'll come up with this time? And...isn't that part of the whole "imagination" thing that RPG's are built for?
^_^
Paul L. Ming