The Keep on the Borderlands

The Keep on the Borderlands. For some this will immediately ring a bell, for others nothing at all. It is a classic Dungeons and Dragons adventure for starting players. And I'm currently going through it and seeing how I would run it. I've been thinking about this on the Gauntlet Forums for a bit at the moment.

I'm not gearing it specifically to kids, but on the other hand I do like to keep things "clean" in my games. With this I mean no gratuitous, descriptive, gore-filled violence and no sexual content of the same explicit kind. I'd like to fade to black where possible when these things need to happen. Same with cussing. I don't like hearing the crude language, but I do like the creative versions, like the faux-cussing in Firefly or the creative ones that captain Haddock manages to churn out. Some good Shakespearian ones are fine by me as well. Not sure why I went this elaborate on this to start with, but meh. It's here. It will influence the way I look at the game.

The adventure is light on actual story, leaving much to the interpretation of the dungeon master. The basic gist is that there are forces of Law and forces of Chaos and that they are in conflict. The module hints that the forces of chaos have large sway over the land but that here and there there are bastions of civilization that withstand the chaos. Law seems to stand for good and chaos for evil, unlike later editions of the game, but more on that in a later post on alignment.

The knights and the keep with the strange and unnerving wilds full of goblins and stuff make it sound very Arthurian to me. Very Chivalric, where knights have codes of honor and quests are being made. Which fits well with a more fairy tale approach which doesn't seem that popular these days. I like fairy tales. I grew up on them. For this reason I'm going to try and re-interpret this game-module, this adventure, in a chivalric fairy tale like manner. I also want to veer away from the often used English view and more to the (for me) closer at home Western European brand. I'm thinking France and Spain. Maybe the Netherlands, Germany, Switserland and Austria. These are the influences I'm going to try and go for.

I'm planning to set it in a version of our real world medieval times. Anachronisms are fine, as I don't want to have to study up on my history all that much. So far I'm having Gauls run around in medieval times. This should not be iirc. But I like it. So yes, I'm probably starting it off in north-western France, in Bretange. I'll have to reïnterpret a few things as I set it there I think, but we'll get there when we get there. So far I've mostly been focussing on The Keep itself and what I can learn from it and how I can use, reformat the information in it and rework that. There's a surprising amount of things you can do with it.

So yes, expect some rambling, at least half formed thoughts and a willingness to be schooled where needed.
Next up: "Starting the Adventure" or "Alignment". I'm not sure yet.