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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ParanoydStyle" data-source="post: 7583869" data-attributes="member: 6984451">So, here's the thing. At first blush I thought that Keep On The Borderlands was a great introductory module to teach new players the game, but that was based on a very cursory skim of the actual module. Being in the habit of doing everything bass ackwards, apparently, I was about 1/4 to 1/3 of the way done translating Keep to 5th Edition when I realized...I actually really dislike this module.Most of my complaints are the same as ones I've read online recently although I probably have a new one or two to add. For starters, the fact that neither the keep nor any of the many NPCs that live there have names is pretty off-putting. Maybe the intention was for the DM to customize the module by giving all of those NPCs names and personalities but as I started to do that for my 5E conversion I got frustrated pretty quickly: there are a LOT of largely fungible nameless NPCs. A complaint I haven't heard from others that I'll throw in is that the "Keep On The Borderlands" is actually a medium sized town. See, on my initial skim of the module years ago, I kind of got the impression from the text about the PCs using the Keep as a base of operations that it would be mostly deserted except for the PCs and the PCs could customize the keep as they saw fit but of course once I got into translating it was clear that that was REALLY REALLY not the case. With a bank and a guild hall and an inn and a tavern and multiple shops along with a seriously sizable army of defenders, the "Keep On The Borderlands" is actually a medium-sized or large town by D&D standards. Which actually makes it even weirder that it doesn't have a name.And finally, and this is a complaint I've seen before, it feels like a nonsensical quagmire of anti-logic how literally 8-10 tribes of demi-humans/monstrous humanoids have chosen to live right on top of each other tenement slum style in the Caves of Chaos when they have the entire surrounding wilderness to find lairs in where they're not tripping over each other. Then there's the fact that they are all completely passive: largely, each tribe of humanoids is just there in their caves waiting for the PCs to come in and try to kill them. The two semi-warring orc tribes are a baby step in the right direction but the fact that neither the tribes or their leaders have names is sort of a roadblock to the roleplaying possibilities. There's a real lack of enemy variety as while there are at least five or six varieties of monstrous humanoids to fight, there really isn't much difference between fighting orcs and hobgoblins, between hobgoblins and gnolls, between gnolls and orcs, between kobolds and goblins, etcetera. And finally, yes, it really does seem to amplify some of the gross and racist underpinnings of early D&D, explicitly stocking these caves with non-combatant females and children, and then encouraging you to go in and make widows and orphans of them which is perfectly okay because they look different than you do.    So, personally, I have scrapped my plans to adapt KotB. I'm sure someone else has, or will, or both. As far as introductory modules go, I think I far prefer In Search Of The Unknown.  What's your take on Keep On The Borderlands?</blockquote>

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