Still, since I have plans now into at least the early Epic Levels, considering a transition before I reach mid-Paragon is not something I look forward to.  And likely won’t consider, for this group, at least.  Since WoTC is talking about an extensive public playtest (or at least more so than in years past), it sounds like I’ll have at least another year and a half to make the decision.  As with many others, I figured something of this ilk would be announced for 2014 and the 40th anniversary of the game.  I was figuring at D&D Experience in January 2014, but now it sounds like that is being rolled into GenCon starting next year, so GenCon2013 appears to be the odds on favorite guesstimate of the ‘Next’ launch.

And while I’m not planning to converting my existing campaign over to playtest, I have other options.  I’m still running the Encounters program for the local game store, and rumblings are that the Encounters program will be used in the playtest in some manner.  I look forward to that, since while I am happy running 4E, there are a few issues I would like to see addressed (or maintained as is) in the new… iteration?  After the 3.5 vs 4 edition wars, the WoTC folks seem to be going out of their way not to use the E-word.  I have mentioned that I have run more 4E games than I have pretty much any previous Edition of D&D – I love the simplicity of setup and prep it has over 3.x.  While I still enjoy playing in 3.x games, I’m not sure I would ever want to run an extended 3.x game again.  That’s one of the things I most fear in a new version of D&D – an increase to prep work for DMing.  If there is one thing I would want to get out of playtesting, it is that the game isn’t changing back to the complex leveling model of 3.x.  While I love the flexibility of that system as a player, it got to be such a chore as we got to higher levels as a DM.  There are things I would like tweaked, of course.  While I love the action economy of 4E, and the inherent balance in classes, I do not care for how long battles run.  My group of 4 (with our companion character gnome bard) seldom gets through more than one combat encounter per session.  We have to wait to start until the young son of our hosts go to bed around 8pm, and at times we balk at continuing past 11pm because we are getting ready to start a new combat.  No doubt that contributes to us still being in high Heroic tier.

There isn’t much that can be said about the system, one way or another yet.  Not a lot of folks are privy to it, and they are under NDAs.  So we have speculation based on Mike Mearls’ and Monte Cook’s Legend & Lore columns over the past year.  Many had speculated based on the topics that they were a precursor to a new edition, and one can hardly dispute that now.  However, I don’t think what we’ve seen in those columns necessarily translate to a sneak peek into the coming revisions.  For that, I am taking a wait and see position.  Some folks will get a better look once they attend D&D Experience in a couple of weeks – a public playtest called “The Caves of Chaos” is scheduled.  Another call back to Keep on the Borderlands, which seems to be a favorite of Mearls, so I’m intrigued.  Unfortunately I won’t be attending, so I will be watching for nuggets of info like everyone else.

Any glimpse through the Encounters program is likely to be late this year (perhaps around GenCon – with a Game Day event like the Neverwinter one this past year), or perhaps even next.  If I want to get in on the playtest bandwagon sooner, I may have a chance.  There is mention of more extensive public playtesting coming in spring.  Hopefully they mean this spring.  I had been considering starting up a D&D campaign for the regular players of Encounters at the game store.  There is a regular Pathfinder game, but no ongoing D&D.  I don’t know if I’ll have the time, but I might make the time if I can use this to playtest.  I’ve signed up on the WoTC website, so we’ll see what comes of it.  Regardless, I will still be plotting the continuation of my 4E Keep on the Borderlands game, and running the next few seasons of Encounters, so 4E is in my life for a few more years, at least.

Since the DM took over just as I was having the group remake their characters at level 2, we stuck with the new level, but the past was ‘wiped clean’.  As such we got level appropriate money to buy gear, and started over with magic items.  I pointed out the standard distribution of magic items (which was actually much better than they had had, anyway, since we were dealing with published adventures, which seem kind of understocked), but the DM decided to go with a single lvl 2 item each, and several potions (healing, resistance, clarity and a gravespawn or two).  We got to choose, with approval, and I was pleased with my +1 Mnemonic Staff (and I love the fact that as a Wizard MC Druid, I get to use it for both classes – even if MC druid has some peculiar limitations).  When we discussed the potions to take, the DM discovered the limits on magic item use per day – a concept he didn’t care for at all.  I know it was an idea it took me awhile to wrap my head around, but I think I understand why it was done (to keep the character from being a magic item delivery system as could occur at higher levels in 3.x), and the exceptions to it for reaching milestones and the like.

Our DM decided to take a different route, proposing the idea of Magical Surges that refresh like Healing Surges do, after an Extended Rest.  The idea being that one could use a Magic Surge to activate a Daily Item Power (only once per day per power, he didn’t change that concept), or drink a Potion (letting us replace a Healing Surge in that case with a Magic Surge, if called for) and then be able to activate another, different, Daily Power (or Potion, Elixir, etc.) as long as you had magic Surges left.  And the number of Magic Surges was determined by class pretty much as the inverse of what that class got in the way of Healing Surges.  If your class gets a lot of Healing Surges, you get a few Magical Surges, and so on, modified by your Charisma Bonus.  Which makes sense, since he always saw Charisma as the power source for magic in his 3.0 game.  Of course, that throws the attribute choices for each class out of whack (not that we changed our scores since this was added later, as we were equipping), and some (like the Warlock) benefited more than others (such as my wizard ).

Overall, though, except for that, I didn’t see any immediate reasons to fight back, and we agreed to try it out.  So far, it’s been OK.  We haven’t been consuming more potions than I think we would otherwise, and since we don’t have a lot of magic items to start with, the difference hasn’t been great.  It benefits us by leaving us with more Healing Surges to spend on non-potion healing, and we have the crutch of extra potions (assuming we can find them) if a battle goes bad.

Where we could get into trouble, I think, is at higher levels, since this Magic Surge doesn’t scale like a Healing Surge does.  We have lots of unused ones at this level, but at some point, when the number of encounters we struggle through increases and we have more powers to activate, we may see the unused ones dry up without a chance for a refresh before taking our Extended Rest.  I can see the kernels of this issue in the way our DM has been customizing the magic items he passes out.

To wit, our initial 2nd lvl magic items were pretty much straight out of the book, the exception being the warlock’s rod. This he modified to have a daily druid power instead of the usual arcane one, since he had a notion to group the players into ‘divine’ (paladin, cleric, avenger) and ‘elf/nature’ (eladrin warlock, wizard/druid, elf ranger NPC) groups on two separate quests and this fit.  Swap one Daily for another (not normally available to the warlock, but no big deal).

Fast forward to after our initial fights with the Keep goblins, and an ambush by kolbolds on the way and we make our first visit to Winterhaven.  Being old school D&Ders, and low level, we brought back as much of the enemy’s gear as one of my Floating Discs could carry, and dumped the lot on the local smith.  We had planned to get the smith to make a nice fire-resistant sheath for the magical hot poker we liberated from the hobgoblin torturer we slew at the keep, so the Teifling cleric would have a decent close combat weapon, but the DM gave us another option.  Trade.

The dwarven smith was taken with an everhot poker, and gave us a deal on a magic sword he had no use for these days – a +1 thundersword which had TWO daily powers (besides the enhancement and crit) – daze and a +1d10 thunder damage.  This was telling, and the start of a trend.  I’ve since found ‘Bracers of the Beast’ which give me more options in beastform (thankfully) in the form of a property, an Encounter Power, and two Dailies.

Throwing out the limits on the number of built in powers will probably cause us to gravitate towards the walking magic store syndrome, especially once our ritual casters hit 4th level (and Enchant Item), and since we have Magic Surges, we’ll get more use out of multiple powers than a standard 4E party, but it means the DM will have to up the opposition to compensate. Which is NOT something he has an issue with.  We have yet to have a TPK under him, but we’ve come close a few times.

With the finely balanced level system as it is, I wonder what the cumulative effect of all of these changes will be.  So far I am having fun, but it is interesting (and necessary) to try and exploit these changes, as it will undoubtedly affect our opposition as well.

In the meantime, I have started playing in another 4th Edition game with a different group, this time a weekly game (more or less) run by our old 3.0 – 3.5 DM.  While I am having fun, I feel the need to share some of the changes and modifications he’s made to the game, both for my own sanity but also so I can think through the implications and perhaps get some help pointing out the potential pitfalls, and avenues for exploitation.  The backdrop will be somewhat familiar to most 4th Edition players, as these stories will involve us progressing through his interpretations of the Heroic Tier adventures, starting with H1 Keep on the Shadowfell.

As usual for my screeds, a little back ground first.  I initially ran this group through the intro game in the DMG and then through the initial few encounters of H1 shortly after the game came out.  And with one exception, we all had a pretty good time.  The exception being, of course, the guy used to running 3.0, our old DM.  He was pretty much in the ’4th Edition = WoW’ camp, and nothing we could do would dissuade him.  He played with us, but with only one eye on the game, while playing computer games on his laptop.  He didn’t really give the game a chance.  The funniest part of his attitude is that we find 4th edition to be VERY similar in some respects to how he used to run his own version of 3.0+ D&D.  Similar, but not the same, of course.  Maybe that was the problem.

This is a guy who always heavily mods whatever games he is running ‘to make it better’, or to ‘make things consistent’.  I could go into detail on his 100+ pages of replacement and supplemental rules for our 3.0 game, but why?  The volume alone should tell you everything you need to know.  Which is not to say the changes he makes are arbitrary or just for change’s sake – he just likes to tinker.  And he runs a hell of a game, putting tons of work into it, so that even when we vehemently disagree with a change (and he dos listen to opposing views – one of the reasons I want to discuss the changes here – ammunition to take back).

Running the 4th Ed game with this group was more of a fall-back option.  I was there primarily to play in the D20 Future game run by a third fellow, Amber run by a fourth, or my own Mutants and Masterminds game set in Chris’  Alphaverse setting.  So it ended up being run every few months when no one had anything concrete prepared, and I could just whip out the module and pick up where we left off.  And our old DM would find other things to do on the nights we ran it.

But fast forward a few months, when half of the group is out of work, and the other half is so busy, they feel they need to take a break from running prepared games.  I propose running the 4th edition game regularly.  Our old DM shocks us by suggesting he run it, so I can play, and he can be involved doing what he loves to do – learning and tinkering.  Apprehensive, we agree, and he takes over the game.

I had the group running the supplied characters from the H1 booklets, and we had just gotten to 2nd level in my version of the game, so I was having everyone retool their characters at 2nd level as they wanted (since we started before the corebooks came out, and now we had both them and the PHB2 to choose from). Some choose to rework their original characters (Dragonborn Paladin, Eladrin Warlock), some choose to go in different directions (Tiefling Cleric of Pelor, Deva Avenger), while I got to try something I’d been itching to (human wizard multiclass druid).

While we were initially following the rules as written, it wasn’t long before the changes started creeping in.  here’s one: Identifying Magic Items.

Usually in 4th edition, one discovers the the properties of a magic item after spending some time with it, after a short rest, etc.  After we had been playing for a short while, we made it to the first level of the Keep, and discovered our first magic items.  It was then the DM discovered this , and decided he’s prefer that some sort of Identification Ritual was used to determine the properties.  Since we didn’t have that ritual, but I had the Brew Potion 1st level ritual, he had me swap his new ritual for that one in my spellbook (I’m getting the Brew Potion back, via a trade with the sage in Winterhaven, but I was a bit upset, even though at 2nd level the ritual is of little use to me).

The basics are this – for a material cost of 1% of the item value, the caster can make an arcana check which determines how long the ritual takes to fully determine the item’s properties.  Depending on the check it’s a sliding scale from 1 minute per level of the item, up to 10 minutes per.  Not exactly something you can do during a short rest. Add to that, that wearable items (armor, bracers, etc) must be worn for 24 hours before their properties/bonuses take effect.

Potential pitfalls:  Drain on money and other resources.

I purchased ritual components before leaving civilization, and made good use out of an Unseen Servant conjured up between encounters (to keep those darn planks in place around the goblin’s pits and excavations on the first level, and to levitate a ghoul corpse out in front of us to trigger some sneak attack archers).  but I didn’t count on having enough components to check every magical doodad we found.  And even if I did, it costs money and time to do that – and especially with written modules, it can be assumed that any items found are going to be needed almost immediately, so a delay to have the item ‘acclimate’ to a user could be potentially deadly.

And encourages us to take more extended rests.

Anything else I’m missing?

Still in a meeting room at Argolin Castle in Jason’s Shadow of the Realm, Talon attends to his prisoner (a vermik) and interrogates it. Discovers that the gods had been to its home shadow and recruited some of its people recently. And it’s hungry.

Jason is concerned that the activation of the crystal will call something nasty to his shadow, and asks Sheenakri to check the borders and boost the security patrols, since he had determined it probable that there were military exercises going on.

Meanwhile, Leo and Jason examine the crystal. Jason discovers a latent afterimage of the woman’s psyche, and Leo attempts to use that to create a Trump Sketch. Jason maintains control over the device, to make sure it isn’t accidentally activated again, while looking for other controls/uses for the crystal. The woman is not recognized by anyone.

It is decided to take Talon’s creature somewhere it can hunt/feed. Such as Sheenakri’s shadow (reluctantly). Sheenakri discovers she can’t Trump anyone back at shadow Wilder, nor the shadow itself. Then Talon can’t reach his shadow by Trump. They decide to put the creature in a wildlife preserve under guard for now.

Concerned, Leo finds he can Trump to Amber and back. The group consider tracking down Torin, and pay a visit to the Hightowers, but Sheenakri’s concern over her shadow wins out, and they try to pool their Psyche to Trump shadow Wilder. A connection opens, but Wilder isn’t there. Instead, one of the connecting shadows is reach, on the shadow path to Wilder.

The group travels there, but the shadow path leads right past wilder. Like it isn’t there. Then they are attacked by 6 of those creatures. Leo drops back to try and Trump Amber – but they are far enough out that it takes a moment. Jason steps back to defend him by sword.

Talon takes on a couple of creatures, clearly outclassing them by sword. Sheenakri similarly bashes and stabs a few combatants, while Bryce releases a lightning bolt spell he had ready to knock his opponent off its feet.

Jason tries to quickly shift local geography while backtracking, leading his opponent into grass concealing a rut in the ground. The creature stumbles, but Jason’s attack is expertly blocked. Using the opportunity, Jason makes eye contact and shuts down combat quickly, appearing as one of its gods.

While the lightning bolt fries one, Sheenakri throws one of hers into the other, finishing them off. They have the dagger cards. Talon’s refuse to surrender, and he makes short work of one, and the other makes a break for it. Talon follows discretely.

Jason’s captive recalls being gathered by a tall man in full armor, face hidden by a black sugarloaf helm from its home to a nearby shadow, and delivered to a young man, with brown hair and a flaming dagger symbol. It is this dagger man who ordered them to attack, knowing where the Amberites would be.

Talon finds the ‘staging area’ for the attack, but there aren’t any others still there, but they left recently. Leo abandon’s the idea of Trumping back to Amber (but verifies it is still Trumpable) and soon thereafter Talon reaches him with the trail. The others come through, and Sheenakri finds some horses for them to follow.

Jason takes point, and leads the hellride after the young man (hopefully). The trail leads towards Chaos and is moving fast. Then it splits off, one track widening as if leading a group (or army) parallel with the original track, which remains. Sheenakri, Talon and Bryce continue on the current path, while Jason and Leo split off to follow the ‘army’.

The army moves towards Chaos, just passing the midpoint, then disappears. Figuring a cover up, Jason heads farther towards Chaos, and tries to backtrack, but can’t pick up anything after it disappears. Pulling up Pattern defense, he tries to barrel through, as if someone tried to pull the shadows over his senses, and he eventually breaks through, finding a little trail back towards the original track. They head back to the original group as quickly as possible.

Meanwhile the others make it to a valley where a single tree stands aways off before a stone wall cutting off the valley further down. They see someone ride up to the wall and dismount. They have a conversation with the Tree, Ygg, who has a little to say about beings who have passed by recently. Sheenakri is intrigued, and wonders if there is a connection between Ygg and her shadow. There is a storm (shadow storm?) brewing over head – over the wall.

The others catch up, and head to the wall. A tall man, in full black armor and sugarloaf helm blocks the door. He says they may not pass – yet. Talon disagrees and walks forward to attack, and gets his lights knocked out, repeatedly. The others try to help, distract the man, etc, but he does not relent. The storm peaks, there are thunderclaps, and the man steps aside, walks to his horse, and takes off.

Helping Talon, they enter the door to find an area walled off like a ceilingless room, containing a bluish-silver Pattern, and something else. A young man, brown hair, holding what looks like a shining ruby stands in the center of a new pattern, glowing red, panting and tired.

Leo conjures a crossbow and tosses it to Talon, who is too weak to shot it. Sheenakri takes it, aims, but the fellow pops out of the center, and reappears at the start of the new, writhing red Pattern. The groups tackles him, and Jason grabs the jewel away, searching for the flaw to verify it is what he thinks it is.

The man is Torin, and he is gleeful, saying he did it. The storm increases in intensity and the red Pattern pulses, feels like it is moving before your eyes. created a Pattern, he is asked. Now, smiles Torin, a Logrus!

And something comes out of the stormfront – a gigantic serpent flying towards us. Torin says we don”t have much time. Jason says he has even less, and stabs Torin in the heart. Leo takes the body and he and Jason toss it on the new logrus. Instead of erasing the lines, the blood seems to energize it, taking on the same red glow, and blotting out the lines into a large puddle, that seems to destabilize the Logrus. It seems to pull on the nearby Pattern, drawing energy from it and shifting it towards it.

The serpent gets nearer, and Jason tries to use a quick Pattern defense, to keep the two structures separate – pushing energy like a Pattern wall between the two. The Logrus swallows the energy, and the serpent is almost there.

They make a run for it, but the hellride gets barely past Ygg when the serpent catches up It is blind – that isn’t Amber’s jewel, but the other eye, recently stolen. Jason exchanges words with the Serpent, letting it know they saved the jewel from the one who stole it – without them it could have been anywhere by then. It owes them. The serpent grants them their lives, and only wrenches Jason’s shoulder as it takes the eye back. It leaves back towards Chaos.

They wander back, and the pattern is being drained, and slips towards the damaged Logrus. Nothing they try seems to stop it. Sheenakri talks with Ygg to try and find out if it can do something to the ground to disrupt the Logrus. No good. The other four decide to walk the dying pattern, hoping it will accept them, and they can bolster it as they walk, renewing it.

They walk in series, with Talon who is too weak otherwise in the middle with Leo who has never walked before. It’s different than the usual walk, but the same. Sheenakri joins in before they reach the center, but it is already starting to recover. s she reaches the center, the Pattern brightens, and it pulls back from the Logrus, drawing the energies back. It swallows all of the Logrus, absorbing it’s energies and causing the Logrus to vanish.

The storm reaches them, but it isn’t as bad, and breaks now that the new creation isn’t there to sustain it. They wait it out in the center of the revived Pattern.

After a rest, Talon has the Pattern send him to the woman from the crystal, and he reappears in a room somewhere in Chaos.

Leonardo wants to stay in the Pattern, absorbing the feel of the area, so he can draw it later, and resting after his Pattern walk. Jason takes the others to the center of the Primal Pattern to wait out the storm as it crosses through Amber. The griffin comes out to see if Jason has any food. Not this time.

Leonardo, son of Fiona, was the first to see one – a creature out of Shadow that was just suddenly there. Was it hiding shapeshifted as a rock in the Grove of the Unicorn? Not wanting to confront it (and sure his stakeout for the Unicorn was interrupted) he calls in Julian by Trump, and heads back to the Castle.

He runs into Jason, son of Flora, and tells him the details. Jason senses a disruption in the local Pattern, and they go to investigate. Bryce, unacknowledged but known Patternwalker, was researching something in the Library when a similar creature appeared. Grayish, with a retractable sword in the arm. Bryce called for the guards, and together they finished it off just as Leo and Jason arrive.

Jason tries to grab a psychic impression from the creature before it dies, and gets a sense of someone unknown, probably male, god-like to the creature, ordering it to seek out and attack Bryce. It has a calling card, with the word ‘Annies’ on one side, and a flaming black metallic dagger symbol on the back.

Sheenakri, daughter of Deirdre, arrives from Shadow Wilder to report a similar creature appeared there, killed both humans and creatures, before being slain. It carried a similar card. Talon, an unknown son of Bleys, appears soon thereafter looking for answers on these creatures as one attacked in his home shadow as well.

Jason performs an impromptu autopsy on the creature, and decides it hails from nearer to the Chaos side of things. Leonardo updates Julian and calls folks known to be out in shadow to warn them. Some are unreachable, many who do respond report a similar creature recently attacked them. Sheenakri and Bryce check out the dagger design with the Chief Herald, and while they don’t find out whose symbol that is, they discover the name Annie’s, and the style used, belong to a recently opened (2 years back) tavern in Amber city, run by Lady Annibelle Rutsgar. A widowed landowner and winemaker, her husband Lord Jerrod Rutsgar was lost in the Patternfall War. They had one son, Torin.

The assembled group goes to Annie’s for a late lunch, and eats and drinks while pumping the staff for info. Lady Rutsgar is a hands-off owner – only coming in every few months. They confirm the card is their’s, or exactly like it, but don’t recognize the dagger design on the back. They mention that Torin has been courting Lady Teresa of Hightower, something that was otherwise unknown to the Amberites, so either it’s recent, or something strange is going on.

Jason decides if there are creatures for each of the cousins, there may still some in the vicinity, since he hasn’t had one show up yet. He leads a directed shadow walk near Amber for the the closest such creature yet alive, and they find themselves being led to Arden. Suspicious, Jason has Leo contact a terse Julian who confirms (though not in as many words) that his men have closed off the entry routes for these creatures.

With that avenue of inquiry closed off, the group split off. Leo wanted to visit the Primal Pattern, and Jason led him to check out if the source of the Pattern disruption came from there. Talon wanted to go back to the Castle and walk the pattern to transport to the origin shadow of these creatures, to capture one alive. Leo gives him a Trump of himself to use to get back. Sheenakri and Bryce went to the Rutsgar estate to speak with Lady Annibelle.

Talon runs into issues – the guard will not let an unknown into the Pattern room. A quick Trump of Leo, who vouches for him and Talon is Patternwalking. He transports to a far distant shadow, full of those creatures, and grabs one. He tries to Trump Leo for a ride back, but…

Leo and Jason make it to the Primal Pattern, which seems in good repair, and nothing out of place (as far as they can tell). Jason wonders why it isn’t guarded, when the guardian griffin appears out of a cave, dragging it’s chain and making all sort of nasty sounds. Jason approaches to just beyond the chain’s limit, and tests it – it is meant to keep anyone from approaching the entrance to the Pattern. It doesn’t like anyone going towards it’s cave either.

Jason Trumps back to his shadow while Leo soaks in the ambiance for future Trump making. Grabbing some livestock (sheep) and dried meat, Jason has Leo bring him back, and Jason feeds the griffin, which eventually allows him close enough for psychic contact, and Jason makes friends, scratching behind the ears, etc. That’s when Talon Trumps Leo for passage back, and fearing the appearance Talon and his captive will cause the griffin to freak (since they don’t plan feeding the creature to it) and tells Talon he will call him back.

Talon gets impatient and starts shadow walking to his personal shadow with his captive unconscious. Leo realizes he doesn’t have a Trump of Talon, and he and Jason eventually head back to Jason’s Shadow of the Realm, Argolin, where Leo works on a Trump sketch to contact Talon. He can’t make contact when it is finished, as Talon is shadow walking, but with Jason’s help they barely reach him, but Talon doesn’t respond and they lose contact.

Meanwhile Sheenakri and Bryce call on Lady Rutsgar. She is thrilled to have Royals visiting, and shows the best hospitality. She’s a little concerned about her son, Torin, who hasn’t been seen for a few days. She confirms that the dagger design is his. He’s been courting lady Teresa of Hightower for almost two years, she says. This doesn’t track at all, as Sheenakri had confirmed with the Herald that this is unknown if true. Torin was last seen in his room, and they are allowed to search it. They find a black metal box with a strange indentation instead of a lock. Bryce examines it and sets off a Chaos energy burst that STINGS! Lady Rutsgar is horrified, and embarrassed, and allow them to take the box. They contact Leo, and head towards Argolin to meet up.

Talon makes it back to his shadow, gets a cage for his captive, and contacts Leo. He comes through to Jason’s castle as the others arrive.

The indentation in the box appears to be the same size as the calling cards, and Talon puts one in the space, and the box pops open to reveal a bluish crystal spire with faceted sides. There appears to be an opaque flaw in the center, and Talon picks it up and looks within. This triggers a hologram of a woman’s head, who addresses Torin, then realizes that the activator isn’t Torin, and breaks contact.

Just then, a roar escapes from the captive Talon brought with him.

This is the first in (hopefully) a series of articles on how I am approaching my first 4E D&D campaign. Consider this post zero; why I’ve chosen to use B2, Keep on the Borderlands as a basis to update, and my history with it.

My experiences with D&D go back to the ‘blue box’ days – Thanksgiving 1978 to be precise. On holidays, my family spent a good part of the day over to my grandfather’s house, and it was about the only time I saw my out-of-town cousins, a trio of boys roughly the same ages as my brother and I (they had more brothers and sisters, but they were younger). We had fun together; playing around the yard, sports, games of make believe, etc. This year they had something new to introduce us to, D&D. Already veterans of a couple of months of play, my cousin Josh ran the rest of us through a dungeon of his own making. What can I say, but that it was magical. But that’s something to expound upon in another post.

The Keep comes into the picture a scant month later, when I received that same Blue Box Basic D&D book for Christmas. Unlike my cousins, I didn’t get B1, In Search of the Unknown as my sample adventure included in the box (nor did I get dice – hard to believe there was ever a polyhedral dice shortage when looking at the pillow case full of dice one of my weekly players brings). What I got was B2, Keep on the Borderlands, an adventure my cousins hadn’t seen yet! And being a holiday, they would be at the usual family gathering, and it was my chance to repay them for introducing me to what would be a life-long passion.

One problem with my notion was that I had no time to become familiar with the rules before hand, and while we could have waited for the next holiday, or had one of my cousins DM for us, we decided upon an unusual solution. I wanted to play as well, you see, and since the adventure modules always had the interior cover map, and a keyed description inside, we decided to play in pure hack and slash mode (not that we knew that term then), starting at the mouth of Cave ‘D’, and working our way in. We’d make plans, choose our course to the next room, and then turn to the proper page in the book and read the entry for that numbered room to find out what we were up against. Of course, what we didn’t realize is that this particular adventure was an attempt at a mini-campaign, so there were keyed areas for the Keep, as well as the Caves of Chaos. And we opened the book to the wrong one.

The first numbered room we entered was 17, and the key told us this was the Chapel, which didn’t seem right. But, OK, we did what we thought we were supposed to, hacking our way through Curates and Men-at-Arms and collecting the treasure. Then the next room, which seemed to be a gatehouse? And an inner Tower next? Something was definitely wrong! Then we figured it out. D’oh! So, reset, and start over with the correct key for the Caves, and a much smoother and less confusing time was had by all. Even though B2 had a bit of backstory to work from, as with many of the early adventures it excelled in the hack and slash mode, so once we surmounted that particulate hurdle, it actually played out pretty enjoyably.

After that initial misstep I’ve had fun with B2 over the years. I graduated shortly thereafter to running my own dungeons, some of which I connected to the wilderness map found in B2. And I would return to B2 from time to time in the 80′s since I found it a great one-size fits all campaign starter. We didn’t always go straight for the Caves, either. I remember at least one run through that was spent almost exclusively in the wilderness encounters. Truthfully, I can only remember making it through the Chapel of Chaos exactly once, and it must have been shortly after seeing Clash of the Titans at the movies, since I recall someone making good use of a severed medusa’s head to turn some baddies to stone.

A few years later my brother got a copy of the Moldvay Red Book Basic set, which also had a copy of B2 inside. A much later printing, of course, with a few changes (the hermit’s puma becomes a mountain lion, a few picture changes, some minor rules revisions), but the same basic adventure. The same adventure that was the first glimmer I had of how to build a simple setting and campaign from. By then, though, I was more interested in the Expert Set, the Isle of Dread, and in AD&D. I left B2 behind for awhile. Until 3rd Edition, in fact. The second 3rd Edition game I played in was a version of B2. It was… unsuccessful, but I lay the failure entirely on the DM in that case, as he tried very hard to railroad us into his updated scenarios. Ragging on players to drink in the tavern so that after one sip they end up hung over and miss a key event the next day sort of railroading.

That wasn’t enough to sour my memories of the module, though, and when 4th edition was in the pipeline, I started casting about for what I might run. The core conceit, ‘Points of Light’, fits nicely with the limited outline that comes with B2. A close wooded map, with several encounter areas, and a base of operations outside of which you are in potential danger. Tailor made for 4th edition, it seemed. Plus, if I ran it myself, I could perhaps purge whatever bad taste the 3rd Edition attempt had left to color my experiences with B2. It needed to be expanded, of course. My sensibilities have changed over the years, and what I would run in the early 80′s now requires a little more depth these days. And a story. Definitely a story.

So the challenge would be to distill classic elements of the B2 experience, come up with a story that made some sense of them in the setting, and then do the necessary updates mechanically. Simple, right? Well, as we’ll see it’s more of an evolution than I originally expected.