Slave Pits of the Undercity - your experiences?

[Agamon]

I can't count how many times I've run this adventure over the years. Seriously, I think it's hovering around 10 to 12. Truely classic adventure. And oddly enough, I'm running a 3.5E convert of it in a couple weeks for a bunch of relative newcomers (most started around the coming of 3E). Should be fun!

 

[grodog]

And now that spell ability stat requirements and stat damage are a part of the system, I think it'll be easy to rule that spellcasting PCs are hampered in A4. Just have them drugged with stuff that inflicts stat damage and their spell use is cut down. But with sorcerers and priests, that's still a fair number of slots to use for casting spontaneous-cast spells. Should be an interesting trick to design how that will work while still making it a fun challenge.

Beware the Eschew Materials feat if you're running A4

 

[smetzger]

Beware the Eschew Materials feat if you're running A4

The proficiency in all simple weapons is a great boon also.

 

[trentonjoe]

I ran A1-A3 last summer as soon as 3.5 came out. A group of us did all 3 in about 36 hours. It was a blast.

The two things I remember:

1) I think the basilick stoned 3 PCs in the courtyard of A1.

2) The bad guy monk died in about 1/3 pf a combat round in A3.

 

[jasper]

again back in my muchkin bad group days. So my memory is blank.
hey what you want it was no later than early 82. That was many beers and steaks ago.

 

[DarrenGMiller]

I ran this series several times. It is without a doubt one of the best adventure series ever produced. One of the best moments of the series came in the Slavers' Stockade:

The party entered the room where the madman had his secret entrance into the ceiling area. The party halfling thief entered first to recon and closed the door behind him. He was supposed to give a signal when the coast was clear, so the party waited. Unbeknownst to them, the halfling began exploring the chimney. He used a ring of flying and went up into the chimney, where he became covered in soot. When his head hit the pillow (he had a 7 INT), he stabbed it and ripped it to shreds with his dagger, getting feathers all over him.

At this point, the party gave up waiting for him and burst through the door thinking something terrible had gotten the best of him. They entered the room and saw a small flying, sooty creature fly out of the chimney at them. In order to escape their attacks and prove his identity, he tried to pull out his trademark wand of wonder (he made a habit of annoying the party by playing tricks with his wand of wonder), which he kept in a holster next to his other wand, a wand of fireballs. When the wand cleared the holster, he forgot which command word activated which wand, so he said them both. Unfortunately, the wand in his hands then filled the room with a fireball that spilled into the hallway, killing 7 characters. It was very close to a TPK. We still laugh about that one today, about 20 years later.

DM

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Oddly, I never played or DM'd this one, or A2. I did use A3 and A4 -- A4 being a great adventure despite the railroaded beginning.

 

[EricNoah]

This was my first AD&D experience. I actually started out inside the dungeon as a slave, used slivers of a broken food bowl to pick the lock of my cage, and managed to fight my way outside to freedom. Good times!

 

[T. Foster]

Looks like I missed this thread first time around, so I'll catch it on the bounce.

A4: In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords was I think the very first published module I ever played in, at age 9, with my best friend (also age 9) as DM (and running his own character). He'd borrowed the module from his older brother (who was way too cool to play with us kids), and we played it under the D&D Expert Set rules because neither of us knew AD&D yet. He thought the whole 'prisoners' thing sucked so he ignored it and let us go in fully equipped. Needless to say that kind of defeated the purpose. This was definitely not one of my gaming highlights (but after we finished he let me borrow the module to read it, and I was so intrigued and impressed by how it was supposed to play that I was pretty much cured of my adolescent munchkinism on the spot, and also became an almost instant convert to AD&D -- I had to find out about all those unfamiliar spells and monsters and magic items and such).

Years later I ran A1 for my main group of players. We'd just finished up something like 2 fruitless years in Temple of Elemental Evil and I was exhausted. There was a lot of screwing around in the first part of the module -- getting sidetracked, doing all manner of dumb stuff -- and sensing another potentially endless module I put my foot down when they finally reached the second level; I told them I was running it tournament style and they only had 4 hours to finish the level, and then I started a stopwatch. Shockingly, the players actually stepped up to the challenge, worked intelligently and efficiently, finished the module on schedule, and everybody had a great time. This module has several really fun and memorable set-pieces, especially the battle with the Aspis drones on the narrow planks over the slave pens.

Unfortunately, things didn't go so well as we moved on to A2. The party stumbled into the lair of the Ankheg (?) in the outer bailey -- I believe they also managed to trip an alarm and alert the entire fortress -- and got beaten up so badly that they were forced to retreat via Teleport spells. It was a complete disaster, one of the most embarrassing defeats that group ever suffered (well, on second thought I take that back, because that group suffered a LOT of really embarrassing defeats, but this was definitely up there). So, unfortunately, they never finished that module and I never got to run the rest of the series. I did play through the entire series once as a "solo adventure" (in which I allowed my favorite character to lose his suit of magical plate mail to that giant magnet trap in the basement in A2 -- I thought that was very mature of my 11 year old self to do) but that's not really the same thing.

 

[JediSoth]

I own all four 1st edition modules and remember playing A1 as a youth. That's all I remember from that, but I did get a 3E conversion of them and incorporated A1 into one of my campaigns a few years ago. It was pretty fun. The PCs, who were of the attack-first-search-for-traps/ask-questions-later-mold had a heck of a time. The best encounter was with some giant weasels. Our burly fighter had a mercurial greatsword by that point and was making short work of just about anything he hit (a few weeks earlier, he killed a wyvern with one hit with it). One of the weasels got latched on his throat and drained him nearly to death before the group got it off him. He was the laughing stock that day (much to the delight of the druid who'd been having a hard time of it since he was always attemping to "dominate animals" (insert your own conclusions about the jokes that can be made there)).

JediSoth