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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 9042380" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon issue 79: Mar/Apr 2000part 2/5Keep For Sale: A Keep? On the borderlands of civilisation? Threatened by monsters? Why I never heard of such a thing! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> Our first adventure takes a very familiar starting point and puts it's own spin on it by making the keep itself the thing you have to clear. You get sold the deed to a keep for a suspiciously cheap price by a dwarf. Of course, there's a catch, and he's fully expecting you to be killed by the monsters in there, which means he can sell it again to another group of suckers a few weeks later. So you've got to get through several days worth of random wandering monster infested terrain, clear it out, and figure out how to keep it cleared, because if you leave it unattended to go back & restock, chances are something else'll have moved in by the time you get back. In the grand KotB tradition, there are several rival  groups of monsters in different parts of the keep, which gives groups more inclined to roleplay a chance to ally with one and play them off against the others. Another pretty decent example of their current trend to play on nostalgia more, combining familiar elements with enough variation that it doesn't feel redundant putting it next to it's inspiration. If you want a low-level adventure that forces the players to think about their tactics & logistics, but gives them plenty of freedom in how they tackle the problem, it fits the bill nicely. Side Treks - The Best Laid Plans: Now here's one a genre-savvy group of players will shortcut through big chunks of. While on the road, a bunch of badly wounded guys in a great hurry ride past you. If you ignore them and head on to the next town as intended, you'll find out they were bandits who just did a particularly large heist that didn't go smooth, stealing the coin moulds for the kingdom. Since you just saw where they were headed, you're in a perfect position to catch them and collect the reward money. Still, despite the hiccups, they remembered to set traps behind them. Their trail leads to a cave. Inside are some easily spooked bats, a tunnel with a blade trap, a partially flooded bit and some bear traps to catch the careless, a bunch of false exits leading to chutes that dump you in the river at the other end, and one that leads to a zipline across it, which leads to a small shack that is their real hideout. (so all those previous encounters were actually completely avoidable if you'd just gone around or over the hill instead of through) If the PC's blundered into the previous traps rather than spotting them, the bandits will have been alerted by the noise and be ready to fight. (although still not at full HP.) If you do beat them, don't even think of keeping the coin moulds for yourself unless you want to become public enemy no:1 in the whole country. A fairly convoluted series of events for such a short adventure which is quite challenging taken at face value, but there's a lot of opportunities for more magically inclined groups to cut the gordian knot and make it simple & easy. A good diviner is worth their weight in gold for all the fights they let you win without fighting at all. Still, this is also pretty decent overall.</blockquote>

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