Conversion: Keep on the Borderlands

[LowSpine]

I'm currently making a decent battle map for the Red Box Basic set's Your First Group Adventure from the DM's book. Don't know how much Gygax was involved in that (it's the Mentzer set.) I'm doing it ready to create a 4E version of the adventure. I'm just doing the frst level for now bt I might include the second level so I can add Bargle to it.

I plan do convert the learner adventure with Bargle and Aleena and the adventure following that as well.

These are simple adventures but they ae the ones that really made me understand and love D&D so I love the idea of updating them.

(Besides Bargle must die!)

 

[PeelSeel2]

I was talking with one of the players and I said we should do Keep on the Borderlands. That is by far my FAVORITE module of all time. I have thought about it alot in the context of 4th Edition. The Keep is the last point of light before the darkness; The hearty souls of the Keep watch for caravans coming from across the borderlands, and see other caravans off on their journey through the borderlands. Unseen in this picture has come a vile cleric of Orcus, who has hired small motley groups of disparate humanoid mercenaries for his ends.....

 

[Klaus]

Please post conversions!

 

[nerfherder]

I just bought B2 from Paizo on Tuesday in tribute to Gary (it was my introduction to D&D), and I thought it would be fun to convert it and run it for my group. However, we've just started a 3.0 game, and I don't want to interrupt the momentum, so I've put the idea on hold. So, I'd love to see the conversion notes you do produce

As I scanned through the module, I did wonder how you would convert the NPCs - including the

Spoiler

chaos priest

.

I think I'll print it out, along with all the known 4e monsters and start scribbling notes.

 

[lbporter]

As to conversion help, looking at the map of the Caves of Chaos, I notice lots of small rooms. I would bunch the creatures from multiple rooms into one encounter. That way you could have waves of gioblin minions attack the party while they are fighting some skirmishers and other stuff.

I have been planning my new 4th edition campaign for a few months now, and I chose the Keep on the Borderlands as the backbone. I deconstructed the caves of chaos and spread them around the area.

Kudos for doing this in Gary's memory, please let us know how it goes.

Luke

 

[HarbingerX]

Earlier this week I spent some time converting Monte Cook's "The Orc and the Pie" to fourth edition.

There were several design challenges bringing this time honored classic up to date, but I think that, by far, the hardest thing to do was figuring out how to translate the scale from feet to squares.

I will have to check my notes, but I think that in the end I decided to have squares roughly equal five feet.

Hope this helps!

I think your conversion is off - a square is roughly equal to a five foot diameter circle. You just need to trim the old 5 foot grids into circles and put Ethereal Gates around each circle circumference so that characters can move diagonally from circle to circle using a point of 'square' movement. Oops - the ethereal plane is gone... hmm I guess they are permanent teleports instead.

 

[frankthedm]

Google turned up the old map for the caves.



I'd recommend more use of elevation in the caves, with areas stacked on top of one another. IIRC Wotc has said their 4E version of the caves will have a definite chaos influence with some impossible geography going on.

Adding more areas and making the slopes steeper like the The Caves of Chaos painting by Michael Komarck sounds like a good idea to me.

 

[Xath]

Anyone know what the rules are for me posting my conversion here? Does WotC hold the rights to KotB? I don't want to step on any toes by posting, especially if they're releasing their own version.

 

[Jdvn1]

My guess--and it's only a guess--is that you can post conversion crunch, but not post any (fluff) text from the module.

Like, you could say, "In <this section>, I <did this>" but you can't post the description of the keep, for example.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

I've done 3.0 and 3.5 conversions of KotB. I'd think 4E would actually be somewhat easier (assuming you have all of the relevant monster stats -- I think we only have Hobgoblins and Kobolds thus far, and one or two other monsters) because you wouldn't have to re-scale the encounter sizes. The number of monsters in the original modules should be about right for 4E.

I'll attach one of my conversions (it isn't completely true to the module as it contains adpatations for my campaign, but it may serve as a good starting point).

Edit: The campaign this was used in was set in Mistledale in the Forgotten Realms, so the Keep became the "Keep at Peldan's Helm", and the Caves of Chaos became the "Caves of Moander" ... but you get the idea.