Keep on the Borderlands

[phydaux]

I managed to get my hands on this classic, old school PnP D&D module. I have very fond memories of playing this mod back in the day. I'm thinking of running my current gaming group through it.

 

As I'm reading through I'm seeing lots of potential encounters, but nothing that ties them together into, for lack of a better term, a quest chain. I'm wondering, for those of you who remember this gem, what might be a good "quest chain" for the various encounters?

 

Thanks in advance for the ideas,

 

phy

[Killer Shrike]

That's kind of like saying you got your hands on a vintage Twinky, but can't find any nutrition value in it.

 

That's a common thing with a lot of the earlier D&D supplements. Many of them can be summarized as "fight room to room until you eventually kill whatever is on the cover". Story? Not important. Coherence? Huh? Logical consistency? {Crickets}.

 

I don't remember KotB that well; but despite all the rosy nostalgia showered on it over the years when I played it back in the day I was not impressed. May have been the GM, may have been my age at the time. But I remember thinking it was incoherent. The NPCs didn't even have names as I recall, and the premise was not really anchored on anything other than "well-stocked monster pool over there, place to rest in between killing stuff over here".

 

I think the main appeal was that for many KotB was their first exposure to D&D / RPGs due to it being bundled with other products. Nostalgia is a powerful thing. Maybe it's main advantage is that it is super simple...adventurers fight the evil power 101...and generic. Hack and slash at its most straightforward.

 

 

So...sure...you could inject a narrative over top of it and call it "Keep on the Borderlands: Redux", but I think you'll find that there is not much to work with provided in the module.

 

 

 

As an aside, remember the old Temple of Elemental Evil? So bad its almost good? Monte Cook did a reboot of it for 3e back in 2000 or so...ok, wikipedia says 2001...I haven't read it in about that many years, but I remember thinking it was a really good example of taking something from the early years of gaming and applying the several decades of game design progress that have transpired in the meantime. It might serve as an example of a way to go about rebooting KotB.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_to_the_Temple_of_Elemental_Evil

[Ockham's Spoon]

Yeah, Keep on the Borderlands was just a dungeon crawl. You can upgrade it easily enough by stating that the canyon full of evil humanoids was never much trouble due to infighting between the groups, but recently someone or something has united them and now the Keep is in danger. The PCs have been hired to help. Or maybe some DNPC(s) was captured in a raid and they have to go find them.

 

Now all you have to do is figure out what powerful entity has united the evil humanoids and map out his/her/its lair. Clever PCs will take advantage of old rivalries between the evil humanoids to either play them off on each other, or at least to keep them from working together. This works best if you sit down and figure out a few key personalities in each group (the chief, captain of the guard, etc.) to use as a general guide. It is still going to be something of a dungeon crawl, but it will make it more coherent and fun.

[Ninja-Bear]

I used part of this module to introduce my brother to Fantasy Hero. I think it is the orc encounter where they have a merchant and his lady in chains waiting for supper I think. The premise I had is that the group of adventurers (which where all dwarves) were going to the keep as diplomats of the local dwarf clan. (Seeing that the keep is of men, I thought it would be a reasonable quest. Also I envision in the background that this land was held be the Elves for generations but then was given by the Elflord to the humans for his own reasons). They stumbled upon a man-at-arms being roasted by some goblins which gave them quest to save the merchant and wife. I called the merchant Lothar and not sure without my notes what the lady was. By saving them, the dwarves have a pleasant reception at the keep and a favor of the merchant. If you look in the center of the module, the is an evil priest stated out, not sure if he is named. He can be the major bad as there is a temple in there caves and his job is to gather the forces of evil and not let any interlopers survive. Well I think the module says not let any adventurers gain experience, but we can change that. One thing I'm also doing is not having a bunch of different goblinkind. For example, I had goblins and the bigger meaner boss goblin is called hobgoblin because he is a boss not a different type of goblin.

 

Hope this helps.

[Greywind]

phydaux, you do realize that you can get KotB and several other of the DnD modules free online, don't you?

[phydaux]

I would never advocate the use of torrent sites.

[phydaux]

I'm thinking I'll have each PC receive "secret instructions" from their "Order."

 

The Cleric will be instructed by senior priests to investigate a possible evil cult operating in the area.

 

The Fighter will be directed by his Knightly Order to find the hidden holdfast of Rogahn the Fearless and investigate his disappearance.

 

The Mage will be told to find Zelligar the Unknown if he is alive, or recover his spell books if he is not.

 

The Thieves' Guild will tell the Rogue, um, I'm not sure yet. I need ideas here.

[Killer Shrike]

I'm thinking I'll have each PC receive "secret instructions" from their "Order."

...

 

The Thieves' Guild will tell the Rogue, um, I'm not sure yet. I need ideas here.

 

1) find a former member of the guild with a price on his head who stole something from the guild's leadership...so go steal it back or otherwise acquire the mcguffin.

2) spy on trade caravans traveling thru the area / stopping at the keep, and send word of juicy targets for highway robbery.

3) carry a secret message for the guild to an agent (or maybe not an agent?), who then starts jobbing the thief, supposedly on the guilds authority.

[Ninja-Bear]

For the thief, let me suggest something from the DM book. There is a rumor that the fabled garnet of gygax was lost in the caves years ago. The guild is interested in the fabled garnet and when a group of adventures goes to the caves, then they send in one of they're men to purloin the jewel.

[Old Man]

Why not have each player's "order" give them secret instructions to retrieve the same Macguffin?

 

I've played several variations on KotB in my day. Probably the hardest was that all the denizens of the caves were working for the same bad guy. The proximity of the Caves meant that if you made too much noise while cleaning one of them out, occupants of the rest would come to investigate. Another version had the occupants of the Caves hostile to one another--we had to increase the distance between cave mouths to make that work--and then a valuable trade route ran down the middle of the ravine, so travelers on it were subject to either getting raided or caught in a fight between the factions. Another version had a magic Macguffin that attracted evil creatures to it, which helped explain the whole weird setup.

 

Regardless, any time we were finished cleaning out the Caves, we found ourselves having to attack the Keep, for any reason or no reason.

[Lawnmower Boy]

Why not have each player's "order" give them secret instructions to retrieve the same Macguffin?

 

 

For additional fun, have each member of the party be an Internal Security plant in their respective order --from different factions of IntSec, of course. I'm sure that such things exist in Alpha Complex.

 

Er, I mean the magical kingdom of Lootaria.

[Killer Shrike]

Why not have each player's "order" give them secret instructions to retrieve the same Macguffin?

 

 

For additional fun, have each member of the party be an Internal Security plant in their respective order --from different factions of IntSec, of course. I'm sure that such things exist in Alpha Complex.

 

Er, I mean the magical kingdom of Lootaria.

Oh I assure you, you do not want to play Paranoia with me. Or really any game where it's ok for the players to plot against and assassinate each other. Otherwise stable and formidable people have been known to cry and / or completely loose their -bleep-. My oldest friend can still be incited to bitter venting on the subject of that time way back where my PC turned the tables on his PC, shot him with his own gun, then took all his stuff and held him hostage. Despite my prediction at the time that one day he'd find the humor in it, he's still pissed almost a decade later. Grudges are so ugly, don't you think?

[Killer Shrike]

Why not have each player's "order" give them secret instructions to retrieve the same Macguffin?

 

I've played several variations on KotB in my day. Probably the hardest was that all the denizens of the caves were working for the same bad guy. The proximity of the Caves meant that if you made too much noise while cleaning one of them out, occupants of the rest would come to investigate. Another version had the occupants of the Caves hostile to one another--we had to increase the distance between cave mouths to make that work--and then a valuable trade route ran down the middle of the ravine, so travelers on it were subject to either getting raided or caught in a fight between the factions. Another version had a magic Macguffin that attracted evil creatures to it, which helped explain the whole weird setup.

 

Regardless, any time we were finished cleaning out the Caves, we found ourselves having to attack the Keep, for any reason or no reason.

Why not have each player's "order" give them secret instructions to retrieve the same Macguffin?

 

Yeah...I had the same instinct, but phydaux seems so wholesome and well intentioned I resisted the urge to encourage him towards backstabbery.

[phydaux]

Well now that you mention it I am running the Hackmaster version....

[Greywind]

I would never advocate the use of torrent sites.

I avoid torrents myself.

[stardogchamp]

this link was in another post... http://www.kestrelarts.com/gamedls.html

several old adventures written up for 5th ed HERO, including Little Keep OTB

[Ninja-Bear]

this link was in another post... http://www.kestrelarts.com/gamedls.html

several old adventures written up for 5th ed HERO, including Little Keep OTB

I just stumbled over this site and was going to recommend it.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I'm in the process of slowly updating the adventures there to 6th edition, but I have a lot of other things that are higher priority.

 

The storyline that I built into it is basically a quest to clear out the entire caves of chaos because something in there is attracting the creatures.  I put a lot of work into adding in faction and quest elements (so you can build esteem with the locals for greater access and treatment in the keep by doing various minor and major quests) as well so that it has a sort of MMOG/computer game feel that would be familiar to newer players.

 

Since KOTB was designed to be an introductory dungeon (along with In Search of the Unknown, also converted to Hero on my page) I wanted to make it a sort of Hero 101 for GMs and players to use.  That makes it kind of a big product, but it was fun to work on.

[Ninja-Bear]

Currently I have been using KotB and I set it in the Westren Shores of fantasy hero 4th. The keep is set in the Lofty mountains. So far the quests have revoled around my brothers dwarf character. He is trying to reclaim his ancestors home. I used kobolds and going to reveal how they were created from the results of the dragon wars.

[Christopher R Taylor]

While Keep on the Borderlands is the more famous, Aaron Allston's Treasure Hunt was a better intro module and was a lot of fun to convert.

[Lucius]

 

I have never played Keep on the Borderlands. I'm afraid I came in even earlier, with In Search of the Unknown.

 

I'm glad these old adventures are still keepin' on, keepin' on.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary asks what "Quasqueton" means, anyway?

[Christopher R Taylor]

In Search of the Unknown was fun to convert as well, but instead of leaving it up to the GM to populate, I filled it and put in a few storylines to follow through, including a complicated vault in the lower level that you have to use a special sequence of devices in the upper level to open.

Related to the first question, I find it interesting to take these old skeleton modules and fill in a story to flesh them out more while converting.  All the design work is done, its just a matter of updating them to modern gaming sensibility which is more than "kick the door down, kill what's inside, and take their loot."

[Steve]

The Village of Hommlet and the Temple of Elemental Evil provided the basis for my very first campaign as a newbie DM. I still remember that little village fondly.

[Nolgroth]

Mine was Under Illefarn. Well that's not entirely true. Against the Cult of the Reptile God had a small town that was reasonably populated and detailed. For that matter, Saltmarsh from the Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh and The Final Enemy also had small towns that were somewhat detailed. Not nearly as detailed as Daggerford was in UI.

[Christopher R Taylor]

All three of those villages are great.  I particularly liked the village in Against the Cult, although Saltmarsh had a better storyline.  Those UK modules were really well done.