Making "Keep on the Borderlands" Plausible
- Thread starter mmadsen
- Start date
Karl Green
First Post
When 3.0 came out I converted the Return to... version to 3.0 AND instead of one little hill I mad a whole set of hills outside of the small keep. I can't remember what I called the hills but they were supposed to be haunted, etc. It worked pretty well. Most of the tunnels were still connected but it was waaaaay stretched out.
As I remember the biggest change in Return to… from the original was just that the cleaned up the editing and change the art and added a few things here and there but it was more or less the same.
As I remember the biggest change in Return to… from the original was just that the cleaned up the editing and change the art and added a few things here and there but it was more or less the same.
Henry
Autoexreginated
Two perfectly plausible backstories:
1) The Chieftain of the Hobgoblins (or, even better, the minotaur!) is amassing humanoids in the forest slowly and quietly to launch a large-scale attack on the nearby keep, to take it, loot it, and leave. The coalitions are still being forged, so each tribe has its own cave system, but alliances are happening, and some creatures are working together.
2) The Humanoids have gathered, but under the superstition of the humans that the caves are haunted. They are banded together for strength in numbers, even if they have their own communities.
I really don't see the need for any explanation than that. Keep in mind that most of the humans in Basic D&D were NPC 0-levels - against a bunch of 1+ hit dice humanoids, and scores of 1 HD humanoids? There was a NEED for heroes to raid the place.
1) The Chieftain of the Hobgoblins (or, even better, the minotaur!) is amassing humanoids in the forest slowly and quietly to launch a large-scale attack on the nearby keep, to take it, loot it, and leave. The coalitions are still being forged, so each tribe has its own cave system, but alliances are happening, and some creatures are working together.
2) The Humanoids have gathered, but under the superstition of the humans that the caves are haunted. They are banded together for strength in numbers, even if they have their own communities.
I really don't see the need for any explanation than that. Keep in mind that most of the humans in Basic D&D were NPC 0-levels - against a bunch of 1+ hit dice humanoids, and scores of 1 HD humanoids? There was a NEED for heroes to raid the place.
francisca
I got dice older than you.
I recently used it. The caves of chaos were a marshalling point for evil humanoids being gathered for an invasion of northern Karameikos, with the Ogre and Minotaur keeping the "troops" in line. Their local contact is the evil priest in the keep, who is a middle man for a never-named evil mastermind.
Link: http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=92669diaglo said:
Shard Avenguard
First Post
Return to Keep on the Borderlands is one of the best modules ever done.
The intrigue inside the keep itself is almost good enough to be an adventure on it's own.
And the changes to the caves are more than refreshing.
It does take a good DM to bring it all together, but honestly, if you can't run Return to KotB at all it's because yer not doing something right. The module very good.
The intrigue inside the keep itself is almost good enough to be an adventure on it's own.
And the changes to the caves are more than refreshing.
It does take a good DM to bring it all together, but honestly, if you can't run Return to KotB at all it's because yer not doing something right. The module very good.
As for the changes, (spoiler alert) they rewrote the whole thing, using mostly similar monsters. The keep and the surrounding wilderness are totally changed. Some monsters are replaced by others, the evil temple is quite different (and Sumerian, for that matter). The minotaur maze is very different and now connects everything with secret doors. The prolog sets it in Greyhawk, but it is clear from the text it was made for Mystara and ported over (not all that well, IMHO). It also has lots of weird (mostly evil) NPCs.(end spoiler) The whole thing as written strikes me as very odd, but it is very modular and easy to discard or change what you don't like.
Allandaros
Explorer
Response to spoilers above:
Wait...how was it designed for Mystara? I have the module, but I didn't see any Mystaran references in there, except for one of the NPC mages being named d'Ambreville.
Wait...how was it designed for Mystara? I have the module, but I didn't see any Mystaran references in there, except for one of the NPC mages being named d'Ambreville.
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