Dungeons & Dragons Provides Guidance on How to Run Heroes of the Borderlands As More Traditional Campaign

A new D&D Beyond article by the designer of the Heroes of the Borderlands set provides guidance on how to tie together various parts of the starter set into an overarching plot, which seems to be a direct response to some of the main criticism leveled at the new D&D starter set. Today, Justice Arman posted a new article providing guidance on how to run the Heroes of the Borderlands starter set into a more traditional adventure. The article contains some new narrative read-aloud text, some additional guidance on how to start playing through the adventure, and some guidance on how to emphasize the Cult of Chaos as the overarching antagonists of the adventure.

Heroes of the Borderlands is based on the 1979 adventure Keep on the Borderlands and utilizes a sandbox-style campaign, where various encounters and plots are provided to DMs, but an overarching plot is left for the players to draw out on their own. There are narrative threads that tease various encounters present in the booklets, but there's not a traditional storyline compared to the other Starter Sets. Several reviews, including our own, criticized the design of the adventure, saying that it wasn't advantageous to new DMs. Part of the reason for the narrative freedom, according to the D&D Beyond article, was to allow every player a chance to DM without spoiling the story.

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

This is akin to adding a few rock'n'roll guitar riffs to Beethoven or Tchaikovsky and market the as making them more 'classical', because 'classical' equals the 1960s, apparently.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

This is akin to adding a few rock'n'roll guitar riffs to Beethoven or Tchaikovsky and market the as making them more 'classical', because 'classical' equals the 1960s, apparently.

Traditional does not mean older. Hope that helps.

 

[SothFan]

So the adventure is and adventure for beginning DMs to wet their teeth with the game rules, but needs some sort of help for telling a story? Bob World Building made similar complaints, but they make no sense to me.

If you are learning to make biscuits to know how the dough rises with various types of milk and shortening or lard, you do not need to know how to ice or decorate a cake just because they are both breads. Your job making the biscuits is to not make hard tack. Likewise this "thing", original and now are teaching the rules to new DMs from my understanding from both modern audiences and the OSR crowd. It is to make one who is new comfortable with wearing the hat and taking the responsibility of running the game. Whether it has a perfect story, or removes some "player agency", is not the point.

 

[the Jester]

I really feel like it wouldn't have killed them to include a little more connections between encounters. I've only run the wilderness part so far, and only two branches of it, but the lack of any cohesion between scenes just felt like it was missing something. I had a lot of "so what" moments in the two games I ran. In many cases, a sentence would have done it.

For the caves, it doesn't look like the characters have any real information to steer them from one cave or another, including caves that might kill them outright if they wander in. Isn't that the definition of false choices? Choose caves A through J but there's no real difference you can see?

I could have missed something though.

Couldn't you, like, watch the caves and see what goes in and out?

Or look for tracks and see what goes in and out?

Or use literally any information gathering technique to investigate?

 

[bedir than]

So the adventure is and adventure for beginning DMs to wet their teeth with the game rules, but needs some sort of help for telling a story?

Nope. That's not what is happening.

What was offered is directions to expand the set in a way that creates a connected story rather than a set of adventures that are designed to teach how to DM to multiple people. The set as designed is to maximize the experience for everyone, not to be a complete campaign.

Like most D&D games how it expresses varies at every table. Some people want sword & sorcery, others want comedy, while still more want beer & pretzels gamification, and other tables want big extensive story games.

All are possible. This thread started with instructions on how to take a beginner set and make it more of a story game. That doesn't mean Wizards failed to make a good starter set.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Couldn't you, like, watch the caves and see what goes in and out?

Or look for tracks and see what goes in and out?

Or use literally any information gathering technique to investigate?

Yes, and experienced players will probably have their characters do that.

I think there's a real chance that newbies -- who this box is squarely aimed at -- are going to walk into a TPK in the caves. There's a number of encounters in the boxed set that probably are overtuned in that sense.

 

[the Jester]

Yes, and experienced players will probably have their characters do that.

I think there's a real chance that newbies -- who this box is squarely aimed at -- are going to walk into a TPK in the caves. There's a number of encounters in the boxed set that probably are overtuned in that sense.

I'm going to be honest and maybe a little bit harsh here- new players aren't stupid. I see a trend of underestimating their creativity and ability to think outside the box that just doesn't hold up very well in play, at least in my experience. Some are trapped in a video game based set of assumptions- that all they can do is what is explicitly offered to them by the dm or by what's on their character sheets- but (again, IME) they tend to break out of this the first time they encounter a challenge that requires any lateral thinking at all.

It wasn't you that couched this as "no information available", but I think that's a poor way to perceive the situation at the caves. There's plenty of information available, it's just not sitting there in plain view with a big neon sign pointing at it. It does take a little work on the part of the players, and that's okay. Figuring out how to investigate things is a huge part of the game. Perhaps the boxed set doesn't offer a lot of guidance- I don't have it but am playing through it in a group I'm in, so I can't say- but I guess I have faith enough in new dms and players that I think they'll rapidly figure it out.

 

[SothFan]

Nope. That's not what is happening.

What was offered is directions to expand the set in a way that creates a connected story rather than a set of adventures that are designed to teach how to DM to multiple people. The set as designed is to maximize the experience for everyone, not to be a complete campaign.

Did you even read what I wrote, or like most just select part to reply to to tell me I am wrong?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I'm going to be honest and maybe a little bit harsh here- new players aren't stupid. I see a trend of underestimating their creativity and ability to think outside the box that just doesn't hold up very well in play, at least in my experience.

The first time I ran Heroes of the Borderlands, I had a TPK with the giant spider encounter in the forest (two giant spiders against three level 1 characters, who were all newbie-ish with RPGs or D&D) and didn't know to focus fire and all of whom started off trapped in the webs.

The second time I ran the boxed set, for a different group, that encounter randomly turned up again and I was smart enough to remove one of the giant spiders from the start, but it was still a tough encounter for level one characters, several of whom started off trapped.

I am not underestimating newbies. The boxed set in actual play has a number of overtuned encounters.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Did you even read what I wrote, or like most just select part to reply to to tell me I am wrong?

I think they missed the allegory you were going for