Thursday, December 17, 2020

The Keep on the Borderlands of Reality - Using B2 The Keep on the Borderland for Night Shift: Veterans of the Supernatural Wars rpg As Campaign Jump Off Point

 So after almost losing my fingers to a snow blower today due to snow storm 'Bailey'. Its been one of those day where thoughts of classic B/X Dungeons & Dragons have been haunting me. Recently with the purchase of  The Nightshift: Veterans of the Supernatural War rpg, the fact that the game easily crosses over with both B/X D&D & other old school games has my brain thinking about old school modules. And so it turned back to B2 Keep on the Borderlands. 



'You couldn't possibly use B2 Keep on the Borerlands as a part of an urban fantasy/horror campaign?' Well my ears pricked at that one comment today as a friends stopped by to cheer me on shoveling snow. Let's get the history of B2 out of the way first;"
"B2: The Keep on the Borderlands" (1979), by Gary Gygax, was printed by TSR in December 1979. It was probably TSR's twelfth adventure, and the first one to use a full-color cover, rather than the monochrome covers that had been used for the previous 11 adventures." Can I say that in many respects the monochrome is still missed. Now to actually dive into the back door of B2 the humanoid forces from the Caves of Chaos are perfectly suited to be invaders for your home town! Imagine if you will that all of those gnolls, orcs, & kobolds are massing in the Caves of Chaos for an invasion. An invasion of small town USA and like an inversion of the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon your PC's are transported to Earth or your adventurers  are actually on Earth. Take your favorite class from NS:VSW & the hidden world has suddenly blown wide open! Did you ever notice how terrified the kids looked in the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon? Being constantly on the run from Venger looked nasty. 


Yeah that Dungeons & Dragons ride?! That's actually  a gate way to Greyhawk or the Wilderlands of High Fantasy campaign world. And now your party or mixed party of adventurers is going to have to survive in a high fantasy realm. The horror of it is that the orcs, kobolds, & even minotaur's are killing for real! 





What would happen if B2 Caves of Chaos started to bleed onto the Earth taking over little by little possibly leading to the infection of reality into another worldly realm. A minotaur or troll facing down a modern PC would be terrifying. 



Now if you think that this the first time that I've headed in this direction think again. Way back in The Dragon issue #57 there was a nice little article about adventuring in the modern world. 


At this point its a thought exercise really at this point. But it would be a fun one to do & quite easy to execute given the nature of it! This a possible campaign idea here & given the nature of B2 quite easy to do. 



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