#haunted keep

[oldschoolfrp]

Many 1st level characters explored The Haunted Keep, found in Moldvay's 1981 D&D Basic Rules in the "DM Instructions" section. Moldvay walked a new DM through the process of drawing a map and stocking a dungeon, leaving the west tower and lower catacombs for the DM to create. Erol Otus also drew the keep in cross-section, and other writers have published their versions of the expanded areas.

[vintagerpg]

The Haunted Tower (1992) is the last of the big box D&D expansions. It is the best one, on the merits of the cover, at least, which is an enlarged crop of Keith Parkinson’s cover for CA2 — Swords of Deceit, one of my all-time favorite pieces of D&D art.

Inside is the same collection of stuff as the other boxes. The big shift here is that the three scenarios are interconnected, making for a nine level dungeon. I wouldn’t call it mega, but it is rather large overall! The big bad at the bottom is a vampire, which seems daunting for fifth level characters, but hey, you gotta have something cool after breaking up all those skelies.

The board game rules are a bit different, rearranging things into a cooperative dungeon crawl adventure game, with no antagonist player.

I haven’t mentioned the back of the box photos yet. They are all various levels of hoot, but this one in particular takes the cake with that craft store Halloween tombstone as a prop. I guess no one had a plastic skull handy.

[mouthbeef]

Haunted Keep 2 by Tom Simpson Via Flickr: From the Dungeons and Dragons basic rulebook, 1974

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Haunted Keep 1 by Tom Simpson Via Flickr: From the Dungeons and Dragons basic rulebook, 1974

[oldschoolfrp]

The Haunted Keep  (Erol Otus, from the Moldvay D&D Basic Rulebook, TSR, 1981.)