After purchasing arms and equipment with their shares from the escort job, the party heads out the Keep gate under the watchful eye of the guards on the wall. Though it was only mid-morning, the heat was already unbearable. Returning to the spot along the north road where the other caravan was ambushed, the party discovers that Keep soldiers have already recovered the bodies of the slain merchant and his laborers. The charred skeleton of the wagon still sits off to the side of the path as vultures pick over the carcasses of the dead draft horses.
No sign of the bodies of the goblin bandits is found, but after locating the gangs' tracks, the party follows their trail westward, off the caravan path and into the rugged wilderness. The ground becomes loose and uneven. Ledges, gullies, and cul-de-sacs make moving in a straight line all but impossible. Fortunately, the ranger's guidance helps the party make decent progress despite the treacherous terrain, and soon they enter a wide pass between a cluster of jagged hillocks to the north and an imposing ridgeline to the south.
The southern ridges rise like the walls of an impenetrable fortress. Their serrated cliffs conceal numerous shadowy clefts and dark folds, and as the party moves through the pass, they sense eyes watching them. A tense hour later, they emerge from the pass into a stretch of broken ground that slopes gently west and then disappears into the golden savanna of the Horse Plains stretching out before them.
I love wilderness areas.
The characters in my campaigns must travel in-game to wherever they want to go, with all that such journeys entail. I always design an exterior component to my adventures, and the party typically has to find the dungeon before they can start exploring it. My players don't often like or appreciate this aspect of my campaigns, but I don't care; I do it for me. I owe this minor obsession to B2 ( and T1 and X1 to lesser extents).
The B2 wilderness area isn't even all that conducive for exploration and adventure. Any of the encounters can easily trash a group of 1st-levels. Most of the encounters are gated by an imposing river, whereas an easy-to-follow trail takes characters right up to the dungeon (the main event). The dungeon itself is so close to the Keep, it defies logic that the Castellan wouldn't immediately send his troops to wipe out the evil camp forming right on his doorstep.
But even with these gentle flaws, B2's concept of a dungeon existing within a wilderness teeming with encounters is ur-D&D for me. I don't consider a dungeon "complete" until I know something about the territory around it (and what lives there).
When I set out to adapt B2, I knew I wanted to greatly expand the wilderness area but still use as much of the source material as I could. To prepare, I read through the original text carefully to pull out all the fun little details that Gary hides in his module-writing—details that are easy to miss if you just skim the write-up. As expected, I found quite a few things I did not remember.
The original adventure features four numbered encounter areas in the wilderness
just outside the Keep walls. There is a mysterious fifth encounter marked on the map—along a "trail" that leads off the southeast edge—but no name or details are given. Instead, the module calls out the "fifth" encounter as the unnumbered but aptly-named "Cave of the Unknown," which was left up to the DM to flesh out (or not). Finally, there are the Caves of Chaos that form the module's centerpiece dungeon.
Wandering Encounters. There isn't a specific outdoor encounter table, but mention is made of "encountering monsters while hunting" for food or while "camping outdoors overnight." There are encounter tables in the rules reference section of the adventure that do not line up with the tables in the Holmes Basic rulebook, but do reflect many of the monsters found in the Caves of Chaos.
Several of the monsters in these tables don't appear in the Basic or Expert bestiary, or in this module (e.g., draco-lizards, robber flies, thouls, white apes, etc.) It's possible some of these were intended for the AD&D Monster Manual which Gary was working on while writing this module (IIRC) but were later edited out.
Oddly, Gary specifically states that "nothing will bother the party when camped outdoors" unless they camp too close to a numbered encounter area (see below). Given that many of the creatures in the wandering monster tables are nocturnal, this seems to suggest we aren't supposed to be using wandering encounters in this area at all (which makes some sense given the presence of a heavily-armed fortification nearby).
The write-up doesn't provide any guidance for how the table encounters might interact with the set encounters in the adventure, either. For example, the Caves of Chaos descriptions clearly indicate that many of the
humanoids who live there go out at various times to hunt for food. If you encounter goblins in the wilderness, does that lower the number of goblins in the Caves of Chaos? The text doesn't say.
The module also seems to suggest that the party needs to actually enter a
numbered square to trigger an encounter (like a vast game of
Battleship). Gary created an interesting mechanic for a nighttime "wandering" encounter with these creatures, however: If the party camps within 6 squares of a numbered encounter area, they have a 1-in-6 chance to be attacked by the creatures in that area. The chance increases by 1 for each square closer to the encounter area the party encamps (so if you set up camp next to the black widow spiders, your party WILL encounter them that night).
It's a good illustration of how to tweak the rules to personalize an adventure and create a useful tool to help quickly resolve a situation. I'm not sure why Gary limited this chance to camping overnight, but a similar encounter chance could easily be applied to a daytime roll if the party approaches too close to a numbered area.
Encounter area 1 is a muddy mound, beneath which dwells a tribe of "exceptionally evil" lizardmen. Lizardmen are neutral in Holmes Basic and AD&D (which makes sense for a lizard-brained creature). They have kids and eggs, and senior citizens. They don't seem to bother anyone who doesn't bother them first. Gary gives no reason for why these particular lizardmen are "evil" or what they do that makes them "exceptionally" so. Nevertheless, this encounter introduces a moral decision as to whether or not to kill the non-combatants (a decision which repeats multiple times once the characters reach the Caves of Chaos). Perhaps making the lizardmen evil is meant to ease the decision-making process for new players who might be confused as to how to handle this moral quandary.
As teens, we never had a problem killing all the humanoids in the Caves of Chaos (or the giant wives and children in G1-3). I don't think any of my current players, who are all in their late 40s to early 60s, would hesitate now, either. We grew up with a tacit understanding that we were fighting irredeemable monsters bent on the destruction of humanity, and that killing them and their unholy progeny was a service to the forces of Law and Good.
I still accept that conceit, but in hindsight, I believe Gary included the non-combatants precisely to provoke the ethical question among players: Should we kill them? That's a sophisticated topic to introduce into a game, but something the fantasy genre is perfectly suited to explore. In my experience, some of the most dramatic role-playing moments have been party debates about whether or not to kill a creature. I've seen characters come to blows over it. Whatever one's personal feelings are about such things in D&D, I'm fascinated by its inclusion as a piece of intentional gameplay in an introductory module aimed at teens and young adults. People still argue about it today.
In any case, the party will only come into contact with the lizardmen if they camp in the fens at night or if they tromp on the mound during the day (and only IF the party decides to cross the river and investigate the swamp, which we never did).
Encounter area 2 is a forest grove where a pair of black widow spiders spin webs in the trees and guard a +1 shield. The adventure doesn't label the spiders as "giant" or "huge" or "large," but it's heavily implied that these are monstrous versions. They have AC 6, 3 hit dice, a bite that does 2-12(!) damage and insta-kill poison if you fail your save.
I couldn't remember whether black widow spiders were official creatures, so I looked it up and was surprised to discover that giant spiders of any sort are not in the Holmes Basic bestiary, nor, apparently, in any of the OD&D books (except for the water spider). This seems like a glaring genre omission from the early game and I'm sort of baffled how such an obvious monster-type was overlooked in the official rules.
The black widow spider is listed in the wandering monster tables in the rules reference section of the module, along with a "crab spider" and a "tarantella spider," but none of these are given stats. And, you have a chance of encountering 1d3 black widow spiders, which begs the questions: Are these different from the ones inhabiting the numbered encounter area and, if not, where did the third one come from? It's also very possible (likely) that the woods are crawling with black widows, but the specific pair in area 2 are called out due to the treasure they protect.
Two versions of a monstrous spider are listed in both the gameplay example and the sample dungeon in the Holmes Basic rulebook. The gameplay example on p.21 details a fight with six "large" spiders that have AC 8, 1+1 HD, and a bite attack that does at least 2 damage and injects fatal poison if a save is failed. The sample dungeon contains an absolute beast of a spider (labeled as "enormous") with AC 3(!), 6(!!) HD, and a bite that does 1d8 damage plus fatal poison (with a -1 penalty to your save!!!). How many 1st-level characters have died to this monster, I wonder.
The Holmes rules indicate that a DM can/should refer to the AD&D Monster Manual for other monsters, but these black widow spiders don't comport with any of those spiders either. These are unique versions from what I can tell, and they have the casual feel of just statting a monster to the desired gameplay instead of adhering to a rigid monster template or needing to call it out as a "new" monster in its own special section of the module text. It's only called a "black widow" because that term has a built-in fear factor with players that is driven by emotion instead of mechanics. I much prefer "freewheelin'" D&D, in this sense.
Encounter area 3 is the hidden camp of a gang of dangerous men who raid the area. The raiders conform roughly to the Bandit listing in the Holmes bestiary or the Brigand in the Cook Expert rules, and are described as "chaotic fighters" who spy on the Keep from this secluded site so as to avoid patrols. The text makes no mention as to whether these fighters are allied with the evil priests in the Caves of Chaos, nor does it specify for whom the raiders spy or who they raid (presumably merchant traffic east of the Keep, although it clearly says the road leads into "forsaken wilderness," so who knows?) They're just a bunch of aggressive guys camping on a hill in the woods. Even a novice DM can make something out of that.
The whole encounter is tinged with madness and uncertainty, luring the players in by their desire for information. The mountain lion doesn't exist in Holmes Basic, but this version mostly lines up with the AD&D Monster Manual version. Gary provides it a +2 bonus to-hit for leaping out of a tree, which is in contrast to the similar leaping attack of the "enormous spider" in the Holmes sample dungeon that knocks the target down and imparts a (-2) penalty to-hit on the prone character instead. More freewheelin' combat effects to spice up the encounter, but these are the little things that can help make each D&D combat feel more organic and different than the previous fight.
Encounter area 5 is an obvious trail, although the symbol for it (a meandering line of plus signs) does not appear in the map legend. The trail's destination is unknown, but travelers on it are frequent enough that the trail forks to connect with the main road leading west to the Keep and the realm it guards, and north toward the Caves of Chaos and the "forsaken wilderness" beyond.
The Cave of the Unknown is the last notable exterior location (other than the canyon entrance to the Caves of Chaos). Appropriately-named, the cave is a blank space intended to allow the DM to expand on the mini-campaign setting with their own material or ideas. The entrance is also only about 600 yards from the Caves of Chaos and the module suggests connecting the two areas via a handy "boulder-filled passage." We never expanded on this area back in the day, but it was smart of Gary to encourage DMs to try it for themselves inside the module.
Map Scale. The area of the Wilderness map is pretty small. Each square is a mere 100 yards across, meaning the Caves of Chaos are just under two miles from the Keep as the crow flies, or not quite three miles using the road. I walk my dog farther than that in the evening, so it seems a little too close for comfort for two armed bastions of Law and Chaos. No wonder the Castellan is concerned.
While this isn't very realistic, the small scale serves the presentation of instructional materials. It doesn't make sense to throw new players and DMs into a huge sandbox with tons of options and no direction, when some simple constraints will help the learning process instead.
All of this material will be recycled in some form into the Badlands wilderness.
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