I have never run or played this module but I really like your take on goblinoids. I also like the idea of this keep being sort of a prisoner or outcast colony on the edges of civilization, it makes sense and kinda makes the whole keep sound more creepy or desperate.
Thanks! As a little inside baseball, I was going to use the political situation around the exiled scion of the Marinelev family as a lead-in to sending the party to the capitol to report on their success and the adventure The Veiled Society. That plot relies heavily on noble family conflict dynamics, and them being tied to the Marinelevs would have given the party the chance to fight to overthrow the Duke who tried destroying that family or to betray the guy who had grown to trust them. BUUUUUT NOOOOO, they had to rage quit!
@@stephenclements6158 That really is a shame about the rage-quit. Our group has mostly strayed away from NPC betrayals because my group tends to be muder-hoboy enough. It might be too much to also have them being paranoid every NPC is tricking them. The betrayal here sounds like it would have really set up a good villain for the party to truly hate and want to take down.
It's good for nostalgia and good today, too. 🙂 My dad had a copy of the Moldvay rules sitting around along with this adventure, I found them, and even though I could barely read, I could tell this was good stuff!
Love the goblin ideas as well. I never saw the need for hobs and bug bears but I like your ideas a lot. Your ideas about darkness are a fix to the infravision problem that maybe just needs for infravision to be dropped. Like the hobs moving thru shadows.
Not gonna lie, the goblins from the movie Legend inspired me, because why not celebrate the awful parts of life with goblin fae?! The nastier the better!
I love the changes you made, especially the fey goblins. The tower of Zenopus is one of my favourite dungeons, including it as an early warmup for the PCs is a great idea. A very entertaining video. Subscribed.
I made the " mad hermit " a Gandalf type very powerful, very unstable but basically on the players side, not a thief but wizard. The evil cleric became a reoccurring villain that the characters had numerous run ins with over the campaign The caves themselves, l had a magical spell on them that once the evil was cleared ,the entrance would slowly start to grow closed to the characters on the final kill would hear the ground cracking and have to grab what they could and Indian Jones style often slide out the mouth just before it sealed.
Oooooh, I like those! Good use of the hermit and cleric there. I absolutely LOVE the self-sealing caves putting the fire under the players to make risk/reward decisions quickly. NICE!
Thanks for your review. I'm just now preping my first OSR-inspired campaign and planing to use B2 as a base for it. It is obvious this module requires a lot of work as it is not much more than a solid framework for DM's own creativity. I hope I'll manage to run it in a few months, due to real life obligations not living much space for RPG's at all, but I'll try to come back to this vid, and add my two cents ;D
I have to ask this question based upon your narrative, were your players old grognards or were they primarily used to playing 5E rules set with newer DM’s? I ask because much of what you described. Sounds like a standard fare from back in the late 70s when I started playing. Although, you sound a bit more imaginative than my DM was back then. However, in not all, but many newer games the idea of the players truly getting into a lose, lose situation, is almost considered a sin.
Haha, you picked up the culture difference exactly! While some of the players had played older editions, they were firmly 5e players in approach and mindset. No joke, one of them had tears in his eyes when I told him his Turn Undead didn't destroy the zombies at the end but instead made them run away, because the Shrine of Chaos protected them. Tears. Your observations on the newer player mindset are spot on.
They come up so rarely in my games I haven't done anything with them. Now that you mention it, it would make sense. If I made goblins, hobgoblins, and bugbears fae, you know small medium and large, then you could do something similar with gnomes, halflings, and elves.
@@stephenclements6158 Halflings are my absolute favorite since I was a child and read the hobbit. They don't get much love in old editions and in newer ones elves and gnomes get fae stuff but halflings get left out.
@@Ravum you're right, aren't you, gnomes have been all over 5e and elves have been put almost everywhere in the multiverse. Well, at least in Dark Sun you get cannibal halflings, so there is that.
You got me there. For Dragonlance, the first born were the ogres, then the elves, and then the humans. I'm tracking kinder were basically a wild magic accident in Krynn.
I have never run or played this module but I really like your take on goblinoids. I also like the idea of this keep being sort of a prisoner or outcast colony on the edges of civilization, it makes sense and kinda makes the whole keep sound more creepy or desperate.
Thanks! As a little inside baseball, I was going to use the political situation around the exiled scion of the Marinelev family as a lead-in to sending the party to the capitol to report on their success and the adventure The Veiled Society. That plot relies heavily on noble family conflict dynamics, and them being tied to the Marinelevs would have given the party the chance to fight to overthrow the Duke who tried destroying that family or to betray the guy who had grown to trust them. BUUUUUT NOOOOO, they had to rage quit!
@@stephenclements6158 That really is a shame about the rage-quit. Our group has mostly strayed away from NPC betrayals because my group tends to be muder-hoboy enough. It might be too much to also have them being paranoid every NPC is tricking them.
The betrayal here sounds like it would have really set up a good villain for the party to truly hate and want to take down.
An absolute classic. Brings me way back: I started with the Red Box and never stopped (3.5 wlll probably always be my favorite).
It's good for nostalgia and good today, too. 🙂 My dad had a copy of the Moldvay rules sitting around along with this adventure, I found them, and even though I could barely read, I could tell this was good stuff!
Love the goblin ideas as well. I never saw the need for hobs and bug bears but I like your ideas a lot. Your ideas about darkness are a fix to the infravision problem that maybe just needs for infravision to be dropped. Like the hobs moving thru shadows.
Not gonna lie, the goblins from the movie Legend inspired me, because why not celebrate the awful parts of life with goblin fae?! The nastier the better!
I love the changes you made, especially the fey goblins.
The tower of Zenopus is one of my favourite dungeons, including it as an early warmup for the PCs is a great idea.
A very entertaining video. Subscribed.
Thank you! And Zenopus has such a great variety of encounters to offer, I jumped at the chance to use it.
I made the " mad hermit " a Gandalf type very powerful, very unstable but basically on the players side, not a thief but wizard.
The evil cleric became a reoccurring villain that the characters had numerous run ins with over the campaign
The caves themselves, l had a magical spell on them that once the evil was cleared ,the entrance would slowly start to grow closed to the characters on the final kill would hear the ground cracking and have to grab what they could and Indian Jones style often slide out the mouth just before it sealed.
Oooooh, I like those! Good use of the hermit and cleric there. I absolutely LOVE the self-sealing caves putting the fire under the players to make risk/reward decisions quickly. NICE!
Thanks for your review. I'm just now preping my first OSR-inspired campaign and planing to use B2 as a base for it.
It is obvious this module requires a lot of work as it is not much more than a solid framework for DM's own creativity.
I hope I'll manage to run it in a few months, due to real life obligations not living much space for RPG's at all, but I'll try to come back to this vid, and add my two cents ;D
That's great! Please let me know how it goes, I'd love to hear it. Good luck!
Some cool ideas in your review.
Thanks, Sage!
I have to ask this question based upon your narrative, were your players old grognards or were they primarily used to playing 5E rules set with newer DM’s? I ask because much of what you described. Sounds like a standard fare from back in the late 70s when I started playing. Although, you sound a bit more imaginative than my DM was back then. However, in not all, but many newer games the idea of the players truly getting into a lose, lose situation, is almost considered a sin.
Haha, you picked up the culture difference exactly! While some of the players had played older editions, they were firmly 5e players in approach and mindset. No joke, one of them had tears in his eyes when I told him his Turn Undead didn't destroy the zombies at the end but instead made them run away, because the Shrine of Chaos protected them. Tears.
Your observations on the newer player mindset are spot on.
If you made goblins are fae did you make hobbits fae, too? They come from the same legends.
They come up so rarely in my games I haven't done anything with them. Now that you mention it, it would make sense. If I made goblins, hobgoblins, and bugbears fae, you know small medium and large, then you could do something similar with gnomes, halflings, and elves.
@@stephenclements6158 Halflings are my absolute favorite since I was a child and read the hobbit. They don't get much love in old editions and in newer ones elves and gnomes get fae stuff but halflings get left out.
@@Ravum you're right, aren't you, gnomes have been all over 5e and elves have been put almost everywhere in the multiverse. Well, at least in Dark Sun you get cannibal halflings, so there is that.
@@stephenclements6158 Is it in Dark Sun that halflings turned out to be the progenitor race or was that dragonlance?
You got me there. For Dragonlance, the first born were the ogres, then the elves, and then the humans. I'm tracking kinder were basically a wild magic accident in Krynn.