{"id":16465,"date":"2026-06-16T09:57:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T16:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=16465"},"modified":"2026-06-01T10:09:31","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T17:09:31","slug":"playing-of-keep-on-the-borderlands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=16465","title":{"rendered":"Playing of Keep on the Borderlands"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Mage’s Musings<\/a> is a channel that has a selection of interesting reflections on old school Dungeons and Dragons – as it was played in the 80’s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the better playlists is is Old School Essentials playlist in which a party goes through the classic “Keep on the Borderlands” module. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

His retelling of their sessions does a great job capturing just how different it was to play by early D&D rules than today. I was intrigued by how deadly combat encounters turned out to be and how often early characters would die. As other DM’s of that era point out, players had to be much more crafty and think about what they were doing. Just jumping into combat would often result in the entire party getting killed. Dice were unforgiving and one bad player decision and some bad rolls would almost certainly get one or more characters killed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Give a few of these sessions a listen. It’s interesting how many characters some players had to go through as they get killed off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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