Take the Caves Back!

The reputation of B2 Keep on the Borderlands and its influence on fantasy roleplaying is such that publishers keep returning to it. TSR, Inc. of course published the original as well as including it in the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set, which is where many gamers encountered it. The publisher would also revisit it with Return to the Keep on the Borderlands for its twenty-fifth anniversary, and the module would serve as the basis for Keep on the Borderlands, part of Wizards of the Coast’s ‘Encounters Program’ for Dungeons & Dragons, Fourth Edition. Now the latest version of the game, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition has not even been available for a year yet and another publisher is revisiting B2 Keep on the Borderlands, but revisiting it from a wholly new direction.

A year before the events of Module SG9: Reclaiming the Caves on the Borderlands bold adventurers made their way beyond the edges of civilisation to strike at an outpost of evil from where the forces of chaos planned to invade the civilised lands. They entered the Caves of Chaos again and again to sow discord between an alliance of evil humanoid races and so save the ‘Keep on the Borderlands’. Cleaned out, the caves have become home to dozens of miners and their families with the discovery of a vein of silver. Of course you cannot keep evil down for long because the previous tenants of the Caves of Chaos want their lease back!

Published by Sacrosanct Games as a twenty-three page, 2.2 MB PDF, Reclaiming the Caves on the Borderlands is designed for a party of between four and six characters of Second to Fourth Level. It is a scenario in which the player characters are evil humanoids out to take back the infamous Caves of Chaos or mercenaries claiming the caves for their employer. Not only are the player characters facing the miners and their families, they also have to contend with rival factions who have also come to reclaim the caves, and perhaps with a counterstrike despatched by the Castellan from the Keep if the player characters prove too successful.

Written for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, the DM will need access to the Player’s Handbook, the Monster Manual, and the Dungeon Master’s Guide. Ideally the DM will also need access to a copy of B2 The Keep on the Borderlands as this will provide both the background to the region, the motives and details of the previous occupants of the Caves of Chaos, and actual descriptions of the caves under their previous tenants. This is not to say that Reclaiming the Caves on the Borderlands could not be run without access to B2 The Keep on the Borderlands, but fundamentally it underpins this new take upon an old classic as what this new take actually is, is a toolkit. Reclaiming the Caves on the Borderlands is a means to approach the original scenario from a different angle rather than being a full adventure in the classic sense.

So if Reclaiming the Caves on the Borderlands is a toolkit, what does it provide? First, a quick set of stats to enable the players to create and roleplay Bugbears, Gnolls, Goblins, Hobgoblins, and Kobolds—and Lizardmen if the players prefer not to play evil characters. Second, a simple means to measure occupation of each of the caves, the progress of other factions as they try to reclaim the other caves, and reward player success with bonus reinforcements. Third, a means to stock the various caves/encounters—nearly all of the locations in the Caves of Chaos will need to be stocked and described by the DM who will have to fill in such details in the spaces provided. A map of both the Caves of Chaos and the surrounding area is also provided. 

Reclaiming the Caves on the Borderlands is underwritten and requires an edit, but then the standards for a $1 adventure are not required to be all that high. This is not to say that the adventure is terribly written, but what it lacks is any sort of background and motivation for the player characters. Who is driving their characters to act? Where are they from? If they are from a tribe, then what tribe? If they are mercenaries, who is their employer? Who are their rivals? Some other interested and rival parties are suggested as possible story lines, but none of them have much to do with evil humanoids. Nor is there any advice on playing ‘evil’ characters, but then perhaps that is outside the scope of the adventure.

There is undoubtedly a good idea at the heart of this scenario, but Reclaiming the Caves on the Borderlands is underdeveloped and the idea at its heart is not as fully supported as it could have been. Yet for $1, the DM is getting something that he can work with and develop himself, and so as a spur for his creativity, Reclaiming the Caves on the Borderlands is a reasonable purchase.

Another Keep on the Borderlands

Hell’s Throat is a seventeen-mile long river gorge that cuts through the Krond Heights. In the past century it has been used as means for orc and goblin tribes to invade settled lands of the city-state of P’Bapar below. A decade ago, a great confederation of Orc tribes flooded through the pass and sacked the keep that had been built on an island above Tanara Falls. In response, the Earl of Reyifor constructed Frandor’s Keep, a larger and more impressive fort intended to monitor and curtail any further incursions down Hell’s Throat, on the same site. In the years since, it has become a base for hunters and trappers, lumberjacks and prospectors, as well as a focus for bandits and thieves and orcs and goblins that have snuck into the region to prey upon the merchant traffic that passes through the Borderlands to Frandor’s Keep and back again. Such is the threat that they represent that the Earl has established a bounty on the heads of all non-humans and non-demi-humans in the region. In the keep itself and in Quarrytown—the shantytown outside it—rumours abound of ghosts on Hell’s Throat Trail, of missing trappers, and more…

Frandor’s Keep: An immersive setting for adventure is a mini-campaign setting for HackMaster Basic published by Kenzer & Co in 2009. One reason that I did not review it at the time was because of how irritated I was by certain parts of HackMaster Basic, though my intention had been to review it as part of the mini-series of reviews devoted to B2, Keep on the Borderlands. Putting aside my dislike of HackMaster Basic—or least certain parts of it—I finally picked up Frandor’s Keep and decided that I wanted to review it. The good news is that I was more than pleasantly surprised by how good it is.

Designed for characters of levels one through five, Frandor’s Keep takes its cue from the classic Basic Dungeons & Dragons scenario, B2 Keep on the Borderlands. Its set-up is that of a lonely outpost located in the hinterland between civilisation and orc or goblin infested wilderness. Unbeknownst to the soldiery and inhabitants of the keep, dangers lie close by and a serious threat is readying itself to sack the keep and sweep down on the civilised lands—just as the orcs and goblins did years ago. It is to this keep that the adventurers will come and in the course of interacting with its inhabitants will learn rumours and pick up small tasks that will eventually lead them to not only uncovering this threat, but thwarting it too. So saving the keep, its inhabitants, and the civilised lands behind the keep.

Much of Frandor’s Keep’s one-hundred-and forty-four pages are devoted to describing the keep’s history and the region around it, before focusing specifically on the keep itself. The setting is that of the Kingdoms of Kalamar, Kenzer & Co.’s house setting for HackMaster. Thus it moves from B’Par to the Earldom of Reyifor to the vicinity of Frandor’s Keep and the series of watch towers mounted on the peaks above Hell’s Throat. Frandor’s Keep really consists of two locations. The first is Quarrytown, the former quarry the mined stone from which was used to build the keep, the second the keep itself. No longer mined, Quarrytown has become a shantytown, home to outcasts from Frandor’s Keep itself, its continued existence allowed by the Earl so that he can keep an eye on its inhabitants. It is a lawless place, though a gang known as the Ravens maintain order and exact taxes of their own. The Ravens serve as the supplement’s primary antagonists.

Frandor’s Keep consists of an Outer Bailey, Lower Bailey, Middle Bailey, and Upper Bailey. Its various buildings and inhabitants are described in some detail, but the buildings themselves are not individually mapped. Two aspects of the supplement stand out throughout the descriptions given. The first of these aspects is the book’s cartography. Where possible, an isomorphic view is given of the layout of the buildings. This provides a three dimensional view of the buildings, the effect being to make them stand out and bring them to life. The other maps in the supplement are clear and simple, but lack the sophistication. The second aspect is effort made to integrate the NPCs into the setting of Frandor’s Keep. This is done through their knowledge of the keep and its surrounds—several lists of rumours and commonly known information being included in the bok, and by providing story hooks designed to get the players and their involved in the life and events of the keep and its surrounds. Each is also accompanied by a story award of several Experience Points.

For example, when the adventurers enter the keep for the first time, they see a man manacled to the pillory. He is a hunter who has been whipped because it believed that he committed a murder—he brought in the head of his victim saying that it was that of a centaur in order to claim the bounty placed by the Earl of Reyifor on the heads of non-human humanoids. If the adventurers can find the body of the centaur and prove to the officials at the keep that hunter was telling the truth, then they will have gained an ally and earned themselves 200 Experience Points.

Opportunities for story awards are seeded throughout the supplement. As long as the players engage their characters in the setting beyond the desire loot and pillage—though there is opportunity to do that too—all the GM has to do is work them into the game and the events of the campaign should all but drive the play of game forward. This is in addition to six named, larger encounters in the book and three multi-session adventures that round it out. Of these three, it is the first—‘The Ransom’—that stands out and is the most interesting. The other two, ‘The Kobold Brambles’ and ‘Mine of the Goblin King’, feel like more traditional Dungeons & Dragons-style adventures and are not quite so tightly bound into the setting of Frandor’s Keep. Lastly, player characters from the keep and up to one of the watch towers overlooking Hell’s Throat. Both The Mysterious Shrine and White Palette, Ivory Horns are available for free, whilst In the Realm of the Elm King serves a similar function and is available for purchase.

Physically, Frandor’s Keep is well presented. It is clean and tidy, and reasonably illustrated in a fairly simplistic style. Bar a single map of the greater region that lacks detail, the maps in the book uniformly good. What is particularly pleasing after having read and reviewed HackMaster Basic, is that the writing is straight and to the point. There is none of the silliness and missed opportunities that marred the pages of that book.

Still, Frandor’s Keep is not perfect. Both ‘The Kobold Brambles’ and ‘Mine of the Goblin King’ could have been better woven into the campaign built around the keep and lastly, it is missing the one element key to B2 The Keep on the Borderlands and its various iterations—that is the equivalent of the feared Caves of Chaos. That equivalent is actually the Mines of Chaos as described in the adventure supplement, The Mines of Chaos. Intended for use with higher level characters and HackMaster Fifth Edition, the sad news is that five years after the publication of Frandor’s Keep, its sequel campaign is yet to see print.

Frandor’s Keep: An immersive setting for adventure lives up to subtitle. It works very hard to involve the players and their adventurers in what is a low fantasy setting—one that could easily ported over to another setting or ruleset, the Kingdoms of Kalamar not being absolutely necessary to play through Frandor’s Keep. It works hard to involve the adventurers and it presents them with plenty of story and plenty of opportunity to create stories. It is this that makes the HackMaster Basic iteration of B2 Keep on the Borderlands a surprisingly mature and contemporary approach to a classic set-up and format.

Retrospective: Return to the Keep on the Borderlands

Having taken you back thirty years for a retrospective of B2, Keep on the Borderlands, it all but behoves this reviewer to move on two decades to examine that classic module’s sequel. Published in 1999, Return to the Keep on the Borderlands was released at time when TSR was still TSR, but had by that time been owned by Wizards of the Coast for two years. With its all silver trade dress, Return to the Keep on the Borderlands was part of a series of modules that included Against the Giants: The Liberation of Geoff, Dragonlance Classics, and Return to White Plume Mountain, which were in turn, revisited, revised, and updated. This time frame firmly places all of the modules in the era of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Second Edition, never the most popular of Dungeons & Dragons’ iterations, and being so late in that game’s era, it means that there is a degree of detail not to be found in the module’s forebear. In fact, if there is one element that stands out in Return to the Keep on the Borderlands, it is its degree of detail.

Beyond the silver trade dress, what strikes you first about Return to the Keep on the Borderlands is its comparative physicality. At sixty-four pages, it is double the length of the original, its front cover is not only in full colour, but done in a more realistic style. Inside the cover folder, the original map has been upgraded to full colour with more detail, and as to the booklet, not a single page is wasted. There is information on every page. That said, the cover artwork looks odd, and the internal artwork is variable in quality.

Like the original though, Return to the Keep on the Borderlands is still designed for a party of first through third level characters. Instead of updating the setting so that higher level characters could return to the scene of their first forays as adventurers – and that remains an untapped possibility, and would in a sense have been an actual sequel – it has been updated and reworked to take account of twenty years of in-game history. In other words, it presents the titular Keep and the nearby Caves of Chaos twenty years after adventurers first struck at the evil residing just beyond the border of civilisation, so giving it time to recover and make plans anew for the inhabitants of said Keep. The idea at the heart of Return to the Keep on the Borderlands is that its player characters have journeyed to the area to make names for themselves after having heard of the legends created from the play through of B2, The Keep on the Borderlands. This possibility lends itself to the idea that the original adventurers would be the parents of the new.

Return to the Keep on the Borderlands is structured much in the same way as B2, The Keep on the Borderlands. It opens with a few pages of advice aimed at the novice DM, the most notable of which suggests that the DM hand out Experience Points for treasure gained, a rule to be found in Basic Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition rather than Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Second Edition, and so at odds with emphasis placed on story awards in the latter game. The issue here is that it is also at odds with the intent behind Return to the Keep on the Borderlands. Is it an exercise in nostalgia or a module written for the beginning DM? If the former, then the inclusion of this rule is acceptable, but if the latter, then the rule is for the wrong game system as opposed for the one it is written for. In either case, it would have been better if story awards had been included as well.

The second section details the Keep itself, and it is here that the module first shows the wealth of development that comes after twenty years. The most obvious change is that every single one of the NPCs that inhabitant the Keep is named, whereas in B2, The Keep on the Borderlands this was not the case. From this naming process, we learn who founded the Keep and its history, and what has changed since the last time adventurers passed through the region. The political situation is also very different. In B2, The Keep on the Borderlands, the Keep was obviously part of a feudal and mercantile system, but here in the sequel, it can become more commune-like, and more democratic. In addition to naming every NPC, the module details their motivations and aims; goes into detail as who knows about the Caves of Chaos and what they know; gives plots or storylines that play out as the player characters return to the Keep after each foray out into the surrounding wildness; and NPCs that the player characters can hire as henchmen, become replacement player characters, or form a rival party of adventurers. What is interesting about the design of these NPCs is that they each have flaw written into them which means that as henchmen makes them unsuitable to lead the party, and if properly played, from the DM dominating the player characters.

What is implicit in the description of the Keep is that the Keep and its inhabitants are under threat from the denizens to be found at the Caves of Chaos in the surrounding areas. A slow growing threat to be sure, but a threat nonetheless, and if the player characters fail to thwart the evil efforts of the Caves of Chaos, then the likelihood is that the clerics there will eventually amass enough undead to overwhelm the meagre defences of the Keep.

The wilderness beyond the Keep has also undergone a redesign and a restock. Many of the previous inhabitants of the forests, river, and swamp that either side of the road that the Keep stands on have retreated, smarting at the efforts of the adventurers in B2, The Keep on the Borderlands. To these are added refugees from the Caves of the Chaos, encounters with the undead and variations upon classic Dungeons & Dungeons creatures, and many of the previous inhabitants of the forests, river, and swamp that either side of the road that the Keep stands on have retreated, smarting at the efforts of the adventurers in B2, The Keep on the Borderlands. To these are added refugees from the Caves of the Chaos, encounters with the undead and variations upon classic Dungeons & Dungeons creatures, and then actual encounters tied into what is going on at the Caves of Chaos. Some of these encounters quite deadly, even for third level characters, let alone for new player playing through his first game of Dungeons & Dragons. That said, not every encounter has to end in a fight, and the region is home to potential allies in addition to its many foes.

One significant change to the surrounding area is the removal of the “Cave of the Unknown,” an unmapped area that was left up to the DM to create and develop. Here it has been turned into simple alternative entrance to the nearby Caves of Chaos.

As with B2, The Keep on the Borderlands, the description of the Caves of Chaos makes up the bulk of Return to the Keep on the Borderlands. As with the rest of the module it has undergone a major redesign, though not in layout. Barring a labyrinth that runs around and connects each of the individual cave systems, nothing has been added to the physical layout. Instead, the inhabitants and contents of the caves have been greatly changed. The most obvious effect of this is to break up the artificiality of Caves of Chaos in B2, The Keep on the Borderlands that had innumerable humanoid tribes crammed into this small area. The original module never explained the reasons for this, but its sequel uses it as the basis to present both the changes and evidence of the plot being worked from within The Hidden Temple.

What is again evident in every entry for the caves is the wealth of detail that the author has brought to them. In comparison, the write up of these locations in the original B2, The Keep on the Borderlands are starkly empty, barely described, and all but bland. Similarly, every creature or group of creatures is brought to life with fears and motivations as well as courses of action that you wish had been present in B2, The Keep on the Borderlands. For example, the reactions of the Kobolds in the original are barely described, but in the sequel, their tactics are given in detail, including the traps and tricks that they will use against any intruders. Both traps and tricks are highly inventive; for the players and their characters, cruel; and for the DM, actually cruel and funny, such that it is clear that the author had fun writing them. Similarly, there is an obvious ghoulish delight in describing some of the new denizens, all of which fit in with the plans hatched within the corridors of The Hidden Temple.

Perhaps the oddest factor about Return to the Keep on the Borderlands is its choice of placement and its gods. The module’s back cover clearly states that the Keep is located in the World of Greyhawk, but B2, The Keep on the Borderlands was never placed there, so why the change? And if so changed, why not state where the Keep is actually located? All of which should have been irrelevant because B2, The Keep on the Borderlands was always intended as a generic module. None of this confusion is helped in the choice of the gods worshiped by the clerics in the Hidden Temple – Erishkigal and Nergal, both of which are Babylonian gods and not from the World of Greyhawk.

There is a lot to like in Return to the Keep on the Borderlands. It does an excellent job of updating the original, fleshing it out a great deal, and adding innumerable story elements. Yet despite its intentions, it fails to be a suitable adventure for the beginning DM. There is just too much detail contained in its pages such that it could overwhelm the neophyte. Yet if the DM can handle the degree of detail, this can be an excellent adventure and one that will take the adventurers beyond third level.

Retrospective: B2, Keep on the Borderlands

That B2, Keep on the Borderlands is perhaps, one of the most famous modules ever released for Dungeons & Dragons is hardly a surprise. For gamers of a certain age, for those that began play with the Basic Dungeons & Dragons box set, it was their introduction to both the game and gaming. For three years, between 1980 and 1982, it appeared in that boxed set, providing the base template for adventures to come as well as hours of play. Gary Gygax’s module holds a certain place in many a gamer’s heart, and has since been celebrated with a sequel, Return to the Keep on the Borderlands – released for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Second Edition as part of TSR’s 25th Anniversary; a reprint as one of the modules included in the TSR Silver Anniversary Collector's Edition boxed set; and a revisit for Wizards of the Coast’s Dungeons & Dragons Essentials line as part of its in-store “Encounters Programme.” In addition, B2, Keep on the Borderlands appeared at position number seven on “The 30 Greatest D&D Adventures of All Time” in issue one hundred and sixteen of Dungeon magazine – as described here.

Like those gamers, B2, Keep on the Borderlands was my starting module. I am not sure that I ever played it, but I certainly ran it, and it is the chance that I might run again – one player in my Monday night group not having played it, and neither has my partner, Louise – that spurred me to take another look at the module. So thus I dug out my copy of the adventure from the battered box that is my copy of Basic Dungeons & Dragons and found it to be in almost as worse a state as the box and rulebook are. It was definitely used, full of pencil marks, some of its pages separated, but everything was there. Whether or not I get a chance to run the scenario is moot, but in the meantime, I can at least give it my best thoughts and a review.

The setting for B2, Keep on the Borderlands is stated as simply and as clearly as possible in the title. It is set in a Keep – or castle, and said Keep does stand on the borderlands, in this case on the borderlands that lie between the civilised lands that comprise the Realm of Man and the wilderness beyond. Just as the Realm of Man has its bastion of civilisation in the region – in the form of said Keep, the forces of Chaos have their own stronghold, a network of caves and tunnels – the Caves of Chaos, dominating a ravine lying just two miles and over a hill away from the Keep. The intention is that young adventurers will travel to this border region, and using the Keep as their base of operations, strike out into the untamed wilderness beyond the walls of the lawful redoubt. Already, the adventurers know of the Caves of Chaos and armed with a rumour or two about the area, and have merely to finish equipping themselves and perhaps hire a henchman or two, before sallying forth.

The Caves of Chaos are almost literally up the road from the Keep. They consist of eleven cave complexes of varying size and complexity overlooking a steep ravine dotted with barren trees. The caves are themselves home to a variety of monstrous humanoids, from Kobolds and Goblins up through Orcs and Hobgoblins to Gnolls and Bugbears. At the rear of the ravine lies the Shrine to Evil Chaos, from within which the forces of, well Evil and Chaos, plot the downfall of the Realm of Man. The wilderness surrounding both the Keep and the Caves of Chaos is also home to numerous inhabitants, some of whom if encountered, will be as deadly a threat as any to be found in the Caves themselves.

Written for characters of first through third level, B2, Keep on the Borderlands is designed to work as an introductory module for both DM and players. It is for this reason that so much of the module is devoted to advice for running and playing the adventure. Naturally, the bulk of this advice, five-and-a-half pages of it, is for the DM’s eyes, whilst just half a page is given to the players. The focus of the advice is very much on running the mechanical elements of Dungeons & Dragons (be it Basic or Advanced, because B2, Keep on the Borderlands can easily be run with either version, and its simplicity does allow it to be run with most Retroclones too) – handling combat, time, the division of treasure and Experience Points, and so on.

As presented, the Keep is a microcosm of the society that it stands as the last bastion of civilisation. It has a bank, a guild house, a tavern, an inn, provisioners and traders, a chapel, and so on. The most noticeable fact about the Keep and its inhabitants is that none of them are named. They are purely known by their role – the barkeep, the smith, the priest, the clerk, and so forth. Almost as noticeable is that none of the rooms are described effectively or clearly, and it is up to the DM to extract and create these descriptions as much as it is up to him to supply the names of the men and women living at the Keep.

The Caves of Chaos possess the same problem, but the issue at the heart of this module’s design is its artificiality. The odd thing is that initially, the Caves of Chaos do not feel artificial. Whereas a dungeon is artificial because the deeper a party ventures, the greater a challenge it offers, B2, Keep on the Borderlands foregoes that in the sense that while the more challenging caves lie at the rear of the ravine, the party is free to wander into any cave mouth that it wants. So that a fearless party – or is that foolish? – could make its way up the ravine and enter the caves home to the Gnolls, the Hobgoblins, or the Shrine of Evil Chaos itself!

Yet the set-up of having the various humanoid races all crowded in on each other is artificial. Although the module suggests relationships between some of the tribes – an alliance between two and one stealing from another, for example, how the tribes came to be living in such close proximity and why they never turn on each other is never discussed. Similarly left undiscussed are the plans that the priests resident in the Shrine of Evil Chaos have on the Keep and its inhabitants. Nor does Gygax suggest what the inhabitants of the Caves of Chaos do on a day-to-day basis beyond going out hunting; what they do as a whole in reaction to any incursion by marauding humans – the reactions of individual tribes are discussed, but not the faux community that is the Caves of Chaos; and what the Keep knows about the Caves of Chaos and it intends to do about them – after all, if the player characters know about them, why not the Castellan of the Keep?

Whilst the advice given for the DM is excellent by the standards of the time, by today’s standards it is lacking. What it ignores is story. There is very little atmosphere or plot to be found within the pages of B2, Keep on the Borderlands, though there are story and roleplaying hooks, such as a merchant being rumoured to have missing in the area scattered throughout the module. The lack of plot means that B2, Keep on the Borderlands is a very static affair, there being nothing to drive the adventurers deeper into the Caves of Chaos apart from the prospect of further treasure and Experience Points. Yet while some might decry the lack of plot and story, this absence leaves room aplenty for the DM to set up more of a story for his players and also leave room for him to have the inhabitants of the Caves of Chaos react against the party’s incursions. Similarly, the scenario has abundant room for the DM to expand on the environment surrounding the Keep and the Caves of Chaos and so create his own material, and that is in addition to the Cave of the Unknown which is included in B2, Keep on the Borderlands and left up to the DM to develop. The question is, does the advice included in B2, Keep on the Borderlands help the DM deal with either issue? By the standards of either today or thirty years ago, the answer would be barely.

In recent months, I had to re-read William Gibson’s Neuromancer as part of a book club. What is so readily apparent in that novel is how so much of the genre it engendered has since been adopted and subsumed into the mainstream such that for even readers new to the novel so many of its elements were familiar. In looking back at a module like B2, Keep on the Borderlands, there is a similar feeling. Its set up of a village – in this case, a Keep – threatened by an uncivilised peril is exceedingly familiar, and if you look at the adventures that have appeared since, from U1, Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh and “The Halls of Tizun Thane” in White Dwarf #18 through to Scourge of the Howling Horde for Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition and H1 Keep on the Shadowfall for Dungeons & Dragons, Fourth Edition, then you will see it appear again and again. Whilst some might suggest that the earlier Gygax authored T1, The Village of Hommlet set this archetype up in 1979, the exposure to Dungeons & Dragons through the Basic Dungeons & Dragons set and its adventure, B2, Keep on the Borderlands, surely cemented it in gamers’ minds.

In truth, B2, Keep on the Borderlands is not my favourite module, but I have a certain regard for it as much as I consider its faults. Its set up is clear, simple, and familiar, to the extent that its challenge is not running the scenario, but in getting a story from its content with which the player characters can interact with. That challenge is born of the fact that ultimately, B2, Keep on the Borderlands is perhaps just a little too shallow. It needs depth and it needs explanation of its set-up, and as much as I want to run it as is, I would appreciate it all the more with more contemporary advice. I would like to see a version of B2, Keep on the Borderlands that updates and develops its set-up in this way, but that is unlikely to happen. Nevertheless, if I am given the opportunity to run the module, I will probably do it as is, in part because the players mentioned at the top of this piece should experience it that way as the author intended.

West is Still Best

Having an interest in the Old School Renaissance and currently being engaged in an ongoing Legends of the Five Rings campaign, I was more than interested to take a look at Ruins & Ronin, a supplement from sword+1 productions based on the Swords & Wizardry White Box rule set that sets out to use the samurai movie as the basis for swords and sorcery adventure in a mythical, medieval culture that is almost like Japan. Its aim is not to create a culture game like the aforementioned Legends of the Five Rings or the classic Bushido, but one full of adventure and mystery in which Bujin, Shugenja, and Sohei explore strange ruins out in the wilderness and delve into deep dungeons below crumbling pagodas, encountering strange spirits and creepy monsters, and finding fantastic artefacts of great power. The idea behind Ruins & Ronin is that samurai should be allowed to go dungeon delving just as much as his Western fantasy counterpart. Unfortunately, Ruins & Ronin fails to live up to all of those aims.

As with Swords & Wizardry’s core rules, Ruins & Ronin presents just the three classes. In Swords & Wizardry, they are the Cleric, the Fighter, and the Magic-user. In Ruins & Ronin, their analogues are the Sohei or warrior-monk, the Bujin or samurai or ronin, and the Shugenja. The bujin can perform a “Follow Through” manoeuvre, striking at another opponent delivering a killing blow, and is unrestricted in terms of what arms and armour that he can use, though the shield is not found in this setting. The Shugenja can cast spells, and like the Magic-User cannot wear armour and is restricted to using Tanto (daggers), Uchi-ne (throwing blades), or Bo (staves) only. Sohei can cast divine spells and turn undead, and cannot wear very heavy armour, or use a katana or a bow.

The playable races to be found in Swords & Wizardry, the Dwarves, Elves, and Halflings, are not present in Ruins & Ronin. Instead, it has the single playable race, Half-Ogres. As with the races to be found in Swords & Wizardry, Half-Ogres advance as Fighters or Bujin, and as you would imagine, Half-Ogres are very strong, do extra damage in combat, and resist disease and poison better. Similarly, neither Swords & Wizardry nor Ruins & Ronin have a Thief-like player class. Now while this is understandable given that Swords & Wizardry draws for its inspiration from the earliest of Dungeons & Dragons books that lacked the Thief class, surely in a game inspired by samurai movies, you would want to have the Ninja as a class? Were Ruins & Ronin to be a culture game based on Japan in which the role of the ninja is downplayed, its absence would be far from objectionable. Here, the lack of the ninja feels like a major omission. After all, the ninja is very much part of the genre.

In general, as can be seen from the example below, characters in Ruins & Ronin do not look very different those from Swords & Wizardry. Very simple and very easy, but lacking in flavour.

Megumi the Pious, Level 1 Sohei
Str: 6 (-1) Int: 14 Wis: 15 (+1)
Con: 12 Dex: 6 (-1) Chr: 4 (-1)
Hit Points: 4 Save: 14 (+2 vs. Death & Poison)
Armour Class: 5 Ascending Armour Class: 14
Masakari (1d6); Haidate, Hara-ate, Jingasa; 17gp

In terms of support, Ruins & Ronin comes with a complete spell list for both the Shugenja and the Sohei character classes; a complete set of monsters; and an array of magical items. Unfortunately, the spells on both lists appear to have been lifted wholesale from the lists for the Cleric and the Magic-User classes from Swords & Wizardry without either a single re-design or single re-naming. So another opportunity to add flavour to the game has been lost. That changes though, when it comes to the monsters and the magical artefacts. Classic monsters from Dungeons & Dragons, such as Black Puddings, Gelatinous Cubes, Hell Hounds, and Treants are joined by an Oriental bestiary that includes Bakemono-Toro, Fox Monks, Kyonshi (Hopping Vampires), Oni, and Tengu. Some classic Dungeons & Dragons monsters have been altered, such as the Lizard Samurai and the Naga, but on the whole, the number and type of monsters listed is impressive, even if it feels odd to mix them up so. The magical items are more straightforward. Basic weapons, wands, scrolls, potions, and so on, work in Ruins & Ronin just as well as they do in Swords & Wizardry, but the author adds items such as the Brush of Translation, which allows the wielder to understand any spoken language; the Dancing Fan, which gives the user a Charisma of 18 when dancing; and the Scholars’ Fan, which automatically swats flies, shields the owner from the sun, and flutters gently to provide a breeze. Thee really do add touches of detail and flavour to the game, and hint at the potential in a samurai themed Retroclone.

So far then, that is what is to be found in the pages of Ruins & Ronin. This leaves what is not to be found between its covers. The first of these is an adventure, so we have no idea how the game is meant to be played, an adventure being perhaps, the best way of showcasing this aspect of the game. The second of these is advice for the GM. Well, to be fair, Ruins & Ronin does include some advice for the GM. Yet that advice amounts to barely more than a page, and the rest that takes the advice for the GM up to a page and a half is a guide to when and how to hand out Experience Points. The actual advice though, can be best summed up as, “Make it up yourself.” Or rather, “Make everything up yourself.” Even then, it is not original, being another section reprinted from the Swords & Wizardry White Box rule set.

Now that advice would have been fine in 1974 and Ruins & Ronin was my first RPG. Plus the fact that I had grown in Japan, and was well steeped in the chanbara movie genre. None of this is true, nor was it true for anyone in 2009 when this book was first published, and nor is it true for anyone reading this review right now. What is also true is that Ruins & Ronin is not trying to be a medieval Japanese culture game, a game of high honour in which tea ceremonies and the composing of haiku figure prominently, so the omission of such details are understandable. Yet the truth is that Ruins & Ronin is actually doing a genre, the chanbara movie genre, and the author omits any discussion of that genre. In doing so, he undermines his own work, because a discussion of the genre, and that would include a list of its inspirations much like Advanced Dungeons & Dragons’ Appendix N, would have explored the very point of Ruins & Ronin. That its fantasy is oriental in origin, and so is very different to the Western fantasy of Dungeons & Dragons or Swords & Wizardry. The difference between the two is why anyone would want to play Ruins & Ronin.

Physically, Ruins & Ronin is decently put together. The cover is excellent, but while the internal layout is clean and tidy, there is not another single piece of artwork in the book. None of the book’s new creatures are illustrated and neither are the new magical items. Which is a pity given how spacious the book is and how much of the book is devoted to the creatures, monsters, and spirits of the Orient, and that is before you get to the magical items.

Ultimately, Ruins & Ronin is a great title, but a wasted opportunity. It is a pity that this title has already been taken because it deserves more than what it been given here. It needs more development so that it has some kind of background beyond the mere suggestion that it is inspired by samurai movies; so that it has classes and rules that reflect that background; so it has a discussion of the genre that inspired the author which would then inspire the reader; and so that it has advice for the GM as to how to make a game of Ruins & Ronin different to that of the Swords & Wizardry White Box rule set.

Right now, Ruins & Ronin is a reprint of the Swords & Wizardry White Box rule set with renamed character classes and an extra set of monsters and magical items, and nothing more. Absolutely nothing more. The lesson of Ruins & Ronin is that if you want to present something different to a sector of the gaming hobby, even a sector that is inspired by stripped down Old School play, it should never be left up to the purchaser to do all of the work to explore your game’s differences.

This Skull Needs Flesh

If you are of a certain age, you will recall an image from the rulebook for the version of Basic Dungeons & Dragons designed by writer, Doctor John Eric Holmes. The image showed a cross section of a dungeon consisting of seven levels with two standout features. One was that the last level of the dungeon consisted of a cave system containing a lake surrounding an island that was home to a domed city. The other, more evocative feature was the entrance to the dungeon was through “Skull Mountain.” What exactly lay behind that Skull Mountain we will never know, but now Faster Monkey Games has picked up the gauntlet to present a dungeon adventure based on that map. The result is an adventure designed for a party of four to six characters of fourth through sixth levels for use with the Retroclone, Labyrinth Lord and its supplement, the Advanced Edition Companion.

Skull Mountain comes with a setting outside of the dungeon, plots going on inside and outside of the dungeon, six levels of dungeon, plus a complex within the dungeon itself. The setting outside of the dungeon is the town of Wolford, which stands within sight of the gently smoking volcano that is Skull Mountain. The town has always been prone to banditry and robbery, but of late there have attacks and worse committed against its populace. Further, Aidan, the teenaged son of the ruling noble, has been kidnapped, and the town’s seneschal, Master Grüber, needs to ensure his safe return before his father discovers his disappearance. This sets up the reason for the presence of the player characters to be in Wolford, to rescue young Aidan, and is the adventure’s initial plot.

Yet for a plot that is meant to drive the party into investigating Skull Mountain, its set up and support are both woefully underdeveloped. Their patron, Master Grüber, has been left a blank canvas and his terms for the party’s employment have also been left blank. Two pages lay out the scenario’s extensive background, but no means of presenting or just hinting at that background is given, when all that was really needed was a traditional rumour table. This omission is at odds with the treatment of the other plots in Skull Mountain which actually encourage the player characters to return to the dungeon and explore its depths after they have rescued Aidan. What this means is that a DM will need to do a bit more work than he really should to fully flesh out the beginning of the scenario.

The dungeon itself below Skull Mountain feels quite small given the feeling of space conveyed in Holmes’ original cutaway. Most of the individual levels consist of between six and eight locations, the lowest level having three times that number in total. Getting down to the level where Aidan has been imprisoned should take no more than a couple of sessions, but there is much more to the dungeon than just that. It is expected that the party will leave once it has located Aidan, hence the need for a plot nudge that will persuade them to re-enter and explore the lower levels. The route to the adventure’s final areas is unfortunately very linear, but it does start with the dungeon’s most memorable feature, a stairway that spirals down round the outside of giant stalactite. Unfortunately, the author does not make as much of it as he could have done. Later on, the characters have to walk over a lake of lava under arrow fire while being snapped at by a salamander, yet the only problem they might face on the way down is catapult, which is easy to avoid. All the characters have to do is run around the other side of the stalactite. The location itself is exciting, but it just needs something a little extra to make it really memorable.

The finale of the adventure is plotted such that it plays out as a fitting climax to the exploration of the dungeon and revelation of its mysteries, essentially delving back into the adventure’s background that goes back over a thousand years. The player characters will find themselves facing a tough foe, but will be well rewarded for that effort. As with the set-up of the adventure, Skull Mountain also fails to deal with its aftermath. There is no discussion of what happens when Aidan is returned, how the player characters are rewarded for dealing with the threat that lies at the heart of Skull Mountain, and how the villains of the piece react to the adventurers’ efforts.

Physically, Skull Mountain is a well written, well presented thirty-six page 9.13Mb PDF. Its maps are nice and clear, but its artwork budget has been saved for a set of five illustrations that can be shown to the players. These have a pleasing Old School feel to them.

Ultimately, Skull Mountain is an excellent dungeon, but not necessarily a good adventure. The dungeon is well thought out and tied into the adventure’s detailed history with some memorable locations. There are probably three or four good sessions of play to be got out of exploring the dungeon alone. Unfortunately, neither Skull Mountain as a location or its plots are as well supported or as well developed as they should have been. For the want of six or eight pages extra support and development, and Skull Mountain would have been as good an adventure as it is a dungeon. With some effort upon the part of the DM, it still can be.

White Box Fever IV

To gamers of a certain age, the mention of Castle Ravenloft will both strike fear into their hearts and invoke any number of strong memories. Originally published in 1983, the legendary I6: Castle Ravenloft was a gothic horror adventure that pitted the heroes against the feared vampire, Count Strahd von Zarovich. Playing upon Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the heroes had to brave his castle in an attempt save the fate of a young woman that the Count believed to be his long lost love. As they explore the beautifully mapped castle and the crypts below, danger was never far away in the form of numerous undead creatures and the Count constantly toying with them.

I6: Castle Ravenloft not only received its own setting, but three sequels: I10: The House on Gryphon Hill in 1986 and then in 2006, Expedition to Castle Ravenloft, the latter for Wizards of the Coast’s Dungeons & Dragons 3.5. The third sequel is also from Wizards of the Coast, is based on Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition, but is not a roleplaying adventure. Rather it is a boardgame. Moreover, it is a co-operative boardgame in which a party of delvers must venture into Castle Ravenloft on a number of missions that will thwart the evil Count’s ambitions. Designed for between one and five players aged twelve and up, the game uses a simplified version of the rules for Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition, and with everyone taking turns being the Dungeon Master, the Castle Ravenloft Board Game never lets up!

Open up the box and you will find it crammed full with components. These include the Dungeon “Start” Tile and forty Dungeon Tiles; five Hero, seven Villain, and thirty Monster figures; five Hero, four Villain, sixty Encounter, fifty Power, thirty Monster, and fifty Treasure Cards, plus others; and some two hundred different Tokens. All topped off by the Rulebook and the Adventure Book, each sixteen pages long, and the game’s twenty-sided die.

Apart from the Dungeon “Start” Tile, which is effectively two Tiles together, all of the Dungeon Tiles are four inches square and marked in one inch squares. All have a black or white triangle marked on them to determine their orientation and a square with a pile of bones to indicate where the monsters start. Some Dungeon Tiles are marked with walls while others are “Quest Tiles,” the target locations described in the missions given in the Adventure Book. Together they form the corridors and rooms of the crypts below Castle Ravenloft.

The miniatures are unpainted, but come in a variety of different colours. So the heroes come in a rich blue, wolves and rat swarms (or rat pizzas as we have described them) in brown; the skeleton and the gargoyle in ivory; the villains such as Count von Strahd in grey; and the blazing skeletons in clear ice blue. These are not the only monsters of course, but all of the figures are nicely sculpted, especially the giant Dracolich Gravestorm.

Each monster has its own Monster card. This lists its Armour Class, its Hit Points – most monsters only have one Hit Point, while Count von Strahd has twelve! – its Tactics, its Attacks and Damage inflicted, and its Experience, or rather the amount of Experience Points the heroes gain for killing it. So for example, if the Skeleton is adjacent to a Hero, it attacks him with a scimitar (a +7 attack that does one damage); if it is within a tile of a Hero, it charges and does a slice (a +9 attack that does two damage!); otherwise, the Skeleton moves one tile closer towards the nearest Hero. Essentially, these tactics are conditional, and while they vary from Monster to Monster, they are always easy to interpret.

The Hero Cards are slightly different to the Monster Cards. First, they have more details on them, and second, they are double-sided. On the one side are the stats for each Hero at first level and on the other side, for second level. Each Hero has a name, a race and a class, a little background, and then his Armour Class, his Hit Points (ranging between six for the Wizard and ten for the Fighter), his Speed (movement points per turn), his Healing Surge (How many Hit Points he gets back after he dies) and a special ability. For example, Thorgrim, the Dwarf Cleric has the Aid ability, which allows him to heal another Hero for one Hit Point if Thorgrim did not attack that turn. In addition, each Hero has one Utility, two At-Will, and one Daily Power Cards that his player can chose from several available. For quick play, the Adventure Book suggests the starting Power Cards for each Hero. Most Power Cards will be familiar to players of Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition, and will provide some form of attack. Utility Power Cards provide another non-combat related advantage, and like the Daily Power Cards are one shot affairs.

It takes a critical roll of twenty and five Experience for a Hero to go up to second level. This increases all of his stats and enables him to inflict extra damage when he rolls a twenty. Besides Thorgrim, the Dwarf Cleric, the other Heroes are a Dragonborn Fighter (provides an Armour Class bonus to Heroes on the same Dungeon Tile), a Human Ranger (can explore or reveal unexplored Dungeon Tiles even if not adjacent to them), a Human Rogue (has a bonus to disarm Traps), and an Eladrin Wizard (knowledge of monsters grants a +1 attack bonus to all Heroes on the same Dungeon Tile). Given that each of these Hero Cards is in a different colour, it would have been nice if the matching Hero figure had been done in the same colour for easier identification.

Both the Rule Book and the Adventure Book are done in full colour and are easy to read and understand. There are a total of thirteen missions in the Adventure Book, of which two are designed to be played solo with just the one Hero. For most of them, the Heroes have to find their way to a certain location, usually a Quest Tile and there defeat all of the Monsters that appear. Nevertheless, the missions provide variety in terms of objective if not necessarily game play.

Game set-up is reasonably quick once a Mission has been decided upon. Play will require a reasonable surface area as the crypts will expand quickly. A player’s turn consists of three phases. During the Hero Phase, a Hero can either move twice, move and attack, or attack and move. Each move is equal to a Hero’s speed, while an attack consists of rolling the die and adding any bonuses listed on the Power Card to beat the Monster’s Armour Class. The most damage that a Hero will inflict is one or two points, usually enough to defeat most Monsters. A defeated Monster goes into the Experience pile, while the victorious Hero can draw a Treasure Card. Some Treasure Cards have an immediate effect such as granting a temporary bonus to attack rolls or forcing the next card drawn from the Monster or Encounter deck to be discarded. Other Treasure Cards have a lasting effect, for example the bonus to Speed that the Boots of Striding grant. Treasure Cards like this can be given to any player upon being drawn.

Following the Hero Phase is the Exploration Phase. If a Hero ends his move adjacent to an unexplored edge, then a new Dungeon Tile is drawn and added to the dungeon. A new Monster Card is drawn by the current player who will control it until it is defeated, its figure being placed on the new Dungeon Tiles’ pile of bones square.

The third and final phase is the Villain Phase, and is perhaps the most interesting. If a Hero did not add a new Dungeon Tile in the Exploration Phase or if the newly added Dungeon Tile was marked with a black triangle, then the player draws and plays an Encounter Card. These take effect immediately and have various effects. These include adding an Environment, such as “Bat Swarm,” which makes attacking adjacent Dungeon Tiles more difficult; an Event, such as “Strahd Attacks,” when the vampire lord appears suddenly, attacks everyone, and disappears; and Traps, such as a the “Crossbow Turret.” Traps remain in play until disarmed and are controlled by the player who drew them affecting only the heroes on that Dungeon Tile.

After the Encounter Card has been drawn and played, any Villains, Monsters, and Traps controlled by a player activate, attacking and moving as dictated on their Cards. Where the Villain Phase gets truly villainous is when there are two or more monsters of single type in play. If a player controls one of these monsters, he not only moves that monster, but also every other monster of that type in play, even if controlled by another player! So if you control a Spider during your Villain Phase, you will not only control its movement and attack, but that of every other Spider in play. Worse, when it gets to the player who controls that other Spider, he not only moves and attacks with his Spider, but also with yours! This multiple monster rule forces the players to try and keep the number of monsters in play down to a minimum of one type.

Once play starts, a rhythm soon develops. The game flows as each Hero advances through the dungeon, revealing more Dungeon Tiles and Monsters, an Encounter occurring, his Monsters moving and attacking, before the next Hero having an opportunity to move and attack, usually to defeat a Monster before it has a chance to attack again. The Encounter Cards add a weird, strange randomness to the game from turn to turn, actually echoing the eeriness of the crypts below Castle Ravenloft that many will recall from I6: Ravenloft.

So how do you win in the Castle Ravenloft Board Game? Well, there are thirteen missions in the Adventure Book, which gives you thirteen ways in which to win by achieving the objectives listed for each mission. Losing is another matter, and there is just the one way in which to lose. When a Hero dies, he is healed a number of Hit Points equal to his Surge value at the start of his next turn. This costs a single Healing Surge. In the standard game, there are only two Healing Surges available, and once both of these are gone, the game is lost.

Yet because new Monsters appear and Encounters occur almost every turn, the game literally never lets up against the Heroes. It confronts them relentlessly with evil and the undead. The only respite from this is Experience. Gained from killing Monsters, a total of five Experience points can be spent to negate the effects of a newly played Encounter Card. This will probably occur more frequently than a Hero going up to second level, which not only takes five Experience points, but also a roll of twenty on the game's die.

The relentless nature of the game's play can also make it a dispiriting experience for younger players. It can be just too hard for them. There are ways to make the game easier for them though. The one listed in the rule book is increasing the number of Healing Surges available to the players, but the Heroes could also start the game with more Treasure Cards and the Experience point cost to negate Encounter Cards and to go up levels could also be lowered. The game could also be made harder by doing the reverse of any of these options and also by having the players randomly choose the Power Cards for their Heroes. Then again, even playing without the Cleric Hero will handicap the players.

So is Castle Ravenloft Board Game a co-operative game? Absolutely. The players have to co-operate in order to defeat the Monsters and get to the objective. Just like any dungeon crawl. As with any co-operative game, the players are free to discuss their actions and should be encouraged to do so to make the best use of each Hero's powers and benefits. It is also co-operative in that the players are up against the game itself, each player's Villain Phase giving him a turn at being the Dungeon Master. In addition, the game can be played solo, a player controlling just the one Hero or many according to the mission. Nor is there anything to stop a fewer number of players controlling more Heroes between them.

The other question is, how reminiscent is Castle Ravenloft Board Game of the original 1983 scenario? Putting aside the big disappointment that the Heroes only get to explore the crypts below the castle – which surely means that there is room for an expansion supplement? – then it evokes memories of part of the castle. The randomness of the Encounter Cards brings to mind the Count's constant toying with the Heroes in the original scenario and the endless supply of Monsters at his beck and call.

Although playing Castle Ravenloft Board Game is hard, it is also fun. Anyone who has played Dungeons & Dragons will find its rules familiar, more so if they have played Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition. Indeed, one player described it playing a roleplaying game, but without the roleplaying. Of course this boardgame is unlike playing Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition in that the game is never relentless like Castle Ravenloft Board Game. Monsters and Encounters do not keep coming at the player characters as they do here, but are neatly parcelled up in set Encounters.

On its own, Castle Ravenloft Board Game offers hard play against a relentless foe. Yet it also serves as a basic introduction to Dungeons & Dragons. Which leaves me with an interesting thought. For just a little time, before the release of Dungeons & Dragons Essentials Red Box, the fact is that Castle Ravenloft Board Game was the best introduction to Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition. Perhaps it still is...?

Daft Insidious?

New publisher Die Cast Games recently caused no little controversy in August of 2010 with the publication of its first module, TSR1 Insidious. Not because of its content, though I shall of course come to that, but because of its “trade dress.” By that I mean the physical elements of a product’s design, packaging, and labelling that identify a product and make it recognisable to the purchaser. With TSR1 Insidious, what Die Cast Games has done is not create a trade dress of its own, but rather ape that of the scenarios published in early to mid 1980s for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons First Edition, best typified by the Desert of Desolation series or I6, Ravenloft. Although it is not an exact copy, this aping also includes the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons logo of the period, the main element missing being the use of an ordinary ampersand rather than the dragon-headed ampersand that we know of old. It continues on the inside of the card cover with its blue on white cartography, and while the layout of the booklet is more open than the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons modules of the mid to late 1980s, it certainly evokes a sense of nostalgia.

The issue is whether or not the use of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons in this manner violates the terms of Wizards of the Coast’s Open Gaming License, and if so, does it jeopardise the future of OGL upon which the Old School movement depends? On this point I am not qualified to comment – my qualification not being in the law and definitely not Intellectual Property law, but the publisher certainly compounds the look with the “TSR” code and front cover illustration, which happens to be by artist Jeff Easley, who contributed innumerable covers to titles published by TSR. The controversy was such that for subsequent printings the module has been re-coded as DCG1-Insidious.

The matter of its appearance aside, TSR1 Insidious or rather DCG1-Insidious, is a standalone module designed for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons to be played by party of three to six characters of between first and third level. It is set in the small town of Sheridan Springs, whose peace has been shattered by strange goings on. Creatures have been seen moving in the woods; townsfolk have gone missing; and weird sounds have been heard coming from its cemetery and the ruins of the manor that stand to its North. Answering a call for help from the local sheriff, the party quickly arrives in Sheridan Springs and soon learns more from its inhabitants. That the townsfolk has not elected a mayor since he blew himself and part of his manor up, that the evil is growing, and that it all could have something to do with a stone obelisk recently installed at the centre of the village.

Apart from encounters with orcs and undead around the village, the characters will soon find themselves moving onto the manor itself. Each of the twenty-five locations that make up the manor are all well described, each entry being neatly laid out with the descriptive text clearly marked. At this point it is difficult to write any more about the adventure without anything being given away, but then again, there is very little in the way of secrets to be revealed. There are creatures in the woods; strange things are going on in the cemetery; the manor does need investigating; and the obelisk does have something to deal with it all.

Physically, apart from the obvious “trade dress” issue, DCG1-Insidious is a nice looking book. It benefits from being on brilliantly white paper and from Jeff Easley’s artwork throughout. The text also benefits from a slightly more open layout, although that does mean that at thirty-two pages, the module is longer than it needs to be. The module as a whole needs another edit too.

One interesting design aspect of DCG1-Insidious is that it is written “Ready-to-Roll.” What this means is that you get the full stats for each and every creature, including their THACO and XP values, as well as page references for abilities, spells, and more from the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks. This is all indeed very useful, and is bound to make the running of the scenario much easier and with relatively little preparation. The module also comes with eight ready to play adventurers, although half of them are of third level, while only one of them is of first level.

There is no denying that DCG1-Insidious looks good. Yet all that pales into insignificance when the module itself cannot match the appearance and style that the publisher aspires to. The issue with the adventure is that it is neither all that interesting nor all that inspiring. We have seen this set up time and time again, and DCG1-Insidious never comes within sight of its most obvious inspiration, the classic U1 Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh. Where that adventure had atmosphere and depth to its story, DCG1-Insidious has none. Worse, it sets up a situation in the form of the mysterious obelisk, and never addresses how this situation could be resolved. Certainly, there is room in the booklet for the author to do so, but that page is wasted to a quarter page’s list of common abbreviations.

To be fair, Die Cast Games has done a good job on the look of its first module. It only needs to be tightened up slightly for the next one. The concept and the writing for that next module not only needs to be tighter, it needs to be if not original, then at the very least, more interesting and more thoughtful. There are just too many good Old School Renaissance scenarios for DCG1-Insidious and Die Cast Games to rest on good looks alone.

White Box Fever I.II

Weird New World is the second item to be included in Weird Fantasy Role-Playing boxed set from Lamentations of the Flame Princess and also made available separately. This is something of departure for the designer, James Raggi IV, as it is not adventure, but a sandbox setting, a region that can be freely explored or roamed by a party of adventurers. Not a departure in the sense that it is without a plot, because most of Raggi’s scenarios are location based and without plot, but rather a departure in that the author cannot bring his customary attention to detail to every element of the region described in Weird New World.

Inspired by Raggi’s adopted home in Finland and his reading about the search for the Northwest Passage, the setting for Weird New World is the frozen North. These are not the only inspirations for this setting. The more obvious ones being H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, but there are possible nods to two classic modules for First Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons as well, S2, White Plume Mountain and S3, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. Much like Tower of the Stargazer, the other adventure included in the Weird Fantasy Role-Playing boxed set, Weird New World is designed for use by someone new to running a wilderness campaign, but where Tower of the Stargazer is written for first level characters, Weird New World is written for more experienced characters of fourth to seventh levels.

Where another adventure from Lamentations of the Flame Princess would come in a simple card cover, the cover for Weird New World folds out to show a full colour map of Raggi’s sandbox. The region comprises almost three million square miles of territory, primarily marked by climate. Also marked on the map are the forty or so locations described in the adventure’s twenty-four page booklet. The maps for two of these locations are given on the inside of the cover, a truly “Great Shipwreck” and a “Pirate Treasure Cove.” Included in the booklet are plain, unmarked copies of the maps for the referee to use and the players to mark up as they explore.

If Raggi cannot bring his customary attention to detail to the region as a whole, he can at least apply to aspects of the setting. Primarily these are its weather, its exploration, and its random encounters, the latter both befitting Weird New World’s clime and the darker, more sinister feel of Weird Fantasy Role-Playing. Thus you have encounters as mundane as a herd of caribou and arctic wolves, but also strange encounters with a crazed whale, tribespeople with a severe hatred of demihumans, and a Living Aurora – surely a Colour Out of Space by any other shade? Raggi never lets up in his weirdness, but whilst he can carry this off effectively in the space of a full adventure where he has room to develop his ideas, here all too often, he can only just present a thumbnail snapshot and no more. Part of this is intentional, the author wanting the referee to explain and expand upon these phenomena himself, but almost as soon as the referee starts thinking about one, then he is looking at the next one on the page. Nor does it help that the adventure lacks advice on developing the author’s ideas, especially after the luxury of the author’s thoughts in Tower of the Stargazer.

Two locations are expanded in detail, each running to roughly three pages in length. They serve up a slice of the author’s trademark oddness, but given their isolated location, it is doubtful that the players will ever get out that far. At least not without some kind of hook, and that is main problem with Weird New World. The lack of hooks, of an obvious starting point, and even a table of rumours leaves a lot of work to do for an experienced referee, let alone a neophyte one. The inclusion of a starting point would also provide a place of refuge for the characters away from strangeness of the region.

In the hands of an experienced referee, Weird New World will provide the basis of a dark and curious campaign. It is not written to that end though, and is just a little too arch for the new referee. Ultimately, the issue is not weirdness of Weird New World – that is its point, after all, but its size. The region is too big for the new referee, too big for Raggi to detail beyond its weirder features, and too big for the player characters to explore fully. A smaller area would have allowed the author to present some of the ideas here to the level of detail we have seen elsewhere, while leaving room for the referee to add details himself.

As the first attempt to create a wilderness adventure, Weird New World is an interesting read, full of ideas ready to be expanded upon. Yet it is too big and ambitious to pull off successfully, and the author will need to rethink his scale for his next attempt.

—oOo—

Weird New World is available in the Adventure Anthology: Blood.

White Box Fever I.I

Among the Old School Renaissance movement, one of the most highly anticipated releases of 2010 is James Raggi IV’s Weird Fantasy Role-playing. Included in this boxed set is the setting, Weird New World and the scenario, Tower of the Stargazer. Both are written to support the new rules and the author’s design aim to present a setting with a more sinister, slightly horrific feel, and go towards making Weird Fantasy Role-playing a complete package, but both are also available separately.

Tower of the Stargazer is an adventure designed for a party of four to eight characters of first level. It describes an isolated wizard’s tower, standing at the centre of a lightning blasted circle. The building appears abandoned, but it holds more than its fair share of puzzles and secrets. This all sounds like a cliché, and to an extent it is. One of the aims in this introductory is to present the cliché of the abandoned wizard’s tower, but in Raggi’s hands it comes alive through almost nothing happening. Combat encounters are few and far between, the emphasis being on the puzzles, the secrets, and the traps. This still leaves plenty for the players to explore and interact with, the one lesson they will learn is that too much curiosity can be a dangerous thing. The lack of combat encounters, the emphasis on traps and puzzles, and the lack of treasure are all trademarks of Raggi’s naturalistic dungeon design.

The overall design consists of just twenty-six locations, comprising of the area immediately outside the tower, the tower itself, and a small dungeon beneath the tower. It is intended to be placed in a relatively remote area, allowing it to be added to almost any campaign. Playing through should take no more than one or two sessions. Mechanically is written for Weird Fantasy Role-playing, but it can just as easily be run for any “Edition 0” RPG.

What sets Tower of the Stargazer apart is that it is written as a “Tutorial” module. As such it is not only is it designed to be played by those new to gaming, but it also is designed to be run by someone new to refereeing. To that end, almost every location described in the adventure is accompanied by a separate box of text wherein Raggi himself steps forth to discuss the elements of the adventure he has written. Primarily, these sections explore what the players might do; the significance of the items to found in each location – of books, in particular; the author’s thoughts in designing and writing; as well as giving staging advice. All of this advice should be useful for the neophyte referee, but some of it should also be useful to someone more experienced, and all of it makes for an interesting read around the adventure. So rarely do we get the chance to hear an author’s thoughts about the module he has written in media res, rather than as designer’s notes in an afterword. On one level, the advice is not quite enough of a tutorial, but the danger in that is that it could turn into preaching.

Physically, Tower of the Stargazer is not quite up to the standards of previous releases from Lamentations of the Flame Princess. The use of a heavy black border and artwork as watermarks on several pages make for quite an oppressive reading experience, very much at odds with the sixteen page length of the scenario. The maps inside the folder though, are very clear and well done. True, it would have been nicer if they had been larger as they do feel slightly cluttered. Another issue with the booklet is the lack of artwork except that in the background, as any such artwork could have been used to illustrate some of the locations in the adventure.

What is surprising for what is an introductory designed for new players is that experienced players are just as likely to enjoy it. Primarily because of the attention to detail that the author has brought to what would otherwise be a cliché, making feel Tower of the Stargazer fresh and part of any setting. Although designed for first level characters, it could easily be played using characters of second or third levels, and given the lightness of the mechanics, be scaled up for higher levels, just as easily as it could be run for the Dungeons & Dragons variant of your choice. The combination of the advice and the attention to detail serve to bring Tower of the Stargazer to life and to make it very playable. Another fine design from James Raggi IV.

Hommlet's Broken Eggs?

It is rare that you will find me writing a review of something for Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition. In comparison to other versions of Dungeons & Dragons, the latest edition does not offer me quite the type of gaming that I want, its focus being too much upon the miniatures skirmish play and the investment necessary to set up and get going. Nevertheless, of late Wizards of the Coast has released several products that I am interested in looking at, and they will be releasing more in the near future. One I have already reviewed is Bloodsand Arena, the Free RPG Day release that previewed the just released Dark Sun Campaign Setting, which I plan to review as I do the recently released Tomb of Horrors hardback. The other book to arouse my interest is The Village of Hommlet, a scenario only available if you participate in the Wizards of the Coast’s DM Rewards programme. Or of course, on eBay, which is where I obtained mine. There is also edition of Tomb of Horrors available via the DM Reward programme, but I have yet to obtain a copy of that.

What the release of all three of these titles indicates is an acknowledgement of the history and the back catalogue of Dungeons & Dragons by Wizards of the Coast. Which beyond the pages of the 2001 Monte Cook authored sequel, Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, never seemed to occur when it was Dungeons & Dragons Third Edition that Wizards of the Coast was publishing, even with titles such as Expedition to Castle Ravenloft which completely ignored the history that stretched back to 1983 and I6: Ravenloft. The history of The Village of Hommlet goes all the way back to 1979 and the TSR module T1: The Village of Hommlet written by a certain E. Gary Gygax. Set in The World of Greyhawk, this adventure describes a small village that has grown prosperous in the years since it was threatened by dark forces from the Temple of Elemental Evil, which itself would be the focus of the 1985 sequel and super module, T1-4: The Temple of Elemental Evil. In recent months the long vanquished forces have begun to scout the village again looking for weaknesses while bandits have been preying on merchants travelling to and from Hommlet. In response, the Viscount of Verbobonc has authorised the building of a guard tower to help protect both the village and the roads. Still, the villagers have become a little wary of strangers. Not necessarily hostile, but just a little more careful.
The original module was designed as a novice adventure suitable for first level characters that would provide more than just a dungeon experience for both characters and players. Both were expected to interact and make friends with the inhabitants of Hommlet, gaining their trust and support before setting off to confront the immediate source of evil at a nearby Moathouse. To support this, both the village and villagers were highly detailed given that it was written in 1979. In comparison, the version of The Village of Hommlet for Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition is written for a group of fourth level characters and designed to take them to fifth. Despite both versions being the same length at twenty four pages, in the new version less of the village itself is detailed, just seven locations in seven pages, including  a single encounter area. Of the remaining sixteen locations marked on the village map, all are given no more than the simplest of descriptions, such as village hall or potter. While this harks back to the titles given on the village map from T1: The Village of Hommlet, the original adventure at least devoted a paragraph to describing the aforementioned potter, his family, his faith, his business, and his monies. The version of The Village of Hommlet does not.

Much of this has to do with the differences in format between Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition. To wit, the whole of the Moathouse location and the twenty four areas in its dungeon below can be described in just three pages, but the shift in emphasis to the skirmish style of play and the Encounter format that supports it means that today almost half of the booklet is devoted to its combat situations.

This being an update for a modern game, it is no surprise that the scenario includes rewards for doing more than just killing monsters. The Village of Hommlet includes seven minor quests, one per major location in the settlement. They range from finding a stolen consignment of brandy to passing a love message on and completing any one of them will gain the characters a small Experience Point bonus.

The other major difference between the two is in the maps. T1: The Village of Hommlet has its maps as detachable maps at the back of the main booklet, while The Village of Hommlet includes a separate foldout double sided map as is standard for Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition. On the one side of this map is a full plan of the Moathouse, the above ground level of the dungeon, while on the other side are the ground floor plans of the village’s inn, the Inn of the Welcome Wench. As far as the actual scenario is concerned, the latter floor plans are irrelevant. Not just because including the cellar, the inn is a three storey building, but also because while the player characters are expected to stay at the inn, none of the action of the scenario takes place there. The action is more likely to take place at another location in Hommlet, the one that is described in the actual Encounter described for the village. It is perhaps the one location that has undergone a major redesign, because back in T1: The Village of Hommlet such encounter would have had characters of essentially first level facing off against opponents of tenth and seventh level. In The Village of Hommlet both are of fifth level – just one level higher than the player characters, but they are supported by several third level guards.

Thankfully, the floor plans of the Moathouse make up for the irrelevancy of the inn’s floor plans. These are nice and clear and easy to use with the miniatures of your choice. As to the dungeon below the Moathouse, little has been changed with this update. Some of the encounters look to be tougher than in the previous version, mainly because of the various abilities that the enemies in question have at their command. This is probably only relative though, as the characters for this edition of the scenario are of a higher level.

One thing that the author does address in more detail is what happens next. In T1: The Village of Hommlet, Gygax simply has an assassin hunt the players characters down. Andy Collins suggests four options that the cult behind the forces at the Moathouse might take in enacting retribution upon the player characters. He also discusses possible play beyond the confines of The Village of Hommlet, this being the investigation of first the bandit town of Nulb, and then the Temple of Elemental Evil itself. Does this mean that The Temple of Elemental Evil might return as a campaign in its own right for Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition? It is a possibility, especially when you consider that Wizards of the Coast are moving back to an easier means of introducing the game with its Dungeons & Dragons Essentials line and the more recent and more obvious acknowledgement of the game’s past. Now if only it were to come in a boxed set all of its very own...

So what do I think of The Village of Hommlet? In part it misses the point of the original, the provision of a fully detailed base from which the adventurers can sally forth from as well as destination to which they can sally. In not detailing the village it means that this version of the adventure loses much of the naturalism of the original. The shift between the editions from a broader roleplaying focus to the skirmish style play has not been supported to the utmost either with the inclusion of the irrelevant floor plans. The Moathouse and the dungeon though are given a more appropriate and detailed treatment, and this is where the scenario is at its best. In fact to get the best out of this adventure, I would actually combine the details of the village of Hommlet as described in T1: The Village of Hommlet with the details given here in The Village of Hommlet.