return to the keep on the borderlands anniversariy

#Return to the keep on the borderlands anniversariy update#

Specific events are tied to the various times in the adventure, a really game effort was made to explain the condistions in the caves and the rationale beind it, and there is a much more coherent feel to the entire adventuring area.

#Return to the keep on the borderlands anniversariy update#

What makes it more than an exercise in nostalgia (though, let's face it that's the only reason this product was made) is the sttempts to update this very dated concept. The episodic idea, where players will make multiple raids remains, since many monsters would wipe the floor with beginning 1st level characters (even Skills and Powers characters!). The caves are still there, and all kinds of different monsters live side-by-side in small numbers of awful multi-demographic sitcom. The introduction implies that XP should be given out for money gained (always, really, one of the strangest RPG rules ever widely used image if these were applied under classic Traveller with that great old Trade and Commerce table!). Produced under the Grehawk Adventures line, this really tries to have it both ways. By 2nd edistion (though by that time nearly everyone had already latched on to the concept), non-objective rewards were added, and players could stop worrying that all the time they'd been interating with NPCs was a waste since they couldn't get ahead without some old-fashioned widow-making. You killed X monsters, got Y treasure, and become Z more powerful, all bound by iron mathematics. Some effort was made to include the NPCs and their role from the keep, but everyone I played with and those I met later who'd played it just remembers the very basic concept of killing everything in the Caves of Chaos and taking the loot.īy the late 90s, this idea is pretty silly, but remember that DND was,Īt least at its inception, only partially a roleplaying exercise (at least from the rules point of view) and still very much a more traditional game.

Designed as an introduction to running a DND game, it was, at the core, nothing much beyond a simple loot and kill exercise. Room-by-room descriptions of every chamber within the Caves of Chaos.Anyone who started playing roleplaying games during the end of the 70s remembers the classic 'keep on the Borderlands', or B2, if only due to its inclusion in the D&D Basic Set. Wilderness encounters with a wide range of classic monsters. Only novice adventurers who have come to try their hand at dungeon delving in this traditional training spot stand in their way.Ī special 'Advice to the DM' section for beginning Dungeon Masters, offering tips and tricks of the trade.ĭetailed descriptions of the Keep and its inhabitants. Humanoids, undead, and evil minions of a dark goddess plot to destroy their enemies. But evil once again stirs in the fabled Caves of Chaos. The trained warriors once stationed here and the experienced adventurers who once flocked to the spot are long gone. Now, almost twenty years later, the Keep has declined into a sleepy outpost settlement. “First published in 1981, B2, The Keep on the Borderlands by Gary Gygax as been played by more people than any other roleplaying adventure, providing an introduction to the hobby for hundreds of thousands of gamers.