Is Slave Pits of the Undercity a well-designed adventure module?

[Mycanid]

Well, I liked it ... I thought it was well designed in general, but I had a few complaints - I wish the module designers had developed the initial stages of getting to the Temple area in more detail. They only skimmed the surface of it all, which frustrated me. I wanted more detail of the city of Highport.

The other complaint was how they did not develop the figure of the Slave Lord at the end of the module like they did in A2-4; a distinct personality of the bad guy that a DM can wrap his rp'ing skill around is a desirable design feature in a module, I think - as it is generally with as many npc's or encounter/opponents as possible....

I liked the non-tournament aspects of the module as opposed to the tournament aspect. When I played it we used the tournament characters (I used Ogre) but the DM did not limit us to use the tournament encounter areas. Later when I DM'd it I used both the tournament and non-tournament areas and found that both I and the players vastly preferred the latter.

Oh yes - there is a STUPENDOUS nwn1 version of this module, with great detail of Highport too, and VERY faithful to the module. Here is the link:

http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Modules.Detail&id=2782&id=3897

 

[el-remmen]

Again, I agree. . . poorly designed, but here are some of the things I did to make it work.

1- A basilisk (or 2?) is loose in the area, even listed on the wandering monster chart – how do you conduct slaver business in a compound with an untamed basilisk running around free?

The basilisk was boarded into the inner courtyard and the slavers/orcs would dump captives and unruly slaves in there. I drew the PCs in there by having some live food wandering around in there (emaciated slaves) desperate to get out. (Ever dump live crickets into a lizard or tarantula tank? Imagine that reaction )

2- Ghouls and ghasts are loose in the area, even listed on the wandering monster chart – and only one minor cleric in the whole compound.

Again, these were locked off into a section of the temple and kept in check until a more powerful priest who worked for the slavers could return to gauge the situation and see if they might be of use. I added letters regarding this and other matters among the slavers' things for verisimilitude's sake.

4- There are tricks set up that expect the PCs to enter the room from illogical (in the sense of the defense expectations) directions – why set up a deception directed at someone coming up out of the sewers? – why aim a flamethrower inward toward the interior of the temple?

I ignored all tricks and traps of that manner - why would they have false slaves among captives who really worked for the slavers (for example), if they did not know the PCs were coming - instead I had a few "loyal slaves" who were so cowed they tried to work against the PCs from fear of the slavers' power.

5- The orcs (the main grunts of the base) are so outclassed by the uncontrolled monsters of the place, one wonders how the place survives.

I removed the wandering monsters and beefed up the orcs some.

Now, sure, a *good* DM could finagle all this into some sense,

Yep.

 

[Storm Raven]

I found this adventure to be a perfect example of abysmal design. (And I did DM a group through this one time.)

It’s an old burned-out temple being used as a slaver base.

Are you sure you DMed this? And are recollecting the adventure correctly? I'm converting it to 3e right now, and I just don't agree with several of your assessments.

1- A basilisk (or 2?) is loose in the area, even listed on the wandering monster chart – how do you conduct slaver business in a compound with an untamed basilisk running around free?

The basilisks are confined to an inner courtyard area. The wandering monster entry seems to assume that they broke through the containing walls that were erected to keep them in, since there is no other way for them to wander.

[/i]2- Ghouls and ghasts are loose in the area, even listed on the wandering monster chart – and only one minor cleric in the whole compound.[/i]

The cleric is 6th level, I'm not sure I would call that "minor". There is also an orcish witch doctor (3/3 cleric/magic-user). The ghouls and ghasts appear to be allied to the slaver band, and their areas are kept seperate from the rest of the complex by the giant sundew, which is presumably immune to their paralysis.

3- There are numerous rooms where the occupants can’t logically get out and move about the complex because of obstacles, traps, monsters – how did they get into that room to begin with?

I'm not sure which rooms you are talking about here. I can't think of any rooms in the complex for which this is true.

4- There are tricks set up that expect the PCs to enter the room from illogical (in the sense of the defense expectations) directions – why set up a deception directed at someone coming up out of the sewers? – why aim a flamethrower inward toward the interior of the temple?

Which deception is aimed at people coming out of the sewers? The only real deception in the complex is the false slaves, and that is aimed at people who show up at the front door pretending to be slave traders. And the flamethrower can be moved. It si after all, sitting in the front courtyard of the complex near the entry portcullis.

5- The orcs (the main grunts of the base) are so outclassed by the uncontrolled monsters of the place, one wonders how the place survives.

Most of the "uncontrolled" monsters are actually pretty well contained. The orcs have a method for dealing with the harpies. The slavers have a truce with the wight. The sundew is behind a door, which is presumably cannot open. The basilisk is in a bricked up room. The ghouls and ghasts are blocked by the sundew. The orcs have pretty much made their lair reasonably secure.

 

[DM_Jeff]

3.0

So good that during the middle of my first 3.0 campaign I went through and converted it for play in the new edition, and it ran just as good as it did 15+ years ago, the players adored it.

-DM Jeff

 

[T. Foster]

As a linear tournament-style dungeon it's a classic -- full of memorable set-piece combats and challenging obstacles/puzzles, perfectly paced to be played through in 2 4-hour sessions (one for the upper level, one for the lower level). We played it in this manner (I even used a stop-watch to time the session) back in the 80s and had a great time -- stripping out all the extraneous campaign concerns and focusing solely on "beating" the dungeon in the shortest time possible made for a great change of pace (and I was suprised at how well my players were able to deal with the verious tactical and logistical challenges when they really focused on it).

As a non-linear campaign module it's considerably more problematic. The premise is good -- a mystery/investigation-style scenario wherein the players track the slavers back to Highport, uncover the location of their hideout, and raid it, but the module only provides the "final scene" and all the rest must be created by the individual DM. Plus the non-linear "campaign" sections of the dungeon don't meld well with the linear "tournament" sections -- much of the latter seems either too arbitrary or too scripted when viewed from the perspective of the former. For campaign play I'd rather have seen this module devote more attention to the investigation before the finale and then cut out a lot of the arbitrary tournament-style challenges and given us more detail on, for instance, the organization of the slavers and what they do when they're not waiting around to ambush a bunch of pesky PCs.

To use the module as a recreation of the original tournament run it's great. To use it in campaign play it needs a lot of addition and reworking from the DM. So I voted "Other."

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

it is a well designed tournament module

QFT. The first two A-series modules never really worked for me, though I can see how they would be great tournament modules. They were just a little too linear, with a few too many out-of-place elements and monsters. I always felt the third was the best of the series -- minus the ending, which was railroaded to get to the fourth module. The fourth module could be forgiven its linear railroad nature slightly since it was a unique setup for the time that gave players a new form of challenge.

 

[riprock]

QFT. The first two A-series modules never really worked for me, though I can see how they would be great tournament modules. They were just a little too linear, with a few too many out-of-place elements and monsters. I always felt the third was the best of the series -- minus the ending, which was railroaded to get to the fourth module. The fourth module could be forgiven its linear railroad nature slightly since it was a unique setup for the time that gave players a new form of challenge.

The A-series didn't really "work" for me or my peers at the time, because we could only work with it by missing the point.

We had some fun by completely mis-using it. It would have been better if we could have used it.

The map for A1, in particular, makes very little sense to me. I can't imagine why anyone would build a temple complex such that the two major areas are separated by a thick wall. If the chapel area is sacred and the stables are impure, then most religions would have built two separate buildings. It doesn't make sense.

 

[grodog]

Like TFoster, I also ran A1 as both a tourney and in campaign play. My players liked the A-series the most of the various tourneys mass-produced by TSR (discounting the G and D series, since they weren't written originally as tourney modules), and we ran them a few times as prep for playing in local tourneys in the NJ-PA-NY-DE-MD corridor.

As a campaign module, I also liked A1 a lot. The temple compound offered lots of options for expansion, and as Ourph said, allowed innovative players a lot of options for entering into the environment. I didn't find issues with the basilisk and ghouls wandering around, Quasqueton, since IIRC the slavers had actually bricked up portions of the temple courtyards, which confined the basilisk to those areas (but woe to PCs who climb in from above! ). I also designed additional buildings for Highport, and linked some of them to the slaver temple via the sewers (some of the areas could only be entered by the sewers and then by ascending to the surface: the upper works of some buildings had collapsed to the point that they encounter areas were inaccessible from above ground).

All-in-all, A1 is my favorite non-Gygax, non-Kuntz TSR module. IME it's great

 

[grodog]

Oh yes - there is a STUPENDOUS nwn1 version of this module, with great detail of Highport too, and VERY faithful to the module. Here is the link:

http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Modules.Detail&id=2782&id=3897

Mycanid, is there a NWN export function, where you can dump the module info/details to text or something like that?

 

[Al'Kelhar]

I've run the module twice now, once in 3E and just a few weeks back in 3.5E. Both times I had to modify it for the reasons people have already advanced - illogical placement of monsters and traps, some unusual areas of the map, and to fit it into an existing campaign. In both cases I re-wrote the adventure completely, rather than just tinkered at the edges., although the basic premise of an old temple taken over by slavers remained. I'd be happy to flick people either or both my 3.0E version and my 3.5E version.

Cheers, Al'Kelhar