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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7584159" data-attributes="member: 4937">Some people really like it, and I'm probably going to run afoul of them by posting this (again), but...Keep on the Borderlands sucks.My complaints against it aren't exactly the same as yours, but they have some parallels.My main problem with the module is that it is far worse as an introductory module for DMs than it even is as an introductory module for players.  Sure, it's possible with a heck of a lot of work to imbed the module into a larger campaign scenario and make some sense of what it is about by detailing the geography and politics surrounding the Keep and the lands war with the forces of Chaos, but that's not at all something you'd expect a novice DM trying to run this module to do, nor does the module really make it explicit that you should.  Indeed, even so much as generating floor plans and NPCs to inhabit the keep - something the module does suggest - is probably going to be a struggle for the novice DM.But aside from that, the DM that taught me how to DM when discussing this module brought up one of its major flaws when he described how when it was run for him, they spent most of the game robbing the Keep.   In other words, they invented their own fun and played a 'Bank Heist' game, based on the problem that the best treasure and perhaps most interesting challenges aren't associated with following the path the module expects you to follow, but in robbing the good guys.   And this is a further intellectual problem because the Keeps inhabitants are vastly better prepared to fight the force of Chaos than the PC's are, and have vastly more motivation to do so, and the module does really nothing to give the PC's motives.   Why do they care about banditry on this road?   Why do they care if there is an evil temple operating in the cave?  An experienced DM can answer these questions and provide hooks, but the module itself does not.Finally, for me the really startling problem with the caves as a lair is that there is no really evident economic activity going on in the caves.  What about the caves makes them so attractive that all these different tribes are willing to fight over them, and what do these tribes do to support themselves when they are there?   How do they feed themselves?  How do they arm themselves?   The only labor we see in the whole module is a small number of goblins foraging, but this foraging wouldn't represent a particularly potent bandit threat to as powerful of forces as we see defending the keep.  Six goblins could scarcely threaten more than a tinkerer or a vagrant, and not a merchant caravan with real valuables.   Yet only the goblins are really doing anything other than waiting in their lair to be killed.   The problem with the tribes as villains is less that they are faceless or racist than that they are never active or proactive, but only reactive.   (You might could argue for racist if in fact you didn't have a lot of human foes - bandits, evil priests, etc. - among the forces of chaos that are equally expected to be slaughtered, or if the humans themselves were depicted in racist terms.  I think that seeing racism here is reading way much more into this than is intended.   A much simpler explanation here suffices and that is that 'men' were listed in the monster manual alongside 'owlbear' and 'minotaur'.   Truly complex interaction between the PC's and the monstrous foes wasn't expected or considered by the writer.  There is no reason to think that kobolds, bugbears, ogres or gnolls are stand ins for any human race or that orcs or goblins are here meant to be anything but other monsters.   Just because it is a bad module doesn't make it racist, and I think to see racism in it says a lot more about the viewer's perceptions than the writers.)But the complaint I would make against the foes in the caves is that they are just cartoonish villains in that they don't really seem to have a motive.  We got these evil priests of evilness (or chaos, or whatever) and they have somewhat lurid depictions of their evil - demonic wall hangings depicting horrid rites, torture chambers, Cthullan temples, etc. - but its left up to the DM to give these villains in sort of depth or purpose beyond being XP bags and largely simplistic tactical obstacles.   It's a really grindy module as written that will come down to a large number of mass combats in choke points in the dungeon as the party masses on one side of a door or in a narrow corridor to neutralize the numbers advantage the tribes have.  As soon as the PC's get a couple suits of plate armor or can afford them, the whole module becomes fairly easy and pointless.I've ran the module twice.  The first time I was 12 and neither I nor my players really knew any better or demanded much more from the game than what you'd get from a game of risk - 16 hours of dice rolling and not a lot of gameplay.  The second time I was 17 and I started to realize the module had problems and needed some adaptation.   I addressed a lot of what I mentioned above, and it went pretty well.   But now that I've been doing this for 30+ years, the amount of adaptation I'd need to make this module truly worthwhile, I might as well just write my own stuff.  I started working on it once before, and even then I ran into problems because really the caves of chaos end up being the chaotic counterpart to the keep, and the whole thing starts becoming a more militaristic campaign which isn't anything I'm really interested in running and which isn't really suited for low level play, which means you have to develop side quests to support the endeavor and turn it into a mini-campaign, and that's just way too much work.</blockquote>

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