The most roleplaying I remember being capable of pulling off at the time was with the isolated mad hermit hiding in the woods with his pet mountain lion.īut here too I was flummoxed. However, at the early age I started playing D&D, connecting cult to outpost, rearranging the map or organizing the tribes of monsters into a community that would naturally defend itself against sword swinging jerks hacking through their front doors was more imagination than my ignorant 9 year old mind could muster. If you cared to, this game could be modified to be more realistic or to fit your specific campaign. When brutal violence is the order of the day on both sides and you live one hundred feet away from your enemy, one or other side is going to be wiped out pretty quick. If anything at all can happen, what's the point? So, when Gygax took his monstrous humanoid tribes, who were warring against one another, and stacked them close-packed in a cave complex that resembled a high-rise apartment complex, it was hard to stomach. There have to be certain rules and boundaries.
Sure, it's fantasy and so reality shouldn't matter, but it does. The Caves of Chaos (gotta love that name) was the place where all the action was at! Boy howdy there was a lot going on in those caves! Minotaurs, medusas, ogres, orcs, goblins and more all crowded into a dozen or so caves clustered together in a relatively small ravine just waiting to slay or be slain. But dang, the place was a veritable king's castle with its own army! This was meant to be a base for operations elsewhere.
Sure, the players would have interactions with the tavern-keepers, traders and moneylenders, but aside from an evil priest who might join the group and trouble them out in the wilds, there was no adventure to be had here. was meant for gamers to use their imaginations to make up the story out of the elements Gygax provided: the officials at the borderland outpost, the bandits of the surrounding lands, the tribal monsters, the evil cult in the nearby cave complex.Įven so, I felt taking up one third of the module (the name D&D gave to these slim booklets) was too much time spent on detailing the outpost. And boy, was I a beginner.Ĭonfusing to a young, undeveloped mind, who didn't understand that this was meant to be a framework for adventure and not a fully realized story with a navigable plot, The Keep. It was, however, a useful tool for the beginner. was never intended to be great literature, even so it wasn't even a particularly good game.
As basic as the D & D Basic Set it came with, The Keep. Awesome and terrible! The Keep on the Borderlands was often the starting point of adventure into the world of Dungeons & Dragons for most.
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