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B2 Keep on the Borderlands Notes

Overview

These notes extract reusable design patterns from retro-module analysis rather than reproducing module content.

Reusable Patterns

  • Frontier stronghold plus nearby hostile complex creates immediate campaign loop.
  • Factional dungeon populations support negotiation and intra-dungeon politics.
  • Restocking keeps repeated expeditions meaningful.
  • Introductory referee guidance can be as valuable as keyed content.

Starter Region Blueprint

For a B2-style campaign start, prepare:

  • One secure settlement with limited services.
  • One nearby hostile complex with multiple internal groups.
  • Two peripheral sites (ruin, hermit, watchtower, shrine).
  • One wilderness route network with at least one dangerous shortcut.

This gives early campaigns a clear home base and immediate expansion vectors.

Frontier Settlement Generator

Create a keep-town in six quick choices:

  1. Anchor function: garrison, trade post, pilgrimage stop, extraction camp.
  2. Material bottleneck: food, timber, ore, coin, medicine, transport animals.
  3. Authority split: commander, steward, faith, guild, militia, crime broker.
  4. Nearby pressure: monster migration, raiders, drought, plague, tax demand.
  5. Social fault line: old settlers vs newcomers, soldiers vs merchants, clergy vs pragmatists.
  6. Opportunity stream: what outsiders can do here that locals cannot.

This prevents the base from becoming a static shop list.

Restock Procedure

After each expedition, run a short reset:

  1. Mark cleared, alerted, and untouched areas.
  2. Move one faction asset to exploit the power gap.
  3. Refill one emptied area with altered occupants or traps.
  4. Update rumors in town to reflect visible consequences.

Restocking should express faction logic, not random replacement.

Stronghold Service Design

Early base settlements feel real when services are constrained.

  • Reliable: mundane supplies, gossip, labor.
  • Limited: healing, specialists, maps, legal cover.
  • Conditional: elite gear, political favors, military support.

Tie conditional services to player reputation or faction alignment.

Keep Politics and Diplomacy Procedure

Between expeditions, resolve one political cycle:

  1. Petition: who asks the keep for action?
  2. Obstruction: who blocks or redirects that request?
  3. Bargain: what tradeoff can resolve the impasse?
  4. Spillover: how does this affect cave factions or border routes?

Turn results into rumors, price shifts, and guard posture changes.

Relationship Web (Keep to Caves)

Map social edges between:

  • Keep authorities
  • Merchant and religious interests
  • Border villages and scouts
  • Cave factions and intermediaries

Mark each edge as stable, strained, covert, or broken. Promote one edge state change each session to keep politics alive.

Domain Pressure Clocks (Frontier)

Track 4 clocks that shape the campaign loop:

  • Border security
  • Food and supply stability
  • Keep legitimacy
  • Cave-faction balance

When any clock hits crisis, force a visible change in services, patrol patterns, or wilderness encounter tone.

Referee Lessons

  • Keep the campaign loop obvious: sortie, return, recover, choose next objective.
  • Use non-hostile monster behavior to avoid one-note attrition play.
  • Let module geography create choices; avoid collapsing routes into linear progress.

Worldbuilding Value

This style turns every small decision into region history. The keep changes, cave factions change, and rumors change. The setting is built through repeated expeditions rather than lore dumps.

See Also

Sources

  • https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/17158/b2-the-keep-on-the-borderlands-basic