If it were not for a stout few, many in the Realm would indeed fall prey to the evil which surrounds them. Always the forces of Chaos press upon its borders, seeking to enslave its populace, rape its riches, and steal its treasures. The Realm of mankind is narrow and constricted. Much has been written suggesting the American frontier as the ideological framework behind D&D in general, and 'The Keep on the Borderlands' in particular, (see comments for this post from Grognardia as far back as 2008, as well as this post from Blog of Holding in 2016). A few years ago, I posted my experience running the earlier version for my son and his friends, (you can check out my campaign journal, complete with tactical illustrations, here).

The version of module B2 in the 1981 Basic Set was the first module I ever ran. The initial version was written specifically for Holmes Basic, and so included Dexterity scores for the monsters. Gygax had just finished writing module T1 'The Village of Hommlet' and completed 'The Keep on the Borderlands' in under three weeks. *from an interview in Goodman Games 'Into The Borderlands' (2018) When Mike Carr wouldn't accept a cut in the royalties he was due, Brian Blume asked Gygax to write a replacement module.* The classic adventure has been the basis of a novelization by Ru Emerson, a long-running webcomic, and a D&D Online video game.Īlthough various reasons for replacing module B1 have been proposed, the original motivation appears to have been financial. There has been more discussion online concerning module B2 than for module B1 (see the Dragonsfoot index, here).

The keep on the borderlands campaign