RPG Retro Review: Keep on the Borderlands 

I still use the Basic rules to run a D&D clinic for my Middle School students. I work at a school for students with Autism and ADHD.

when I was 12--DnD was the greatest thing ever---im very nostalgic for the early modules and rules

We played the living hell out of this. I still have my old copy, yellowed and held together with masking tape. Over the years I have sold off all my old stuff, even my white box stuff, but I could never part with this one. Too many memories...

Wow. Also introduced to me on a walk to school back in the winter of 1980, i believe, Grade 7. My imagination ran wild hearing the stories, i still remember some of it. Then within a week playing, on yep a dining room table in someones house. How many other people experienced the same phenomenon. Uncanny! Thanks for bringing back ol memories!

I think "Keep" was kept simple so as not to overwhelm the DM, but I was told many years ago by a TSR employee, while at GENCON that "Keep" was supposed to be a center for the characters to build a campaign and they supposed that DM's would simply name the NPC's themselves, depending on how important the NPC's became. I think a good DM could create an entire world of adventures without using another module. One could easily translate the NPC's to PC's, giving further depth to the entire cast of the keep.

Oh they had "murder hobos" in the glossary? They were more forward than I thou- oh. Murder holes. Carry on.

My first character, a thief, was killed in the caves by a poison needle trap. That's when the party met my next character a dwarf Dain Goblinstomper back at the Keep.

My first adventure was here.

I always made it that the shrine was a beacon. They wanted the humanoids as an army that they could turn into undead as they fell. The keep hid a great treasure. Similar

The Sandbox within a Sandbox (within a Sandbox) at 14:00 is more brilliant today than ever. Genius.

It was the first D&D module we ever played. Our rather distinctive 6'7" thief interestingly enough went rogue, and tried to rob the jeweler on his own. I still can't believe they couldn't track us down inside that tiny, tiny keep. My brothers Elf got thrown in the dungeon for goosing an old lady at the trading post. My best Friends Second Level Fighter got ripped limb from limb by the Owl Bear. Our Party approached a cave through a copse of trees and Kobolds dropped on us from above and we had about a 20 minute melee where we kept missing the kobolds and hitting each other. By the time we finished off the first four we had to pack out returning to the Keep to heal. We got skewered by the Bugbears, Terrified by the Minotaur, reduced in level by the Wight and stoned by the Medusa. Our Cleric ended up an NPC guardian of the Bloody Ewers of the Shrine. There were a few grateful merchants and hunters we rescued but many more instances of sudden but inevitable Betrayal. I had the Caves being purposefully infested in order to oppose the Keep that had actually been built too deep into the borderlands. I had nastier big bads set up in the Cave of the Unknown. They were a superior version of the Clerics from the Temple focused on converting prisoners to evil. Good times, Good Times. I got more play out of this module than anything else I have ever owned. It probably cost 5.95$ originally

The owlbear just wants a hug ;)

The major personalities in hommlet are purportedly the surviving characters played in Gygax's home campaign of the temple of elemental evil.

Wow really amazing review and overview! subscribed! don't ever stop making videos!

What great fun we had with this module. Learning the fine art of throwing flasks of oil and shooting flaming arrows. We lost several characters as we fought our way into the caves. Then headed back to town for more supplies of oil and arrows and some new PC's. The Owlbear was nearly the death of us all but a lucky hit doing maximum damage saved us. After going through several of the caves I think that only one or two of us went up in level since so many of us had died repeatedly. I think I still have the players map of the caves we had explored and we never did explore them all.

Great review! I ran this module LONG ago and loved it! Pro tip: If I ran it today though, I'd probably split up some of the sections and make them entirely SEPERATE locations, ending in a trek to the Shrine of chaos.

I played this module until it fell apart! I STILL have certain portions of it memorized, even after over 35 years!

I really loved those old Tom Moldvay Basic sets. That's how I got into D&D! Quintessential Generation X I suppose. KOTB was my first real adventure too. I revisited it a few times and also did variations on a theme with it , liking the open-ended nature of the way it's written by Gygax. I ultimately set up a situation where all the humanoid monsters were loose allies and planning attacks - and doing recon - on the Keep. Also of interest is The Cave of the Unknown.

Cheers. I'm starting to run this on Sunday for two groups. Been doing small adventures during quarantine, and each group will approach this differently.

4 players think Bree-Yark means "We surrender."

Love listening to your reviews and insight on these classic gems of AD&D.

I still remember the lay out of the Keep. I used it as a place that the players could stay at till they ran across a NPR that told them something that lead them to leave and go do a adventure. The Keep in my game controlled a crossroad and a river crossing that were the country leading trade routes . Taxes and Tariffs were charged by the Soldiers of the King .

I lost my beloved bard Morgan to a manticore on the way to the Caves of Chaos. Alas, he almost made it to level 2!

Goodman Games has this as part of their “Original Adventures Reincarnated” line. It includes scans of the original plus a fifth edition conversion. It also gives a little history and includes commentary by Luke Gygax and Mike Mearls.

This was my introductory adventure, as well.

I'm loving these reviews. I played back in the 80s. I'm now almost a grandpa and will be taking my wife and kids through a first edition experience

My first module I ever DM’d and played.

I never took the time to wonder why an evil cult chose to develop in the caves, so close to the civilized-run keep.

This module came with my copy of Moldvay's Basic Rules boxed set. Provides a sound base of operations for characters & a very playable and enjoyable dungeon setting with multiple levels of challenge & stimulating variety of encounters. Along from B1 In Search from the Unknown, which I played using the Holmes Basic rules, this was easily the playable modules I experienced in my early D&D playing years.

I loved this, I'd also like a spoiler version where you would go room by room through it, recollecting and reading about the old adventures.

this is my first campaign in D&D also later the first when I became DM

I love your reviews. I do have to point out that a lot of what you described as Erol Otus art was Jeff Dee, though. Keep up the good work, and We'll Keep on the Borderlands!

One of the classics. My first adventure at the picnic table with most of the neighborhood kids. I modified that character to AD&D and played him until I didn’t play anymore.

I've been working on a conversion of this one to Pathfinder in order to introduce my daughter to gaming. This is a great review.

I wish someone would make B2: The Keep on the Borderlands into a movie, or an ongoing tv series, but they'd probably screw it up, like they did with other D&D movies. I just think this module is the perfect setting for starting a campaign.

I ran this adventure with the 5e rules recently. Your review is very accurate, and I agree with almost everything. I found the Medusa and Hermit, the most interesting characters and encounters. I made a lot of changes and added many different NPC's and details for my group. I like sandbox, but now that I've run it. I honestly didn't enjoy it that much compared to other adventures I've run.

love the retro series...extremely well done. I'm now subscribed

Thanks for this review. I have recently downloaded the original PDF and the 4e version, printed them out and am readin through them to learn what I can steal and adapt to my needs.

In australia we got Journey into the Unknown in the Moldvay red box Basic set not the Keep on the Borderlands.

I'm about to run a party through Keep. I ran my student RPG club through this module and they liked it (back when we were one table and not 5). This new party is 3 40-somethings and 2 50-somethings and 1 9 year old. Three of them played 1e and 2played 2e. One never played DnD and the other started with 5e and the 9 year old.... a real newbie. We'll be playing on Discord so who knows but I love this module. It's falling apart, but I put some tape here and there. Thanks for your ideas about developing the temple of evil chaos. I made it a temple to Thanatos, with black scythes all around the walls. The raids are to fund expeditions to find the gem Harvester of Souls and the Thanatos' Death Scythe (borrowed from the Smite Wiki). We start in a week! Merci beaucoup!

This was my introduction to D&D in the fall of 1980. I was instantly hooked on the game. Much later, sometime in the 90s, I was DMing a game based in the Mystara world and had the opportunity to relive those days, this time as DM, for a group of new PCs.

I made this modal my intro to a campaign I have been running now for two year. It was really fun to run a modal that was older than most of the players.

A++, really enjoyed this video. This module seems to always find it's way back into my weekly game.

Random ideaL Back in the day I kitbashed my campaign together from a bunch of modules, Then I had each player roll 3 rumors, these were rumors their player knew from the beginning. This way even though a sandbox the players had som ebuilt in idea of where to go and what to look for.

2:18 It really does look like batman is holding a little knife.

I’d love to run this. Great video ✌🏽

Well done. Very thorough review of one of the best modules of all time.

My group cleared the caves. Then captured the Keep. Then a random encounter was 300 humans arriving. The DM said it was an army patrolling the area. Run away!

Thanks for the review!!! This was the first adventure I DMed in 1982, but I was very young and not very good at it then. :D That said, I still use the hub-and-spokes world building method for making home brews, just like in Hommlet and Keep. I agree with your assessment of the bad "dungeon ecology" you speak of -- it just never struck me as compelling even by the time I was a junior in high school. Also, I tend to have smaller "caves" (i.e., adventure sites) to explore compared to those that Gygax designed. That said, these things are easily fixed by modification or simply basing your base on the models he provided for us. In general, the more I see what WOTC does (poorly), the more I respect the original conception of the game in its first "mature" form that appeared in the 1980s. In my opinion, that game is superior to WOTC's 3e-5e in more ways than it is not.

Love these reviews and historical visitations! You’ve gained a new sub. Thank you!

This was my first DnD game my brothers introduced me to (they were old school)

Man, that's one module I have never had the chance to play. It's so classic. I honestly didn't know it was originally set in Mystara.

I just got a copy of this module today for $15.00 at a friend of mine's comic book shop.

Late to the game (pun completely intended) but thought I'd share a few of my thoughts on KotB. (SPOILERS AHEAD)The last major campaign I ran, had this as a backbone. I placed the KotB in the Forgotten Realms setting and used it as a segue into a much larger developing storyline. I started my party with a Dungeon adventure called, "The Inheritance," which was a fantastic adventure in its own right. Premise is that one of the players has inherited a small keep North of Waterdeep but they have to clean it out to claim it. The small keep, owned by one of the character's uncle, was overran by Hobgoblins. Clearing the keep came with a small parcel of land as well, 20 square miles, under the authority of Waterdeep whom the owners owe taxes to and are responsible for keeping safe and cleared of baddies. In the campaign I ran, the characters learned after clearing their keep, that the KotB lies just beyond the border of their own property and is essentially their nearest neighbor and an important area for buying supplies, hiring soldiers and artisans (particularly for improvements to their own player owned keep). The KotB sends emissaries as a show of goodwill and the characters eventually recognize that the KotB will make good allies in that remote stretch of land. Leader of the keep informs the players of goings on at the Caves of Chaos, which used to be mines that were abandoned years back. Unknown backstory is that the evil cleric that has infiltrated the Keep is actually a small potato in a much bigger kettle. He has been tasked with recruiting humanoids to serve the same master as the cleric. In this regard, the presence of the different tribes is explained as the critters being emissaries in their own right of much larger tribes scattered about the area. The evil cleric has called them together to assess their willingness to support his cause and to curry favor from them while testing their loyalties. The hobgoblins are of the same tribe as those of the player ran keep, so they already have an awareness off and hostility towards the player characters. Part of the intrigue of course, is that all of the tribes aren't committed to the cleric and those he serves, and those that are, are struggling to be viewed more favorably. This creates a lot of points the players can exploit if time and circumstance permit. In the long run, the players cleared the caves and defeated the evil cleric's minions, though the cleric himself survived and escaped. This led to more adventures as characters followed clues to the higher power the cleric was working for, meanwhile the cleric had to atone for losing the mines (and the KotB which was likewise his goal) meaning he was slated to be a thorn in the side of the players at a later time. Meanwhile, the players would incur more wrath from the higher power as the players upset their plans. My hope was to assemble a group of evil characters whom the players had thwarted over the course of their career who would ultimately conspire to defeat the PCs and regain their honor as all would be serving the evil higher power in some form or another. This never came to pass as the game fell apart around level 8 or 9 as my group of players scattered to the four winds. One noteworthy though unrelated adventure had the PCs coming to the aid of a town on the rim of their borders who was being strong armed by a group of bandits. The bandits were led by an Ogre Mage who rode a Gorgon as a steed. This led to a fantastic showdown where again, the main bad guy escaped though his steed did not. One of the players was turned to stone which quickly led to a great, though unintended adventure, where the players had to find and clear the tomb of a man reputed to have had a pet cockatrice while living. the characters killed said cockatrice, collected material components for an elixir, and were able to "unstone" their fellow adventurer and several townsfolk. It was a good example of taking an unintended event and making further storyline around the characters motivations. KotB was the very first adventure I ever ran, though the outcome was awful. As I shared on Facebook: Ya know...I think the only real bad DMing experience I've encountered was me. In my defense, it was literally my first time running a party through an adventure...we were all like 12 or 13 and I put the gamers, all first time players as well, through Keep on the Borderlands. Things went well...I suppose as well as they could under the circumstances. Players had advanced a level or two each and had finally made their way to the Temple of Chaos. All was going well until the group entered the chapel where looking at the walls can cause you to go into a deep trance. 5 or 6 players, memory eludes me now, but ever single one of them failed their saving throws. So you have the entire party standing there swaying on their feet and chanting with no discernible conclusion. Essentially, it was a TPK where the characters were never actually killed or really knew their fate. Needless to say, I didn't have a back up plan and my players were like, "That's It??? WTF??" A few ideas I had for making the KotB a bit more dangerous, particularly if you have players who are higher level than they should be, or have played before and know enough to take some of the fun out of the dungeon: *I kicked around the idea of making the kobolds a bit more dangerous. One idea I had in particular was that the kobolds had previously raided a traveling band of performers and bards. In doing so, they collected as treasure musical instruments (among other things). I had the idea of the kobolds laying a weighted net in a tree just outside of their cave. The net was suspended with weights, and woven into the net were small metal hooks and bells from tambourines from the bards. Once tripped, the net would fall onto the players, in their efforts to escape the small hooks would hang up in their chainmail and in the gaps in plate armor, etc. As the characters became hopelessly tangled, they are also jingling the small bells woven into the net attracting the attention of the kobolds who swarm out. *The Caves of Chaos have terrain features that reasonably intelligent humanoids would exploit. Archers and spearmen placed farther up the walls of the gorge pose a significant danger to players on the floor of the canyon. *When the players retreat to the Keep, the monsters in the area are going to talk...word will spread. Reinforcements can be called in, alliances formed, and all sorts of defenses can be cobbled together. Monsters shouldn't be sitting around waiting to be cleared out and killed by the PCs. This is their home, when the characters leave the monsters will respond and take advantage of this absence to improve their likelihood for survival. Characters shouldn't condition themselves to think that they can slaughter an entire cave full of humanoids and the rest of the caves will be twiddling their thumbs waiting to get slaughtered too. Pits can be dug, deadfalls can be set, all sorts of nastiness can ensue. *As an alternative to the last point, when the characters are in a cave cleaning it out...what's the rest of the valley doing? If word got out players were slaughtering a cave full of humanoids, all sorts of possibilities present themselves. Imagine the PCs surprise when they leave a cave and find several of the other caves have banded together and are waiting outside to greet them. The Caves of Chaos are in a box canyon, monsters would surely exploit this point to force players into a bottleneck and take the advantage. Imagine players, battered and bruised from clearing a cave, suddenly find themselves having to hold their position within that cave because retreat is certain death. The Temple of Chaos has a blocked in passage, I've never head of anyone making that into an expansion, though it certainly lends itself as such. Ditto the Cave of the Unknown. Plenty of opportunities to create new material or drop in small, one off adventures from a source like Dungeon Magazine of the Book of Lairs.

Great retro review. One of my all-time favorites. Subbed!

Nice work here, and thank you for the trip down memory lane!

Whats odd is that the caverns vary in depth from the sloping hill surface and as Subsidence is at 100% when the width of cave is equal to or greater than the thickness of the ceiling a large portion should have subsided.

Basic D&D certainly helped expand my vocabulary. I don't remember how old I was when I got it but it was probably around 6th or 7th grade in the early 80s. Words like retainer, sarcophagus, dais, and troglodyte

This Module is literaly eqivalent of tutorial area in every video game.

Can't express just how much have enjoyed this. You are doing fantastic vids sir. I started with your COC vid and then kinda worked my way thru several of the others with some standout enjoyment being your in-depth coverage of AD&D. The garage band jam at the beginning always makes me smile, hahah...such a departure from the usual heraldry and bombast people usually feel obliged t open their gaming-related vids with. Your jam stands out in a good way. From a technical perspective, your vids are really well done; just visually engaging enough to keep it moving, but with a real emphasis on the audio for info. Speaking of audio-The v/o audio seems to have gotten the bugs sorted out as well; so no more bass-heavy pops with "P"s and whatnot. Which makes it more pleasant to listen to on headphones I might add. Very cool mate, well done. As one of the countless who was introduced to D&D via this module, this is really near and dear to my old school heart. There is plenty of life left in this scenario and I started a new group last year with this very module...worked like a charm with very few mods. Thanks for all this AMAZING content mate- I have subbed and will recommend the channel to my friends. May I request a BOOT HILL, PENDRAGON or TRAVELLER vid? Best- M

Thanks dude. Just subscribed. Going to be starting a new game and since myself and one other player in the group have D&D experience, I have decided to introduce the rest of the players (Who have never even played any RPG's before) to D&D via the Basic set (Keep on the Borderlands) then move on to the Expert Set (Isle of Dread) and then see what happens from there. Good video. Off to watch your review on the Isle of Dread...

I've been reading through this to see how well it could be used as a cyberpunk setting with the appropriate changes.

Cool video. I have a huge d&d and ad&d collection and rolemaster collection in pristine condition. And magic card collection among other RPG games

Yet another great review Cap.

My very first module. I loved it!

Just stumbled my way onto this channel. I own the Original Keep on the borderlands module and am DM'ing my sons and nephew. It will be my nephews first D&D experience so I thought I would start with a good classic like "Keep on the Borderlands". I had lost the map of the keep and found plenty of them online to download (Good ole' web community). First played D&D in 1981. I had to sneak behind my parents back because they said it was "satanic". (Remember those old days?). Anyway found you here. Subscribed.

That TSR logo tho!

Some kind soul actually ported this to the EZD6 rules

KotB was my first taste of RPG's. We played during the lunch break in junior high school everyday. We didn't have dice, just those cardboard chits in bags, and had no idea what we were doing. When we finished killing everything in the caves the DM had me draw out a specific number of rooms on graph paper and I began killing people instead of monsters. About half way through I realized this was the Keep! He was running it like a dungeon crawl lol. Good memories :) I'd really like to see a video on your current thoughts about D&D 5th edition, a year after its release.

your reviews are very good. impressive. love listening to all of them. wish I had more time to play old school again.

Man the memories...this was the first module I ever Dm'd for. My friend used to call this module The Cheap on the Boarderlands. LOL.

Thx. Ill use homlet as base and caves for dungeon :)

There were two approaches to playing D&D in California in the mid-80’s. There were the Dragon Dice heads, who insisted on rolling and crafting new matrixes if a player wanted to order a pizza or go to the bathroom. And there were the storytellers. We were the avid readers of the Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia, Chronicle of Pyrdian & Dragon Quest books who used our skills to draw multiple page maps that took D&D to a new, vibrant level of choose your own adventure seasoned with the golden age of radio “theater of the mind.” You can infer from which category I hailed. For some of us once you DM’d there was no going back. Ironically my original team all met attending Fremont Christian School. As a 50 year old Christian I can now see the church’s concern back then but playing was so immersive and so much fun and frankly the church offered nothing that could even come close by comparison. Satan (as in Beelzebub, the real devil) hides in EVERYTHING. From Harry Potter to porn. Workaholism to religious zealotry. But the Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac & Jacob is who gave me the hyper creativity that writing D&D modules as an adolescent nurtured. What other game can profess to churning out hundreds of dedicated 12 year old writers who hunched over pen & graph paper pages instead of out riding BMX bikes? We learned to paint our little pewter figurines while our friends were shooting windows with BB guns. I basically ignored fifth & sixth grade in favor of writing my own modules. One trip through the Keep on the Borderlands and within months I was buying hexagonal graph paper & creating new worlds outside the dungeon environment. My games were THE BEST in Fremont, CA circa 1984-86. But then my kid brother let some overzealous youth ministers talk him into burning all of my D&D stuff. Every map. Every module. Every game board. Even my pewter characters. Hundreds of dollars in mowed lawns and washed cars and hundreds of hours learning to write… poof💥🔥 Gone. Now, today I’m a dedicated Christian and he’s a dedication Portland leftist. Go figure.

Great review. Getting ready to start using the 5th edition for the first time, using of course, this module to get things rolling. The re-issue is pricy, but interesting. I hope WOTC keeps putting them out. Keep up the great work!

Just found out about this channel and all i can say is how was i not aware of it!? Looked through a couple more videos, they are great. Subbed and can't wait for more videos :) For now, i am gonna make myself some coffee and run a channel video marathon :) Keep up the good work!

Been thinking of getting the 5e version reprint with the older versions included. Can't recall the company right now. Lots of good ideas and plots to use. Can rename stuff to fit my world. Nice review.

Ah yes, the Owlbear of death

The caves of chaos, the title divulges why so many monsters are living so closely. The effect of the clerics is to push chaos throughout the region, not only affecting those in the caves, but even driving the mad hermit mad. The raiders are normal mercenaries driven to raiding by the caves effects. The longer the characters are in the region (before they have defeated the clerics) they should be driven more chaotic, with clerics having an important role in keeping characters from turning chaotic.

This was my first dungeon. And still my favorite.

Great work as always!

💕 . I got the Goodman games version .

Great job as always, thanks!

Modded this old one for NWN too. It's a lot of fun.

Those Undead were really creepy if you seen what they really looked like coming down the black and read stone halls after your party. This was my second adventure. I played this with Basic and then a few years after in AD&D by converting it.

I know what there were so many evil humanoids there! They must be there to worship Evil Chaos! :-)

Snake cult? Great Conan connection.

14:30 There is an old cistern on some property my brother owns.

A great, fun module. Easy to slot into most campaigns. :)

I'm using these two (KotBL and VoH) now as part of the foundation for a play-by-post game in a Yahoo Group.

Bree Yark!

Good times...

I've just started watching your retro reviews and I'm really enjoying them. I just purchased the pdf's from drivethru and can't wait to run them with my 10 and 13 year olds. I noticed you gave B1 a 14 on your last review. Just out of curiosity, where would you rank this classic?

Greatest Modul ever made. Built years of play off of this one...

To those posting it was their first module. Luckies! I got Castle D Amberville as my first. Don't worry years later when I got to play Call of Cthulhu I fit right in.

You did B1, you did B2, so when are you doing B3 Palace of the Silver Princess?

I got B2 in my original Holmes set and it was the first module I ever ran. I thought pretty high of it until I played it just a couple years ago. There just isn't any conflict. The Keep dudes are just sitting there and the monsters are really no threat to anybody. There's really no reason for the party to be killing the monsters. But the biggest issue is just how dumb the monsters are. They are just sitting around waiting to be killed. In order to approach the caves, the party needs to traverse a big open canyon, yet not a single group of monsters bothers to post a look out. There are some kobolds hiding in a tree but they just drop down on the PCs. What they should do is wait for the PCs to enter the cave and meet the first set of guards. Then they should attack the party from behind. A guaranteed TPK. If played even remotely intelligently, the Caves of Chaos could easily wipe the floor with any party less then 5th level. Sure, you could modify to module, as you suggest, to make it more interesting but I contend that that effort would be better spent just making a whole new adventure. T1 and B1 are waaaaay better. (assuming you download the fixed B1 map).

2:50 A wilderness map with a square grid? What madness is this?

My 1st Module as a DM... must be around 1983...

My Yellow Orc Savage Mage and his horde lives just outside the swamp on the other side of the river from the bandit camp. My band includes 4 goblins, 2 bugbears, and one ogre. But another band of about 23 grey goblins lives with us, in another cavern. There are some really neat characters in the horde. They just raided the bandit camp and took all their stuff to outfit the goblins with gear... but they are planning on moving on soon.. they are not affiliated with the Caves of Chaos.

Came here to find out what the actual adventure was. Apparently there is none lol it's literally just a set of locations with monsters in them. Very glad modules have changed lol