The only creature I had to toss out completely was the medusa, but a hag worked well as a replacement, hidden among the prisoners. If a family didn’t go high enough, I’d grab something from another family, or I’d toss a challenge adjustment on one of them. Most of the creatures were a straight conversion, though it was nice to know what level range I was working with. This way, I could go back to it as I built out the caves. Then, I made a table of rough conversions from the module to PF2. That way, I didn’t have to worry running out of lower level caves, nor did I have to worry about a group of level threes tearing through a bunch of goblins. Because I didn’t know what APL I would be working with, I went ahead and created scaled versions of each encounter. Getting convertedįor each of the maps, I decided that I would keep the general theme, but set up at least three types of encounters: Trivial, Moderate, and Severe, with one Extreme tossed in one of the caves for fun. It wasn’t like we needed the room, after all, since I wasn’t throwing dozens of goblins at the players. The original maps work off of 10′ squares, which I changed to 5′ squares. I ended up swapping in new creatures, since I didn’t feel like writing my own, and it isn’t like there’s a shortage of options to choose from. For example, the medusa was straight out, and stirges haven’t made it over to PF2 yet. There were also a few creatures I had to change, since they’re either too high level, or they don’t exist yet in Pathfinder 2e (as of this writing, only two of the Bestiaries are out).

I ended up switching to five-foot squares, and drastically reduced the number of enemies. The squares were ten feet, and it wasn’t unusual to have a room filled 10 to 15 mobs. The number of expected mobs was huge, and the playing field was much larger. Keep on the Borderlands was absolutely written for wargamers. I even found maps that were redrawn to work with Roll20! I found no shortages of maps, keys, and guides. This module has been out for a while, so the amount of player-created content is high. This is super important in a West Marches campaign, where you never know what the APL is going to be (though I did cap it at APL 3) This might be more PF2 than anything else, but I found the caves to be fairly easy to scale to different levels. It’s not just goblins! The caves feature all sorts of enemies, giving players varied challenges that still make sense. It recommends actions for various NPCs, and suggests how the caves might change over time as more of them are cleared out. While you could, in theory, just use a key you find online for the Caves, I recommend giving the module a read. There’s plenty of room for a group of PCs to move around, but they have enough corners and doors to make line of sight important.

The layout of all of the caves are great. Some of the advantages of using the Caves of Chaos: Not only is it a short, interesting read, but it has some tips on how the denizens caves should react to a bunch of adventurers running around and causing trouble for them. I ended up not using the “Keep” part of the module (the group already has a functional town), but the Caves of Chaos were well worth the price of the module.Īnd yes, I recommend grabbing the module. It’s basically one huge map that features a number of caves, some interconnecting, some not. The Caves of Chaos aren’t quite as dramatic as they sound. Keep on the Borderlands has two halves to it: A keep that the players liberate and then mold, and the Caves of Chaos, which serve as the main threat. Converting it to work in 2e took way less energy than I was expecting, even though the module is old enough to have grown children of its own. Not only is it an interesting piece of gaming history, but it’s an excellent adventure, even today. I bought it from DriveThruRPG, and I’m glad I did. My husband recommended Keep on the Borderlands, a classic module published in 1979 and written by none other than Gary Gygax. One of the challenges of being a GM for a West Marches style of campaign is coming up with content where it’s easy for a large number of players to interact with the plot, while keeping the challenge rating flexible.

B2 the keep on the borderlands price