If you’re like me, then you are a sucker for old school on-the-frontier dungeon crawls. Shadowed Keep on the Borderlands is more than an homage to those days of yore. It plays and expands on the theme with intriguing characters, compelling stories, and cunning encounters. There is such a wealth of adventure packed into this ruined little keep that it will keep your players engaged session after session, and keep them coming back for more. So make a run for the junk food and pop, come up with pithy character hooks, don’t forget to buy a 10-foot pool, and always keep your wits about you. It’s that kind of adventure and more.
Full disclosure. I’ve known the author, Creighton, for a long time. We worked together back in the Living Greyhawk days, and he was always a skilled, dedicated, and passionate adventure writer. I’ve seen some amazing things from Creighton, back in the day and at Raging Swan Press, and this adventure is his best yet. No pressure, chap!
You’ve heard the story before. There is an abandoned keep, bandits, and the promise of treasure. Some would call them clichés. I like to call them pillars: Exploration, combat, and reward. I’m not alone in this, though we can quibble about the details. Ah, pillars; they are all the rage right now…we have not seen this much enthusiasm for them since the time of the Prophet. But this isn’t just a rehash of paragraph-long room descriptions and a random assortment of fun low-level monsters. I’m going to rain some minor spoilers down. If you are a GM looking for more information, keep going. If you want to play this thing, run along. But before you do, it’s awesome. Go buy it for your GM and have them run it.
You can download a free sample of Shadowed Keep on the Borderland and test drive before you buy. I think you’ll like what you find.
This is the SPOILER space for you fuckers who are just scanning for SPOILERS, but pretend you’re not when you find one. SPOILER!
It also has the ever elusive pillar of story. I think that’s what the kids are calling it these days. And not blah, blah story. I’ve always admired Creighton’s grace with story, here he shows a brilliant economy for storytelling. Evocative, to the point, and often visceral without any damage to his voice.
So you can strike out fast and loose or you can research the area and its history. Either way you’ll come across a disturbed bandit queen that struggles with goblins for control of the crumbling keep. The PCs are in for the wild ride as they will no doubt disrupt this cold war with sword, spell, and wit. There are histories to discover, tricks and traps to outsmart, and monsters to kill. At the same time each encounter has verisimilitude—the ether twin of certainty and rationalization, one of those holy grails of RPG design.
There is also some truly awful shit in Shadowed Keep on the Borderland, and I mean that in the best possible way. From the aforementioned bandit queen, a deeply scarred apologist of her own hate–a nearly a sympathetic character, but a better tool for carnage and betrayal. To the fiendish ogre chief of the goblin faction, a fellow that, “has lived the good life—plentiful women, loot and battle. He is content.” His favorite pastimes: fostering concubine competition and eating those who dare plot against him. This is my kind of fella!
I’m wondering why these two aren’t wrapped up in some wildly dysfunctional relationship. You’ll have to excuse me. I’ve been watching bunch of Shameless.
Too raunchy for you? Wuss! But don’t worry. Deeper down there is an awful pit full of undead who merely want to quench the light of the living. In general, Shadowed Keep on the Borderland is easily played a series of deadly encounters with little dressing, but delve deeper into the work, and complex relations, amazing detail, and drama unfold.
I think one of my favorite features of this adventure is that you can plop it down nearly everywhere. I have grand plans to use it in my upcoming Carrion Crown campaign.
Okay, okay. I’ve shed my unusual curmudgeonly ways to gush about something, and a friend’s adventure at that. I like this thing. If you don’t, you can say so. But say why. I think you’ll either come off as lying or think I’m full of shit anyway. The first I can stand in small doses. Even if you are correct in the second case…meh.
And now for something completely different.
I’m working on a personal project and I need your help. I want information for a side project. I’m going to do some persona modeling. You don’t know what persona modeling is? You’re going to like this game. It’s roleplaying at its finest. Well at least character creation at its finest. Just hang on for the ride.
I think one of the problems with the modern tabletop market is that they are using antiquated by thorough numbers from the 3.5 launch. I think the market has changed. Hell, I know that the market has changed. But I need data, and I want it in an unusual way.
I want you to describe your gaming group as it stands right now. I don’t care where you post it. It can be here, on Facebook, on ENWorld, wherever. What do you play? How old is everyone? Describe the personalities and relationships in the group. What is your group’s play style? Do you like this play style? How often do you meet? Any other defining traits? It can be as brief or expansive as need be, but this should be from your experience; from your circle of friends and gamer acquaintances. I’m not looking for any armchair brand managing here or sugar-coating. I want your ground-level experiences. The nitty-gritty. If need be, a brutal assessment. Change to protect the innocent. If you don’t do this, you’re the reason why we can’t have nice things.
Just for shits and giggles, everyone should start “Dear Neogrognard Letters.”
Dear Neogrognard Letters
I’m currently involved in 2 gaming groups (although three of us play both), one star wars saga edition and one pathfinder.
The Pathfinder group is a collection of old school friends who have met once a week to play since we were 16 (now mid 20s) and we are currently playing City of the Spider Queen (for about the 5th time, and the first time we’ve reached Maermydra). This group has fluctuated in size, but currently we have 5 players and the DM. Play styles differ week on week, usually we run thins at a very relaxed pace, our DM is exceptionally good and he really relies on us to drive the story, if we’re slow, hes slow. Sessions generally run Thursday evenings, for around 5 hours. We have run several adventures in the past, some us ran through the old 3.5 adventures – Lord of the Iron Fortress, Standing stones, bastion of broken souls etc (these epic characters make a reappearance occasionally). We have also run a 3.5 eberron game through to level 19 with a different DM. I’ll run through the group briefly and try and give a snapshot of the different play-styles and personalities.
- The DM is excellent but fairly unforgiving, we’ve spent several sessions struggling through (but generally enjoying) RP encounters and deaths are, while not commonplace, regular enough. I guess we’re pretty tight on rules, and only house rule when totally neccessary (this happened a lot more in 3.0/3.5 than pathfinder). We have written backgrounds/fiction for our characters on occasion, and the DM does send us out a lot of facebook/email messages with descriptions/flavour/plot in order to aid us playing our characters in whatever adventure we’re running.
- Player 1 is perhaps more driven than us, and really likes to push things along, often hurrying others through their turn in combat (which can cause issues). Unfortunately, the same player is running a wizard for the first time and can tend to take an awfully long time to decide his actions. He generally plays greedy, self-centred characters who have little affection for the rest of the group. He’s not big on roleplay, but gets a kick out of his character having an impact on the world.
- Player 2 is the obligatory power gamer, he often gets bored of characters and attempts to get them killed in order to roll a new one. He does get involved with some rp, but his characters are often blank slates who exist only to deal terrific amounts of damage.
- Player 3 really enjoys the tactical side of combat, planning out encounters and getting through them unscathed, but he hates rolling up new characters and can get somewhat frustrated and distant when we do any roleplaying and interaction with npcs as a group, but in a smaller group or solo hes is much more involved and really enjoys these RP heavy areas. He is also rather cowardly in combat, and always advocates running away or planning for hours rather than taking any risks.
- Player 4 always has his laptop out, gets distracted and has to be filled in on the situation every time it comes round to his go, this player clashes with Player 1, who will often try and second guess what player 4′s character will do (almost taking his go for him) rather than explaining the situation to him.
- Player 5 (me) generally likes to get things moving along, but I find myself cracking jokes and getting distracted by conversations. When we are focused though, I really like to move encounters along (hence player 1 can sometimes annoy me rather a lot). I tend to do most of the interaction with NPCs etc, and most of my characters sort of slide into a leadership or spokesperson role. I also have a horrible gift for remembering canon/setting info, especially Forgotten Realms stuff. I have a tendency to unintentionally meta-game a fair amount and reveal a lot of setting info people don’t really want to know.
The star wars saga group is a 4 man group, Player 3 from the pathfinder group also plays in this group and the same DM runs the adventure. We really get a lot more done here, action seems to flow a lot quicker and the game runs much more smoothly. The personalities here clash less, we all have a similar sense of humour and the one liners and retorts really flow much more smoothly.
Dear Neogrognard Letters,
What do you play: My group plays a variety of games. We primarily play D&D 4E, though we have been playtesting (several games) and also have been playing through the editions. At times we play other games (such as Eclipse Phase, Shadowrun, Spycraft, Legends of the Five Rings, even Pathfinder). We play a fair bit of organized play (Ashes of Athas, LFR, Shadowrun Missions, etc.). We also play a variety of board games. Last year we played a 3E-4E hybrid called Enlightened Grognard.
How old is everyone: In my late 30s, I have graph paper older than the 20-year old players. We have players in their 20s, 30s, and 40s and with mixed experience levels (some very recent gamers).
The personalities and relationships in the group: Not sure what you want here. We have experienced storytelling DMs and great role-players, we have guys looking for heavier optimization and medium RP (though all like heavy story), we have accomplished organized play authors and others that have never played much OP at all, we periodically see wives join in and actively try to bring in more women players and DMs. We interact heavily with the gaming community, judging at cons and interacting with known gamers in the area. Two players run a podcast. Two have been published, or four if you include OP.
What is your group’s play style? Do you like this play style? : We do a lot of playtesting, primarily because we enjoy giving back (and also seeing new stuff). But, when we aren’t we tend to run long campaigns with heavy story and RP and less combat. The combats are intense, cinematic, and usually very meaningful to the story. PC backstory matters. There is good humor. We focus on the game and don’t have major issues with digital or other distractions. We enjoy both map and mapless combat. 4 of us like painting minis. Most of us are pretty big collectors and own a lot of stuff. We can call on close to 2 dozen players pretty easily to help join us, primarily due to our involvement with the community (Encounters, LFR, conventions, concerts, etc.).
How often do you meet? : Once a week for 4-5 hours.
Any other defining traits? : Great senses of humor. Smart and capable players. Tolerance of different gaming styles and games. Excited to discover new gaming aspects. Welcome change.
Dear Neogrognard Letters;
We currently play Pathfinder, though in the past we have played 4e, d20 Modern, and 3.5 (as my personal preference is Pathfinder, that decides what the group plays). Our group is fairly new, consisting of 8 people – one is 34, four are 23, one is 19, and two are 16. Three of the players are family members and seem fairly new to TRPGs, so they have a lot of fun just exercising the freedom such games allow. The four of us 23 year-olds are close friends that started the group – two are pretty into game mechanics and creating weird character types, one of us is fairly quiet and prefers grittier characters or larger-than-life characters to fulfill himself, and the last one is there mainly to hang out and isn’t very interested in mechanics. The last player is a complete newbie to TRPGs and seems kind-of uncomfortable embracing his nerd-side, though he really gets into his character.
We have been proving to be very heavy with roleplaying with this group, although mixing in challenging encounters really helps keep people everyone entertained. I like this style of play, but I would prefer if the players didn’t split-up so much and took more initiative with what they want to do (this seems to be changing, though).
We currently are playing once a week, but if all goes well we’ll try and run a mix-up of a monthly game session/board game day. Our group as a whole has never been really, REALLY into mechanics, so between that and the relative inexperience of the players we tend to play fast-and-loose, sacrificing hard rulings for a mix of what I deem most realistic and/or fun at the time. Character deaths tend to occur only under dire circumstances but still do happen – the players get bored when encounters don’t prove challenging enough. I also like to make players feel special with magical gear, but I prefer to give them something special that will last them the campaign (there’s usually a penalty involved for not using the item in question).
I am the GM of the group, and though I do enjoy doing so, I prefer playing more – I am the GM out of need, not necessarily desire. I do like to purchase a lot of books and PDFs for the group (both 3PP and from main publishers), though most of it doesn’t get used much. PDFs are handy, but I prefer books overall; however, if a certain document is short and needs to be shared a lot, I tend to buy PDF products. Finally, I like the strong online community & support available for TRPGs, but it can be overwhelming at the same time.
We play pure dungeon delve style- no roleplaying. We use campaign arcs starting at level 1 and ending at level 30. There are between 9-16 of us that play weekly, split into groups of 4-5. Some of, including myself, delve at least three times a week. We use miniatures, 4th edition and write up loose narratives tying the delves together and into the campaign arc. We have comPeter four campaign arcs (faced Orcus, Tiamat twice and Torog- beating only Tiamat, tpk on the rest). Character death is high.
The group consists of two stereotypes- older, mid to late 30s and college students. Us older ones have great jobs and pour money into minis and well, minis. We discourage roleplaying and come from a warhammer/citadel background. A few of us are disquieted by the recent Legends and Lore columns and the hiring of Monte Cook. To be fair- we have a few players that like Roleplaying and are excited to see D&D Stupidly named Next in the works.
We do have a Paizo delve but I’m not too familiar with it. They are using the new Paizo PPM and seem to be having fun with it. I respect Paizo products but I don’t support them. The 4th crew of 2008 has all my love- nothing, to me, will ever beat that era.
I’m in 3 RPG groups at the moment. The first meets once a week for about 6 hours. It has two men, and two women. The women are my wife and daughter (21 years old), respectively, and the man I’ve known for 30 years. We play a mix of systems (3.5, Star Wars d20, both strongly modified, and Hero Systems), and switch around GMing some. All adventure material is homebrew. We like both a crunchy-wargaming feel to combats, and strong characters and narratives. Characters very rarely actually get killed off.
The second group I game with has my wife and daughter and another couple I’ve known for 25 years. We play 4e, and there’s less character/narrative stuff. We play strictly modules. I GM’ed this for a while, now the other guy is taking over, with the next module in the series. This group meets roughly once a month for perhaps 6 hours.
The third group I game with has (again!) my wife and daughter and two other long-term friends, one man, one woman. We play 4e (with a few house rules) in a home-brew campaign that I GM. This features more narrative and roleplay than the second campaign, but perhaps less than the first. It also meets about once a month for about 8 hours. Brunch is included beforehand, dinner after is optional.
Dear Neogrognard Letters:
I am a 60-year old male who has been playing the various iterations of D&D for 25+ years. My group consists of myself, my four sons, one son’s wife, another couple and their two sons. We have played regularly on Friday nights for almost as long as I’ve been playing. We have gone through the editions of D&D from 2nd to 4th and decided that we preferred D&D 3.5, so our last two campaigns have used that version. I have been the DM for all these years. The members of our group have different styles – one prefers the thrill of combat, one is really into character creation, and several are very much the roleplayers. Since my DMing style is largely the storytelling type, I try to provide ample opportunities for characters to interact with their environment in whatever way they choose.
Every October we take a break from D&D and play the d20 version of Call of Cthulhu and are considering a campaign based on Green Ronin’s “Song of Ice and Fire” (someone else will take the GMing responsibility for that one).
Dear Neogrognard Letters,
My current “gaming group” is actually two groups that overlap each other, and both of which overlap some other groups as well. One group has 5 members (two women, three men, all in their 40s), though only 4 show up for one of the ongoing campaigns. Most of us have been friends for more than 20 years, and we’ve all been friends with at least 2 other members for 25+ years. Our play style is roleplay heavy, with questions like what noncombat skills, performances, and crafts characters have as likely to come up (and potentially end a quest or alter a plotline) as who can cast fireball. This blends with a true love of miniatures-based, tactical combat, complex rule options, and use of cunning rule synergy. We play 1ce every 2 weeks, and regularly alternate between a long-running 4e campaign, and a long-running Pathfinder campaign. Almost all adventures are unique creations of the GM, though elements may well be borrowed from published adventures. We have been known to throw in extra sessions of card games, boardgames, and World of Warcraft sessions, but those are considered extras. We often see movies as a group, have birthday and holiday parties, and normally have a home-cooked meal as part of each gaming session. Most sessions run 4-6 hours. Campaigns run anywhere from 6 months to 2 years on average, and have been known to run for 10 years or more.
My second group is 4 people (3 males, 1 female) all in our 40s, all friends for 25+ years. We meet every other week, and alternate between 2 long-running Pathfinder campaigns. The group dynamic and play style is very similar, with a slightly higher emphasis on no-holds-barred roleplaying where nothing is considered taboo or off-limits. This group is somewhat less likely to gather for outside events, but that’s an issue of scheduling rather than interest. Most sessions run 7-11 hours.
Only myself and 1 other person in the second group are also part of the first game group, but the other 2 people in the second group are also apart of 2 or more *other* game groups, who play weekly or bi-weekly, and include at least six other gamers (four males, two females) in their mid-to-late 30s and 40s – many of whom I have played with, but can’t currently get our schedules to align regularly.
Originally both groups met weekly, resulting in 2 games every weekend. Current pressure on my schedule made that too great a time pressure, and I am responsible for reducing the groups to alternating weeks (a total of 1 game session per week). Both groups have a deep love of all things geeky, and include passions of various levels for movies, books, television, anime, superheroes, mmorgs, cosplay, card and board games, game design, drawing and digital art, and all things fantasy and sci-fi. While we have currently settled into just pathfinder and 4e games, in the past 3 years we’ve had long campaigns of Mutants & Masterminds, Champions, Star Wars Saga, and Cortex (Supernatural), and played dozens of other RPGs in 1-shots or short games that came to premature ends.
I have always assumed my gaming habits (including playing with many of the same people nonstop for 25 years, sometimes having up to 4 regular games every week, and mixing birthday parties with 3-day nonstop gaming marathons combined with homemade feasts) were abnormal.
Hope this helps.
Thank you, Owen!
No problem.
I’ll be curious to see any conclusions you come to.
So. Where can I pick this adventure up?
Here http://paizo.com/products/btpy8rna?Shadowed-Keep-on-the-Borderlands among other places.