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A starter-level adventure, set in the World of Greyhawk, and meant for between four and six PCs of 1st to 3rd level under 2nd edition <i>Dungeons & Dragons</i> rules.

The PCs begin this particular adventure as young, inexperienced residents of Greatwall, a former farming village turned fortified stronghold, situated right on the border between the kingdom of Furyondy and the evil domains of the demi-god Iuz. Greatwall is suffering a major crisis in supplies since merchant caravans are loathe to make the treacherous voyage to the outpost. The commander feels that if he can send a merchant caravan from Greatwall to their closest trading partners and back again safely, then trade routes will re-open. Faced with the monotony of night watch duty on the walls, or fourteen-hour work details in the fields, the PCs jump at the opportunity to join on as caravan guards. If nothing else, the pay is incredible and it gets them out on the road for a little while.

Unbeknownst to them, a traitor to Furyondy is feeding information to Iuz. Information that includes the travel route of this caravan, and the details of what it's carrying. Now known to the Orcs of the area, the caravan becomes the target for every raiding party and bandit group along the route as danger dogs the PCs heels and every stop yields additional dangers.

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I wanted to rate this higher, because the idea behind this adventure is fairly solid. Unfortunately, it's also incomplete as published, meaning that before it can be put to use, the would-be DM must spend time putting together an entire missing encounter to bridge the gap between two chapters. It's a good thing author Paul Riegel laid out what was <i>intended</i> to happen across the course of the adventure at the start, because otherwise there would be literally no connective tissue between the penultimate and final encounters of the module.

And this missing event isn't just a random collection of skirmishes: according to the adventure outline, this was meant to be a massive assault on a town by Iuz's forces which is cover for an assassination of an NPC the characters are supposed to meet up with. They learn the details of this NPC's killer, then track down, capture, and interrogate him in order to learn the location of the hidden base within Furyondy's borders.

But all of that is missing. Somehow, an entire chapter of this adventure was just dropped and nobody noticed. It literally goes from a meeting with the PCs' contact, who makes his way back to Greatwall to inform them of the traitor in their midst, to the PCs staging an attack on a disused coal mine, with the text giving <i>zero</i> reason why they should be going to this mine and what their intended goals are once they get there. Were it not for the adventure summary given in the intro, there would be no way at all to even attempt to explain anything about the final leg of the adventure. And it's not like my copy's missing pages or anything like that -- all 32 are present and accounted for.

I don't understand how something like this happens. Either Riegel just forgot to write that part of the adventure, or the editor Andrew Stephen Harris cut it for some reason, but neither option makes sense. This is <i>not</i> a blink-and-you-miss-it scene, or a couple of words accidentally stripped off the end of a paragraph. If Riegel didn't submit it as part of his manuscript, how did this get past both the module's editor and the playtesters? If it was there, then why would an editor remove it?

This is one of the most egregious errors I've ever seen in an adventure printed by TSR, and there's no explanation I can conceive of that warrants it. At least with the summary information, it's possible for the DM to kludge something together for the players to go on, but there's no reason such a major chapter of the adventure should be farmed out to the DM as homework. It's a shame, really, because the story and presentation aren't terrible and would otherwise have earned this a solid 3 or 4 star rating.

I should point out that while <i>Border Watch</i> only received a single printing and thus was never corrected in print, TSR did realize that they'd left this section out, which they later uploaded to their website as a digital errata sheet. Wizards of the Coast has since scrubbed the TSR archival content from the site, including this errata, but [The Aceaum](https://www.acaeum.com) currently hosts a backup of the text which you can access here:

https://acaeum.com/library/wgm1.html

Recommended only for 2E product line collectors and Greyhawk enthusiasts. Otherwise, there are much better adventure options for introductory/starter adventures out there that don't leave out the second-to-last chapter.