The Keep on the Borderlands

The Keep on the Borderlands is a Dungeons & Dragons module by Gary Gygax, first printed in December 1979. In it, player characters are based at a keep and investigate a nearby series of caves that are filled with a variety of monsters. Designed to be used with the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set, it was included in the 1979–1982 editions of the Basic Set. It was designed for people new to Dungeons & Dragons.

The Keep on the Borderlands went out of print in the early 1980s, but has been reprinted twice; a sequel was also made. A novelized version of the adventure was published in 1999. The module received generally positive reviews, and was ranked the 7th greatest Dungeons & Dragons adventure of all time by Dungeon magazine in 2004.

Plot summary
Player characters begin by arriving at the eponymous keep, and can base themselves there before investigating the series of caverns in the nearby hills teeming with monsters. These Caves of Chaos house multiple species of vicious humanoids. Plot twists include a treacherous priest within the keep, hungry lizardmen in a nearby swamp, and a mad hermit in the wilderness. It typifies the dungeon crawls associated with beginning D&D players, while permitting some limited outdoor adventures.

When The Grand Duchy of Karameikos edition of the Gazetteer series was published, the Keep was given a specific location in the Known World of Mystara, in the Atlan Tepe Mountain region in northern Karameikos.

Original publication
The Keep on the Borderlands was first printed in December 1979 and published in 1980. It consists of a thirty-two page booklet with an outer folder; the module was written by Gary Gygax, with cover art by Jim Roslof and interior illustrations by Erol Otus. It is designed for use with the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set. Although also available for sale separately, it was included in printings 6–11 (1979–1982) of the Basic Set. The cover of the first printing included the notation, "With minor modifications, it is also suitable for use with ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS"; this was removed from later printings.

The module's cover notes it is especially designed to help beginning players and Dungeon Masters (DMs). Tips for running encounters appear throughout the text to assist beginning DMs. The module also provides rudimentary rules for wilderness adventures, as these were not included in the D&D Basic Set. The structure of the adventure as a series of separate caves allows for segmented playing sessions for beginners. The module has been described as a low-level introductory scenario, which leads the player characters from an outpost on the frontier of law into the forces of chaos.

Reception
Kirby T. Griffis, reviewing the adventure in The Space Gamer No. 37, found the module "interesting and full of excitement", though he considered the map sloppily done. He concluded by stating "on the whole, I enjoyed this module and recommend it."

The Keep on the Borderlands was ranked the 7th greatest Dungeons & Dragons adventure of all time by Dungeon magazine in 2004, on the 30th anniversary of the Dungeons & Dragons game.

Ken Denmead of Wired listed the module as one of the "Top 10 D&D Modules I Found in Storage This Weekend". According to Denmead, the module "should give a party of low-levels a rather challenging time." The module was also reviewed in Shadis #29 (1996).

Lawrence Schick, in his 1991 book Heroic Worlds, describes the adventure as "A good start for new players" and speculates that at the time, there had probably been more copies of B2 printed than of any other role-playing scenario.

Later versions and reprints
The 10th Anniversary Dungeons & Dragons Collector's Set boxed set, published by TSR in 1984, included the rulebooks from the Basic, Expert, and Companion sets; modules AC2 Combat Shield and Mini-adventure, AC3 The Kidnapping of Princess Arelina, B1 In Search of the Unknown, The Keep on the Borderlands, and M1 Blizzard Pass; Player Character Record Sheets; and dice; the set was limited to a thousand copies, and was sold by mail and at GenCon 17.

The Keep on the Borderlands went out of print in the mid 1980s. However, the module was partially reprinted in the supermodule compilation B1–9 In Search of Adventure (1985), which included the Caves of Chaos, but not the keep or surrounding wilderness. To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Dungeons & Dragons game in 1999, a reprinting of the original adventure was made available in the Dungeons & Dragons Silver Anniversary Collector's Edition boxed set, with slight modifications to make it distinguishable from the original (for collecting purposes).

A sequel, the Return to the Keep on the Borderlands for 2nd edition AD&D, was released in 1999. Although the original B2 publication was generic in terms of setting, the 1999 Return module placed the Keep in Yeomanry, making it a canonical location in the World of Greyhawk. The placement of the Keep in Greyhawk did not match many details in the sequel, such as several non-Greyhawk deities, nations, and peoples. At least two of the non-player character descriptions refer to details from the Mystara setting rather than Greyhawk.

In 2001, Wizards of the Coast published Keep on the Borderlands, a novelization by Ru Emerson for the Greyhawk Classics series. The novel was also set in the World of Greyhawk with scant references to its location.

A hacked version of the module was published for the HackMaster RPG in 2005, and entitled Little Keep on the Borderlands.

In September 2010, the module was re-released for D&D 4th Edition by Wizards of the Coast for use in the weekly D&D Encounters sessions. Like the original, this revised module was designed for use with the contemporaneously released Dungeons & Dragons Fantasy Roleplaying Game boxed set for D&D Essentials, which is oriented towards the beginning player. This time, The Keep on the Borderlands is set in the D&D base world of the Nentir Vale, in an area known as the Chaos Scar.

A revised edition was released at D&D Expo in January 2012 under the title Caves of Chaos as playtest material for the upcoming 5th edition of D&D. Players had to sign a non-disclosure agreement before playing the adventure.