Making "Keep on the Borderlands" Plausible

[John Morrow]

Has anyone updated Keep on the Borderlands to make it somewhat plausible? What did the Return to... version do to update it? And what would you suggest?

The initial part of my D&D 3.5 campaign was loosely based on the three variations of Keep on the Borderlands (B2, Return, and the Hackmaster Little Keep adventure). Basically disassembling the ravine that contains the Caves of Chaos into a series of dungeons that are further apart will avoid some of the monster hotel feel, but change the character of the adventure a bit. For the most part, I disassembled everything down to the monster and room list level, picking bits from all three, and then put them back together again. I also created my own version of the Keep using elements from all three of the sources. While the Hackmaster module is a bit too tongue-in-cheek for my tastes, it includes a lot of details (especially around the Keep) that you might find useful, too. Basically, Return To and Little Keep provide a lot more detail on the people in the Keep and add more of a plot and meaning to what's going on in the area but they lack the clean simplicity of the original as a result.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Just for the sake of clarity, was is it that you feel makes KotB implausible? Is it just the wild combination of a zillion different monster types--the most common complaint I've heard--or is there something else?

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Check out the beginning of diaglo's other story hour (Banewarrens D20) to see another take on it ... basically, various nonhuman tribes hired by an evil temple to raid the local countryside and make it look random, kept from too much infighting by the power of the temple.

 

[Endur]

I always liked Keep on the Borderlands.

I treated it sort of like the Creature Cantina in Mos Eisley spaceport. Or Jabba the Hut's palace in Return of the Jedi.

All sorts of bad creatures can be close together when they are afraid of a more powerful evil creature, i.e. the humanoids are afraid of the evil priests.

The Evil Priests try to keep them all organized, but orcs and other creatures will squabble and steal from each other. So long as they don't commit mass-slaughter of each other, the evil priests don't care. And if they do slaughter each other (or if heroes slaughter the humanoids), the evil priests turn the bodies into undead.

I didn't much care for Return to the Keep. It had some very good ideas, but using the Sumerian Gods was kind of wierd. I would have preferred a Greyhawk Yeomanry setting.

 

[mmadsen]

Just for the sake of clarity, was is it that you feel makes KotB implausible? Is it just the wild combination of a zillion different monster types--the most common complaint I've heard--or is there something else?

When I made the original post, I hadn't looked at Keep in years, but, yeah, the "monster hotel" complaint is quite common, and that's what I was thinking of.

 

[Remathilis]

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.

Notes on references:

Third is a Cynidcian from B4: Lost City. D'Amberville is a family of messed up wizards from X2. The Assassins from the Assassination plot (Thomas and Holga) are from L2: the Assassin's Knot.

There might be more, but I'm not that versed in module lore.

All in all, I found the original much better and easier to adapt.