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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hriston" data-source="post: 7588793" data-attributes="member: 6787503">First, as a point of clarification, it isn't a 1st Edition module, as the thread tag would suggest. It was written for inclusion with the Holmes Basic Set and was later revised for the Moldvay Basic Set, so ostensibly it's for those editions of the game. There's some evidence, however, that Gygax wrote it using d6 hit dice for the monsters, instead of the d8 hit dice that were used in both Basic editions as well as AD&D, suggesting it was written, at least in part, with the original 1974 rules, pre-Greyhawk supplement.Second, when I ran the adventure about five years ago using the D&D Next playtest conversion of the caves, I felt it needed fleshing out in several areas, some of which, in hindsight, probably wasn't all that necessary. My additions were as follows:1. I set it in the World of Greyhawk, roughly following the suggestion in RttKotB for setting it in the Yeomanry, although I chose the eastern part of the Yeomanry, or Old Eor, rather than the western part, because I felt the Dreadmarsh area was a good fit for the lands of chaos to the east in the module. Part of this was to use the weather tables from the World of Greyhawk boxed set to generate naturalistic weather for the region. If I ever have the chance to run it again in a different Greyhawk campaign, I'd try placing it near the mountain pass between the Duchy of Tenh and the Hold of Stonefist. 2. I increased the scale of the wilderness map to one-half mile per square versus the original 100 yards to account for 5th edition's faster movement speeds. I felt this put enough distance between the keep and the caves. This had the effect of widening the river on the map to a mile or more across in some places, so I identified it with the Javan, one of the major rivers on the Greyhawk map. 3. I defined areas around the keep, caves, and other encounter areas on the wilderness map in which random encounters with the inhabitants of those areas might occur, and made random tables for which denizens of the caves might be encountered in that area. I also made tables for wandering monster checks in each area of the caves, including patrol groups of the particular cave's inhabitants and groups invading from other caves. All of these were also combined with more generic dungeon and wilderness random encounter tables. 4. I used some playtest-related documents concerning the characterization of some of the major NPCs, and in particular made some effort to draw parallels between the NPCs of the keep and characters from the HBO TV series "Deadwood".All in all, I think B2 is a great starting point for a campaign and stands on its own as a setting in its own right which can be expanded out in whichever direction the game-play takes the campaign.</blockquote>

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