Running B2 Keep on the Borderlands as a one-shot

#1

Despite it being older than myself, I feel a strong pull to B2 Keep on the Borderlands. I’ve run it a few times now as a one-shot scenario, using The Black Hack, Troika!, and most recently D&D 5e. Here are the tweaks I make so that it becomes a viable adventure site for a 3h30 session.

Hard frame the open

Khedera, a votaress of your order, hired you to guard her while she made a wax rubbing of the old chaos altar in an abandoned temple within the Caves of Chaos.
That was three days ago.
You don’t know if she’s alive, or where she is, or where you are.

No wasting time at market, or waiting on a mysterious stranger to accost you in the tavern. This frame gets you straight into the fray, with implied peril but no need for an in medias res fight scene. It’s a framing device I stole from a panel about the Pathfinder Playtest by way of gg-no-re podcast, and it’s perfect for massive dungeon maps.

If you don’t spoil the existence of the chaos temple to your players, you could give the patron a different goal. I’ve had her delivering a missive to one of the orc tribes (though in this case I’ve left that message with the PCs rather than on the body of the patron).

Overt objectives

From the start, I tell the players that there are three goals:

  1. Get out into fresh air

  2. Find your patron — or their corpse

  3. Complete the initial goal

I’ll usually also tell the players they can level up if they achieve one of these (and even with counting XP in 5e, that still worked {before the owlbear tpk}).

These upfront objectives make this work as a tournament module if you were that way inclined.

Defensible start

The party have been in the caves for at least a few days, so they will have ended up in a defensible position. I default to room 28 (the hobgoblin storeroom) which helps explain why they start with full hp. If you do this a lot and want to mix it up, roll 1d4-1 for the tens and 1d10 for the units and find the closest defensible position to that. It helps if you are at least half a dozen rooms from a cave exit. You can also use 1d6//1d10 to determine the location of the patron.

Reaction rolls and wandering foes

This is a module full of monstrous humanoids with their own agenda and secrets, so to turn it into a mindless bloodbath would be to do it a disservice. For every encounter you have, make a reaction roll. If the system you play doesn’t have one, steal this:

Reactions (2d6)

  • 2 - open hostility

  • 3-5 - prove their superiority

  • 6-8 - advance their agendas (typically here it’s Get Off My Lawn)

  • 9-11 - seek mutual benefit

  • 12 - no-strings assistance

This exact table I’ve stolen from an OSR blog but the precise one escapes me.

Likewise, if players tarry in a location or make an unreasonable amount of noise, roll 1d6: on a 1, the closest creatures come to investigate; on a 2, the party hear sounds of the nearby creatures.

Speed and usability

There exist a number of maps of the Caves that overlay monster types and numbers in their locations, which allows you to run mostly from that single sheet with minimal lookup. Find your own favourite and use that.

B2 The Keep on the Borderlands is a classic that still holds up as a pleasantly flexible adventure site and with these tips, you don’t have to block off a long season at your gaming club.

I’m keen to hear other’s stories about running this (or other classic larger modules) as one-shots. What’s your experience?

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#2

This seems totally usable and interesting but your write-up leaves me with one question. How did the players lose their patron?

#3

That it’s an open question lets me invite suggestions from the players which helps to get them thinking about the sorts of ways they want to interact with the scenario.

I admit it is a very gamey conceit

#4

B2 is an interesting adventure in that it works best as one of faction conflict and schemes, but little of this is presented by Gygax.

If you are playing up the dungeon crawl/exploration aspects I’d suggest uping the timekeeping and resource depletion elements: implementing actual random encounters, tracking supplies (either with an exploration/overloaded die or time track) and minimizing 5E’s anti-exploration rules (light as a cantrip say).

Likewise it’s quite possible to build off the reaction table (which I believe is from 1981 Moldvay Basic or AD&D) to make it more dynamic. A rule I like is that you use the roll divided by 2 (or minus 2) for the number of interactions/questions the party gets to resolve the encounter before the creature attacks 3 - 9 or wanders off 10 - 12.

Likewise reaction works decently in tandem with the 0e surprise rules. In an unlit area on a 1-2 in 6 monsters gain surprise and attack immediately (assuming they see themselves likely to win) before rolling reaction. PCs can only gain surprise (same mechanic) if the don’t have a light or are quickly opening a door.

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