The Keep On The Borderlands

In preparation for running B2 - The Keep On The Borderlands' for my sons I did a quick Google search. It turns out there is a wealth of information, discussion and resources available.

One interesting post that I found was 'Playing with Sketchup and the Caves of Chaos' in which the author of the post took an image of the original blue map and, using Sketchup, created a 3D representation of the valley that contains the caves.

By far the best resource that I found was 'Caves of Chaos Reimagined by Weem'. Weem has created some truly awesome maps of various size and resolution of the caves. I've printed out some of these maps and laminated them for use when playing the module.

While 'Adapting Classic Adventures like Keep on the Borderlands to DnD Next (or 5E)' deals with adapting the module to current edition (A)D&D, it has links to further resources that are of great use.

While reading the 'Keep', the thing that struck me first is that nothing has a name, and there is no real sense of place. From the point of view of slotting this into your own world this is great. Originally, I was planning on running the game in Mystara, mainly in Karameikos, but I am toying with creating my own world in a piecemeal fashion. Regardless of which option I take, I have come up with some names for the locations:

Introducing D&D to the kids

A few years ago I played the Dungeons and Dragons board game with my kids. The eldest was 11 and the youngest was 7. They took to it like ducks to water - they liked the miniatures, the colourful boards and of course rolling the dice. Fast forward to this last Christmas and I thought that it was about time I should try and introduce them to a real RPG - in this case the 1983 BECMI edition of Dungeons and Dragons. This was the first RPG that I ever played when I was 12/13 and I still have fond memories.

After playing a few sessions of about an hour each using the example 'dungeon' in the Dungeon Masters book I quickly realised how deadly the game really is to 1st-level characters! The shortness of the sessions was governed by the fact that each time a character reached 0 hit points. At the end of each offending encounter the adventurers would return back to the local village and rest up until the 'near-death' character was nursed back to health (I made the decision that there would be no deaths this early in their foray into a real RPG). After clearing the first level of the dungeon I decided that I would forget about the second level and move them over to 'The Keep On The Borderlands'.

As many veteran D&D players will know, the 'Keep' is a piece of gaming history. I had a copy in my teens but I never actually played it as a player or a DM. Reading the guidance for DMs you can really feel the Gygaxian influence in its design. The module does have its flaws though. The idea that the characters will make multiple forays into the 'Caves of Chaos' without the mass of monsters that live there all piling in to defeat them is difficult to comprehend. And why are there no look-outs? They are only a couple of miles away from the Keep and a stones throw from the road!

I started the adventure straight from the module. I read the introduction to the boys and the characters approached the Keep. They started to interact with the guards, and it was at this point that the youngest lost interest and decided he wanted to do something else. The eldest wanted to carry on, so he entered the keep and wandered around interacting with various residents and gathering what information he could. By the end of the session the party was just about to start their assault on the Caves. What I learned from this session was that the youngest has no interest whatsoever in anything outside the dungeon - he just wants to get on and kill some monsters and grab some treasure! While this means I have to change my approach a little, it doesn't pose a problem - it just means that whatever adventures I want to play start with the characters arriving at the edge of the 'dungeon' ready to go.