Irongate Keep

NOTE: The following material is an homage to the Basic D&D module: B2 Keep on the Borderlands. In adapting it to my 5e campaign, I took liberties with the original document (some of which I intend to discuss in a future post), but I tried to keep much of the flavor and phrasing of Gary's original text. This module taught me what a dungeon setting was all about, and, to some degree, has influenced every adventure I've ever created.

Classic illustration from B2
by D. S. LaForce (Diesel)

This sturdy fortress sits at the southernmost edge of human civilization. Built along an ancient trade road, atop a high bluff at the head of a wide canyon between two steep ridgelines, the keep's purpose is to defend the remote border of Remedios against invaders from the Red Desert. A village has sprung up within its walls, catering to the needs of those intrepid enough to brave the wild frontier beyond. The village will serve as the characters’ base camp as they adventure in the Badlands.

The keep's Castellan is a no-nonsense, law-and-order man. Though loyal to the king, he expects his ailing liege to die soon, so he is careful with his alliances and keeps his troops close by to fend off ambitious rivals. Despite the tenuous political situation in the northern capital, he is duty-bound to his sworn mission: maintaining the keep’s standing strength and defending the pass from incursions. 

In recent years, it was discovered that the craggy hills around the keep are rich in ore and gems, prompting an influx of itinerant prospectors and treasure-seekers. As a result of the mining boom, the Castellan's coffers are filled with gold. He has received credible reports, however, that trouble is a-brewing in the hills to the south: witnesses claim to have encountered various bands of hostile humanoids roaming the canyons, and perhaps gathering together into a bigger force.

In order to protect the keep—and his new source of revenue—without risking his own troops, he has decided to fund an operation off the keep's books. His closest advisors and officers have orders to find trustworthy mercenaries willing to brave the wilds and root out the source of this growing menace. Several parties have been dispatched so far, but none have returned. 

There are many such opportunities at the keep for brave souls willing to handle dangerous threats, particularly those who first make names for themselves among local residents and officials.

Campaign Prologue

Session 0 for this campaign consisted of rolling up characters and then giving the players the following background information and encounter.

Seeking adventure, the characters have signed on to escort a merchant caravan across more than 700 miles to Irongate Keep on the southernmost border of the kingdom of Remedios—the edge of the civilized world. Each was paid 50 guilders (gp) to sign on, plus another 150 guilders upon arrival.

During the trip, each character learns two of the following rumors about the area, overheard from the merchants (roll 1d8, no repeats)…

1. The Badlands region was once the site of an ancient temple dedicated to Thera—matriarch of the Solis pantheon, and the goddess of earth, life, and hearth. In the distant past, her temple priests fought a war with an evil cult. The ruins of both the Theran temple and the cult’s former lair are hidden somewhere in the hills below the keep.
2. The keep’s castellan is a former Remediosi knight, a righteous man of law and order.
3. The keep’s doctor pays good money for animal and plant specimens for his studies.
4. The broken hills of the Badlands are rich in gold and silver ore, but there are also many reports of caves and ancient ruins dotting the region, chock-full of treasure and artifacts.
5. There is a fountain in the keep with a statue of the water-goddess, Luvia (daughter of Thera). Supposedly, its waters invigorate any follower of the Solis pantheon. When the moon is dark, the statue is said to whisper secrets to the faithful.
6. There is a secret morgue beneath the castellan’s fortress, where the doctor conducts grotesque experiments on the dead. Some say he is a necromancer.
7. The vizier of the keep is one of the castellan’s closest advisers. He is said to possess a magical eye that sees everything that happens in the keep.
8. Many unsavory characters pass through the keep’s village...especially now that so much ore is coming out of the hills. Be careful what you say and to whom you say it.

It is up to the players as to what rumors they share with the rest of the party (or don't). 

Survival in the Badlands

The extreme climate makes life difficult on the frontier. A semi-desert region, the Badlands typically sees high temperatures and arid conditions, with some days becoming unbearably hot.

Heavy rains and flooding are occasional problems in the canyons, as are blinding dust storms that sweep in from the Red Desert to the south.

The following house rules were implemented to help simulate the difficult conditions.

Keep on the Badlands — Character Creation

I asked my Monday night players how they felt about switching to a different rules system for the new campaign. I explained that I really wanted to run Basic/1e D&D using one of the retro-clones, but my suggestion was met with a resounding, "No, thanks." The guys know 5e and are confident playing it, so they have zero interest in learning a new game (even if it's sort-of the one we used to play 40 years ago).

I like core 5e well enough so I'm not terribly disappointed, but I was jazzed about trying something different (especially for this campaign, my adaptation of B2 Keep on the Borderlands). I haven't played/run AD&D since the late 80s—going back to that system or even Basic sounds like great fun to me, but it's not the hill I felt like dying upon.

Fifth Edition it is, then. To capture the feel of Basic/1e under the 5e framework, however, I established the following character creation guidelines. Because the Caves of Chaos are filled with lots of enemies, I also boosted some of the class abilities to give the party a little more endurance and enable them to press on longer without stopping to rest every other combat (which might be difficult or even impossible during an attack on one of the humanoid lairs).

The Badlands

The Badlands are a desolate range of broken hills located along the southeastern border of the kingdom of Remedios, across the Plains of Yorum. The region is harsh and unforgiving, a labyrinth of boulder-filled canyons that wind through high, craggy ridgelines.

The air here is hot and dry, and vegetation is sparse—mostly dry grass and low, thorny scrub. An occasional stream trickles through the deeper canyons, where thickets of pine trees and brambles grow. In some low-lying canyons, the streams get trapped and form weed-choked marshes that teem with mites and biting flies.

The craggy hills are rich in mineral wealth, however, and mining camps have popped up all over as prospectors, assayers, and merchants flock to the region seeking their fortunes. Caves abound and shelter can be found among the terraced ridgelines (though such caves are often the lairs of dangerous creatures). The ridges are also said to hide mysterious ruins that hold all manner of ancient secrets, treasures, and terrors alike.

The locals consider the entire land cursed. Some say an ancient evil once held dominion over the area—and that shadowy remnants of it linger still. Prospectors tell tales of ill-seeming creatures slinking through the hills... and of an evil cult stirring them up.

To the west sprawl the arid grasslands of the nomadic horse-clans, who compete for territory with herds of aggressive centaurs as well as bugbear tribes who dwell in the fringes of the Badlands. The territory to the east is the stomping grounds of a trio of hill giants—brutish brothers who war constantly with each other. The eastern hills are crawling with their evil minions—goblins, orcs, and much worse. Nobody goes into the east, not even the brave soldiers of Irongate Keep. Beyond the Badlands to the south lies the inhospitable Red Desert, home to the savage red orcs.

Keep on the Badlands

I took a brief hiatus from the blog due to real-life work projects. In the meantime, Jeff decided to end his campaign and asked me to resume DM duties for our regular weekly Roll20 campaign. The only thing I had ready to go was a set-up I created during the 5e playtest (D&D Next). The playtest packet included a conversion of the Caves of Chaos (sans keep or surroundings) from the Basic D&D module: B2 Keep on the Borderlands.

Erol Otus captures it all so perfectly.

B2 was the first module I adventured in when I started playing D&D, and the caves hold a special place in my heart as my first foray into a "dungeon" setting. I still vividly remember flipping through the module for the first time and seeing all those illustrations that cemented what D&D was in my young brain.

My plan during the playtest was to run B2 as a mini-campaign to introduce my players to the new ruleset. I re-imagined the keep as an outpost on the edge of a desert wilderness called "The Badlands," and created a new regional map for the players to explore (much of it cribbed from the original module). I never ended up using any of the materials when we started playing the published 5e rules, even though I'd done a lot of work on it. This seemed like a great opportunity then to dust off the setting and start a new campaign: Keep on the Badlands.

The setting is a sandbox with several active plot-lines occurring in the area (one of which is the restoration project underway at the Caves of Chaos—the existence of which is NOT currently known to the residents of the keep). Part of the early campaign will involve uncovering the knowledge of the caves and the evil cult behind it.

Irongate Keep — the last bastion of civilization on a desolate frontier.

Letting My Players Choose the Next Campaign

I recently resumed work on my Deep Vaults adventure, but a complication arose this week. Our Tuesday night campaign is currently run by my friend Jeff, who I've known since college and with whom I swap off DM duties so we both have opportunities to play. He's been running a simple megadungeon concept, sort of an urban Caves of Chaos, to experiment with using some of the OSR principles I've shared with him.

We've been using the Into the Unknown (O5R) rule-set with some house mods for his campaign, and I think everyone is enjoying the simpler, more-grounded approach. Our players have grown a little jaded and lazy from computer games, though—and the isolation of Roll20 doesn't help in terms of player engagement—so Jeff and I both like 5e's core game engine to provide a framework for player actions (even though we loathe the setting and current direction of the game). 

Jeff's done a great job adapting to the OSR methodology but now wants to experience it as a player, so the plan was for me to run one area of his megadungeon. He still wants to do that, but has also indicated that he wants to wrap this experiment up soon and take a break from running while he applies what he's learned to a "real" campaign. As a result, my concept for the Deep Vaults is too ambitious for the near-future. I adapted the adventure from another concept that exists in my own campaign, so I don't want to waste it on something that will soon end and make it all irrelevant.

Thus, I'm forced to switch creative gears again. I'm still developing the Deep Vaults (which I will continue to post here along with the other adventures I'm working on), but for Jeff's campaign I've decided to run an older, unused dungeon I've had in my folder for awhile. It's an as-yet unnamed cavern crawl, sort of along the lines of Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, for levels 4-6. It's mostly done, I just need to finish up a few places in the key and create the Roll20 assets.

As for the future...

Like many DMs, I'm certain, I have a folder full of campaign concepts—half-baked ideas and scraps of worlds I'll likely never visit. As I discussed in an earlier post, I'm already working on multiple long-form dungeons, but I haven't committed to any single one. Those adventures represent old projects I'd like to finish, as opposed to starting new ones. 

I feel like if I can at least get those finalized and shared online, then I'm okay if I never actually use them in my own campaign. I've released that creative energy into the world and they can live or wither on their own. I have no illusions of fame or glory by sharing them, nor am I interested in how I can make a living writing game material...I think the barriers are high, and the effort-to-reward ratio is too low. It's fun to feed the creative beast, though, and if I can inspire even one other person with an idea, then it's worth it.

In any case, I have all these campaign concepts but I can't decide which one to pour new creative energy into. I have a few months...maybe a year to prepare. To combat the decision paralysis, I've decided to let the players choose. I've compiled a list of ten campaign ideas, some of which would be based on an old-school 5e rule-set and others on different rule systems altogether.

I've asked the players to rank the campaigns in order of interest level, from 1 (lowest) to highest (10). Unless one concept just blows everything else out of the water, we'll then take the top 3 scores and re-vote. The winner will be the campaign I develop over the next 4-6 months.

The survey list I sent them follows the break...