Oh dear, oh dear. No, this just doesn’t work. This is why 2nd edition went to shit towards the end of its life. A sequel to the classic Keep on the Borderlands just goes straight into the “what were they THINKING?!” category.

Now, Return to the Keep on the Borderlands is not entirely awful. It’s a serviceable enough adventure, I suppose. The cartography, especially the full color maps of the Caves of Chaos at the end, is particularly good. And it’s cute that they attempted to throw a few easter egg references to the classic line of modules in there, like a NPC named after the famous Château d’Amberville, a possible henchwoman from the very distant Cynadicea (although I’m not sure when the Warrior Maidens of Madarua became the Warrior Maids of Maruda, but hey…), and a couple of passing references to In Search of the Unknown.

However, that’s where the good stuff ends. Sure, the original adventure has been expanded considerably, with both completely new areas and extended details on existing ones, but the new areas are just uninspired, and the extra details just don’t sit well with me. I’ve heard critics of the original bitch and moan for years about how none of the NPC’s had any names or background information. Or about how this or that didn’t have very specific information about what should happen next. I think the point of the original was to encourage the DM to, you know, use their imaginations. Just a little bit, no? When is the last time anyone EVER ran a module completely as is, without ANY modifications or deviations whatsoever? I know that’s certainly never happened with me, I’m changing stuff all the time, so I’m happy with B2’s ‘rough outline’ approach to things. This is a huge problem with Return though. It’s supposed to be some shining example of how the roleplaying hobby had ‘grown up’ in the twenty years or so between B2 and the follow-up, but how exactly is holding both the DM and the player’s hands from start to finish supposed to be a more mature representation of a roleplaying game?

Another serious, gaping flaw is the fact that this was released as an official Greyhawk product. A big ‘whoops’ on the publishers’ part, surely, because there is nothing — NOTHING — that ties this module to the world of Oerth. There are more references to the Mystara setting than there are Greyhawk references, which means the designers were either lazy, stupid, incompetent, or all of the above. I suppose one could convert all the names of the foreign deities to ones from the Greyhawk pantheon, somehow shoehorn the keep into the setting’s history, and remove any references to other campaign settings, but as an official product of that setting, these self-edits should not be necessary, plain and simple.

And the art… let me tell you about the artwork in this module. It’s Horrible with a capital ‘H’. People can gripe about the quality of the artwork in the original module (especially the Jim Roslof cover), but it is nowhere near as bad as what you’ll see inside the Return book. The cover painting, complete with an oversized halfling and a warrior dude in the center who stops helping his companions in this dire time of need and instead decides to turn and pose for the illustrator, should give you an idea of what you’re in for… but it gets much, much worse. Inside you’ll see kobolds who look like monkey-dogs alongside some of the most godawful character portraits ever. Every adventurer portrayed in this book has a ridiculously gigantic head and a shrunken, deformed body with tiny arms and mismatched legs. It’s nothing short of shocking.

Then there’s this picture of some bandits sitting around playing cards…

Notice how the fella closest, the one with the ponytail, is looking at nothing but a big, blank spot on his cards. However, the other two gentlemen (the bald guy looks suspiciously like James Carville) have little dots on the BACK of their cards. So what are they doing, playing in reverse?! Is this some stupid bandit game of chance where you’re only allowed to look at your opponent’s cards but not your own? Or was the artist here just too damn lazy to make this look a little more legit?

You know how a return to the keep could have worked? If they could’ve somehow turned it into a high level adventure where old characters have to return to the Caves of Chaos, the site of their first adventures. Maybe some lich or beholder moves in, redesigns the place a bit, installs new traps and brings in new minions. A number of cave-ins and such could make the player knowledge of the original layout a moot point. The keep itself could have a new ruler who frowns upon adventurers, just to make it more interesting and to take away that ’safe’ resting place. But the mad hermit with the pet lion stays, dammit, I don’t care what you say. Even if your PC’s killed them the first time around… another mad hermit and pet lion spawns. Or something.