B2 Still Works

There is a superstition that ACKS is too large for the modules you already own. The book is thick; therefore, the door to the Caves of Chaos must have changed. It has not.

Keep on the Borderlands does not care how many pages are in the Judge's Journal. It cares whether you can roll a reaction, spend a torch, and decide if the hobgoblins are a fight or a problem you are not ready for. That is the same loop you already know from B/X and OSE. ACKS did not replace it. ACKS put a country behind it.

This is how I talk myself out of starting. I look at domain chapters and assume the first session has to justify the whole shelf. The first session has to justify a march to the keep and a reason to leave it. If the party comes back rich, the rest of the game wakes up. If they don't come back, you still played tonight.

The old modules are not a compromise. They are the on-ramp. The Borderlands keep is already a seed of a domain. The wilderness around it is already hexes. The factions in the caves are already the kind of mess a future lord would have to finish.

Put the Imperial Imprint on the table.

Open B2 anyway. Let the crate prove it can do the small game before you demand the empire.