The author discusses the colonialist setting of Keep on the Borderlands and some of the changes they made to present the political backdrop of the setting as a set of moral choices instead of a ‘given’.
Some time ago I considered running Keep on the Borderlands as an interesting ‘blast from the past’ of the hobby (since no one at our table has experienced that era of D&D firsthand). However I was annoyed by what I read about the morality of the setting (the colonialism, and the false equivalence of law=good).
This blog post gave me some ideas of how to take such a module and give the players opportunities to question its moral statements in-universe.
If anyone knows any other blog posts on these topics I’d be interested in reading them.
I found much of the commentary offered to be weak. I gave up at the point where they bitched about Gygax listing material items in detail without much on social relationships…after writing all about how GMs take materials and use them as seen fit at the table, that providing system as tools for use is a really good thing. Um…ya think maybe Gygax was leaving that untouched so the GM could decide all of that? Just maybe? That he left a lot undescribed relying on individual GMs to decide how it works in their games?
While I can’t speak to his assessment of the English language RPG industry (though I feel like he’s definitely right specifically about AD&AD 2E-era adventure modules), I feel that people very often mischaracterize those from other play cultures. And this seems no exception.
I do love what he did to the module. I would very much consider taking some of those ideas and running with them.
I noped out with his complaint that the response from troops to PC misbehavior would arrive in a round or two. Uh, dude…it’s a keep, a fortress, which isn’t very large and is where lots of troops live. If you do something stupid in front of my house, I guarantee I’d be outside to deal with it in a minute or two.
Then he started carrying on about the keep not having a modern judicial system… No…just no. I clicked away at that point.
The link with law = good is straight from OD&D. Chaotic clerics are “Evil Priests”. Though released with the Holmes Basic box set which used the 5-alignment system which has lawful good or lawful evil, it also says that chaotic characters are “…they are often, but not always, evil.”
Strategic Review or maybe Dragon magazine is when Gary released the 5 alignment system, which came with Holmes. I just looked it up and Moldvay basic still calls law good and chaotic evil. AD&D definitely doesn’t. I’m not sure about BECMI.
I just checked SR. #6 has an article about alignment, though it’s not about the 5-point schema.
EGG has an article in Dragon #9 that also isn’t about the 5-point system. The article is for varied character and NPC alignment in OD&D. Nothing about the 5-point system.
The earliest issue I could find about Basic was from the time Moldvay Basic was released, and neither Homes nor Moldvay spoke about the alignment system. Checking the Moldvay rules, those use L/N/C and not the 5-point system.
I’m at a loss as to where I first saw that version of alignment for D&D.
Oh, in so many ways! Though I can’t recall exactly what I read in the linked blog post that prompted my comment.
A comment I read just the other day (paraphrased): “How can anyone even play that game? It has absolutely no mechanics to support narrative.” This was from someone used to story games encountering an OSR game. I’d imagine many OSR players would be just as aghast encountering a game that asked them to directly author the imagined world (see Sam’s Three-Question Taxonomy).
But at this point I’ve gone way off the original topic so I’ll hush, haha
Strategic Review, vol 2 issue 1(Feb ‘76) is where the 5 point alignment is given, that’s the whole purpose of the article. There’s law and chaos and the good/evil axis is given with neutral being its own point. Holmes basic has the 5 point system, as well. The basic line keeps things simplistic with law/chaos.
Edit: you also see this burgeoning with “lawful with evil tendencies” or “chaotic with neutral tendencies” in OD&D later stuff, as well.
I generally don’t love Taskerland’s posts - I think they are too reductive of OSR innovations and frequently try to pass OSR innovations off as their. Here I reject that the history of English language RPD adventure design is one of designer control - I think that’s always been contested, despite some prominence in the late 80’s and 90’s. It’s certainly something the old OSR rejected just as the Forge did.
In this case I disagree with the basic premise of the post, even if I think their personal campaign sounds fun and their solutions are perfectly fine.
I’ve always noted that Keep on the Borderlands is intended as a Western Cavalry Story, but it often fails to provide that in play - not because it’s written to fail, but because it’s written as an RPG adventure. Even in 1986 when I played it as a child without much sophistication or ideological grounding, decisions that Gygax made pushed moral gray. The existence of monstrous families, and the overall feeling of bursting into “not-people’s” homes to murder them and loot felt increasingly criminal and wrong to even our simple kid brains. This is as it should be I think - taking wealth from the “wilderness” has always meant violence and cruelty - but as the grandeur of London or other colonialist capitals show … it is undeniably effective. Let the game explore that…let it exist in a space of moral unease.
I think this is not Gygax’s intention, but it’s certainly the effect and it comes from a core honesty in his design that is hard to set aside. Gygax may have been a Chivington quoting weirdo, but his design treats monsters as having societies and functioning much as people - they have families, protect sacred items, organize, store food, gather socially, and have leaders. I suspect the point is to make conflict between them and the party more interesting and allow for more complex tactics and schemes … but it also naturally creates moral ambiguity and humanizes the monster far more them later design.
Reimaging B2 to emphasize this is an OSR staple going to long before I published my own review/take 12 years ago…
A Note on Alignment: OD&D alignment is not a controlling or moral system - it is largely a way to pick who you can hire into your army. In OD&D it seems assumed that the party may contain characters who serve law, chaos, and neutrality - and has some minor effects. This is what one would expect from something designed as a supplement offering “commando raids” to largescale club wide wargame tournaments, where multiple player and NPC factions are envisioned. Alignment only really starts to develop moral/ethical frame works in AD&D and also becomes increasingly important. Now I suspect it functions largely as a dodge for moral complexity in a game where one murders a lot of thinking talking creatures.
I didn’t read that SR #6 article as laying out the 5-point system. I thought it showed what was coming, though, as it illustrated all the shades of difference among the beings and their proclivities. I could see how it would lead to the 5-point chart as well as predict the 9-point AD&D chart.
The 5-point article I recall first seeing had a diagram showing the five alignments and didn’t have all the discussion of nuances between lawful and chaotic among good or evil beings. that just may have been a rules text laying out the basics of it.