Have the Castellan of the Keep hire a mercenary recruitment officer (retired army officer) who then hires the player characters (in far off cities and towns) as mercenaries to capture or kill threats around the Keep. The Keep’s mercenary recruitment officer brings the player characters to the Keep by one or more horse-drawn stagecoaches. It helps the player characters to gain the trust of the Castellan if the PCs are already members of a Lawful temple, a well-known noble family, or a community service organization such as the Harpers of the Forgotten Realms.
More encounters for role-playing. For example, Abraham Lincoln once said, “Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?” I give the same amount of experience points when my player characters win over their enemies with persuasion, as I do when they defeat their enemies with combat.
Create planted fields, farm buildings, and farmers around the Keep. One extended family of five adults and seven adolescent children is sufficient to grow all the food needed by the Keep. The inhabitants of the Keep would need a food source. This food would be easy to grow and Keep without refrigeration, such as rice, pickles, and freshwater fish caught by a professional fisherman and a fisherwoman from the nearby river. They could hire the player characters for a few days of work.
From the map, we see that in some places the river is as wide as the Keep. Thus, I see that the wide river would be used for transportation for people and freight. Between the river and the Keep, create a boat and barge basin, cargo teamsters, and a passenger carriage for important people visiting the Keep. Also, describe an enclosed, riverboat construction warehouse and a slipway, boat ramp. For some money, a family of boat builders will be happy to build the player characters a riverboat to use as a mobile bastion.
In addition, have a boat owned by the national postal service. The riverboat has a crew of postal employees that are responsible for both letters and packages to be delivered to and from the Keep. When the boat is tied to a pier, windows in the hull allow the riverboat to become a mobile post office.
The player characters need to be able to send and receive letters and packages from their families, mentors, and/or leaders of a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) such as a temple or a community service organization such as the Harpers of the Forgotten Realms.
In addition, the player characters’ mentors, nobles, and NGO leaders could write the player characters letters of Recommendation to the Castellan of the Keep. Such correspondence will give the PCs more credibility in the mind of the Castellan.
Imagine adding a road that follows the path of the river. This road is for the transport of passengers and freight, and doubles as a towpath allowing wagons or pulling beasts such as mules to pull barges and riverboats. The player characters can get part-time jobs in a road maintenance crew.
If you have Chaos spies in the Keep, then have Lawful spies in the Caves of Chaos. It is up to the game master to determine if these Lawful spies trust the player characters with their lives or not.
In the Caves of Chaos, put in sources of safe drinking water and latrines. This gives player characters opportunities to capture inhabitants of the Caves of Chaos. Once captured, players can question the inhabitants and/or bring these people to the Keep to be questioned by the Keep officers.
Tell your player characters that there are a set number of days or weeks to finish an individual task. Failure to meet that deadline results in dire and/or deadly problems for the inhabitants of the Keep as well as the travelers on the road and river. The overarching goal of the module is to take down the Shrine of Evil Chaos, before it becomes a serious threat to the safety of the inhabitants of the Keep. Keeping the Keep in Lawful control will cost much less in lives and resources, than attempting to retake the Keep from the control of Chaos soldiers.
Search the Chaos Shrine to find the Shrine records. (A Shrine this important to Chaos would create several important documents.) In turn, the PCs will find out who his higher ranking priests are, (this evil priest needs to give monthly reports to and take new commands from higher level priests who administer the Shrine from a distance), plans on how the Chaos Lords plan to take over the Keep, (the Chaos Lords know that the inhabitants of the Keep are a threat to the Caves of Chaos), how the Chaos soldiers gets supplies, and when the Chaos soldiers are paid by a once a month payroll wagon.
(These Chaos soldiers are evil, yet they still need to be paid for their hard labor and to make up for their abysmal working conditions. The Caves of Chaos is a place few are willing to make their homes. Taking over the payroll wagon before it gets to the Caves of Chaos will demoralize the Chaos soldiers, and encourage a few to leave for better opportunities elsewhere.)
Moreover, information of the evil priest’s background allows the party to know if the priest is willingly working with Chaos, or was his mind enslaved by a relic of evil. If his mind was unwillingly enslaved by evil Chaos, have at least one option for the PCs to free his mind from that evil. The priest’s family may pay the player characters money for the priest to be returned to them, dead or alive.
Within a dust covered book, there are records of where and who made Shrine artifacts. The sacrificial altar was made with stone not found within or near the Caves of Chaos. Thus, this large stone was made and then infused with Chaos magic somewhere else; then it was moved with great expense to the Chaos Shrine. Likewise, the mundane artifacts such as the tapestries depicting obscene images, to the magical infused such as the 4 ancient bronze vessels designed to hold blood from sacrificed victims made to come from outside the Caves of Chaos.
Finding out where and who made these Chaos artifacts will be an important intelligence advantage to Lawful people. For example, the maker’s mark stamped on the bottom of the bronze vessels will point to the craftsperson that made these vessels. A maker’s mark is found on the bottom of a vessel, which is a stamped mark being a sign of the person or workshop responsible for its production. This information will then trigger future quests, where the player characters are asked to seek out and then destroy workshops that create Chaos artifacts, while bringing those who make these vile Chaos artifacts to justice.
Have the Castellan of the Keep give service medals to surviving player characters, while making arrangements for dead player characters to be buried in stone coffins at the Keep’s underground crypt, or be resurrected or reincarnated. The Castellan will also write letters of recommendation for future employment. These letters could open the way for more dangerous assignments, more dangerous foes, and larger rewards.
Give an option for players to take over the Caves of Chaos, clean up the overall taint of Chaos, and then use these caves and the land over these caves as their Bastions. Owning this land will give the players rights to harvest timber and animals on the land, as well as mining any resources under the ground.
In conclusion, a published module is a list of choices for the players to have a few hours of collaborative fun. By expanding the number of player character choices beyond those offered by the original module, our storytelling games become more entertaining for everyone at our tables.
I have a fundamental issue with the Keep, as it was presented in the original module -- namely, there's a pretty good argument for the PCs being the bad guys, because the Keep looks very much like an offensive border fort (designed to capture territory), not a defensive fort (designed to protect territory). Some generally reasonable questions to ask when looking at a structure like that is (unless otherwise, 'yes' is a marker of defensive, 'no' is a marker of offensive).
Is there something it's protecting? Here, I quote the introduction: "You have travelled for many days, leaving the Realm and entering into the wilder area of the Borderlands. Farms and towns have become less frequent and travellers few. The road has climbed higher as you enter the forested and mountainous country." That's a clear 'no'.
Is there an evident threat? Yes, but see next question.
Is the fortification appropriately sized for the threat? No, it's grossly oversized for the threat.
Is the fortification used as a home base for raiding parties? Yes (PCs who are going out to find loot are raiding parties). This is an indicator of an offensive fortress.
Is the fortification used as a home base for defensive patrols? Not as far as we can tell.
I would say all of that can be resolved with a couple of adjustments:
Put it a lot closer to civilization. Even a day's travel to the nearest significant town is plenty for PCs to feel isolated.
Have some quests that are about dealing with malicious raiding parties. Note that this requires there to be something to raid (see #1).
Change the map scale from 10' to 5' (from about 2 acres to about 0.5 acres), and reduce garrison by around 75%. That changes it from a fairly large castle to a fairly small castle.
On page 6 of the “Keep on the Borderlands” module, I read under (DM Notes About The Keep) “Those offenders taken prisoner will be locked in the dungeons under the Keep and punished for their crimes.” Yet, I can’t find any depiction of these dungeons. I believe that the New “Heroes of the Borderlands” D&D Starter Set needs to have written descriptions and maps of the Keep dungeons.
You wrote: Is there something it's protecting? Here, I quote the introduction: "You have travelled for many days, leaving the Realm and entering into the wilder area of the Borderlands. Farms and towns have become less frequent and travelers few. The road has climbed higher as you enter the forested and mountainous country." That's a clear 'no'.
What can a Dungeon Master do to give this keep an overall narrative purpose, other than being a safe fortress to rest and resupply the party? A Game Master should look beyond the pages of this module and see how it fits into the wider world. I am open to continuing this interesting conversation.
The fortress could be protecting the fur trade in this area, the same way that the Fort William fur trade post protected the fur trade in central Canada. DMs should put fur trappers and fur merchants as PCs and/or NPCs inside and outside the Keep. This link can give DMs ideas on how to build their frontier settlement. https://fwhp.ca/
The fortress could be protecting a plan to harvest trees around the Keep, build a large sawmill, and then send cut lumber, in large rafts down the river to Lawful cities and towns. There also might be veins of metals or layers of coal under the ground around the Keep.
The fortress could be protecting the river valley, to prevent the river from being used by a flotilla of Chaos cargo and passenger boats from invading the Lawful cities and towns along the river.
The fortress could be protecting the trade carts and stagecoach passengers on the road and boat traffic on the river. Base this adventure on Fort Boise that was a major rest and resupply trading post for Oregon Trail Travelers.
The mesa (an isolated, flat-topped elevation, ridge or hill) that the fortress is built upon could be protecting a secret. This secret could be an underground temple of Law that was abandoned by a surface Chaos invasion tens of thousands of years ago. Or, the secret could be a rumored dragon’s hoard of treasures located somewhere within the mesa. Base this adventure on the ongoing treasure hunts on Oak Island.
The fortress could be a forward operating base to encourage Lawful settlements in once lawful territory that hundreds of years ago were overrun by Chaos. Imagine that this remote keep could be just one of a dozen such remote fortresses in a Lawful master plan to push Chaos back, while expanding the lands of law on a wide national border. Think of how the ancient Roman Empire expanded from a modest settlement to one of the largest empires of the ancient world. A lawful royal family planning to drive Chaos back for dozens or hundreds of miles will give the player characters many opportunities for collaborative storytelling.
What can a Dungeon Master do to give this keep an overall narrative purpose, other than being a safe fortress to rest and resupply the party? A Game Master should look beyond the pages of this module and see how it fits into the wider world. I am open to continuing this interesting conversation.
There's nothing wrong with a home operating base, it should just be (a) a home base for heroic activity, not loot and pillage, and (b) weak enough to explain the actual need for the PCs.
(a) requires something to protect, that requires actively going out to protect something. That generally means settlements.
(b) is much better served by a keep with a garrison of 40 than a keep with a garrison of 130.
Looking over your suggestions, most of them don't help any of my issues, but (3) is interesting, because it makes me notice something I was ignoring: that's a quite large meandering river there. It's no Mississippi river, but it's (a) not something you see in mountainous terrain, and (b) probably navigable. Which brings up another traditional (if, um, bad) use for such fortresses: local robber barons forcing traffic to pay tolls (I mean, they might also provide some protection... but it's mostly about the tolls). And it appears to flow west to east, which is definitely strange, because the normal settlement pattern for rivers is to spread from mouth upstream, but it appears that the area actually protected by the keep is upstream, not downstream.
The most consistent interpretation of the positioning of the keep is that there's a mountain range to the west that forms a natural border and that the keep is a forward operating base for the conquest of the lands east of the border, but, well... that gets back to my 'the PCs are the bad guys' issue.
When originally published, the concept behind the Keep on the Borderlands was the following;
The KEEP is a microcosm, a world in miniature. Within its walls your players will find what is basically a small village with a social order, and will meet opponents of a sort. Outside lies the way to the Caves of Chaos where monsters abound. As you build the campaign setting, you can use this module as a guide. Humankind and its allies have established strongholds - whether fortresses or organized countries - where the players’ characters will base themselves, interact with the society, and occasionally encounter foes of one sort or another. Surrounding these strongholds are lands which may be hostile to the bold adventurers. Perhaps there are areas of wilderness filled with dangerous creatures, or maybe the neighboring area is a land where chaos and evil rule...
Ahead, up the winding road, atop a sheer-wailed mount of stone, looms the great KEEP. Here, at one of civilization’s strongholds between good lands and bad, you will base yourselves and equip for forays against the wicked monsters who lurk in the wilds. Somewhere nearby, amidst the dark forests and tangled fens, are the Caves of Chaos where fell creatures lie in wait. All this you know, but before you dare adventure into such regions you must become acquainted with the other members of your group, for each life will depend upon the ability of the others to cooperate against the common foe.
I get pantagruel’s idea about the keep being, basically, the first step in colonizing an area settled by sentient beings. But, as I realize they know, in the days the module was written, the goblins and orcs and such were all irredeemably evil. Killing the goblin babies was even expected, iirc, as they would, without question or exception, grow up to be evil goblin adults. I’m not trying to get into the question of whether or not that’s a good thing, or saying I prefer the older white-hat/black-hat style. It’s more just, even if it were an offensive keep, they are working against an evil group that will always be evil, with no room for growth, change or nuance. So it’s hard to say the PCs are the bad guys.
That said, I am interested to see how they handle it on the new version. I realize it won’t be difficult to say, “not all goblins are evil, but these ones are.” I’m just curious about what they come up with.
I think the simplest way to adjust the keep for my concerns, without directly changing its use (and, honestly, making it potentially a better seed for a longer campaign) is some background changes. For example, consider this:
The keep was originally established by a kingdom downriver (to the east). That kingdom no longer exists, it was overrun by Chaos relatively recently, but whoever/whatever overran it (details not important at this stage) hasn't gotten around to dealing with the keep. The PCs come from a neighboring kingdom that lies on the other side of a mountain range, and is near a pass through the mountains. For simplicity, we'll call these the Eastern Kingdom and the Western Kingdom.
The river the keep is on originates in those mountains, and ceases to be navigable shortly to the west (a waterfall or fork). The original purpose of the keep was to protect a transshipment area that moved cargo from boats to carts and vice versa, around which a small town had grown, but trade has largely dried up due to, well, being overrun by Chaos, and the town is now more or less a ghost town (good place for PCs to go poking around).
The Castellan still formally owes allegiance to the Eastern Kingdom, but as his overlords appear to have vanished, he's had to scramble for alternative sources of support. The Western Kingdom isn't willing to send an army, but supplies and young seekers of fortune... that cost is well worth it to keep an eye on the problem.
Most of the factions in the cave are, honestly, just bandits that would be a problem if more trade were passing through, but are currently not a priority. However, there's the worry that whatever took out the Eastern Kingdom will eventually turn its eyes on the keep... perhaps the cult of chaos in the caves is related?
Longer term, having a mysterious kingdom-destroying threat off downriver is great campaign seed. I can't think of any Forgotten Realms adventures that are willing to just destroy a country to set up a BBEG (outside of the FR, there is Dragonlance... so probably have a primary threat that isn't dragons. Given the theme of the evil chaos cultists, a lich-king probably fits the bill, but probably best to just leave it an open question for the DM and/or future adventures).
If interestedted, they elaborated more on it's history with Return to the Keep on the Borderlands back in AD&D 2nd Edition;
The Keep
The Keep and the surrounding swamp and forest actually occu py quite a small area of land, only a few miles across. As such, this adventure can easily be dropped into almost any fantasy campaign.If you're using the World of Greyhawk setting, the Keep should be located in the southwesterrunost part of the Yeomanry, a lordless land of freehold farmers shielded by mon ster-haunted mountains from the great desert beyond. The official name of the Keep is "Kendall Keep"; the lord who built it named the place after a deceased adventuring partner. However, residents and travelers alike universally know it mere ly as "The Keep."
History of the Keep
The Keep was founded some thirty years ago by Macsen Wledig, a successful adventurer who, having reached the stage in his career when he had begun to attract followers, decided to retire and build his own stronghold with the proceeds of his exploits. He chose an area on the fringe of civilized lands where he could carve out his own little fief. Having chosen a readily defensible spot not claimed by any lord, he proceeded to build a stronghold atop a low flat hill, not too far from an important trade route. He planned to drive all the monsters from the land, save for a few which he intended to allow to skulk in odd comers, feeling that the occasional monster-hunt might prove good sport when he began to miss the old days of dungeon delving and deeds of valor. Then, peasants and freemen attracted by the protection of his fortress would settle nearby, and within a few years he would have his own village at the heart of a region of well-defended farms and fields, the beginnings of his own barony.
Such, at any rate, was his plan. In the event, Macsen found that retirement agreed with him. He devoted all his time to man aging the affairs of his garrison and the Keep, leaving the region beyond untouched save for the occasional patrol, and even these grew less frequent as the years passed. It was left to others, themselves aspiring young adventurers even as the Lord of the Keep had once been, to clean out the humanoids of the nearby Caves of Chaos, raid the lizard men of the swamp, and eliminate those threats to his little settlement. Eventually the decimated lizard men became so few that they were shy and rarely met with, the emptied caves offered neither treasure nor glory to explorers, and would-be heroes out to make a name for them selves moved on to other regions.
Thus things remained for many years, until the disaster of war overtook the land. The Keep itself was unaffected, being far from the centers of civilization and the other prizes of war, but Macsen could not stand by and watch his homeland far to the north be destroyed, not while he was still hale enough to wield a blade. Gathering all his troops except for a few whom he left behind to man the Keep until he returned, he marched away and was never seen in the south again, falling in battle with all his men around him. When peace came at least, word of the disaster finally reached the Keep. The castellan long held out hope that the rumors were false, but at last had to admit that his master, and almost all his own comrades, were dead. Fortunately, Macsen had chosen his castellan well. Devereau was a faithful henchm.an, an archer who only remained behind because of a crippling wound received in an early adventure; had he been able to march alongside his lord he would have died with the rest. A more ambitious man might have declared him self the new Lord; a less deliberate one would have recruited new troops and thus brought in strangers, forever changing in character of the original settlement. Devereau did neither. After calling a meeting attended by every man, woman, and child in the Keep, he discussed their situation and put before them three options: to abandon the Keep and each return to his or her homeland, dividing the remaining treasury equally; to invite a new lord or lady to come and to obey his or her will as they had Macsen's; or to appoint a new leader from among their number. Following much debate, they chose the last of these, asking Macsen to continue as castellan and see them through the diffi cult times ahead, renewing his appointment at a town meeting at the end of each year.
In the years since, the Keep has slowly rebuilt its strength. The profession garrison of the past has been replaced by a militia, with every farmer and craftsman (and -woman) serving a stint of guard duty in rotation. Much of the old barracks and parade ground have been transformed into vegetable plots (the better to feed the population in time of crisis) and living quarters for inhabitants of the Keep and their families. The wisdom of this policy has been tested and proven: Three times the Keep has been attacked or besieged by humanoids or bandits, and each time it has held out and overcome its foes. Today it is a small but thriving community once more, less populous than of old but warded by people who have invested years of hard work into making this their home and been willing to defend it to the bitter end.
Many great suggestions here. Without knowing, i always seen the Keep as a sort of ''Point of Light'' before the term was coined in 4E, a good bright spot in a dark dangerous place.
The funny thing is the very first 5E i ran back in 2012 was in these Caves during early phases of alpha playtesting, boy did the game evolved since then!
For river traffic, my PCs arrived at the Keep’s boat dock. They were using a boat design that I copied from Lewis and Clark's shallow draft keelboat. Crewed by the PCs, this is good transportation and home base for a party. I hope a similar keelboat is included in the Heroes of the Borderlands starter set.
You wrote, “…that gets back to my 'the PCs are the bad guys' issue.”
Fair enough, yet Gary Gygax came from tabletop miniatures wargaming, where all players could do is fight their opponents’ miniatures and farming for experience points. So, how do we players move beyond roll playing and to role playing?
Also, it is up to you and your fellow players to decide how your group is going to interact with the Game Master’s NPCs. Decades ago, I ran this module with a group of University of Minnesota students who saw kobolds as more than chaotic evil foes worthy of nothing more than experience point farming.
In the original German folklore, “A kobold is a general or generic name for the household spirit (hausgeist) in German folklore. It may invisibly make noises (i.e., be a poltergeist), or helpfully perform kitchen chores or stable work. But it can be a prankster as well. It may expect a bribe or offering of milk, etc. for its efforts or good behavior. When mistreated (cf. fig. right), its reprisal can be utterly cruel.”
My kobolds have good behavior when treated well, or have bad behavior when mistreated. Because, if kobolds are always evil no matter how they are treated; they become targets for experience point farming. This in turn quickly makes encounters with kobolds repetitive and boring for me and my players.
In my campaign, my party’s persuasive bard asked the Kobold Chieftain if following the creed of Chaos was working out for himself and his tribe. After talking for a few minutes, this Chieftain admitted that his followers, most of them blood relatives, are abused, robbed, or murdered and sometimes sacrificed on the altar located in the Chapel of Evil Chaos by the more bloodthirsty species of the Caves of Chaos.
My bard was able to persuade the Kobold Chieftain that he and his tribal members would live better lives, by taking up the creed of Law. That his people would eat healthier food, wear better clothing, live in better homes, and be more protected from harm, while creating much needed farms around the Keep; then to continue to follow the creed of Chaos, being robbed and murdered for their misplaced allegiance. As our group’s Dungeon Master, I found the bard’s player talk was persuasive; the bard didn’t need a dice roll, as his words alone were sufficient to persuade the Kobold Chieftain.
With the Castellan’s assistance, my player characters bought many expensive tools and a cartload of different seeds, as well as building underground homes for the rehabilitated Kobolds to create fruitful farms around the Keep. By growing several types of crops, caring for farm animals for meat, as well as fishing the river for fish these Kobolds made both themselves and the Keep inhabitants more food secure.
Note: I give the same amount of experience points when my player characters win over their enemies with persuasion, as I do when they defeat their enemies with combat. As Abraham Lincoln once said, “Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”
First, I like those 2024 kobolds that are cousins to Chromatic dragons. This allows first level player characters to encounter a type of dragon species.
Second, kobolds are related to dragons and therefore have a large amount of respect for dragons and those related to dragons, such as my player character dragonborn.
Third, I like that kobolds are no longer smaller versions of gnolls.
Lastly, my players talked about rolling up a party of lawful kobolds to spy on the other species of the Caves of Chaos. They didn’t follow that path, but it is an option I think would be fun for when I run the Heroes of the Borderlands starter set.
To sum up, it is up to you and your fellow players to decide if your PCs will follow the path of good or follow the path of evil.
To sum up, it is up to you and your fellow players to decide if your PCs will follow the path of good or follow the path of evil.
Well, to some degree.
In general, for 'good' PCs to go into a cave and slaughter everything there, they should have reasonably reliable information that bad things are happening in there. If we actually look through the areas of the caves of chaos that include sentient creatures:
A (Kobolds): based on area 3, they're eating people... but zero information to clue in the PCs.
B, C (Orcs): they're using heads to warn off intruders... but that's not clearly evil. Other than that, nothing.
D (Goblins): based on area 21, they're stealing and looting... but zero information to clue in the PCs.
E (Ogre): appears to be a mercenary.
F (Hobgoblins): they're capturing and torturing people, and there's a rumor at the keep about a captive merchant. Unfortunately, no way to follow the rumors to actually reach the hobgoblins.
H (Bugbears): they appear to be stealing from someone, and capturing slaves -- but mostly from the other factions at the caves, so no likely way for the PCs to know anything about it.
I (Minotaur): definitely a nasty customer... with no clues.
To the best of my ability, I will attempt to answer your question if the player characters could be considered the “bad guys” or not. Please turn to page six of the module and then read the first paragraph of the “background”.
“The Realm of mankind is narrow and constricted. Always the forces of Chaos press upon its borders, seeking to enslave its populace, **** its riches, and steal its treasures. If it were not for a stout few, many in the Realm would indeed fall prey to the evil which surrounds them. Yet, there are always certain exceptional and brave members of humanity, as well as similar individuals among its allies — dwarves, elves, and halflings — who rise above the common level and join battle to stave off the darkness which would otherwise overwhelm the land. Bold adventurers from the Realm set off for the Borderlands to seek their fortune. It is these adventurers who, provided they survive the challenge, carry the battle to the enemy. Such adventurers meet the forces of Chaos in a testing ground where only the fittest will return to relate the tale. Here, these individuals will become skilled in their profession, be it fighter or magic-user, cleric or thief. They will be tried in the fire of combat, those who return, hardened and more fit. True, some few who do survive the process will turn from Law and good and serve the masters of Chaos, but most will remain faithful and ready to fight chaos wherever it threatens to infect the Realm.”
Gary Gygax and his creative team created a module where Lawful meaning good player characters fight against Chaos NPCs meaning irredeemable evil. Having PCs being the “Good Guys” while the inhabitants of the Caves of Chaos being the “Bad Guys”. Based on tabletop miniatures combat, these Chaos NPCs are for experience point farming and walking loot boxes. For example, in the Lord of the Rings novels by J.R.R. Tolkien, none of the main characters attempt to talk the Orcs of Mordor out of serving the Dark Lord Sauron. Gary Gygax has hard-wired those game mechanics ideas into the text.
Gary Gygax should have asked the Dungeon Master to ask each player character to describe in their background on how Chaos agents have harmed their family and friends; described the reason why they walked away from the safety of the core of the Realm to reach the Borderlands. If a player character says that their character wants to “Fight the Chaos and Evil” that is a vague answer. Instead, it is better to have a player character say, “I want to find and then bring to justice the Chaos priest that murdered my parents to give their blood and souls to an evil immortal.”
Remember, just because Gygax said it doesn't mean it's a good idea. Simple RvB is fine for a wargame, but in a heroic RPG (or fiction) it's expected that the PCs are foiling evil, which means that the bad guys have to demonstrate their evil.
Gary Gygax and his creative team created a module where Lawful meaning good player characters fight against Chaos NPCs meaning irredeemable evil. Having PCs being the “Good Guys” while the inhabitants of the Caves of Chaos being the “Bad Guys”. Based on tabletop miniatures combat, these Chaos NPCs are for experience point farming and walking loot boxes. For example, in the Lord of the Rings novels by J.R.R. Tolkien, none of the main characters attempt to talk the Orcs of Mordor out of serving the Dark Lord Sauron. Gary Gygax has hard-wired those game mechanics ideas into the text.
Gary Gygax should have asked the Dungeon Master to ask each player character to describe in their background on how Chaos agents have harmed their family and friends; described the reason why they walked away from the safety of the core of the Realm to reach the Borderlands. If a player character says that their character wants to “Fight the Chaos and Evil” that is a vague answer. Instead, it is better to have a player character say, “I want to find and then bring to justice the Chaos priest that murdered my parents to give their blood and souls to an evil immortal.”
This precisely.
Classic D&D for which this module was made (B/X) tried very hard to remove moral quandaries about killing monsters out of the game by clearly identifying "things you could kill without morale concerns". The problem was that, in the same breath as Gygax tries to convince you "these are evil monsters", he also outlines the fact that these are societies with their own culture, families and rules as you explore the caves of chaos. These come in the form of descriptive queues, but there is all manner of evidence that the Caves of Chaos aren't just a base for evil monsters. They are not the purely evil killers with no redeeming qualities one is sort of led to believe at the start once you just look under the covers a little bit.
It's a long-standing issue with a lot of the adventures from old-school D&D days. In the monster manual, it says "Orcs are evil", but when you read/play the adventures you realize that, this is clearly not necessarily the case. Players using nothing more than their natural sense of right and wrong recognize that just from the evidence presented to them as they play through these adventures, Keep on the Borderland in particular. At some point for example you might run across Kobold children and you have to decide what to do with them now that you had orphaned them by murdering their families. Are Kobold children evil monsters, members of Chaos?
These sort of moral dilemmas I think are good for the game and it's actually part of what makes Keep on the Borderlands such a memorable adventure because it's one the results of the adventure that players would often question whether or not they were really the good guys. I don't know if this was Gygax's intention or not, but that is very much what happens when you run this module. I have run it many times and never has any player walked out of that adventure feeling completely justified with the task of protecting the keep by infiltrating the Caves of Chaos. There are always these questions of moral right and wrong.
I'm actually quite curious to see how Wizards of the Coast's interpretation of this module in the upcoming starter box will handle this aspect of this module. Especially curious to see how they handle the removal of certain species like Orcs from the Monster Manual, in which Orcs are one of the prominent monsters of the Caves of Chaos.
I'm having similar moral quandries with one of the games I'm playing in at the moment. We're playing Oracle of War, an Eberron set campaign originally written for Adventure League. It's a decent campaign once you get used to how episodic it is but the further we go the more we're all asking if we're the bad guys because the "evil Warforge raiding nearby towns" are essentially an oppressed ethnic minority that want to settle in a place no one else can live due to magical fallout and adventurers keep being sent to harass them. I'm not entirely convinced it's intentional either
I'm having similar moral quandries with one of the games I'm playing in at the moment. We're playing Oracle of War, an Eberron set campaign originally written for Adventure League. It's a decent campaign once you get used to how episodic it is but the further we go the more we're all asking if we're the bad guys because the "evil Warforge raiding nearby towns" are essentially an oppressed ethnic minority that want to settle in a place no one else can live due to magical fallout and adventurers keep being sent to harass them. I'm not entirely convinced it's intentional either
This happens a lot in adventure writing and its very often not an intentional part of the story that the players discover.
I think its kind of impart due to the fact that the concept of fantasy adventures by and large is that they represent mercenaries to some extent. This used to be a supported concept (1 gold = 1 XP) in older editions, but even without these core rules to support the premise, players have a tendency to exhibit mercenary behavior anyway. Think about how typical it is for players to respond to a quest to do something in an adventure with, what's in it for us? What's the reward? Why would we risk our lives for these strangers?
I think to some degree its just an inherent part of D&D adventurers that they are not really "good guys" by the super hero definition. Or perhaps better to say that characters are more Batman good guys than they are Superman good guys, if that makes sense. Like, fantasy heroes in D&D are not really purely good guys and that is somewhat supported by the fact that their sort of primary "routine" is murdering things. They are not hunters, taking down game. They are quite literally arming themselves to the teeth with weapons, armor and magic, going somewhere and very often just acting as judge, jury and executioner with no qualms about it simply because "that's their job or their task".
I guess what I'm saying is that by any measure of real-world morals, almost all adventuring heroes are basically professional killers. I would say that a medieval fantasy world has a different moral compass. Like if you see a group of Orcs robbing a villager as an adventuring hero, you murder them without consequence and within the scope a fantasy world, this is justifiable and good, you can expect the town to reward you for your heroism even if you have no actual police authority. Its normalized within the context of the D&D fantasy setting and only feels immoral because you're placing your own worldview on the part of a fantasy character living in a fantasy world. The rules are not the same.
My characters, whether ones I'm playing or NPCs when I DM, do tend to refer to themselves and the players as mercenaries rather adventurers for exactly that reason and I even had one player object until I pointed out exactly what you describe
My characters, whether ones I'm playing or NPCs when I DM, do tend to refer to themselves and the players as mercenaries rather adventurers for exactly that reason and I even had one player object until I pointed out exactly what you describe
It's kind of an evolution thing. I think modern players are a lot more socially, politically, and culturally sensitive and active, so this is reflected in how they play and think about D&D. This has gotten to the point that we are altering the game fundamentally, take the whole Orcs are not monsters thing. I never fully understood why we chose Orcs, but not say Kuo-toa. Why did fish people not get any love?
Roleplaying games are about taking on a role, which by it's definition means playing a character that most likely has a different moral compass and values than you do, will be from a different culture than yours. Not everyone can easily adapt to that concept and more and more people struggle with the ideas behind "acting" as someone else always finding connections between the real world and the fantasy world we are portraying.
When I'm playing Arkadias the Necromancer, I mercilessly murder things, raise them from the dead and make them kill things on my behalf, casting them aside when I'm done with their corpse. That is not a reflection of my personal morals (or anyone else's that I have ever met for that matter), it's me pretending to be a character in a fantasy game. But I can understand that if you're looking for hidden meaning behind it, I'm sure you'll find it and when you do, that might become a struggle for you.
What I find interesting is how big of a problem morales have become. I mean we used to play a game called Vampire The Masquerade and we were literal evil monsters, yet I don't recall anyone ever having problems with it. I wonder how people react to The World of Darkness today?
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Create planted fields, farm buildings, and farmers around the Keep. One extended family of five adults and seven adolescent children is sufficient to grow all the food needed by the Keep. The inhabitants of the Keep would need a food source. This food would be easy to grow and Keep without refrigeration, such as rice, pickles, and freshwater fish caught by a professional fisherman and a fisherwoman from the nearby river. They could hire the player characters for a few days of work.
From the map, we see that in some places the river is as wide as the Keep. Thus, I see that the wide river would be used for transportation for people and freight. Between the river and the Keep, create a boat and barge basin, cargo teamsters, and a passenger carriage for important people visiting the Keep. Also, describe an enclosed, riverboat construction warehouse and a slipway, boat ramp. For some money, a family of boat builders will be happy to build the player characters a riverboat to use as a mobile bastion.
In addition, have a boat owned by the national postal service. The riverboat has a crew of postal employees that are responsible for both letters and packages to be delivered to and from the Keep. When the boat is tied to a pier, windows in the hull allow the riverboat to become a mobile post office.
The player characters need to be able to send and receive letters and packages from their families, mentors, and/or leaders of a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) such as a temple or a community service organization such as the Harpers of the Forgotten Realms.
In addition, the player characters’ mentors, nobles, and NGO leaders could write the player characters letters of Recommendation to the Castellan of the Keep. Such correspondence will give the PCs more credibility in the mind of the Castellan.
Imagine adding a road that follows the path of the river. This road is for the transport of passengers and freight, and doubles as a towpath allowing wagons or pulling beasts such as mules to pull barges and riverboats. The player characters can get part-time jobs in a road maintenance crew.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towpath
If you have Chaos spies in the Keep, then have Lawful spies in the Caves of Chaos. It is up to the game master to determine if these Lawful spies trust the player characters with their lives or not.
In the Caves of Chaos, put in sources of safe drinking water and latrines. This gives player characters opportunities to capture inhabitants of the Caves of Chaos. Once captured, players can question the inhabitants and/or bring these people to the Keep to be questioned by the Keep officers.
Tell your player characters that there are a set number of days or weeks to finish an individual task. Failure to meet that deadline results in dire and/or deadly problems for the inhabitants of the Keep as well as the travelers on the road and river. The overarching goal of the module is to take down the Shrine of Evil Chaos, before it becomes a serious threat to the safety of the inhabitants of the Keep. Keeping the Keep in Lawful control will cost much less in lives and resources, than attempting to retake the Keep from the control of Chaos soldiers.
Search the Chaos Shrine to find the Shrine records. (A Shrine this important to Chaos would create several important documents.) In turn, the PCs will find out who his higher ranking priests are, (this evil priest needs to give monthly reports to and take new commands from higher level priests who administer the Shrine from a distance), plans on how the Chaos Lords plan to take over the Keep, (the Chaos Lords know that the inhabitants of the Keep are a threat to the Caves of Chaos), how the Chaos soldiers gets supplies, and when the Chaos soldiers are paid by a once a month payroll wagon.
(These Chaos soldiers are evil, yet they still need to be paid for their hard labor and to make up for their abysmal working conditions. The Caves of Chaos is a place few are willing to make their homes. Taking over the payroll wagon before it gets to the Caves of Chaos will demoralize the Chaos soldiers, and encourage a few to leave for better opportunities elsewhere.)
Moreover, information of the evil priest’s background allows the party to know if the priest is willingly working with Chaos, or was his mind enslaved by a relic of evil. If his mind was unwillingly enslaved by evil Chaos, have at least one option for the PCs to free his mind from that evil. The priest’s family may pay the player characters money for the priest to be returned to them, dead or alive.
Within a dust covered book, there are records of where and who made Shrine artifacts. The sacrificial altar was made with stone not found within or near the Caves of Chaos. Thus, this large stone was made and then infused with Chaos magic somewhere else; then it was moved with great expense to the Chaos Shrine. Likewise, the mundane artifacts such as the tapestries depicting obscene images, to the magical infused such as the 4 ancient bronze vessels designed to hold blood from sacrificed victims made to come from outside the Caves of Chaos.
Finding out where and who made these Chaos artifacts will be an important intelligence advantage to Lawful people. For example, the maker’s mark stamped on the bottom of the bronze vessels will point to the craftsperson that made these vessels. A maker’s mark is found on the bottom of a vessel, which is a stamped mark being a sign of the person or workshop responsible for its production. This information will then trigger future quests, where the player characters are asked to seek out and then destroy workshops that create Chaos artifacts, while bringing those who make these vile Chaos artifacts to justice.Have the Castellan of the Keep give service medals to surviving player characters, while making arrangements for dead player characters to be buried in stone coffins at the Keep’s underground crypt, or be resurrected or reincarnated. The Castellan will also write letters of recommendation for future employment. These letters could open the way for more dangerous assignments, more dangerous foes, and larger rewards.
Give an option for players to take over the Caves of Chaos, clean up the overall taint of Chaos, and then use these caves and the land over these caves as their Bastions. Owning this land will give the players rights to harvest timber and animals on the land, as well as mining any resources under the ground.
In conclusion, a published module is a list of choices for the players to have a few hours of collaborative fun. By expanding the number of player character choices beyond those offered by the original module, our storytelling games become more entertaining for everyone at our tables.
I have a fundamental issue with the Keep, as it was presented in the original module -- namely, there's a pretty good argument for the PCs being the bad guys, because the Keep looks very much like an offensive border fort (designed to capture territory), not a defensive fort (designed to protect territory). Some generally reasonable questions to ask when looking at a structure like that is (unless otherwise, 'yes' is a marker of defensive, 'no' is a marker of offensive).
I would say all of that can be resolved with a couple of adjustments:
On page 6 of the “Keep on the Borderlands” module, I read under (DM Notes About The Keep) “Those offenders taken prisoner will be locked in the dungeons under the Keep and punished for their crimes.” Yet, I can’t find any depiction of these dungeons. I believe that the New “Heroes of the Borderlands” D&D Starter Set needs to have written descriptions and maps of the Keep dungeons.
You wrote: Is there something it's protecting? Here, I quote the introduction: "You have travelled for many days, leaving the Realm and entering into the wilder area of the Borderlands. Farms and towns have become less frequent and travelers few. The road has climbed higher as you enter the forested and mountainous country." That's a clear 'no'.
What can a Dungeon Master do to give this keep an overall narrative purpose, other than being a safe fortress to rest and resupply the party? A Game Master should look beyond the pages of this module and see how it fits into the wider world. I am open to continuing this interesting conversation.
There's nothing wrong with a home operating base, it should just be (a) a home base for heroic activity, not loot and pillage, and (b) weak enough to explain the actual need for the PCs.
(a) requires something to protect, that requires actively going out to protect something. That generally means settlements.
(b) is much better served by a keep with a garrison of 40 than a keep with a garrison of 130.
Looking over your suggestions, most of them don't help any of my issues, but (3) is interesting, because it makes me notice something I was ignoring: that's a quite large meandering river there. It's no Mississippi river, but it's (a) not something you see in mountainous terrain, and (b) probably navigable. Which brings up another traditional (if, um, bad) use for such fortresses: local robber barons forcing traffic to pay tolls (I mean, they might also provide some protection... but it's mostly about the tolls). And it appears to flow west to east, which is definitely strange, because the normal settlement pattern for rivers is to spread from mouth upstream, but it appears that the area actually protected by the keep is upstream, not downstream.
The most consistent interpretation of the positioning of the keep is that there's a mountain range to the west that forms a natural border and that the keep is a forward operating base for the conquest of the lands east of the border, but, well... that gets back to my 'the PCs are the bad guys' issue.
When originally published, the concept behind the Keep on the Borderlands was the following;
I get pantagruel’s idea about the keep being, basically, the first step in colonizing an area settled by sentient beings. But, as I realize they know, in the days the module was written, the goblins and orcs and such were all irredeemably evil. Killing the goblin babies was even expected, iirc, as they would, without question or exception, grow up to be evil goblin adults.
I’m not trying to get into the question of whether or not that’s a good thing, or saying I prefer the older white-hat/black-hat style. It’s more just, even if it were an offensive keep, they are working against an evil group that will always be evil, with no room for growth, change or nuance. So it’s hard to say the PCs are the bad guys.
That said, I am interested to see how they handle it on the new version. I realize it won’t be difficult to say, “not all goblins are evil, but these ones are.” I’m just curious about what they come up with.
I think the simplest way to adjust the keep for my concerns, without directly changing its use (and, honestly, making it potentially a better seed for a longer campaign) is some background changes. For example, consider this:
The keep was originally established by a kingdom downriver (to the east). That kingdom no longer exists, it was overrun by Chaos relatively recently, but whoever/whatever overran it (details not important at this stage) hasn't gotten around to dealing with the keep. The PCs come from a neighboring kingdom that lies on the other side of a mountain range, and is near a pass through the mountains. For simplicity, we'll call these the Eastern Kingdom and the Western Kingdom.
The river the keep is on originates in those mountains, and ceases to be navigable shortly to the west (a waterfall or fork). The original purpose of the keep was to protect a transshipment area that moved cargo from boats to carts and vice versa, around which a small town had grown, but trade has largely dried up due to, well, being overrun by Chaos, and the town is now more or less a ghost town (good place for PCs to go poking around).
The Castellan still formally owes allegiance to the Eastern Kingdom, but as his overlords appear to have vanished, he's had to scramble for alternative sources of support. The Western Kingdom isn't willing to send an army, but supplies and young seekers of fortune... that cost is well worth it to keep an eye on the problem.
Most of the factions in the cave are, honestly, just bandits that would be a problem if more trade were passing through, but are currently not a priority. However, there's the worry that whatever took out the Eastern Kingdom will eventually turn its eyes on the keep... perhaps the cult of chaos in the caves is related?
Longer term, having a mysterious kingdom-destroying threat off downriver is great campaign seed. I can't think of any Forgotten Realms adventures that are willing to just destroy a country to set up a BBEG (outside of the FR, there is Dragonlance... so probably have a primary threat that isn't dragons. Given the theme of the evil chaos cultists, a lich-king probably fits the bill, but probably best to just leave it an open question for the DM and/or future adventures).
If interestedted, they elaborated more on it's history with Return to the Keep on the Borderlands back in AD&D 2nd Edition;
Many great suggestions here. Without knowing, i always seen the Keep as a sort of ''Point of Light'' before the term was coined in 4E, a good bright spot in a dark dangerous place.
The funny thing is the very first 5E i ran back in 2012 was in these Caves during early phases of alpha playtesting, boy did the game evolved since then!
For river traffic, my PCs arrived at the Keep’s boat dock. They were using a boat design that I copied from Lewis and Clark's shallow draft keelboat. Crewed by the PCs, this is good transportation and home base for a party. I hope a similar keelboat is included in the Heroes of the Borderlands starter set.
Lewis and Clark's keelboat - Wikipedia
You wrote, “…that gets back to my 'the PCs are the bad guys' issue.”
Fair enough, yet Gary Gygax came from tabletop miniatures wargaming, where all players could do is fight their opponents’ miniatures and farming for experience points. So, how do we players move beyond roll playing and to role playing?
Also, it is up to you and your fellow players to decide how your group is going to interact with the Game Master’s NPCs. Decades ago, I ran this module with a group of University of Minnesota students who saw kobolds as more than chaotic evil foes worthy of nothing more than experience point farming.
In the original German folklore, “A kobold is a general or generic name for the household spirit (hausgeist) in German folklore. It may invisibly make noises (i.e., be a poltergeist), or helpfully perform kitchen chores or stable work. But it can be a prankster as well. It may expect a bribe or offering of milk, etc. for its efforts or good behavior. When mistreated (cf. fig. right), its reprisal can be utterly cruel.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobold
My kobolds have good behavior when treated well, or have bad behavior when mistreated. Because, if kobolds are always evil no matter how they are treated; they become targets for experience point farming. This in turn quickly makes encounters with kobolds repetitive and boring for me and my players.
In my campaign, my party’s persuasive bard asked the Kobold Chieftain if following the creed of Chaos was working out for himself and his tribe. After talking for a few minutes, this Chieftain admitted that his followers, most of them blood relatives, are abused, robbed, or murdered and sometimes sacrificed on the altar located in the Chapel of Evil Chaos by the more bloodthirsty species of the Caves of Chaos.
My bard was able to persuade the Kobold Chieftain that he and his tribal members would live better lives, by taking up the creed of Law. That his people would eat healthier food, wear better clothing, live in better homes, and be more protected from harm, while creating much needed farms around the Keep; then to continue to follow the creed of Chaos, being robbed and murdered for their misplaced allegiance. As our group’s Dungeon Master, I found the bard’s player talk was persuasive; the bard didn’t need a dice roll, as his words alone were sufficient to persuade the Kobold Chieftain.
With the Castellan’s assistance, my player characters bought many expensive tools and a cartload of different seeds, as well as building underground homes for the rehabilitated Kobolds to create fruitful farms around the Keep. By growing several types of crops, caring for farm animals for meat, as well as fishing the river for fish these Kobolds made both themselves and the Keep inhabitants more food secure.
Note: I give the same amount of experience points when my player characters win over their enemies with persuasion, as I do when they defeat their enemies with combat. As Abraham Lincoln once said, “Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”
First, I like those 2024 kobolds that are cousins to Chromatic dragons. This allows first level player characters to encounter a type of dragon species.
Second, kobolds are related to dragons and therefore have a large amount of respect for dragons and those related to dragons, such as my player character dragonborn.
Third, I like that kobolds are no longer smaller versions of gnolls.
Lastly, my players talked about rolling up a party of lawful kobolds to spy on the other species of the Caves of Chaos. They didn’t follow that path, but it is an option I think would be fun for when I run the Heroes of the Borderlands starter set.
To sum up, it is up to you and your fellow players to decide if your PCs will follow the path of good or follow the path of evil.
Well, to some degree.
In general, for 'good' PCs to go into a cave and slaughter everything there, they should have reasonably reliable information that bad things are happening in there. If we actually look through the areas of the caves of chaos that include sentient creatures:
To the best of my ability, I will attempt to answer your question if the player characters could be considered the “bad guys” or not. Please turn to page six of the module and then read the first paragraph of the “background”.
“The Realm of mankind is narrow and constricted. Always the forces of Chaos press upon its borders, seeking to enslave its populace, **** its riches, and steal its treasures. If it were not for a stout few, many in the Realm would indeed fall prey to the evil which surrounds them. Yet, there are always certain exceptional and brave members of humanity, as well as similar individuals among its allies — dwarves, elves, and halflings — who rise above the common level and join battle to stave off the darkness which would otherwise overwhelm the land. Bold adventurers from the Realm set off for the Borderlands to seek their fortune. It is these adventurers who, provided they survive the challenge, carry the battle to the enemy. Such adventurers meet the forces of Chaos in a testing ground where only the fittest will return to relate the tale. Here, these individuals will become skilled in their profession, be it fighter or magic-user, cleric or thief. They will be tried in the fire of combat, those who return, hardened and more fit. True, some few who do survive the process will turn from Law and good and serve the masters of Chaos, but most will remain faithful and ready to fight chaos wherever it threatens to infect the Realm.”
Gary Gygax and his creative team created a module where Lawful meaning good player characters fight against Chaos NPCs meaning irredeemable evil. Having PCs being the “Good Guys” while the inhabitants of the Caves of Chaos being the “Bad Guys”. Based on tabletop miniatures combat, these Chaos NPCs are for experience point farming and walking loot boxes. For example, in the Lord of the Rings novels by J.R.R. Tolkien, none of the main characters attempt to talk the Orcs of Mordor out of serving the Dark Lord Sauron. Gary Gygax has hard-wired those game mechanics ideas into the text.
Gary Gygax should have asked the Dungeon Master to ask each player character to describe in their background on how Chaos agents have harmed their family and friends; described the reason why they walked away from the safety of the core of the Realm to reach the Borderlands. If a player character says that their character wants to “Fight the Chaos and Evil” that is a vague answer. Instead, it is better to have a player character say, “I want to find and then bring to justice the Chaos priest that murdered my parents to give their blood and souls to an evil immortal.”
Remember, just because Gygax said it doesn't mean it's a good idea. Simple RvB is fine for a wargame, but in a heroic RPG (or fiction) it's expected that the PCs are foiling evil, which means that the bad guys have to demonstrate their evil.
This precisely.
Classic D&D for which this module was made (B/X) tried very hard to remove moral quandaries about killing monsters out of the game by clearly identifying "things you could kill without morale concerns". The problem was that, in the same breath as Gygax tries to convince you "these are evil monsters", he also outlines the fact that these are societies with their own culture, families and rules as you explore the caves of chaos. These come in the form of descriptive queues, but there is all manner of evidence that the Caves of Chaos aren't just a base for evil monsters. They are not the purely evil killers with no redeeming qualities one is sort of led to believe at the start once you just look under the covers a little bit.
It's a long-standing issue with a lot of the adventures from old-school D&D days. In the monster manual, it says "Orcs are evil", but when you read/play the adventures you realize that, this is clearly not necessarily the case. Players using nothing more than their natural sense of right and wrong recognize that just from the evidence presented to them as they play through these adventures, Keep on the Borderland in particular. At some point for example you might run across Kobold children and you have to decide what to do with them now that you had orphaned them by murdering their families. Are Kobold children evil monsters, members of Chaos?
These sort of moral dilemmas I think are good for the game and it's actually part of what makes Keep on the Borderlands such a memorable adventure because it's one the results of the adventure that players would often question whether or not they were really the good guys. I don't know if this was Gygax's intention or not, but that is very much what happens when you run this module. I have run it many times and never has any player walked out of that adventure feeling completely justified with the task of protecting the keep by infiltrating the Caves of Chaos. There are always these questions of moral right and wrong.
I'm actually quite curious to see how Wizards of the Coast's interpretation of this module in the upcoming starter box will handle this aspect of this module. Especially curious to see how they handle the removal of certain species like Orcs from the Monster Manual, in which Orcs are one of the prominent monsters of the Caves of Chaos.
I'm having similar moral quandries with one of the games I'm playing in at the moment. We're playing Oracle of War, an Eberron set campaign originally written for Adventure League. It's a decent campaign once you get used to how episodic it is but the further we go the more we're all asking if we're the bad guys because the "evil Warforge raiding nearby towns" are essentially an oppressed ethnic minority that want to settle in a place no one else can live due to magical fallout and adventurers keep being sent to harass them. I'm not entirely convinced it's intentional either
This happens a lot in adventure writing and its very often not an intentional part of the story that the players discover.
I think its kind of impart due to the fact that the concept of fantasy adventures by and large is that they represent mercenaries to some extent. This used to be a supported concept (1 gold = 1 XP) in older editions, but even without these core rules to support the premise, players have a tendency to exhibit mercenary behavior anyway. Think about how typical it is for players to respond to a quest to do something in an adventure with, what's in it for us? What's the reward? Why would we risk our lives for these strangers?
I think to some degree its just an inherent part of D&D adventurers that they are not really "good guys" by the super hero definition. Or perhaps better to say that characters are more Batman good guys than they are Superman good guys, if that makes sense. Like, fantasy heroes in D&D are not really purely good guys and that is somewhat supported by the fact that their sort of primary "routine" is murdering things. They are not hunters, taking down game. They are quite literally arming themselves to the teeth with weapons, armor and magic, going somewhere and very often just acting as judge, jury and executioner with no qualms about it simply because "that's their job or their task".
I guess what I'm saying is that by any measure of real-world morals, almost all adventuring heroes are basically professional killers. I would say that a medieval fantasy world has a different moral compass. Like if you see a group of Orcs robbing a villager as an adventuring hero, you murder them without consequence and within the scope a fantasy world, this is justifiable and good, you can expect the town to reward you for your heroism even if you have no actual police authority. Its normalized within the context of the D&D fantasy setting and only feels immoral because you're placing your own worldview on the part of a fantasy character living in a fantasy world. The rules are not the same.
My characters, whether ones I'm playing or NPCs when I DM, do tend to refer to themselves and the players as mercenaries rather adventurers for exactly that reason and I even had one player object until I pointed out exactly what you describe
It's kind of an evolution thing. I think modern players are a lot more socially, politically, and culturally sensitive and active, so this is reflected in how they play and think about D&D. This has gotten to the point that we are altering the game fundamentally, take the whole Orcs are not monsters thing. I never fully understood why we chose Orcs, but not say Kuo-toa. Why did fish people not get any love?
Roleplaying games are about taking on a role, which by it's definition means playing a character that most likely has a different moral compass and values than you do, will be from a different culture than yours. Not everyone can easily adapt to that concept and more and more people struggle with the ideas behind "acting" as someone else always finding connections between the real world and the fantasy world we are portraying.
When I'm playing Arkadias the Necromancer, I mercilessly murder things, raise them from the dead and make them kill things on my behalf, casting them aside when I'm done with their corpse. That is not a reflection of my personal morals (or anyone else's that I have ever met for that matter), it's me pretending to be a character in a fantasy game. But I can understand that if you're looking for hidden meaning behind it, I'm sure you'll find it and when you do, that might become a struggle for you.
What I find interesting is how big of a problem morales have become. I mean we used to play a game called Vampire The Masquerade and we were literal evil monsters, yet I don't recall anyone ever having problems with it. I wonder how people react to The World of Darkness today?