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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AtomicPope" data-source="post: 8433544" data-attributes="member: 64790">Agreed.  Keep on the Borderlands is designed more like an open world war game than an RPG adventure.  My gripe is that B2 has a tournament mentality that there will be a dozen players fighting monsters for hours on end in winding caverns.  The potential for roleplaying is there, but it's glossed over and never fully realized as the OP laments.  NPC names?  Not today!  Go kill some bandits!Back to the OP, original module B2 The Keep on the Borderlands has the problems of being a tournament module.  It lacks important roleplaying details, favoring endless slaughter over developing NPCs or social encounters because in a tournament or at a convention there's no time for that.  The 2e remake called Return to the Keep on the Borderlands is by far the superior version of the module.  Easily my favorite module of all time.  I've run it for AD&D all the way to 5e and it works great.  Pretty much all of the problems mentioned the original post are fixed.  NPC names?  There are Who-zits and What-zits galore!  You want NPC motives?  They've got plenty!  But who cares?  No big deal.  There's lots more!  For instance, the Caves of Chaos are better handled in that there are rationales for the various groups holed up.  The surrounding environment has some added details as well, adding substance and history for roleplaying context (pretty standard for modern RPG modules nowadays) that allows for social situations that just didn't exist in the original.  There is also a well-needed tension between monster groups that didn't exist before either.Over the years I added a metaplot to the Caves, the Caves of Chaos are a staging area for an invading army.  The goblins are just laborers.  They were conscripted into a Hobgoblin army and they're storing supplies for upcoming siege against the Keep.  The Orcs are mercenaries, and merely tolerate the Goblins.  The Bandits and Kobolds don't like the fact that Orcs and Goblins are moving in.  This allows me to sprinkle clues of a coming war.  For example, in my edited version the Bandits have hijacked some of the Goblin shipments and have lots of army supplies in their store holds, but they haven't been outed as the culprits yet.  But The Return to the Keep doesn't have to be played that way at all.  I just like doing it that way, with subtle modifications here and there, because it gives me a campaign primer.</blockquote>

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