B2: Keep on the Borderlands

[occam]

I played through and DMed B2 numerous times when I first started playing D&D. We never bothered with the Keep itself, usually just going straight into the Caves of Chaos. I later reused the map a couple of times to populate with AD&D monsters.

Last week I finished DMing the new "Keep on the Borderlands" for D&D Encounters. That was a lot of fun, and I finally paid attention to the Keep!

 

[Lord_Blacksteel]

I'm running it right now using Basic D&D for some kids (alongside a 4E campaign) and they are having a blast.

It can be quite deadly - we've averaged about a PC death per session at 1st level, but now as they move into 2nd and 3rd the body count has dropped. The big creatures can one-hit most starting characters and you want a big party to offset some of the attrition but it brings back a lot of memories and is a lot of fun. It was my starter adventure way back when and I ran it repeatedly in the 80's. It's very cool to come back to it after at least a 10 year gap and see it through different eyes.

Going back through it and some of the other Basic and 1E adventures the design philosophy is definitely "nail down the mechanical aspects of the adventure and leave the fluffy stuff to the DM" and while I like a solid plot as much as anyone I have to say it's refreshing to read through and have the details handled in advance while leaving the rest open.

 

[karlindel]

I used B2 as the basis of a story arc in a 3e campaign I ran.

I used a different adventure for a starting adventure, and then the party learned of a kidnapping and tracked the kidnappers to the Caves. They saw some of the kobolds sneaking out on a hunting trip, and talked them into helping the party with information on the other denizens of the Caves.

It's great as an idea mine, although I did spread the caves out a bit more and expanded some of the background to make it work for my campaign.

 

[Stormonu]

I was just going to ask if anyone wrote up their own "Cave of the Unknown" that shows up on the wilderness map in B1.

And in the 30 years I've had this module and glanced at that map, it never occurred to me until now that cave is supposed to be the Caverns of Quasquenton (B1). I think Kenzer & Company hit on this in their B1/B2 version for Hackmaster, but I didn't put it together until now.

 

[rogueattorney]

I was just going to ask if anyone wrote up their own "Cave of the Unknown" that shows up on the wilderness map in B1.

And in the 30 years I've had this module and glanced at that map, it never occurred to me until now that cave is supposed to be the Caverns of Quasquenton (B1). I think Kenzer & Company hit on this in their B1/B2 version for Hackmaster, but I didn't put it together until now.

I made my own. I put a rival group of evil clerics in the first level with various undead baddies on the second, and warring factions of wererats and thouls on the third. I also have a seven level dungeon under the Keep itself, which connects to the the Caves of the Unknown. The first level are cellars and basements of the Keep building, with a hideout for bandits allied to the raiders to the south. Lower, there are crypts, ruins of an ancient settlement that the Keep is built over, and then finally the entrance to the Great Troglodyte Empire.

I don't think the "Unknown" in Caves of the Unkown and the title of B1 is a coincidence, but for me, I like putting B1 off the map a bit to the north and B5 is up-river a tad. Guido's Fort, as mentioned in B5 is a small outpost of the Keep.

 

[thedungeondelver]

Oh and in case anyone was wondering, the Keep proper is located on the border of the Pomarj.



(I must now move to another city and change my identity so that KNOWN WORLD/MYSTARA fans don't find me and lynch me.)

 

[Ranes]

To me, there's nothing nostalgic about B2. I never played or ran it back in the proverbial day.

However, I've always enjoyed reading other people's stories of how it got them started and the fun they had. So, given that I've since acquired two copies of it, when my nephews' ages hit double figures and they started pestering me to run D&D for them, I decided that this could be an ideal introduction for them (and a way to prise Xbox controllers out of their paws). And so it proved.

The boys didn't get what was going on at the keep. The owlbear taught them that it's sometimes a good idea to run away, and they got used to creating multiple characters (there were several deaths). They've moved on from the caves now but B2 came through for all of us.

 

[havard]

Oh and in case anyone was wondering, the Keep proper is located on the border of the Pomarj.

(I must now move to another city and change my identity so that KNOWN WORLD/MYSTARA fans don't find me and lynch me.)

*lol*
In one way it makes sense to have it in Greyhawk since it was written by Gary. However, Mystara is the only setting that has an official placement for the Keep. Another thing that makes me thing it fits for Mystara is that Mystara is a setting that almost every TSR employee worked on at one time or another. So I see B2 as Gary's contribution to that shared vision setting.

-Havard

 

[Beginning of the End]

In one way it makes sense to have it in Greyhawk since it was written by Gary. However, Mystara is the only setting that has an official placement for the Keep.

IIRC, Return to the Keep on the Borderland placed it officially in Greyhawk.

 

[Ranes]

That's right. It suggested placing the keep at the southwestern edge of the Yeomanry. On the other hand, I just pulled out my old Greyhawk maps from Dungeon (118-121, IIRC). Those maps were supposed to site all the Greyhawk dungeons but I can't find the keep.