Wednesday, July 31, 2013

It seems Keep on the Borderlands: The Expansion (part of Usherwood Adventures' High Adventure From Middle-School...

It seems Keep on the Borderlands: The Expansion (part of Usherwood Adventures' High Adventure From Middle-School series) has Dex in the monster listings, suggesting the author was playing Holmes at the time!

Check it out, it's free.

http://www.rpgnow.com/product/117295/Keep-on-the-Borderlands-The-Expansion
http://www.rpgnow.com/product/117295/Keep-on-the-Borderlands-The-Expansion

9 comments:

  1. Good spot, Connor. I saw the announcement for this on K&KA but just d/l it now. It's very short but has an idea for the Cave of the Unknown I haven't seen before. And I like the presentation.

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  2. The monsters/NPCs use the same format for the stat blocks as in the Holmes version of B2. I see some AD&D spells for the Cleric, but that is to be expected - after all AD&D is the "official" Holmes expansion. : )

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  3. The author is Welleran on K&KA and other forums. I just downloaded another one of his, Foray into the Wilderness, and it also uses the Holmes stat block.

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  4. I found this 2010 quote from Welleran on Grognardia, in response to our own Wayne Rossi:

    "Wayne, you've solved a mystery that's been bugging me since I started playing D&D again in earnest! When I started doing stat blocks for my megadungeon, I always put Dexterity as the first stat and could not for the life of me remember why I did it - now I know it was a Holmesian leftover form ancient times!"

    http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2010/07/holmes-nostalgia.html

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  5. Good find. Too bad he isn't a member of this community. I'll send him a link.

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  6. No problem - I just sent him an invite.

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  7. Howdy -- I'm in! 

    The Grognardia quote pretty much sums it up.  I started with Homes in 1980 but shifted to AD&D not long after.  However, I carried over a bunch of little details, some of which continue down to today (such as magic missiles doing d6 damage rather than d4).

    Oh, and thanks for the invite!

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