Session Report: Keep on the Borderlands #1

Note: this is a re-post from an older blogging platform. Links may be hinky. Originally posted on 1/29/24

We celebrated the 50th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons in the most appropriate way: with a total party kill in the very first encounter.

Let’s rewind, just a touch. We knew the anniversary was approaching, and I’ve been wanting to play some different systems. I also just so happened to find my original copy of Keep on the Borderlands, along with my original copy of Tom Moldvay’s Basic D&D rules (plus some other assorted gaming goodies that will no doubt be featured here at some point). So I pitched it: how about playing Keep using the Basic book as written? My group, of course, was all in.

They rolled up their characters during the week – we ended up with three dwarfs, an elf, and a cleric (the player made him a cleric of Graxus, a god that features quite prominently in our long-term Low Fantasy Gaming campaign). No backstories, minimal equipment, and barely any hit points. Yup, we were going old school for sure.

Keeping our “as written” edict in mind, I read the introductory paragraph right out of the module, and we were off. The players introduced themselves to the men-at-arms guarding the Keep (a great little conceit) got the tour from the corporal of the guard, and then found themselves standing in the courtyard staring at each other. They’re experienced roleplayers, so very quickly we had established one of the dwarfs cheated on the other dwarf with the other dwarf’s sister, the elf was here on something like rumspringa, and the priest was here to spread the word of the Iron God. They hit the tavern, one of them sang for his supper, the ale flowed, and the next morning, they tromped down the road and into the Borderlands.

Long story short – they followed the river into the fens, encountered the lizard men, steel was drawn, and, combat was joined. Side initiative, phases of combat, morale – we went By the Book. And as it turns out, first level characters are not what you would call hardy. More blows were missed than landed – by a wide margin – and pretty soon, we had five dead PCs (and one dead lizard man, credit where due) and at least another scheduled hour of game time to fill.

Luckily, it’s easy to roll up characters, which we did. Just like that, we had a party of ne’er do wells ready to step in. Again, my group saved the fun by deciding that this party, led by the aggrieved dwarf sister above, had been shadowing the first party with an eye towards ambush. The dwarf wanted revenge, the cleric wanted to kill the Graxian heretic, and the thieves wanted, well, money. They lurked in the bushes and let the lizard men do their dirty work. Then they looted the bodies, finished off the lizard men, and returned to the Keep with a necklace to sell, a story to tell, and honestly, a shockingly meager helping of XP.

Holy shit, was it fun! 

Going back to brass tacks was refreshing, and it’s fascinating to see the echoes of these rules in the games we’re playing today. There are grey oozes in the Caves of Chaos, and a big ol’ grey ooze got our current LFG campaign started. Maybe it all really is the same game after all. 

On a nuts and bolts level, the players are going to have to adjust their mindset, but so am I as the DM. I need to remember things like morale and reaction rolls, which could have helped them avoid that fateful encounter – they’re not kids. They can use their words and I probably should have let them take more of a stab at that.

Finally – a note on the technology. I wanted to stay aligned (see what I did there?) with our “as written” philosophy, so I tried to keep it as theater of the mind as I could, though we are a remote group so some concessions do have to be made. We had fillable PDF character sheets and I used Quest Portal as our VTT, which was perfect. We had shared dice rolls, music and background pictures for flavor, and only used grids and tokens to keep track of numbers and zones.

All in all, it was a super fun – and honestly meaningful – celebration of this game. The group is into the idea of continuing Keep, which is great, because I am, too. Shit, I gotta see if they can make it to second level.