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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7586092" data-attributes="member: 4937">The problem with the statement that "Keep on the Borderlands" is a great module because you can make it your own is that the same can be said of absolutely every adventure.  There isn't an adventure out there that can't be filled out, clarified, rearranged or rewritten into a great adventure.  Claiming that an adventure is great because you can make it your own is equivalent to claiming that a game's rules have no problems because you can always house rule them.  I have no problem with the idea that you ought to make a module your own.  If you read through my posts on the boards you'll find that I consistently advise new DMs that no module really should be run out of the box without prep.  What I have a problem with is the idea that something is good because it needs more prep and DM input than usual, and especially when that module is included in a box set for a "basic game".  [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION]: I put it to you that something is suited well for Sandbox and "Story Now" play, if and only if it is internally coherent.  B2: Keep on the Borderlands is not internally coherent out of the box.  It is in fact one of the least internally coherent modules ever published.   Can it be made internally coherent?   Sure, but only with great effort and imagination.   By internally coherent, I mean that a player is rewarded for imagining the environment and making assumptions based on the environment, because there is an underlying reality being simulated.  But B2 in fact does not describe a setting with an underlying reality.  It describes a setting which is largely incomprehensible and which requires major acts of subcreation to turn into anything which actually made sense, like explaining what motives the tribes have for living in close proximity despite hating each other, or explaining what economic activity allows the situation described to continue (how do the tribes eat, get drink, obtain weapons, pay for goods), or explaining really how the caves came to be in the first place.  Why does each tribe occupy 'cave area' that seems to only have rooms suited to their needs and little or no extraneous rooms?  Who built the caves and why?  Etc.As such, B2 does not support either Sandbox or "Story Now" play.   All the answers to the questions are "Because it is a game."  What it actually supports is only "Step on Up" game centered play, and while there is nothing wrong with that, the game it creates of taking down the different tribes is largely repetitive and uninspired.   So for "Story Now", I've always found that term to be ridiculous.  Here is the official take on it by "The Forge":"Story Now requires that at least one engaging issue or problematic feature of human existence be addressed in the process of role-playing. "Address" means: • Establishing the issue's Explorative expressions in the game-world, "fixing" them into imaginary place. • Developing the issue as a source of continued conflict, perhaps changing any number of things about it, such as which side is being taken by a given character, or providing more depth to why the antagonistic side of the issue exists at all. • Resolving the issue through the decisions of the players of the protagonists, as well as various features and constraints of the circumstances."So, after all that Sokal affair word salad, what is "Story Now"?   Depending on how you interpret that load of crap its everything or nothing.  Seriously, B2 as a module is meant to address "one engaging issue or problematic feature of human existence"?  Seriously?  Which one is it?  How does the map of B2 fix that idea in the game world, and really is even having a map a "Story Now" concept?  Isn't B2 really addressing Basic's limited range of published content (practically ever monster in the basic set appears at least one, as does practically every magic item), dropping them into a kitchen sink environment, and setting up the players to obtain the XP and treasure they need to level up?   Any "problematic feature of human existence" you end up addressing will be tangential to the design and content of the module.   You might invent one, but it won't be found in text itself.  In no fashion does the module really even meaningfully set up an ideological conflict between Law and Chaos.  The players choices are almost certainly going to address things like, "Left or Right?" in a dungeon where left or right have a different outcome, but not a side or purpose you can meaningfully choose.  There may be stratagems and role-play that take place, but it won't be addressing story in the sense that "Story Now" means (to the extent that I allow it means anything at all).</blockquote>

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