The Shared Experience: Keep on the Borderlands

[MerricB]

We occasionally talk about the shared experience of the early D&D adventures. Obviously, having an adventure or setting packaged with the Basic game really, really helps with that experience. (It also helps if it's good. Do we talk about the shared experience of the Terrible Trouble at Tragidore? Only as DMs laughing about how bad an adventure can be...)

However, if the acaeum is correct, Keep on the Borderlands was only packaged with the D&D Basic set from someway through the Holmes edition (1980) through the Moldvay edition, and was discontinued as being in the box for the Mentzer edition in 1983.

So, perhaps it isn't as shared as I thought it was?

So, here's a poll - when did you start playing D&D, and have you played or DMed the Keep on the Borderland.

(Any shared experience that relies on the Mentzer Basic set is lost on me, btw).

I could do more polls with Hommlet, Threshold, and so forth, but - for me - the Keep is the most iconic D&D adventure ever. Your experiences don't count.

Cheers!

 

[SpiderMonkey]

Crap. I need to read the directions a bit better. I never played it until this past summer when I ran it as a 3.5 conversion. Does that count?

 

[Kwalish Kid]

I've played that in and around that damned thing at least three times, in at least two different game worlds. Not including the times I've run the thing.

 

[MerricB]

Crap. I need to read the directions a bit better. I never played it until this past summer when I ran it as a 3.5 conversion. Does that count?

Yeah. You've played it. A lot of my current D&D players have played it, and have the shared experience as a result, but they only played it as a 3e conversion. There are still times they talk about things that happened there - and on the Isle of Dread!

Cheers!

 

[WyzardWhately]

I didn't start seriously playing until the early-to-mid nineties. I ran into the Keep much later. I've DMed it a couple times since then, and never played it. I still use it as inspiration. The HackMaster version, btw, is Brilliant.

 

[el-remmen]

I busted out the Caves of Chaos for my current campaign. It is utterly hacked apart and may be indecipherable and mixed up with some Dungeon adventures. . . but it is there. . . (check out sig for story hour)

EDIT: But yeah back in the day I both played in it and ran it countless times.

 

[Glyfair]

I started about 1977 (AD&D MM was out, PHB hadn't been released yet) with the Holmes Basic Set. The first full adventure I ran was In Search of the Unknown. A year or two later I did eventually buy and run Keep on the Borderlands (probably not long after it was released).

Good idea for a poll Merric. I may have to put a series together just finding out how many here played or ran the classics (one on AD&D adventures, one BD&D, etc).

 

[Lanefan]

I've never played it, but fully intend it to be one of the first adventures I run in the next campaign I DM.

Lanefan

 

[ivocaliban]

Started in '91. Never played Keep on the Borderlands.

 

[Henry]

Played it then, played it recently with Castles and Crusades rules, and I think I've actually played those caves under every single edition of D&D that I've played, because I love using it so much.