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Keep on the Borderlands


phydaux

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The guards in the keep didn't stand a chance in D&D. By the time you finished cleaning out the Caves the PCs were all level 5-6 and were like unto gods compared to normals with 3 hit points. Seriously they'd just blow the gates off their hinges with fireball and mosey in.

 

FH was more even but I remember having to uprate some of the guards to enforcer level to make it more of a challenge. There was always the chance of a lucky hit dropping a PC but as long as they didn't try a frontal assault they'd probably be okay.

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I suppose the way to handle that would be to reinforce the gate, beef up the guards with more ranged weapons and OCV, and add in a few specialty characters (no reason more adventurers couldn't have been attracted to the region) such as healers and mages.  After all the keep has resisted seige by the monsters for quite a while and has emerged basically unscarred.

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The very last time we did it (in an FH campaign), the GM set it up so that the leadership of the Keep was actually working with the evil priests in the Caves to build up a nonhuman army. So there were some instances of theft and sabotage while regrouping at the Keep, and then some documents in the evil priests' possession at the Caves that implicated people at the Keep. Then when the PCs returned, the gates were barred, and the PCs had to sneak in and confront the real baddies without killing too many of the innocent guards. Of course it was impossible to know which of the guards was in on the plan and which weren't...

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I've been using the EHPto send to pcs on missions. They been returning relics for the priest unaware. I judt ran the mad hermit. (Unbeknownset to the pcs he was a former employee of EHP and went crazy). The pcs think that the hermit was caputered and that is why he is crazy. So next time the pcs are going into the bugbear caves (they have prisoners). And hopefully they go into the caves of the minotaur! Bwahahah!

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I'm not finished rebuilding the G series, I got 2 done but stalled on the third because life got in the way.  Hopefully I can do that one at least and finish out the trilogy.  Because my world doesn't have a heinz 57 progression of giants, I started with Ogres and I tried to add a bit more story and context to the modules.  As tournament games they were pretty spare and isolated.

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  • 11 months later...

I'm not finished rebuilding the G series, I got 2 done but stalled on the third because life got in the way.  Hopefully I can do that one at least and finish out the trilogy.  Because my world doesn't have a heinz 57 progression of giants, I started with Ogres and I tried to add a bit more story and context to the modules.  As tournament games they were pretty spare and isolated.

I converted the first two of those Giant modules into Hero, but that was ages ago, using 1st edition, and I have no clue where my notes are.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

I think the palindromedary ate them.

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Two Kings Keep is actually a re-imagining of In Search of the Unknown for Hero.  Its been changed enough to be its own product and fresh for even people who had the B1 module memorized, but it should be familiar.

 

I have a rebuild of Keep on the Borderlands in the same manner in mind as well.  The two will mesh together - 2KK being in the forest - to form a beginner's fantasy sandbox.

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There was actually a release of a 30th Anniversary Edition of Keep on the Borderlands...I just so happen to have it.  It picks up a few years after the original and has a bit more story to it...but, as someone mentioned, it's really just an intro module for beginning characters to cut their teeth and to give beginning GMs a chance to learn as well.

 

Much like the palindromedary...I, too, started with In Search of the Unknow...and still have that module as well. :)

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Man, I wish I had been there!  I lost most of my old D&D modules in a basement flood; I can either find used copies or buy what are (apparently) poor quality scans from dndclassics.

 

Keep was my first adventure too, iirc, as DM and player.  No story whatsoever, but the novelty of the new medium and the sense of discovery as you explored the Caves is a cherished memory.

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I've used the Keep with Hero, putting it in the Turakian Age - the Borderlands were those between Khirkovy and Vestria. It worked pretty well (one of the other GMs in our RPG community has run it with GURPS as well).

 

If you want more than a simple dungeon crawl, you need to assign motivations to various parties. My own solution wasn't particularly original, but it served its purpose.

 

The Keep was built to defend against Khirkovian incursion; the occupation of the various caves by humanoids is ostensibly at the instigation of the Evil Clerics, who have Khirkovian connections - though they were in fact renegades not sanctioned by the Khirkovian authorities. Both the Evil Clerics and the Khirkovian authorities has a spy in the Keep.

 

Depending on what evidence they uncovered (and which side they work for), PCs could instigate or avert a border war.

 

There's a moderate amout of work to do to bring the keep up to playable standards - NPCs and businesses in the Keep have to be named (or a names list prepped), side quests planned. There's a lot you can do in the Keep before ever heading to the Caves of Chaos.

 

Some prep work is needed for the Caves as well, though I largely kept this as dungeon crawl. The Evil Clerics needed a bit more detail, and some handouts and coded messages prepared.

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  • 8 months later...

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