OD&D Keep on the Borderlands, some observations

[cavalier973]

Well, he'd be early 20s if played by one of them in '81 ... (Tom Hanks did Mazes & Monsters the next year, it seems)

I was going to say “Cary Grant” or “Gary Cooper”, but I wondered how many people would know who those guys were.

Reminds me of a Frank James sketch:

 

[Hriston]

The wilderness is laid out in squares rather than hexes. The map key says, "One square equals 100 yards", which is kind of vague. Is each square 100 yards by 100 yards, or is it 100 yards square? The section entitled "ADVENTURES OUTSIDE THE KEEP" indicates that PCs take an hour to traverse one square if searching, or they can cross three squares in an hour if (by implication) they are not searching. This seems incredibly slow, even if one square is 100 yards across. In fact, if one has the "Expert Rules", then one can see that the movement rate for wilderness travel is the same number as in dungeon travel, except expressed in yards rather than feet. So, 90' per turn becomes 90 yards per turn, when traveling outside a dungeon.

There are around sixty squares--if following the road--between the Keep and the Caves of Chaos ravine. If each square is 100 yards across, and it takes an hour to move across three squares (sans searching), then it would take 20 hours to get from the Keep to the Ravine. That's two or three days.
If, instead, on takes the Expert rules for movement, and the PC party can move at 90 yards per ten-minute turn, then it would take them about 67 turns to get from the Keep to the Ravine, or about 11 hours.

When I was prepping to run B2, I prioritized the text in the body of the module over the map scale which I decided must have been based on incorrectly applying dungeon exploration movement speeds to outdoor travel. If you assume a heavily armored dungeon exploration and mapping movement rate of 60' per 10 minutes, along with 10 minutes out of every hour spent resting, it works out (eta: when converting feet to yards on a 1:1 basis when moving from dungeon to wilderness) to the 300 yards per hour you get when combining the map scale with the module text. This is, as you have observed, painfully slow for outdoor travel.

Rather, I assumed that when Gygax wrote the module he was imagining a map of the minimum scale described in this passage from p. 173 of the 1E DMG, under Appendix B: Random Wilderness Terrain (bolding added):

If a wilderness expedition moves into an area where no detailed map has been prepared in advance, the random terrain determination system below can be utilized with relative ease for a 1 space = 1 mile, or larger, scale.​

The only difficulty I see with this approach is it makes the river on the map somewhat unbelievably wide, unless we're to believe it to be a river on the scale of the Mississippi. It also puts the Caves area out of scale with the dungeon map, but that can be reconciled by assuming the smaller scale map is showing an area at the far end of the ravine. On a map I made for my home game, I scaled the width of the river down so that it's much more narrow.

 

[Parmandur]

unless we're to believe it to be a river on the scale of the Mississippi.

I mean...sure, why not?

 

[Hriston]

I mean...sure, why not?

Now that I think back, I wanted a smaller river because I was trying to fit the B2 wilderness area into a part of the Greyhawk map where there were no major rivers (between the Dreadwood and the Hool Marsh), so it's completely based on decisions I was making about that particular campaign. If I was to run this now, however, I think I'd keep the width of the river as is, but would use a scale of 1 mile per square or maybe 2/3 mile per square if we accept that the intention was that Gygax was describing a heavily armored movement rate of about 2 mile per hour rather than the normal 3 miles per hour.

 

[cavalier973]

I finished reading through the module (again) a little earlier, and saw something that adds weight to my idea that the spell “Detect Evil” can reveal that an object is cursed.
On page 22, under “55. Chapel of Evil Chaos”, it speaks of bronze vessels will glow if “Detect Evil” is cast upon them. It doesn’t specifically say that the items are cursed, but the description of what happens if a PC picks up one of the items is pretty much what happens if a PC picks up a random cursed item. It says that “Dispel Magic” and then “Bless” needs to be cast to “save” the character that picks up one of the items.

 

[Jaeger]

Trying to make it more than it is reminds me of the people who want to insist that He-Man and the Masters of the Universe featured highly detailed worldbuilding later reboots need to treat as sacred. It's fun for what it was, but let's not go crazy.

Well, Acktually...

The Masters of the Universe Bible

Given the disagreements people have over Wotc's lore changes to Forgotten Realms. He-Man fans are in good company!

B2 is rather notorious for it's lack of detail... I mean, the NPCs n the Keep don't even have names! It's like several other early modules in that it takes a lot of DM preparation to make use of it.

That feels pretty revisionist to me. People like B2 because pretty much every Gen Xer who grew up playing BD&D and/or AD&D probably played B2 multiple times.

And this is why B2 generates such fond memories

No B2 game is played the same way twice. It has what the video game hobby would call 'replayability'.

All the heavy lifting is done. Names? That's easy stuff. B2 eases you into stuff a GM needs to learn to do anyway, without making them do too much.

I prefer the sparseness of B2 not because of nostalgia, but because it is sparse. I don’t have to worry about remembering names and plots and subplots etc etc etc. I do things on the fly as the adventure progresses. I feel like I have freedom to place people and places into the game without screwing up a predetermined plot.

B2 the way it is is very much a feature to me rather than a bug.

Also ^This^.

Could B2 be punched up a bit today? Sure. B2 wasn't perfect. But adding in plots and subplots would ruin what made B2 awesome.

B2's sandbox structure is what has made it endure.

 

[Willie the Duck]

I agree that the mapping and movement part of the game seem like an excessive extrapolation of dungeon-crawling rules, and that things work relatively fine if just replace the scale with something else and keeping the caves 11 hours direct march (2-3 days with exploration) from the keep. What bugs me about the existing scale (much more than travel speed, which honestly often felt off in TSR-era D&D) is that 6000 yards, much of it with a road, is too close to have a major hub of brigand activity, plus several man-eater monsters, for the threat to be only starting as 'minor issue the keep is willing to pawn off to adventurers.'

Regarding the sparsity of town detail, I think there's room to disagree. Potentially based on what you expect from the towns. Justin Alexander posits that Gary "primarily saw cities as the hub around which adventures were based: You came back to the city to get supplies and hirelings. You left the city in order to have adventures." I can't find it, but in another post I think he highlighted how the description of the keep rapidly provides for the players all the information they need to use the town for that purpose -- the main drag is set up with all the different locations an adventurer would need to know about roughly in the order they would be useful -- Gatehouse where the guards can provide the most basic information on what's happened since the party last visited, then stables, then shops and chapel (for healing) before the inn, with a separate inner baily full of the rich and powerful people which can literally be cordoned off until the PCs finish the quest and earn enough renown to deal with such people (and need future adventure hooks). I think that's a not-unreasonable conjecture about the purpose/logic. It's also worth noting that this is intended as an introductory adventure, where maybe it is okay if the guards are 'the guards' and don't have a backstory or wants and dreams. More importantly, that is the time in your (players and DMS) gaming career when too much detail and diversion from the intended adventure (the Caves) might lead to people getting stuck on side plots and not get to the exciting adventure or something.

I don't know. Whenever I've run it, I've given townsfolk names and personalities and plots going on ahead of time, but only revealed them when the players press. It didn't seem hard, but a pre-made write-up (perhaps in an optional extra pamphlet labelled 'adventures in town') would have been helpful for a new DM.

What I rather more dislike about the module is the incentivization structure it teaches with meeting strangers. There are <spoilers> three specific instances when they run into people wanting the them to help out, offering to help out, etc.: the hermit, the town cleric, and the lady (medusa) in the jail cell). In each case, the party has to decide whether to trust the person/help them out/accept their help or not. In each case, it is a bad idea. Not in isolation, but I think this did contribute to the murderhobo reputation of that era of gaming, as it at least kinda telegraphed that doing otherwise was a bad idea. In my own games, I tend to give them a random chance of being hostile, neutral, or helpful.