The stand-alone Shadowed Keep is a classic and the Ashlar version feels polished and complete. It's unfortunate some of the original (and excellent) artwork didn't make the final cut, but the result is a glabrous old school aesthetic that puts corporate mannerists to shame. The new maps are gorgeous. Previously, each area of the keep was paired with relevant stat blocks and a compilation PDF was mercifully included. The new edition organizes everything into one bookmarked PDF (plus a version for mobile contraptions) with all encounter stats compiled at the very end. It likely comes down to preference, but this GM appreciates being able to quickly eye a nearby room's contents without changing pages. There are two minor issues worth noting, both of which are in the statistics appendix: Braal's domains are inconsistent with his Deities and Demons entry and Firean's abilities and equipment don't reflect her newfound faith. These are very minor and shouldn't impact gameplay, but attentive players familiar with the setting might bring it up (usually at the most impractical time). The town of Dulwich now feels alive and vibrant: new locations, new nutters, adventure hooks aplenty, and East Gate's owner has finally crawled out of bed. I did notice a rogue copy-paste sitting in the Golden Skull, but what else should you expect from a den of thieves? Dulwich has the potential to rival Languard in opportunities should a group prove sufficiently nosy. Additional distractions can also be found in the nearby wilderness including a small settlement easily adapted to deal with nonstandard PCs that are otherwise accustomed to torch-and-pitchfork welcomes.
All in all, this is a massive improvement over the original work.

This is a classic product from Raging Swan Press and it was one of my first purchases from this publisher. I love the old-school feel and I love running it for new players.

This takes me back to my first module I played in. Looking forward to tying this into me homebrew campaign set in Ashlar. Keep up the great work!

This is a fantastic, engaging low-level adventure from Raging Swan. I usually find low-level adventures to be tedious at best, but Raging Swan has made a challenging, interesting adventure with memorable characters and settings. Well done.

Billed as a 1st-level adventure and suitable for starting off your campaign, this is almost a mini-campaign in its own right with the added advantage of providing a place suitable for the party to use as a base if they fancy doing so. There's a lot packed into these pages!

We start with evidence of the mature and ordered design process that typifies Raging Swan Press product in the shape of a set of notes detailing how to understand the anatomy of an encounter. This shows the various components, and then goes through them explaining how to read the details presented and use them to effect. If you like writing your own materials, it's worth studying these to help you structure them effectively, especially if you want other people to be able to run them. Don't be baffled by a stat block or flounder when the party wants to identify what they've found ever again!

We then move on to the background to the adventure. Whilst this is summarised here for the GM, much of it can be discovered by the players either by research and rumour-hunting before their characters set off or through the adventure itself. The keep - whose proper name is Ironwolf Keep, but few people call it that - is situated on a hilltop in the middle of a dense forest, a bit off the beaten track, and whilst the Keep and its immediate surroundings are well detailed, it is designed so that you can drop it into any appropriate location in your own campaign world.

Next comes the introduction to the adventure. There are several ideas that you can use to get it off to a flying start, pick whichever you think will appeal to your party. Once you have them hooked, there are two ways to find out more: a character may roll on Knowledge (local) or Knowledge (history) if he has them to recall some information, or anyone can ask around and pick up some rumours about the place... not all of which are true, but what do you expect of gossip picked up in taverns? Armed with whatever they manage to find out, the party then needs to reach the Keep so there's a section about woodland travel and the dangers that they might encounter... including a bear and wolves, as well as other creatures that may be less friendly. There's plenty of those little details that make the whole thing come to life as well.

This attention to detail continues throughout the rest of the adventure, which falls into four parts: The Watchtower, the Donjon, the Realm of the Blood Moon and the Undercrypt - all parts of Ironwolf Keep itself. In nature this adventure is pretty much of a sandbox with the party free to explore as they please... yet in a neat embellishment there is a 'timeline' of what is going on in and around the Keep, things that will happen irrespective of what the party is doing, but which gives that air of reality - this is a living setting which will carry on regardless of what the characters do or even if they are still there. It's a really nice touch, and something worth considering for your own adventures (or even for adding in to published ones, if that's what you prefer). Yes, the party are the heroes of THIS story, but there are other stories going on around them.

Each area of the Keep is described in detail making it very easy to picture in the mind's eye - and so describe it to the players. Further aid is given in a series of handouts including illustrations you can use as 'This is what you see' as the party explores. Throughout, there are various options as to what they can do, with the ramifications explained clearly. These touches would make it easy for a novice GM to run, yet serve to enhance the ease of play even if you are no stranger to that side of the screen. There are opportunities aplenty for combat, but also times when stopping to talk could prove to the party's advantage.

If the party is so minded, once cleared the Keep could make a good base for them, and you could build future adventures around them settling in and then using it as a base from which to explore their surroundings and seek excitement and profit... or they may prefer to loot what they can and move on. If the entire place is explored and cleared, the party should be 3rd-level by the time they are done. And there are plenty of little snippets scattered here and there to spawn ideas for further adventures.

Overall, if you are looking to start a campaign from scratch in a temperate frontier-type setting, this would be ideal. There are even nine pre-generated characters for your players to choose from if they'd rather jump straight into the action than roll up their own, each fulled armed and equipped and ready for play. This is truly a campaign start in a single package.

One of the things that I really appreciate about Raging Swan is the ease of running their modules and adventures. The format of their books makes it very easy to keep track of the NPCs, who's doing what and to whom and the flow of the events is very easy to remember and to execute. It was no different with Shadowed Keep on the Borderlands. I highly recommend this for any GM who wants an adventure full of flavor and excitement.

If you are wondering if this module is worth the price the answer is yes. HOWEVER i strongly suggest getting the printed version as the minute I got the PDF I wanted the feel of the hardcopy.

Pros: Well organized, logically sectioned off into playable parts. XP listed with encounters. Home printing (except 1st page) are nice and clean and ink saving.

Cons: I felt that the body count of NPCs was a little light. (A bandit band of 7?), No master list of each faction's headcounts/stat blocks. Not outlaying buildings a keep would have (unattached kitchen, forge, stables, kennels, aviary, and food storage silo)

Requested improvements:

1) I felt that there should have been more bandits, perhaps on hunting patrols, bandit-ing patrols, and Keep exploration patrols I total of 20-30 in a master list would be good.

2) A master list for each faction

3) I would like to see repair costs & times for the keep and for repairable content. (a mend spell works WONDERS! as does prestidigitation).

4) I would LOVE a player's map with graph squares of the building's outline like what was done with Tegal Manor by Judges Guild years ago.

5) A "if the keep was finished" map that can be given to the Players once it is fixed up. I would buy that as a 11x17 map printed through here!!

So basically my review is this. Yes this is worth the $ but it does open me up to wanting MORE from this publisher.

When I first read the title for "Shadowed Keep on the Borderlands" my first impression was that it was nothing more than a cheap rip-off of a classic Basic D&D module. But after reading all the great reviews of it posted on here, I decided to to give it a deeper look. I apprehensively decided to purchase the module when I found it on sale since it was only a few dollars. I'm now very glad I did. Shadowed Keep on the Borderlands is easily one of the most thoroughly detailed and entertaining modules I've even read. The attention to detail is staggering and far surpasses any other module I've ever read in my almost 30 years of playing RPG's in general and D&D in particular. I don't normally review products I purchase, but in the case of Shadowed Keep on the Borderlands I am making an exception for such an exceptional module. I highly recommend this module to any aspiring GM.

This is a brilliant re-visit of the old "Dungeon Module T1" concept. Others have given very detailed reviews which I agree with.

My only complaint is that I don't have any low-level parties to run through SKotB right now.

This is a fantastic module. I will address some specific items here, as the previous reviews by Endzeitgeist and others do a good job covering everything else I might say.

Spoilers might follow, so if you plan to play it just skip to the end.

The generic placement for this module is very well done. Unlike the original Moathouse (from the Village of Homlett/Temple of Elemental Evil series), which was located near a swamp, this one can be located anywhere. And the minor earthquake that affected the underground areas decades ago could still have caused a nearby swamp to be created. This is one of the few "place it anywhere" locations that can really be place anywhere in my campaign world. Speaking of the background notes, I can see PCs falling upon hard times and ending up like the original owners.

The artwork is excellent. I'm a big fan of providing visual references for my players, and this module gives me ample opportunities to do so. The cartography is also very nice. I'm a fan of Billiam Babble's Inked Adventures, and appreciate the hand-drawn maps. As a side note, if you travel over to Billiam Babble's deviantART gallery, he has some pictures of the maps with a parchment background.

There is an adventure timeline that helps GMs create an atmosphere to reinforce the idea that the PCs don't live in a bubble. There are two story hooks the GM can use as great teaching-moments to show that not every encounter has to end in bloodshed (although they will, it's still a good addition). These add story options, and get away from the usual linear-dungeon trope that most dungeons fall victim to. Giving the NPCs personality traits does the same thing, and alleviates the GM from trying to add mannerisms on the fly. I’ve seen this in other Raging Swan products, and it’s a wonderful addition. The GM gets to focus on other things.

Once again, the feeling of an organic adventure is reflected in the random encounters table. Eliminating specific encounters because the PCs already fought them makes perfect sense. Again, I can give the players the feeling that the PCs aren't the only ones running around in the world.

Information for scaling the encounters was also much appreciated. Although each entry seems fairly repetitive, something a lot of published adventures forget is "Repeat the important information where the GM is going to read it.” This is very important, since the GM already has so many things he has to worry about when running the game. I'm a lot more likely to remember what the scaling effects were (or that I can scale the encounter!) when I have that information right in front of me.

I sat in a seminar by Tracy Hickman, where he said "don't ever put 'indecipherable runes' in your description, because the players WILL sit and try to figure out what they say." I encountered this in Paizo's Rise of the Runelords adventure, and my players drove me crazy trying to copy the writing and translating it, since the runes the PCs encountered did actually mean something thousands of years ago. Without spoiling too much, there is an area where PCs can waste a bunch of time (and get attacked by wandering monsters), and it makes perfect sense in the context of the area.

The PCs can get a map as part of their loot, leading them to a further adventure in a lost dwarven hold. I would have like a larger image of the handout, but I'm pretty sure I can enlarge it myself. There is a map of the dwarven hold as well should the GM want one. Hadramkath is one of Raging Swan’s other products, and makes a nice addition here. If the GM wants to direct their players elsewhere, I sense an easy link to "Forge of Fury" or a half-dozen other dungeon crawls. Similarly, the GM can drop it if it doesn’t fit with his game. I wish more adventures did this. Once again, it creates a living world for the PCs to explore. And as GM I am totally NOT railroading the players into choosing their next adventure. Great stuff.

I think this is a worthy successor to the original Moathouse. It improves the original with a non-linear storyline and NPC motivations, capturing the competing interests of those who reside in the Keep (especially the competing interests within the factions!). Overall, each of the additions makes the whole much more "real" than traditional dungeon-crawls.

Well done, Creighton! Thanks for creating such a great product.

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this adventure from the author. This is not a playtest review, although I fully intend to run the adventure for my group when we’ve got some time to play it.

Shadowed Keep on the Borderlands is a 94-page adventure for 1st-level Pathfinder RPG characters, intended as a starting location for fledgling adventuring careers, to be easily inserted into a DM’s campaign. The name of the adventure spells this out too, harking back to the classic B2 (now being used to playtest D&D Next!) and the less-fondly remembered 4e introductory adventure, Keep on the Shadowfell. To me, the name also summarises what this adventure is – the classic, old school concept of an introductory dungeon (well, only part of it is an actual dungeon, but you know what I mean) brought up to date for today’s gamers.

Raging Swan Press uses a very crisp, easy to read, no-nonsense layout for all their products, and Shadowed Keep is no exception. The page design and the way the product is structured is intended to make it easy for the DM to run the adventure and pick out key information quickly and easily. It does this very successfully through the use of smart stat block and encounter formats, and by providing extras such as pre-generated characters (illustrated by the legendary Larry Elmore!), player handouts and illustrations to show the players. The maps are not fancy but are very clear, and there is good use of art throughout to illustrate the adventure.

So, what’s the adventure like, anyway? I don’t want to give too much away as my players are likely to read this, but the Shadowed Keep was built by the great adventurer Valentin Ironwolf forty years ago. After his drunken death at the hands of the goblins and orcs he spent his career murdering, the keep fell into disrepair and is now the sinister home of several different factions. Adventure hooks are provided to get the PCs to go there – bandits have been raiding the nearby villages, tales of Valentin’s riches and so on – as well as a rumours table (another welcome nod to the old school) for those players who like to spend some time researching what they’re about to get themselves into.

The adventure briefly details the wilderness around the keep, including a random encounter table and a handy menu of terrain features to add to any forest combats the PCs might experience en route. Full stat blocks are provided for the monsters involved to make it as easy as possible for the time-pressed DM to run. Later in this section a number of options for further adventures once the keep has been cleared out are given – including the intriguing possibility the PCs might claim the castle as their own base.

The bulk of the book, of course, details the keep itself. As well as the enemies, treasures and items of interest found in each location, there is also a timeline of events to make the keep a dynamic place with various inhabitants coming and going. This section also outlines a number of roleplaying possibilities as one or two of the factions living here may attempt to negotiate with the PCs.

Minor spoilers follow The keep is divided into four sections, each home to a different group of opponents. The Watchtower is home to a gang of human bandits, the ruined Donjon is the lair of various dangerous and mostly unintelligent monsters, and the cellars beneath the Donjon are where the Goblins of the Blood Moon are based. Finally, the Undercrypt is under the influence of necrotic seepage with all that entails.

Encounter design is excellent, with lots of neat details on each area, including tactics sections for the monsters, terrain features that can be climbed, pushed over and pulled, and advice on scaling the encounter for weaker or tougher parties. As an added bonus, one of the encounters features one of my favourite low level monsters (a Fiend Factory classic). To make exploration more rewarding, the PCs can uncover clues to the history of the keep and its original inhabitants as they wander around, and even have the opportunity to interact with one of them. NPC opponents are well-detailed throughout, facilitating roleplaying if your group is prone to parley or take prisoners.

Overall, Shadowed Keep on the Borderlands is an excellent way to kick off a new Pathfinder or D&D 3.5 campaign. It has a cool, old school feel – Creighton has said it’s his homage to the Moathouse from T1 on his blog – and presents a detailed adventure setting, full of memorable and fun encounters. Highly recommended.

This adventure is 95 pages long, 1 page front cover, 2 pages advertisements, 1 page SRD, 1 page back cover, 2 pages editorial, 1 page ToC, 1 page statblocks by CR (and a cool rhyme for your bard!), leaving 86 pages of content, so let's check out Raging Swan's latest adventure!

This being an adventure review, I urge potential players to jump to the conclusion in order to avoid SPOILERS.

Still here? Shadowed Keep of the Borderlands is essentially a sandbox adventure in the truest form - intentionally reminiscent of the classic moathouse of ToEE, the now ruined keep was originally constructed by adventurers who have subsequently been routed and destroyed in a night of carnage by their goblinoid foes.

Now, the woods surrounding the keep have become rather unsafe - animals, vermin, bandits and worse prowl the woods and some sages speculate that a map to a famous lost dwarven hold might still lie within the keep - hopefully enough prompting to get the PCs to try to tackle the keep! The surface section of the keep essentially has two different areas - the bandit queen's tower and the donjon of ruin. In the former, the bandits (who may be tricked, negotiated with and even be joined by your PCs and get the RSP NPC-treatment with mannerisms etc!) make for a potentially lethal coordinated defense and if your PCs think they'll be in for an easy ride, they'll learn a harsh lesson here - the foes in the keep react organically to threats. Which is a VERY important thing to consider about this adventure: The amount of detail provided for the keep is stunning - many rooms feature d20 tables to find valuables not found by other looters, bones of small animals, harmless mold etc. Essentially each room has SOMETHING going for them and NPCs and critters use the terrain to their advantage. Bandits use tables for cover, red hot pokers scare the hell out of goblins who used them on foes and know all too well the effect the things have, giant spider hang on the walls and throw nets on PCs, who in turn may hide behind tapestries - there is some environmental peculiarity in every room.

Wait, goblins? Yeah, but let's talk about the donjon first - essentially the middle ground between the two factions of the fortress, the donjon is in a state of dilapidation and disrepair, overrun by vermin and haunted by the ghost of the former lord's child who wants to have his remains buried with his parents - only that's not as easy as one would hope. It is at the latest here that PCs will realize something - traps are not randomly strewn about, but instead can be anticipated and found via clever roleplaying, interrogation etc. The same holds true for the as of yet undiscovered and magically trapped vault of the adventurers, cleverly hidden within the donjon.

Beyond the donjon, in its cellar and dungeon, the blood moon goblin tribe has found a refuge and lurks, waging war on the bandits under the leadership of the despicable...ogre. Yeah. I was not impressed by that. How many adventure modules have you read for 1st level where the PCs eventually fight a damn ogre? My cynicism should be proven wrong in this particular instance, though, for said ogre-brute is a horned, EXTREMELY deadly fiendish monstrosity (with a corresponding artwork), guarded by 3 medium, dual poison-sickle wielding concubines! It should also be noted that PCs may actually use tribal politics to gain an ally in a megalomaniacal goblin adept as well as rescue prisoners and even attack the green threat with the bandits - all options that should be considered, for the PCs are up against a goblin tribe that may actually launch a coordinated defense against their intrusion and makes good work of their bugbear mercenaries and environmental surroundings.

Beyond the caves of the Blood Moon (which may be entered via multiple ways, btw.!), there lies the undercrypt, a once hallowed hall (essentially a couple of extra rooms) now teeming with undead - a strange, necrotic corruption is spreading from a fissure of dark, ice-cold water and hallowing the ground/finding out what the source of the corruption is, might make for a nice follow-up to the things happening in this particular part of the dungeon. Once the goblins have been crushed, the bandits defeated, the ghost laid to rest and the undead disposed off, the PCs might actually lay claim to the fortress, which would make for an interesting product in the future - here's to hoping that RSP releases one!

The adventure comes with 9 pregens (including witch, oracle and magus, but no summoner or alchemist), 3 pages of handouts (an overview of the keep and two beautiful maps leading to the lost dwarven hold and depicting its layout, which served to immediately spark my imagination for further adventures) and 9 pages of illustrations that you can show to the players - this whopping amount of player-friendly additions is simply amazing.

Conclusion: Editing and formatting, as I've come to expect from Raging Swan Press, is top-notch - I didn't notice any glitches. The layout adheres to RSP's classic and printer-friendly, easy to read 2-column layout and the artworks are plentiful, classic b/w and amazing - with the exception of one piece (a certain treasure guardian, who looks cgi-ish and doesn't fit with the rest of the artworks), the artworks are top-notch in quality and evoke not only a sense of nostalgia, but also help illustrating the mood of the locations. Even better, their additional reproduction as player handouts make it easy on the DM to just hand them off instead of having to cut up the printed-out pages. Neat! The pdf comes fully bookmarked and comes with an optimized version for use with e-readers. I'm a huge fan of the maps of the dwarven hold (and want to see the adventure set there!), but I would have loved it even more if the PCs had some way to find a similar (perhaps faulty) map of the dungeon below the donjon. Oh well, you can't have everything. Which brings me to the foes encountered.

I know, this is by design, but I'll come out and say it. Bandits, ogres and shadows. I don't want to see them in a first level adventure. They have been done to effin' death. Seeing that this adventure is a homage to the classics and deliberately tries to evoke a feeling of classical modules, I'm willing to let that particular gripe slip, though - especially due to doing at least SOME things different.

Much like many classic modules, the shadowed keep is not necessarily a good read and when first going through it, I didn't feel too impressed. In fact, I probably would have put this down, were it not for my experience as a DM - Creighton provided me with an advance copy and thus I had the option of running my players through the whole module prior to writing this review and... they had a blast, as did I. Which is not a given. I'll come out and say it - I don't like the "Temple of Elemental Evil". There. I did it. Pull out the rotten tomatoes, but I never liked the module and always considered it extremely overrated. Thus, deriving any sort of enjoyment, let alone this amount from a module that is a declared and designated homage is rather astonishing. While the story/location is not too exciting, it is all about the details in this particular adventure - the whole adventure makes for such an immensely detailed place, the foes and their tactics are so detailed that actually RUNNING the adventure is a blast, especially with all the things to show your players. Even better, the module provides quite a challenge - if you play your odds smart as a DM, the players will be up to a Frog God Games-level challenge - during our run, my experienced players had 3 fatalities and none felt unfair or unjustified. Brains is just as important as brawns when challenging the Blood Moon on their home turf, especially their chief and his concubines! Even better, a timeline of events to spring upon your players - wandering animals, weather phenomena, goblin attacks - you name them, is provided to make the adventure feel even more organic and alive than by virtue of its excessive details. Using this timeline and shifting events around enables a DM to further customize the individual playing experience and provides for an excellent tool to put up and ease off pressure from the PCs while they are exploring the keep, thus ensuring no boredom can ever settle while exploring the different areas. All in all, we had a surprisingly awesome time while clearing out the keep and thus, in spite of my initial cantankerous nitpicking, I'll settle for a final verdict of 5 stars for this very old-school module.

Endzeitgeist out.

The following review was originally posted at Roleplayers Chronicle and can be read in its entirety at http://roleplayerschronicle.com/?p=19271.

Shadowed Keep on the Borderlands is a location-based adventure module for Pathfinder. It is designed for 1st Level characters to be brought to 3rd Level if the entire keep is purged of threats within. The adventure has an old-school appeal with a romp through the entire keep, above and below ground, similar to a dungeon delve. The biggest difference here is that the encounters are defined from room to room, although random encounters are possible.

OVERALL

Shadowed Keep on the Borderlands is an excellent location-based adventure; not only in design but also in flavor and layout (layout of the adventure, not the publication.) It’s an excellent introduction to a lengthy campaign for those who enjoy this style of game-play. It creates the ultimate campaign starting point and launchpad, with campaign hooks included in the publication.

RATINGS

Publication Quality: 10 out of 10 Raging Swan Press is known for their simple yet extremely effective and efficient layout and format. Shadowed Keep on the Borderlands is one of their best products yet, if not the best. The flow of the publication is incredibly smooth and any GM will find it extremely easy to run the adventure. One of the factors that make it so easy is how detailed each encounter is in terms of tactics, environment, and scaling. Additionally, there are some beautiful illustrations that create a lot of visual appeal for important locations. Topping it all off is an old-school style cartography showing off every room and area of the adventure module.

Storyline: 8 out of 10 Shadowed Keep on the Borderlands has very little storyline involved while at the same time it has three different mini-storylines framing the different aspects of the keep. The three storylines frame the keep’s original purpose (along with its downfall) and its current residents. These mini-storylines are not designed to develop throughout the adventure as they are simply given purpose in the beginning and their outcomes will be decided by the actions of the PCs. The keep’s ultimate storyline is that of the PCs and how they view the keep. If they clear it and walk away, then the keep’s storyline ends there.

Desire to Play: 9 out of 10 As far as playing a location-based adventure, Shadowed Keep on the Borderlands is an excellent choice and filled with details and possibilities. The GM can incorporate the keep in a number of ways, gauging the response of the PCs and how they view the keep’s future use. As far as using it as a launching point for a lengthy campaign, it’s a fantastic way for the PCs to get their feet wet while providing a base of operations should they deem it worthy. Essentially, Shadowed Keep on the Borderlands can serve a number of purposes besides just being a location-based romp through this broken down keep.

Overall: 9 out of 10 Shadowed Keep on the Borderlands is an excellent adventure in terms of quality of design and possibilities for use. Every single room within the keep is extensively described and detailed, making the GMs job much easier, and the flavor of which change or grow as the PCs get deeper and deeper into the adventure, which avoids the feeling of repetitious or mundane. Don’t expect the same old thing when you enter a new room, because you will possibly be very surprised at what you find.