TSR's module A1, Slave Pits of the Undercity

TSR module A1, Slave Pits of the Undercity, is the first and the most coherent of the Slavers modules: inventive and challenging while being the most sensibly drafted of these disorderly villain lairs.

The history of the series further emerges from a thread on Dragonsfoot remembering the specifics of the GenCon tournament that gave rise to the four A series modules. The temple and dungeon levels of A1 and A2 each were a single, linear adventure. Player groups in the first round were randomly assigned into one of these four qualifiers or a fifth one corresponding to the early section of A3.  From these five, the best-scoring made it to the semifinal and final rounds, which respectively used versions of the later (city) part of A3, and all of A4.

From such a genesis we can trace the design of Slave Pits of the Undercity (and here, perforce, the spoilers begin). Helpfully for our archaeology, the module includes the original tournament railroad maps for the top and dungeon levels.

New monsters, meant as a surprise, were regularly "spoiled" on the A series covers - here, the aspis

TEMPLE LEVEL

The tournament scenario gives the players inside information about a secret door in the wall of the temple. This door is trapped but not guarded - such is the security protocol of a disorderly fortress - and leads to a twisting corridor through an abandoned area of the building. The "railroad" takes the party past some well-set fights, and other situations that act like puzzles without seeming contrived, such as a deceptive plank over a pit, or a combat dilemma involving a new plant monster, the giant sundew, that becomes much easier if the party realizes how the fortress forces manage this menace in its midst. After this gauntlet, the party will run into the actual slaver forces, and these encounters are devised with the same art, combining trickery, interesting combat problems, and traps.

That's the end of the railroad; but even the tournament scenario has a couple of distractions and dead-ends. One of them, a roughly patched wall that if broken through leads to a face-to-face encounter with a basilisk, had the distinction of taking out a player-character in my own 5th edition campaign.  And in the campaign version of the module, more areas are added branching from the tournament path - a stable guarded by slaver forces, a haunted cemetery and a garrison of terrified orcs, and a spacious courtyard, possibly a shortcut, but where more undead lurk. The reissue of the module in 1986 added a gate from this courtyard into the midst of the organized opposition area, further adding options for the attack.

This expansion allows different approaches to the temple complex. Jason Thompson's cartoon walkthrough of the module shows two of these: one party sneaking in through the tournament entrance, the other masquerading as slave-buying customers to go through the front door. Entering by the stables, by the graveyard orc door, or simply climbing the wall in an unguarded spot are also possibilities.

DUNGEON LEVEL

There are ways down from the temple, most obviously at the end of the final boss fight of the temple railroad; but the full module places two more descents to vary play in the dungeon level. This underground jams together four quite different areas: the eponymous slave pits, with slaves, slavers, and minions; a set of caves that hosts a tribe of orcs allied with the slavers; another set of caves that hosts a population of another new monster, the fearsome four-armed insectoid aspis folk; and a network of wet and filthy sewer passages that ties the whole place together.

The railroad version of the dungeon has the players first encountering some nasty larvae in the acidic spawning pool of the aspis; then crossing the sewer to muscle through a protracted fight with most of the orc tribe; then finally engaging the slavers, including some of their aspis allies, before confronting the slaver leader - who, it has to be said, is less formidable and treacherous than the final encounter of the temple. 

The open version develops the aspis zone and has more connections to approach the bad guys. While the temple is infested with ghouls and a wight, the underground is only semi-unruly - these are groups cooperating with the slavers for now, but if a way can be found to communicate, faction bargaining in the classic big-dungeon style can happen.

BEST OF THE SERIES

My current party cleared out most of A1, using a conversion to 5th edition. Running it was a delight -- the combat challenges tough and packed with surprises, but not in a way that felt forced or unfair. The tricks and traps have a gritty, naturalistic feel to them, and the different areas of the complex are balanced between abandoned/haunted, main bad guys, and side factions. We see how the garrison of orcs, half-orcs, and evil humans deals with the unruly forces in their midst - finding a way to tame the sundew, cringing in fear from the haunted cemetery, hiring some of the aspis. This was also the deadliest module of my campaign, claiming two PCs. Probably, this is just due to incautious player mistakes snagging on two of 5th edition's few remaining teeth. One, doppelgangers have an absolutely deadly surprise attack if they can catch a party member alone; two, even with two saves, there is no easy answer to petrification until characters hit ninth level.

As we'll see in the pieces to come, the other A-series modules, in my opinion, are less deft at presenting an unruly stronghold: A2 is ambitious but strained, A3 a mess, and A4 returns to better form but famously hangs on a railroading premise that may not sit well with new-old-school values.

Night's Dark Terror 14: Funny Things Happen on the Way to the Horse Market

This is part of a series of posts with a scene-by-scene critique, appreciation, and improvement of the 1986 TSR module B10, Night's Dark Terror. 

After Xitaqa, the players are finally released from the chain of time-sensitive adventures leading to the rescue of Stephan Sukiskyn. It's up to you how much breathing room they get, to go on some of the side adventures mentioned earlier. But logically, the Sukiskyn family would be very eager to get their 24 white horses sold before too much time passes. Nor would they be at all happy to see the adventurers, still bound by their agreement with Stephan, march off to raid some goblin lair or haunted tomb, never to return. 

CC Public Domain 1.0 image from PickPik

The power to resist the family's pressure lies in the hands of the players, but they also have a powerful lure to make the journey. For there's easy money in it without any obvious hazards -- 50% of the sale price, if they succeeded in returning Stephan alive, and even after the recovery of his dead body they'll probably be cut in for 25%. But is the journey to the market site, the elven trading post of Rifllian, uneventful? Of course not! There are four keyed encounters along the way. All of these, in one way or another, expose the party to the ongoing plots of the Iron Ring.

1. Ambush at Misha's ferry. After the possibility of an uneventful but sentimental last encounter with Misha's bear, there's an Iron Ring attack set up at this crossing point, with a force almost identical to the very first encounter on the river.

Let's imagine what's going through the minds of these shadowy overlords as they try to put an end to your ever-so-inconvenient heroes. The river attack failed, but they can blame it on the added forces of Kalanos, his men, and the walls of the riverboat. The siege of Sukiskyn failed, but there was the whole combat-ready family in addition, and again, fortifications. It just about makes sense that the baddies would think a force totalling 13 hit dice (in Basic D&D) would have a chance against the party, alone (but for Stephan and Taras) and in the open. But by now the total party levels should number 12-18, plus 8 levels in Stephan and Taras.

This ambush should be easily winnable by the heroes. If its failure becomes known to HQ, by survivors reporting back, or by the dead being discovered, the Iron Ring as an intelligent organization should know that a bigger force is going to be needed to take the good guys down. Mostly, this logic is followed in the rest of the adventure, but never to its ultimate conclusion. Maybe that's just standard Bond-villain procedure applied to the fiction of adventure gaming. To strike from complete surprise, with numbers that cannot be defeated, would be profoundly unfair to the players.

2. Raid the Iron Ring camp. On the trail across the moors to the gnomes' ferry, the party runs into Loshad one more time, who tells them of an Iron Ring slaving camp in the hills. Attacking it would satisfy both Loshad's goals (free mistreated horses) and the party's (free mistreated people). This encounter is tougher, with 28 hit dice worth of foes, but the party might gain surprise. If you think the odds are too much, you might let the players bargain the were-horse into giving fire support. Loshad, as usual, is written well as an NPC. His pro-horse agenda makes dealing with him more prickly than your usual quest-giver.

In this and the previous encounter, it is possible that the party captures Iron Ring personnel and convinces them to talk. This is not covered in the module, which assumes a strict code of silence among this organization. But in fact, through some impressive persuasion and stagecraft of intimidation, my group succeeded in wresting some limited information out of one captive goon. You may want to have the bad guys hold their tongue no matter what. But as I'll argue below, this policy tends to frustrate the natural motivation to go on the offensive.

3. The gnomes' ferry. There's something amusingly Vancian about the gnomes' ability to sniff out a party's wealth and adjust their prices accordingly, even if the well-traveled Stephan would be in a position to warn the party. In running this place I took the opportunity to flesh out the gnomes a little, as well as introduce some more NPCs to the inn which, as they were more campaign-specific, I won't trouble to detail.

Aino Weaselbane is the leader of the gnomes, an attractive and shrewd silversmith with a nose for gold. She pours ale and cooks meals in the kitchen, and will take the lead in bargaining for passage across the river or any other goods, such as silvered weapons.

Jorma Sawleaf, a bard, plays the hurdy-gurdy in the inn. He will take requests for a tip of 2 gold, and will stop playing entirely for 10, unless outbid by someone who inexplicably appreciates his music.

Pekka Waggletop is an idler, drunk, and pub crank of the first order. If so much as looked at, he will launch into his crazy ideas about slaver conspiracies and evil wizards. By chance, he is right, but only by chance.

Vallo Gimbletooth is the waiter, a retired pit fighter with the scars and broad-bladed shortsword to show for it. Naturally, he also takes the role of security for the inn.

Symphonia, just Symphonia, is a veiled fortune-teller who uses cards for divination.  Her prophecies ("cross my palm with 20 silver") tend to be vague, but one in three is startlingly accurate.

Here, too, there's an encounter with an Iron Ring agent who is smart enough to run from this party, putting them again in the position of initiative as they decide whether to pursue him. Frustratingly, though, there's little to be gained information-wise if they do; thwarting him only slows down the Iron Ring's operation to tail the party a little bit.

4. Meeting with merchants. This encounter just across the river, unlikely to end in combat, introduces two elements to be repeated later on. First, we start introducing one of several temptations to sell part of the white horse herd immediately, rather than hold out for a better deal at Rifllian. Then there's the news -- hardly surprising or worth the asking price -- that Iron Ring agents are specifically searching for the party.

After this last encounter, we end up just a day away from Rifllian, but with a contradiction hanging heavily over the adventure. Night's Dark Terror perfectly illustrates how, in the 1980's, Basic D&D was just one step ahead of its Advanced stable-mate in meeting the need for emotionally engaging adventure stories. Soon afterwards, Dragonlance (with its own, far worse railroading issues) and Ravenloft (better done, for sure) would start to fill that niche for AD&D. But meanwhile, you have the heartbreaking death of Aleena from the Mentzer Basic starter adventure. And in this module, the heartbreaking death of Mish, and after that, all sorts of human woe and destruction visibly served out by the Iron Ring and their goblin stooges. 

So, at this point, red-blooded heroes should be raring to take the battle to the enemy and root out the Iron Ring menace. But the adventure, as written, frustrates that aim. Once more, they're put onto the railroad train by one of the Sukiskyn family -- Stephan, who has no interest in seeking revenge against the conspiracy that kidnapped him, menaced his family, and murdered nearly the whole human population of the upper Volaga River. No, his only thoughts are to follow the family treasure map to that mysterious feature shown in the mountains. 

This contradiction explains why the rest of the adventure, to me, is unsatisfying. Over the next several encounters, the party will be shadowed and sniped at by Iron Ring forces, but is given no lead to take the initiative. My players weren't having it; a successful interrogation at the slavers' camp gave them the bare minimum information that the Iron Ring had a base under Kelven, and they are currently knee-deep in the first module of TSR's renowned A series, which fits the situation perfectly. The gnomes, the merchant, or documents found at the slavers' camp are also good opportunities to lay down clues for a more attack-oriented campaign.

Because of this not-unwelcome derailment, the next entry will be the last in this series for a while. I'm not going to comment on any scene I haven't played through, and Rifllian was the last scene in B10 that the party played through before getting into a more proactive adventure.

Night's Dark Terror 3: Misha's Ferry

 

This is part of a series of posts with a scene-by-scene critique, appreciation, and improvement of the 1986 TSR module B10, Night's Dark Terror. 

There's no downside in adopting the rules-as-written travel rates and having two or three days pass between the river ambush and the next encounter at Misha's Ferry. The upside is that it gives the party more time to rest and recover, which in B/X D&D is necessary given the absolutely punishing hit point recovery rules that were somehow left out of the rulebook but are spelled out in this module, on pull-out sheet 1. For each day spent resting you get ... one hit point back. Practically, this elevates the cleric to a must-have class in the party, with their ability to throw out a still-miserly one or two Cure spells a day (but none at first level!) 

Rules-as-written, this is another reason why this module may be too hard for 2nd level Basic D&D characters - the players are soon to be thrown into a gauntlet of encounter after tough encounter without the luxury of several days to rest up fully in between them. You may want to adopt my 52 Pages house rule that characters gain 1 hit point per level from a night's rest, and add that they gain a similar amount from resting all day. Fifth edition, of course, is a more forgiving game, and the encounters as written are much more survivable for a 2nd or 3rd level party in that system.

When the boat reaches the ferry, the emotional and moral depth of the module starts to show. Players who arrived here through the Mentzer Basic set will have already dealt with tragedy in the example game as they see the beloved Aleena fall to evil Bargle. Even though the Basic D&D family had a reputation as being for kiddies, by the mid-80's it joined the Dragonlance trend to present plotted stories that engaged players' feelings, of which B10 is a very good example. No, the 80's did not shy away from heartbreak in fantasy for the sake of the children! Now we're about to get to the tragic streak that runs through the first third of Night's Dark Terror.

Kalanos drops you off at the ferry and gives you directions to make your way inland to Sukiskyn, Stefan's homestead. If they've been helping to row, your party members might be crucial to the boat's progress against the current. But it's also not the end of the world if Kalanos gets to Ilyakana, only nine miles upriver, a little late. The ferry lies on a trade route, and Misha the druid is not around to operate it ("probably just off hunting!" says Kalanos). So, you can also have some vagabonds waiting at the north side of the ferry who will take a short-term rowing job, or even some replacement PC's, as I mentioned last time. And, as we're not necessarily following the same schedule that puts this event at "late afternoon," Kalanos would logically park the boat at the ferry if it's sunset or after dark when they get there.

As might be expected, all is not well with Misha. Her cottage is empty and her pet bear, which Kalanos mentioned, comes roaring out of the woods, maddened and bleeding (from the neck, given the source of the wounds). The plot, which you're invited to telegraph heavily to the players, says that the bear is too scary to fight, so the party holes up in Misha's cottage until it goes away. In 5th edition, a plain old CR 1 brown bear isn't hard for 3rd level characters to fight. A DM might up-scale it to a CR2 cave bear or even a CR3 owlbear. But in Basic, the bear with its hug attack is dangerous as hell, especially against a lightly armored foe. When I ran the first few scenes of B10 using my 52 Pages Basic-like rules, Kalanos (who had chosen to camp overnight at the ferry) high-rolled morale, ran at the bear, and immediately got mauled and death-hugged, 5th level be damned.

No worries, though. If you manage to kill the bear, that's just more fuel for the tragedy once you figure out that it was rage-grieving the death of Misha. Indeed, this is the first of several instances in the adventure where the impact of war and violence is shown through the trauma of a third party, contributing to the gritty feel and raising the stakes in the action. You might also find the dead Misha if you search the river bank. Why you didn't have a chance to see the body coming up the river is unclear, but I just relocated the scene of the tragedy to a berry bush inland (and for 5th edition, added a few goodberries in a pouch to reward the party for finding her). Drained of blood, with bites on her neck, there's a good chance your players will think "vampire" instead of the real culprit, "vampire bats" working for the enemy. Anyone for a darkly comic bear hunt with stakes and garlic at the ready?

I recommend letting players know that they get a few XP, no more than 100 among the party, for burying Misha and any other dead people who are found without hope of burial. This reinforces the theme that the players represent decency and civilization. In fact, the ferry episode introduces a moral urgency to the adventure. The players are not just charging into a condominium of sentient abhumans, licensed to murder and loot, as they were expected to in the first of the B series, Keep on the Borderlands. It's 1986, and they've found the quickest way to establish a heroic narrative: show victimized people. If your ethics run that way, a DM might bend the narrative to involve misunderstood humanoids manipulated by an evil human slaver conspiracy. Or not. The point is, you the players are just on the way to do some business, and trouble has come to you and your hosts. But you're well equipped and eager to fight back - hell, it might even make you stronger in the doing.

Some of this module's much-derided railroading comes through after this encounter. For the story to play as written, the players need to leave the cottage next morning and take the whole day getting to Sukiskyn. Authorial fiat descends like a ton of bricks: the DM is told to use any means necessary to get the players to stay in the cottage overnight. Scary wolves howl in the night, and attack if the players press on to Sukiskyn -- though 5th edition characters will not be scared of 2-5 big bad wolves. What's more, the DM has permission to get the players lost in the woods, Blair Witch style -- even though there's a trail and a waxing moon shining through light clouds, by the adventure's own meticulous almanac. And then, when they set out the next day, the DM has the power to stretch or squeeze the path to fit the party's movement rate, making sure they get to Sukiskyn at sundown so the big set-piece there can go exactly as planned.

I'll have more to say about this next post, but, is it such a terrible crime if the players get to their destination a bit early or a bit late? Let's look at the trail. As mapped, it winds across six hexes, 18 miles to Sukiskyn. 

If the heroes get there early, it's because they've braved the perils of the night journey, or risked lighter armor in exchange for faster travel, or somehow learned that it's a bit quicker to follow the main river and turn at the stream. So why not reward early-comers with a safer set-up for the big battle that's ahead? If they get there late, things can also be arranged so they don't miss everything, but they have it a bit harder. In Mentzer D&D, the sluggish travel rates of the Cook edition get more realistic. Those in no or leather armor move 24 miles a day, those in metal armor move 18. So an average party will get there in time, the lighter-equipped party is rewarded by getting there a few hours before sunset, and any slower movement has to be chalked up to dawdling or encumbrance beyond fighting kit.

Nor is there any need to bend the rules to frustrate the night journey.  Just throw some heavy cloud cover over the skies, warn them that openly carried light will attract attention. Warn them, too, that they will get tired near dawn. Perhaps that fatigue involves minor hit point damage, an exhaustion level in 5th Edition, or some minuses to attack. If they insist on going by night, throw in guaranteed encounters with a hungry wolf pack tailored to the party's abilities, and with an advance party of goblin scouts, representing the ambush that starts off the next episode.

There are 46 pages of adventure, and we're on page 2; dozens of encounters, and we're at the third one. But here is where Night's Dark Terror puts on its big show; here we are, at the siege of Sukiskyn!