Although I have my own PDF copy of B1: In Search of the Unknown by Mike Carr, I also purchased the hardcover version of Goodman Games' Into the Borderlands, which combines B1 and B2. While reading the B1 portion, it struck me that the way I normally populate B1 is completely different than the approaches Goodman Games uses. Let me explain... B1 has plenty of story hooks surrounding Quasqueton, the dungeon of the module. The cliff notes version is that there were these two higher level adventurers that are considered heroes because they fought off a barbarian horde and likely met their end stopping a barbarian invasion into the area. Since no one has heard from them since and since some time has passed, your party of adventurers realize that the fortress the heroes used as their base (named Quasqueton) is probably abandoned and ripe for looting. The dungeon itself has plenty of puzzles, mysteries, and hidden treasures, but the rooms lack monsters. The dungeon comes with a list of possible monster encounters and their treasure that the dungeon master can pick from and populate the dungeon as he or she sees fit. Because of this, no Quasqueton dungeon is ever the same from dungeon master to dungeon master. It's even up to the dungeon master to determine whether or not the two adventurers who built Quasqueton survived their encounter and if there are further adventures involving them. There's also a tower near the dungeon that is mentioned, but not drawn up leaving it to the dungeon master to create it from scratch if desired. Also, the wizard of the adventuring pair seemed to enjoy conducting questionable magical experiments and the fighter employed orc mercenaries, so the heroes might not have been all that heroic. Again, up to the dungeon master.
Anyway, what struck me when reading how the Goodman Games writers filled Quasqueton I found they went in three different variations. Chris Doyle infested Quasqueton with a goblin tribe, which was warring with a group of orcs that were further into the dungeon, and with a sprinkling of giant insects thrown in for good measure. This made sense to me... maybe the orcs were the leftover mercenaries, but now they were fighting off goblin invaders and an infestation of giant insects created from previous experiments.
Michael Curtis populated Quasqueton with a lot more variety of creatures. Kobolds, goblins, and giant rats in the beginning, but undead and larger humanoids further in without any kind of logic outside of just making the encounters different so the players weren't bored.
Tim Wadzinski went a different route and one I wouldn't had thought of. He chucked a lot of the suggested encouters away and populated the dungeon with rival exploration parties. Some local clerics with their own religious agenda. A group of thieves set on looting the place. Berserker fighters pillaging. Plenty of humanoid tribes doing the same, and then stuff that wasn't even in the orginal list of provided encounters such as blink dogs. Because everyone loves blink dogs.
What struck me is that none of the writers included the giant crab at the bottom of the pit trap. There's a trap that drops the characters into an underwater chamber, and in the list of suggested monster encounters there is a giant crab. So I always stuck the crab in the water chamber under the trap, since that made the most sense to me. But I haven't seen anyone else ever do the same, which kind of blows my mind. I've run this twice now, usually populated with recently unemployed orc mercenaries that stuck around and made Quasqueton home. If I run it a third time I think I'm going to go with orc zombies (statted as normal zombies), but the zombie condition is caused by some magical experiment that went awry in the chamber of giant mushrooms towards the end of the dungeon. So some sort of magical fungus is reanimating the dead and causing them the rise again to serve some sort of master mushroom that the party needs to destory.
Has anyone else here ever run B1 and if so, how did you populate the dungeon? I read some variations from the Dragonsfoot forums and everyone seems to do something wildly different, which is probably the true charm of the module.
Anyway, what struck me when reading how the Goodman Games writers filled Quasqueton I found they went in three different variations. Chris Doyle infested Quasqueton with a goblin tribe, which was warring with a group of orcs that were further into the dungeon, and with a sprinkling of giant insects thrown in for good measure. This made sense to me... maybe the orcs were the leftover mercenaries, but now they were fighting off goblin invaders and an infestation of giant insects created from previous experiments.
Michael Curtis populated Quasqueton with a lot more variety of creatures. Kobolds, goblins, and giant rats in the beginning, but undead and larger humanoids further in without any kind of logic outside of just making the encounters different so the players weren't bored.
Tim Wadzinski went a different route and one I wouldn't had thought of. He chucked a lot of the suggested encouters away and populated the dungeon with rival exploration parties. Some local clerics with their own religious agenda. A group of thieves set on looting the place. Berserker fighters pillaging. Plenty of humanoid tribes doing the same, and then stuff that wasn't even in the orginal list of provided encounters such as blink dogs. Because everyone loves blink dogs.
What struck me is that none of the writers included the giant crab at the bottom of the pit trap. There's a trap that drops the characters into an underwater chamber, and in the list of suggested monster encounters there is a giant crab. So I always stuck the crab in the water chamber under the trap, since that made the most sense to me. But I haven't seen anyone else ever do the same, which kind of blows my mind. I've run this twice now, usually populated with recently unemployed orc mercenaries that stuck around and made Quasqueton home. If I run it a third time I think I'm going to go with orc zombies (statted as normal zombies), but the zombie condition is caused by some magical experiment that went awry in the chamber of giant mushrooms towards the end of the dungeon. So some sort of magical fungus is reanimating the dead and causing them the rise again to serve some sort of master mushroom that the party needs to destory.
Has anyone else here ever run B1 and if so, how did you populate the dungeon? I read some variations from the Dragonsfoot forums and everyone seems to do something wildly different, which is probably the true charm of the module.
