Keep on the Borderlands, a Reviewcap

Having run my Hill Cantons campaign for several months in person by this point, there are always those who for some reason cannot commit to meeting in person that regularly. For some of those friends of mine that would normally not be able to join in person I have been running a mini-campaign playing through the titular module. 

The campaign is set concurrently with the regular Hill Cantons campaign, being set in the more northerly borderlands province of Hoimatbuch (I decided to base it loosely on Austria). With continual squabbling between the various petty fiefdoms the area has been left without a strong central power to protect the people of the province. 

Aside from the recap itself some GM thoughts as well as a mini-review of module have also been included below, happy reading! 

Characters

• Bear Stormpissed - Level 4 Fighter
• Jarno Ironbraid - Level 4 Dwarf
• Pearl the Reckless - Level 4 Magic-User
• Huldovic Klyvballe - Level 3 Fighter

Followers

• Dromat - Level 1 Fighter 
• Pavel - Level 1 Thief
• Argo - Loyal Dog

Graveyard

• Jutta Longbeard - Level 2 Dwarf
• Belnar Longbeard - Level 1 Dwarf
• Etti Fogcrest - Level 1 Elf
• Men-at-arms - x11
• Torchbearers - x3

Note: Character levels are taken from the end of the adventure. 

A certified classic? by Dave Trampier

Action Report

Meeting up at a fort near the southern border towards the Hill Cantons our dramatis personae are as follows; Bear Stormpissed, a former mercenary and self described "power twink"; Belnar Longbeard, a dwarvish scoundrel and all-round asshole; and Etti Fogcrest, a plump elf who has distanced herself from her fae heritage. 

The characters find themselves contacted by a local noble named Hermann von Hyggvald. The man explains his brother was traveling to meet him in the local capital of Dregendorf when he and his entourage was ambushed and captured by goblinoids from a local series of Caves. Hermann offers the party a rich sum of 3000 gold suns for the retrieval of his brother and his sister in law, giving the party 500 suns up front with which to outfit themselves and hire additional help. 

After a series of short delves into the caves fighting everything from kobolds to goblins, Belnar is killed by a local Ogre whilst Etti is speared to death by a goblin (not to mention the many hirelings who perish during these delves). The two are replaced by; Pearl the Reckless, a mage who lives up to her name both in the dungeon and the alehouse; and Jutta Longbeard, the daughter of Belnar whom had come to track down her deadbeat dad. The party eventually manage to fight and trick their way to the hobgoblin prisons and rescue the prisoners therein. The brother of von Hyggvald and his wife are are rescued from near death and the party return triumphantly to the keep. 

The party spends their next series of adventures exploring the lands around the keep itself, and hearing rumours of treasure in the dens of a nearby group of Lizardmen they decide to investigate. In this the party is joined by Huldovic Klyvballe; a warrior on a quest to cleave as many schlongs in twain as she possibly can. The party also enlist aid from Pearl's continual hookup Pavel, whom had been the one to originally tell the party of the treasure. Though the party defeat the lizardmen in a desperate battle, Jutta is sadly slain in the process. Pavel claims a magic sword as his share and subsequently heads off to the capital to meet with a supposed buyer. The rest of the group divide the treasure amongst themselves with Pearl taking one of the eggs to raise as her own. 

The group spends the next expedition exploring the so-called "cave of the unknown" and find it to be overrun by ghouls. They slay many of the undead, rescuing the cave's resident oracle and her dog Argo from the creatures and leaving them behind as they head back to the keep. 

As the characters are preparing their next delve, they are surprised to once again encounter Pavel only for the man to remember none of them. All attempts to reconnect with Pavel are met with failure, and eventually he goes back the way he came. The only explanations the party find are vague rumours of a strange town up north where folks seem to be loosing their memories. 

Before the party can investigate further Argo arrives at the keep seeming worried. Following Argo the party find a raided campsite and signs of a struggle. The characters come to the conclusion that the Oracle has been kidnapped and use Argo to follow her track. Eventually the tracks end up leading them back to the Caves of Chaos, specifically a cave which the party had been told was inhabited by humans. 

After encountering strange acolytes as well as various undead creatures and a gelatinous cube, the party eventually manage to find the tracks of the oracle. Sneaking past perfumed pleasure dens the group make their way to the main chapel of what they now figure to be a strange snake cult. 

As they burst into the chapel the group are shocked to discover the oracle captured and about to be sacrificed in what is clearly a demonic ritual. The party valiantly charges the assembled cultists, making short work of most of them. This is still not enough to stop the head priest from performing the sacrifice and ushering forth a giant frog demon from the depths of the hot hells. As the situation seems the most hopeless Huldovic throws herself against the frog demon whilst tossing a heap of burning oil against the now jubilant high priest. The oil miraculously burns the priest to death, whilst with a single desperate stroke Huldovic slashes the crotch of the demon sending it back to whichever dank place it came from. 

With her last breath the oracle grants her last bit of power onto Pearl. Finally the party loot the priests chambers before retreating back to the keep to celebrate their victory. All the characters spend some time carousing, with Pearl hooking up with Dromat - a Brazonian exile and the groups last surviving hireling. The party finally decide to take their leave of the caves and further investigate the strange reports of people loosing their memories, trekking north to the village which they by now have learnt the name of: Orlane. 

by Jim Roslof

GM Thoughts

This game has so far been a blast to run with a lot of the sessions being played whenever me and the players have the time (which has so far been multiple times a week). The first session of this campaign was in fact the longest I have ever played, totaling around eight hours. In total the adventures took place over a total of seven sessions. 

What I initially found interesting was the high amount of character deaths at first and second level. This was largely skipped during the Hill Cantons campaign due to the speed at which the characters leveled up, but here it was really apparent how vulnerable low level characters really are. I'm also sure that the greenness of some of the players in this campaign also was a contributing factor as it has either been a long time since some last played D&D or they have never played before at all. 

At this point the party has survived the grinder of lower levels and are now beginning to become the types of characters that can both take and deal out a hit. Bear especially has by this point acquired both a set a magical platemail and a magic sword, alongside having rolled incredibly high on his hit point rolls. The fighter class is one which I don't see nearly as much as the other "basic" class types and I'm happy to have it nicely represented in this campaign. 

I have tried to interlink this adventure with the next one (can you guess which one?) as best as possible, which in hindsight has worked quite well. The way I've directed the players has been very natural so far, even though this is not a sandbox the players have very willingly bought into the "adventure path" (or railroad if I'm being unkind to myself). In this way I think starting with a more sandboxy module and getting more linear from there is a good idea, since it gives the players time to buy into their characters and the setting as well. 

One thing I regret about setting this adventure in the world of the Hill Cantons is the lack of setting specific monsters and treasures. Aside from the frog demon and parts of the snake cult it has all been very vanilla fantasy stuff, which is something I would have liked to change. Perhaps this is not as bad as I think though, as since a couple players are very new it might be good to have a more vanilla introduction before things get truly strange. 

Lovely cover art by Jim Roslof

The Module

Does this adventure deserve its status as a classic? I certainly think so. The content to page count ratio is quite high, the amount of mileage you get from its 30 or so pages is really quite a lot. I'm sure the characters could have stayed in the caves for many sessions more if they had wanted to. 

The fact that the tentpole dungeon - the Caves of Chaos - is made from many separate small caves is also great since it allows a GM to simply drop in one of the caves somewhere on its own should they be in need of a quick dungeon. 

The keep itself is fine enough, very utilitarian as a home base and not very intricately detailed. I am not the first to notice, but a lot of the NPCs described therein are perhaps more villainous than the various humanoid groups in the caves. Having run this module twice now I'd like to run it one final time "in reverse" with the players being part of one of the various humanoid groups making raids against the keep. 

Much has been written in regards to the largely problematic nature of this module, something to which I readily agree. In the two times I've run this adventure I've generally played it very straight ("what are you going to do about those orc babies?"). I think this adventure generally works when your style of play is more "beer and pretzels", as has been the case both times I've run this adventure. 

I really do think the adventure kind of falls apart when you really do take it seriously. It makes very little sense to be rooting for the characters when they invade the homes of and kill sentient humanoids without provocation. Framing the initial delve as a hostage rescue did make the initial delve somewhat more justified, which was also helped by the players being happy to negotiate with and ignore those humanoid groups that were not involved in the kidnapping. Each time the players came across humanoid civilians they either scared them away or circumvented them. 

Framing the human cultists as the real threat is also something which I would consider an idea. Perhaps the humanoids would normally live in the valley peacefully if it were not for the influence of the real bad guys. This also opens up for the potential for the players to take a more diplomatic stance. A campaign centered around social conflict and by diplomatic means turning the humanoids against the cultists sounds like a fun time! 

I would still recommend the adventure, with the caveat that GMs should take care to consider if their players are the type to stop and think "are we the baddies?". If so perhaps this is not the adventure for you. At least I think the GM needs to add additional reasons for why the players should charge headfirst into the home of some kobold.