![The Keep on the Borderlands (Dungeons \u0026 Dragons Module B2)](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1179925026i/973112.jpg)
Title | : | The Keep on the Borderlands (Dungeons \u0026 Dragons Module B2) |
Author | : | |
Rating | : | |
ISBN | : | 0935696474 |
ISBN-10 | : | 9780935696479 |
Language | : | English |
Format Type | : | Paperback |
Number of Pages | : | 28 |
Publication | : | First published January 1, 1980 |
This module includes a cover folder with maps & a complete description booklet to form a ready-made scenario of Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set.
It has been specially designed for use by beginning Dungeon Masters so that they may begin play with a minimum of preparations.
The Keep on the Borderlands (Dungeons \u0026 Dragons Module B2) Reviews
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Awesome and terrible! The Keep on the Borderlands was often the starting point of adventure into the world of Dungeons & Dragons for most. As basic as the D & D Basic Set it came with, The Keep... was never intended to be great literature, even so it wasn't even a particularly good game. It was, however, a useful tool for the beginner. And boy, was I a beginner...
Confusing to a young, undeveloped mind, who didn't understand that this was meant to be a framework for adventure and not a fully realized story with a navigable plot, The Keep... was meant for gamers to use their imaginations to make up the story out of the elements Gygax provided: the officials at the borderland outpost, the bandits of the surrounding lands, the tribal monsters, the evil cult in the nearby cave complex.
Even so, I felt taking up one third of the module (the name D&D gave to these slim booklets) was too much time spent on detailing the outpost. Sure, the players would have interactions with the tavern-keepers, traders and moneylenders, but aside from an evil priest who might join the group and trouble them out in the wilds, there was no adventure to be had here. This was meant to be a base for operations elsewhere. But dang, the place was a veritable king's castle with its own army!
The Caves of Chaos (gotta love that name) was the place where all the action was at! Boy howdy there was a lot going on in those caves! Minotaurs, medusas, ogres, orcs, goblins and more all crowded into a dozen or so caves clustered together in a relatively small ravine just waiting to slay or be slain. That was the unrealistic part. Sure, it's fantasy and so reality shouldn't matter, but it does. Ask any fan of fantasy lit. There have to be certain rules and boundaries. If anything at all can happen, what's the point? So, when Gygax took his monstrous humanoid tribes, who were warring against one another, and stacked them close-packed in a cave complex that resembled a high-rise apartment complex, it was hard to stomach. When brutal violence is the order of the day on both sides and you live one hundred feet away from your enemy, one or other side is going to be wiped out pretty quick.
If you cared to, this game could be modified to be more realistic or to fit your specific campaign. However, at the early age I started playing D&D, connecting cult to outpost, rearranging the map or organizing the tribes of monsters into a community that would naturally defend itself against sword swinging jerks hacking through their front doors was more imagination than my ignorant 9 year old mind could muster. The most roleplaying I remember being capable of pulling off at the time was with the isolated mad hermit hiding in the woods with his pet mountain lion.
But here too I was flummoxed. I didn't understand how the multiple maps that came with this module related to one another. I mixed up the entries and accidentally stuck the hermit in the kobolds' cavern. I also didn't know what a contour line was (ahem, there's a glossary of terms in the back of the booklet...why didn't I look it up?) and thought the blue lines were meant to be streams.
Yup, four lovely little streams flowing unimpeded in unison through solid rock between caverns, doing a nice loop about the ravine before heading on out. I was DMing this once for a friend and he was confused to say the least, but we both enjoyed playing so much that we just let the nonsensical details slide. Hey, it was Dungeons & Dragons, with all its books and books of rules, you still did what the hell you wanted to do. That was the point.
For all its faults, The Keep... was a great resource for those just starting out. It was more than a module, it helped guide the players through their first gaming experience giving them pointers, not only on how to interact with this new world, but also how to get along with your fellow players. Subsequent rules books made this obsolete, but it was helpful at the time, at least to those who were old enough to understand the concepts...or even the terms for that matter. I'm talking about me...
Rating: Could give it the 5 stars my heart desires, should give it the 1 or 2 star rating it deserves, but I'll go with 3.5. -
Where Rolling and Playing Begins: The Keep on the Borderlands
Odds are, your first tabletop roleplay encounter was Dungeon's and Dragon's, "Keep on the Borderlands" so is it the best module ever? Nay-nay! Dungeon magazine ranked it 7th (in 2004), but its a contender for most nostalgic.
In childlike fashion, let's consider the art first. Jim Roslof's impressionistic cover--by impressionistic I mean, compositional nightmare--wouldn't strike most as the work of the TSR Art Director. The tree has a twinge of Monet's-eyes-are-going charm, and this work (or lack of it) qualifies because it gives the perception regardless of the, "I put the background on last to match the module," look. This pink-fuschia-whatever border was a bold move for macho game and time. The first full-color (non-monochrome) module cover does stand out on a shelf.
A trio of blue-nosing hobgoblins won't keep these fashion challenged elves from the Caves of Chaos! Not with this Bow of Recoiling singing its death dirge! If you glance, the orc shields make cave doors. Beware of Senior Assistant Frozen-legs of the Falldown Clan.
If you're unfamiliar with RPG's, this owlbear offering his joy buzzer was the Big Boss to beat. Picture drawn shortly before banning halflings from polearms. After consulting Unearthed Arcana, my best guess is: the dreaded super hobbit poleaxe. Watch out for that tail sweep, Merry!
"I just want hugs! HUGS!!!! B+ on the Roslof Scale.
Gary's Monster Condo: Rooms for Rent
A frequent criticism of B2 is bad monster ecology. How do monsters live so close and not fight?
A) Kobold Kamp
B) Orc Love Lounge
C) Second Orc Tribe
G) Don't Buzz the Owlbear
H) Bugbear Lair, “Safety,security and repose for all humanoids who enter." WELCOME!
I) Minotaur's Maze
J) Rollin' Gnolls
K) Shrine of Evil Chaos: "Hellooo, medusa nurse!"
You may also recall the Mad Hermit who lives in the tree with his wildcat.
Gygax later admitted that the result wasn't "ecologically correct," but that wasn't really the point. He intended the module as a primer for DM's and players. By the time a noob finishes he can identify all the beat-on humanoids without having read, The Hobbit.
"Hopefully, they will quickly learn that the monsters here will work together and attack intelligently, if able."
"There are signs beside the entrance cave in kobold, orcish, goblin, etc. Each says: Safety, security and repose for all humanoids who enter - WELCOME! (Come in and report to the first guard on the left for a hot meal and bed assignment.)"
Do people interpret this as: bugbears eat everything? My take: the forces of Chaos won't cooperate, until pressured, as opposed to some race war mentality where no humanoids can get along. Humanoids get sanctioned as player characters in second edition anyhow.
The unbreakable rule is: there are no rules. It could go either way.
Like when a writer says: "My characters have their own minds. I didn't want him to turn into a left-handed, lesbian, midget, albino, but she's such a free spirit now." That sounds like lack of craft or it's just using a more intuitive approach. The first print even had a blurb saying it was for Basic D&D but could be used with Advanced with some modifications.
The Keep allows you to raid, regenerate, and recruit retainers. D&D can be world focused or you can go dungeon diving in the caves. You could try to sack the Keep or focus on the Chaos Caves
Still feel you could build a better dungeon? Many have rebooted Keep, as shown in the history that follows. I imagine Gary would've liked that.
If reading for pleasure, skip the Keep.
This following history draws upon Shannon Appelcline's Designers & Dragons - a history of the roleplaying industry told one company at a time. Please feel free to mail corrections, comments, and additions to [email protected].
"B2: The Keep on the Borderlands" (1979), by Gary Gygax, was printed by TSR in December 1979. It was probably TSR's twelfth adventure, and the first one to use a full-color cover. . . . Like its predecessor, B1: In Search of the Unknown, this adventure was created for use with the first edition of the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set (1977), created by J. Eric Holmes. Once it was printed, "Keep on the Borderlands" immediately replaced In Search of the Unknown in the Basic boxed set.However, "Keep" is much better known as the adventure packaged with the second edition Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set (1981), which was revised and updated by Tom Moldvay. It remained a part of that package throughout its life (1981-1983).From 1980-1983, Dungeons & Dragons was seeing its most explosive growth, and the Basic Set was the prime entry point to that game. As a result, B2 ended up the most printed D&D module of all time. Much later estimates suggest there might have been 1.5 million copies printed in all, between the two boxed sets and standalone sales."The Keep on the Borderlands" has been revisited many times, most notably in Wizards of the Coast's Return to the Keep on the Borderlands (1999) for AD&D. In more recent years, the setting made a thematic return as the Chaos Scar, which was spotlighted in D&D Encounters Season 3: Keep on the Borderlands - Season of Serpents (2010-2011) and in Dungeon #171 (October 2009) through Dungeon #197 (December 2011), all for 4e. The adventure may still have a future in D&D too, as it was released as Caves of Chaos at D&D Expo 2012 as a playtest for D&D Next.About the Creators. Gary Gygax wrote The Keep on the Borderlands at the end of his period of greatest adventure productivity, from 1977-1979, shortly after creating T1: The Village of Hommlet. By this time, actually managing TSR was taking up increasing amounts of his time, which kept Gygax from doing more creative work. He hired Jean Wells and Lawrence Schick to form a Design department in 1979. Going forward, this department would be the main source of TSR's adventures, not Gygax."
Five stars. Succeeds as a basic D&D primer and launch mechanism. In conclusion: "You know that you have certainly discovered the Caves Of Chaos." Bree-yark!
Click here for another B2 article on, "How I got started."
For a toasty roast of B2, from Apple to Jellyfish, try Denada's, Let's Read: Keep on the Borderlands.
Free PDF: Beneath the Little Keep 2, Expansion for The Little Keep
Stuff that didn't fit in the module. Thanks JB.
Creator's Blog and article on sacking the Keep: Secret of the Keep on the Borderlands
Careful you don't lose your soul to Blackrazor.
Read my review of B1: In Search of the Unknown. Excelsior! -
The classic Dungeons & Dragons module
3 December 2011
So, I have reviewed the original box set and now I come to the first Dungeons and Dragons module that I ever owned. This is a classic module, and pretty much all of the roleplayers of my generation will fondly remember it. It is not a great module, it has no real quest in it, and if it is to be run properly, the dungeon master does have a lot of work to do. It was not until the third module in the series that there was an actual quest. However, this one module almost seems to be the defining element of the early game.
Basically the players arrive at a keep on the borderlands, and then using the keep as a base, go out into the wilderness fighting bandits and such, and then travel into the Caves of Chaos for more adventure. However, there isn't a strict plot in this module. Some have described it as an open adventure, and while that is true, the actual module has very little outlining the interaction between the keep and the caves.
This is a good module to introduce new players to the game, but once again it has become quite outdated. The Dungeons and Dragons game has evolved a lot since then, and if dungeon masters want to run this adventure, then a lot of work needs to be put into it. Yes, the caves do have a nasty cult operating out of it, but as mentioned, there is little in the module indicating any plans that the cult has, or how the residents of the keep are affected by this cult.
It is also interesting to note that when the Dungeons and Dragons computer games appeared, especially the ones that allowed you to create your own adventures, many of the authors returned to this module to bring it into the game. As said, this is a classic module, not because of any skill or outstanding aspect, but rather because it seems to always bring back the good old days. -
This module seemed to start every, "Let's get back into D&D" campaign. No need for a plot device here. There are Caves, and they are full of Chaos. Never mind that the chaotic caves have well organized defense plans. "BREE-YARK!"
5 stars for nostalgia's sake. -
Caves of Chaos, or all the creatures in a 60 chamber complex at once. But does it have a bugbear? Check. An owlbear? Check. Skeletons? Check. Oh, and more!
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Amazing and revolutionary for its time, still good enough to beat 99% of modern adventures, but everything it has done has since been improved, sharpened to a keen edge.
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This was the first D&D adventure I was introduced to, and it remains for me a kind of model of the “best” possible dungeon-crawl for that game. It is also deliberately written as an introductory dungeon for new Dungeon Masters and includes some good advice for first-time DMs on running a campaign. It’s not especially sophisticated or clever, but it establishes a good baseline of what to expect from D&D.
The title is interesting, in that it describes the “home base” from which the adventurers will set out, rather than the dungeons they will explore – which are called “The Caves of Chaos,” a perfectly good adventure title if ever I heard one. The Keep is an outpost of lawful humanoid civilization on the edge of an untamed wilderness, and it includes all of the things a party needs to prepare for their journeys outward, including an inn, a tavern, and a shop, as well as a chapel (with higher-level clerics), a smithy, a bank, and various military and defensive structures to maintain order in case of attack or internal criminal action. Several NPCs with varying motivations, personalities, and interests are prepared, and there is also a list of rumors for the PCs to hear and possibly act upon. The Keep is not the primary location for the adventure, but it does have enough detail and potential to give some interesting side-adventures.
The first task the players have is to venture out into the wilderness in search of the Caves of Chaos. This can take a while, depending on their choices, how good the advice and rumors they picked up at the Keep, and simple luck. The wilderness includes some areas stocked with monsters as well as a chance of wandering monsters, and if the characters are on foot (as first level parties often are), they may have to make several journeys out to search the nearby region, using up food and supplies and possibly suffering damage from monster fights along the way, without much chance to earn treasure to replace losses. A kind DM may want to hasten this part of the adventure before PCs start starving.
The “real” dungeon, however, is the Caves. which are accessed through various openings in a ravine-mouth, with the easiest to find/enter being the lower level challenges, and various hidden, trapped, or more difficult ones holding more powerful monsters and greater treasures. There are eleven entrances, listed as “A” through “K” in the module. Some of them lead to caves which inter-connect with other entrances, while some are discreet caves. Monsters within include goblins, orcs, kobolds, giant rats, bugbears, stirges, fire beetles a minotaur, an ogre, a gelatinous cube, a medusa, and an evil priest with undead minions (mostly skeletons and zombies). Since the party is presumed to begin at first level, some of these creatures are a bit weaker when encountered than you might expect, but some are powerful enough to slay a party foolish enough to directly attack something more powerful than they are. The players have to learn what is and is not reasonable behavior as they proceed, sometimes by losing characters to unfortunate mistakes.
In all, there’s nothing that exceptional about this adventure, but its value comes from the fact that it is such a generic dungeon that it can easily be used as the basis for beginning a new campaign, allowing DMs and players to learn the ropes in a “normal” D&D environment before trying to get creative and riff on the common themes. Funny enough, I find it all the more appealing because of its very banality. This was a dungeon with nothing to prove, just hours of fun for everyone involved. -
The quintessential low level adventure / campaign starter.
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Its not great but its not horrible for an old school D&D module. I think it was pretty advanced for its time- not really a railroad adventure, a developed open setting (the Keep) that the characters could explore and interact with its varied inhabitants. The Caves of Chaos were a collection of opposing monsters in close confines, but they were separated by terrain and the author did attempt to provide a somewhat plausible explanation on how this was possible, as well as discussed the possibility of the player characters trying to manipulate the various factions to fight against each other. Overall a pretty decent introductory adventure (and setting).
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Una de las primeras aventuras publicadas, este clásico definió durante muchos años cómo se jugaba D&D, y cómo se creaba un pequeño sandbox donde los personajes podían explorar una y otra vez la misma o distintas localizaciones para correr muchas aventuras. Hay aspectos que quizá no han envejecido tan bien, pero sigue siendo una pequeña obra maestra que merece la pena revisitar.
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Welcome to the land of imagination. This is how the all-mighty and iconic B2 module welcomes us. One of the most, if not the most played adventure module in history. The Keep on the Borderlands was originally published as a standalone module, but after the success that B1 In Search of the Unknow proved in its basic set package, it was switched for B2 during the printing of 1979 to 1982, and that's more or less how this module became the de facto adventure for the grand majority or late 70s kids.
Starting some things of, I do not see myself as Gary Gygax biggest fan. After reading a variety of articles by him in the early issues of Dragon magazine, I must admit I still have a sour impression of him, both regarding his writing style and his egoistical personality, however, there are things that I do appreciate and enjoy from him, particularly his gaming philosophy and prioritization of imagination and adventure. The Keep on the Borderlands is supposed to epitomize the golden age of D&D adventuring, and it is well respect, and still played to this day. In my quest for enlightenment, it is my time to dip my toes in the lands of the keep.
Starting the module we have another large introduction meant to show you the reins of the game and adventuring. As always, you have the typical DO NOT READ disclaimer if you are not a dungeon master. There was a sense of mystery and esoterically qualities back then in being a DM, wasn’t there? This idea that this book is meant for one type of eyes only, for those that dare wander across the oceans of reality and dream. I love it.
This adventure is designed for the rather large quantity of six to nine first level players. Nine players, imagine trying to fit nine PCs in current D&D games. Even in the 70s I feel like this was such a daunting task. The sheer fact of putting nine people in a table wide and large enough already sounds difficult. The adventure also assumes that your group has already one magic user and a cleric, because back then getting fucked in the ass as a first level PC was a given, so clerics usually helped a ton balance the odds, mostly because a lot of adventures really liked using undead and demons. The paragraph also gives you some general recommendations, including what kind of starting gear your should give your players. A potion of healing is recommended. This is something that I like and that I think a lot of early adventures generally lack. The pre-game session, the one where the players get ready and start to balance things out among themselves. Who gets the longsword? Who wants bow and arrow? Who is the weakest player to give them a potion? Etc. Useful tips!
And here's the fun part that makes B2 such an interesting game. The paragraph proceeds to explain how the KEEP is your "home base". Unlike B1 In the Search of the Unknown, which has very set and understandable paths to follow, B2 is more open, which is why it is famously known as the sandbox adventure. The keep acts as your point of departure and also rest, while the Caves of Chaos is the place where your party will spend most of their time exploring, adventuring, and dying. The rest of the pages take a chunk explaining some of the basic ideas and mechanics of DMing, particularly how to divide treasure, experience points, and how to be a good DM. Some basic but very necessary advice if you are a beginner master.
After that, the adventure begins. You are a party of daring explorers, warriors, mages and scholars in search for fame and treasure. At the borders of the realm, where forces of chaos and good fight and die every day, there's the Keep on the Borderlands, a place of danger, challenge, and reward. The Caves of Chaos are nearby, where monsters and terrible secrets await. It is indeed a very basic premise but the content inside is what makes it worth it.
The Keep on the Borderlands is a big adventure that acts an startup for a greater campaign. The main premise of it lies in its keep and the nearby caves. The actual overland/wilderness of this module is a little bit barren, and while there are some areas and encounters to explore, it is mostly empty on rather small when it comes to regional maps. The true gist of exploration lies in the nearby Caves of Chaos. A massive and sprawling cavern system that’s quite detailed and filled, really, filled with a variety of encounters, combats, monsters, treasure and very interesting areas that the deeper you venture, the deadlier and more gruesome they become. In this sense, it is quite complete and offers you pretty much anything you need as a starting DM. The previous module was mostly focused around a big dungeon, with some general ideas as to what to do with what you have, but B2 goes a step further and gives you plenty of options, not only the ones provided in the pages themselves, but also various ideas of what kind of stuff you can do. It doesn’t limit you, it doesn’t tell you: game over, you've finished the adventure! It begs you to play, to create, to design and to go into an adventure. There's one particular area that acts as a white canvas, the Cave of the Unknown, which is supposed to be your own adventure, the DMs design. Of course, it doesn’t tell you to this right away, and it even encourages you to hide these caves from the eyes of the players until you feel you are ready to create it and run it. After finishing the exploration of the wilderness and the underground areas, I am pretty sure most DMs would feel quite encouraged and excited to create their own maps and lands to explore.
There is plenty of stuff to do here, and I love how it gives you so many ideas without really exploding you into a cumbersome task of memorizing. You can find monsters, you can hunt down raiders, you can explore forests, you can clear out areas with deadly creatures, you can join or fight against tribes and factions, you can find out about a betrayal in the keep, or be betrayed by some NPC, you can kill down some giant spiders, find a mad hermit, etc. The ideas are plenty without going into unnecessary rhetoric. It welcomes expansion and improvement, while giving you the tools necessary.
The actual material of the adventure is mostly concentrated around the keep, and the caves, the last one taking a big chunk of pages to describe more than 64 different rooms, that range from empty cells to chaotic temples. The cave system is large, quite large, and has a lot of things for your party to encounter. Luckily, is it not meant to be as deadly as some other adventures of this era used to be, while still having some nice surprises. Particularly, I love the Minotaur room due to my personal bias: I think minotaur's are some of the coolest and best monsters to use in any fantasy setting. There are also some other areas and kinds of enemies to face against, yes, there's orcs, goblins, spiders, undead, and so on. Most are quite manageable, while others are more challenging but still doable, like a Medusa and the Minotaur, but there are no dragons, demon lords, or liches.
This is Gygax, yes, but it is not Tomb of Horrors, and I respect the fact that there's a sense of guidance and tutoring in the prose, while balancing out danger and reward. One of the early statements tells you how to be a good DM, and it highlights that a DM shouldn’t be out there to get the players. The rest of the adventure proves to follow this guideline by giving you plenty of paths to take where your players are surely to have lots of fun. I would, for sure.
I love how in the advice section, it also tells you that monsters shouldn’t be stupid or fool. If a player uses the same tactic over and over again, the monsters will learn and counter it. A big of error lot of newbie DMs is making monsters simple stat boxes with legs. These monsters are supposed to represent you, and you are supposed to represent them, adapting to their levels of strength and intelligence, you should play them properly. A goblin might run and hide if faced against certain death, while a party of raiding humans might set traps, ambushes, or even trick you into believing they are good. This is great advice. Monsters are smart, and so are you. I think.
While in my previous experience with Gygax, I really haven’t had a good time, this adventure feels very different from anything else I've read from him. It is well designed, well written and has an understandable, right to the cheese prose that's good enough without need of being overbearing. Mike Carr style feels much drier in comparison; where B1 spent a lot of time being overly descriptive, Gygax uses the right amount and the right quality for his descriptions, following a good style and structuring. Sure, it's not literature level of description, but it does the job.
There are some things that can be criticized, however. Again, this introductory module is marketed as a beginner set that requires little preparation in part of the DM, but further inspection does show it requires quite the preparation by the simple fact that there's a lot of content and intricacies you must understand. By nature, any large map that has more than 10 rooms will probably require you that you read and take some notes, and here, the caves have more than 64 rooms, some of which have set encounters that you should study well beforehand, unless, of course, you want to take some stops and breaks while playing to constantly check the book, which in my opinions tends to break the immersion and flow of game. However, that's a given with any big map so I will cut them some slack; the other issue and one that's more notable is the keep itself, which isn’t fully mapped, lacks some floors and actually encourages you to finish it to your liking or as your players wish. If you star the game straight away, you might find the keep a little empty and confusing, particularly if you don't know or have NPCs ready. Speaking of which, the table where the NPCs are listed is just terrible to read. For some reason, they thought of coding the personalities, and there are 20 personalities in total, each one corresponding to a number. In the table, instead of just telling you the personality, they have a number and you have to constantly check the number to see the personality. Unless you are quite good at memorizing fast, this gets a little annoying. As I don't personally have a physical copy, I had to use a PDF to read this module, and there's a weird break in the middle where some players stats and resources are found. It seems these were meant to be removed from the book and used by the DM, but I find it odd to put it such a place and not at the back or end of the book. The organization could be better, indeed.
The wilderness also leaves some to be desired. It is pretty empty and barebones, with only a few areas to explore. Part of this is because the module tells you that to play with further wilderness additions, you have to use the Expert Set. I think they could have gone a little bit further and add more stuff to find out in the overland area. The caves are gigantic, but the actual lands of the surface feel more scenic and just there for your players to pass through and into the caves.
We have a case of predated quality here, not on the essence, but the way the book is made. The module organization and formatting could be done better, but as far as the actual content that matters, it is pretty damn good.
B2 The Keep on the Borderlands deserves the praise and the popularity it has. Perhaps the most sold module ever, it is a nostalgia pill for many, and a great study of old school D&D for others, or both. It has everything you need to truly play the spirit of a TTRPG game. Adventuring here is meant to be expanded, to be used as a base to improve and grow your game, creating a fascinating campaign where you, as a DM, feel comfortable with the resources, tools, and knowledge, and your players feel welcomed, prepared, and excited for the thirst of quests. In that aspect, it really succeeds at making you fall in love with D&D. -
Classic D&D module. The open, "sandbox" nature of the setting makes it suitable to drop into almost any campaign. I was well chuffed to find a copy for $2.50 at Half-Price Books. They've started putting collectible prices on their old RPG books but every once in awhile you can still get a bargain.
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First actual module I ever played. Jared Craigs was a wicked DM with the perfect DIY heavy metal mural covered basement to drink soda in while slaughtering kobalds.
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My first adventure module as a dungeon master. I liked playing this basic dungeon quest as it helped newer players learn the game.
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Rounding out the 70s and just in time for Christmas as D&D is getting increasingly popular after the accidental publicity caused by James Egbert's disappearance, TSR decided to replace the B1: In Search of the Unknown adventure that came bundled with the Basic Set, written by Mike Carr, with a new Gygax adventure... This also had the advantage of making Gygax more money instead of having to pay a percentage to Carr for each Set sold. But that's a story that has been covered elsewhere.
As an adventure it's an interesting one. For one thing it tries to be as neutral as possible in order to be able to fit into any possible campaign setting. It's a Keep (no name) on the border lands between a lawful civilized world and a chaotic wilderness, there is not a single named NPC, although there are priests, castellans, major enemies and so forth. This is clearly purposeful and Gygax explains that the DM should fill this with details pertaining to the world that the DM has created.
These are the days before campaign settings and DnD lore, the Greyhawk setting was still months away, and Gygax who didn't understand why DMs would ever want to play other people's modules also seems resistant (and he says so in some Dragon columns) to give DMs ready-made settings. So we have a keep, we have a wilderness with enemies and we have the creatively named Caves of Chaos, filled with warring factions of Orcs, Goblins, Kobolds, Bugbears and a hidden Evil Shrine to a non-descript evil god and some evil priests and undead. There's lot of potential here for adventures if the DM takes their time with creating plots and backstories, and that is really a Gygaxian principle of using the game as a stimulant for the imagination not only of Players but also the DM. A great example of an introductory module. -
Less of a module like we know them these days, and more of a setting, a location drawn in great detail, a place in which to have adventures rather than instructions on how the adventure 'ought' to proceed. The titular Keep, likely the players' base of operations, has as many pages devoted to it as the caves (of Chaos) full of monsters in which they'll be exploring and fighting and dying, probably, old-school D&D was pretty unforgiving.
I don't know, but likely this is the blueprint for the 'living dungeon' model, with instructions on how the monsters reform after attacks, make alliances, or scatter altogether. Particularly like how they can gain fame of their own for capturing and ransoming a player, making the inevitable future revenge mission actually harder, with more monsters drawn to their gang.
Beyond that, I have more or less the same complaint with this as I do with its 5th edition descendent, Lost Mine of Phandelver: as an introduction to the game, its flavour is perhaps necessarily the most basic taste of the genre. But having spent my entire adolescence reading fantasy novels before coming to D&D, I need something a little more aesthetically/thematically spicy than orcs in this room, goblins in that room. -
I have no idea how to review this. It's an "introductory module" for the Basic D&D game from 1980. I owned it 35 years ago or so, but I don't remember that my middle school D&D group ever played the whole thing. We may have played a single session, but since "Advanced" D&D came out, we didn't want anything to do with "Basic" D&D. I bought a PDF copy recently and read through it for the nostalgia value.
As a piece of fiction, it's terrible; but that's not why it exists. As a fantasy role playing game adventure, it's not even all that great, since so much of it makes no sense in the modern context of gaming. But since the style of FRPGs has evolved so much, it's a great historical document to show how the originator of Dungeons & Dragons, Gary Gygax, intended the game to be played. It's all about the dungeon crawl - hack and slash. -
No question that this started it all. First module with my group. Interesting details of the Keep. A bit of overland adventuring, and then the Caves of Chaos. Cave by cave, race by race, playing the humanoids off against one another. A good introduction to the basic enemies in the D&D universe. When the players gave up on the dungeon I used its inhabitants to stock a combined army that assaulted their home town.
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I don't recall ever playing this module during my gaming career but we worshipped it by name. I have played in many adventures which were influenced by Keep on the Borderlands. It's a death trap and a classic of old school fantasy role playing.
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Probably the Platonic Form of the sandbox adventure and a great way to start a B/X or OSE campaign. Rightly a classic, if a bit... say, genocidal in places, from a modern perspective. Write around that. Or lean into thr horror of it. Do what you want. I'm not your mother.
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This was my very first D&D adventure as it came in the box set. Five stars for nostalgia. After all, this was where it all began for me. Three stars for quality and monster ecology plausibility. But as a starter adventure/dungeon crawl, it would be hard to improve on it.
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This does not make any sense whatsoever as an adventure. As a pure hack n slash I guess it’s ok but there is no motivation save killing humanoids that are stacked cheek by jowl together for the slaughter. Seems dull and nonsensical.
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Probably the single most played dungeon module ever. Really interesting to see how Gygax designed the various dungeons, what is specified, what is left out. I can see myself running this at some point, but its usability, although not bad, would still require quite a bit of work on my part.
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The origins of my roleplaying is deeply rooted in this adventure. Drive a sword into an orc warrior's skull! Huzza!
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A Classic good time
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Smells like nostalgia.
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Very good 1st adventure.