Retrospective: Secret of the Slavers Stockade

The "Slave Lords" series of AD&D modules consists of four modules, beginning with Slave Lords of the Undercity, about which I have fond, if complicated, feelings. Truth be told, that's true of all the modules in the A-series, They're a mix of compelling ideas, some memorable encounters, and contrived situations in order to serve their purpose as tournament scenarios. When TSR published them, the designers cleaned them up for more general use, to varying degrees of effectiveness. 

The second module in the series, Secret of the Slavers Stockade, by Harold Johnson with assistance from Tom Moldvay, is, in my opinion, one of the better ones. Its premise is that the characters have a map to an old fort in the hills that is really a front for the salvers. Their goal is to investigate the fort and, if possible, disrupt the operations of the slavers within. It's a solid basis for an adventure, one that demands stealth and thoughtful action to succeed.

The fort (the titular Slavers' Stockade, which gets an apostrophe in the text but not on the cover) is large and well defended, with plenty of guards whose presence makes it difficult for the characters to move about. In fact, the place is so well defended that the tournament scoring system operates under the assumption that, after three hours of play, the characters will not make it very far into the fort. In addition, there's a section specifically devoted to "hill fort strategy," detailing how the guards will respond once it becomes apparent there are intruders in their midst. That's not even factoring in wandering monsters. In short, the characters have their job cut out for them.

Ultimately, to put an end to the threat of the Stockade, the characters will need to find and kill its overseer, Markessa, an evil female elf fighter/magic-user, who keeps a pet owlbear and is guarded by goblins. Here's Bill Willingham's [I'd originally incorrectly identified this as Roslof's work – JM] illustration of her and two goblins.

These goblins look a lot like Roslof's depiction of them for the AD&D Monster Cards in 1982, the year after the publication of this module. Once again, I find myself absolutely fascinated by the variability in the way some humanoid monsters are drawn in Dungeons & Dragons, with goblins having some of the greatest variability. 

The module includes some of other interesting illustrations, such as that of a new monster, the boggle, drawn by Jeff Dee.

I draw your attention to the boggle because he's not terribly dissimilar in general appearance to Roslof's goblins. Of course, he also looks a bit like Gollum from the 1978 Ralph Bakshi The Lord of the Rings animated film, so what do I know? The module includes several "tactical maps" for major encounters, which are decorated with illustrations of some of the monsters found in the Stockade.

Both of these figures are drawn by Jeff Dee: the upper left being a goblin and the bottom right a kobold. Both look very similar to those drawn by Roslof for the Monster Cards. That makes me wonder if perhaps there was some level of art direction at TSR during this time or if it's simply a case of a group of artists who all cribbed from one another when drawing these creatures. I simply don't know the answer at this point, but I must confess that I'm now of a mind to see if I can find out.

In any case, Secret of the Slavers Stockade has the potential to be a fun module, if your players enjoy sneaking around and avoiding drawing attention to themselves. If not, it's probably going to turn into a huge combat slog and will likely result in one or more character deaths. The latter was my own experience of refereeing it in my youth, but, in those days, we were much more tolerant of gigantic slugfests than I am today. Even careful players will likely find this a difficult module, so I won't be surprised if many commenters don't share my largely positive opinion of it, which is fair. For me, I appreciate that Johnson didn't make the Stockade easy to overrun. This is, after all, the headquarters of a powerful evil organization; it should be a dangerous place and it is. 

Have a blurry orc by Jeff Dee

Patient Zero

With the publication of the Dungeon Masters Guide in August 1979, Gary Gygax's Advanced Dungeons & Dragons project was essentially complete (though we would nevertheless see the publication of not one but two more hardback AD&D volumes over the next couple of years). Consequently, 1980 was the start of a period in TSR's history when the company shifted its focus to supporting Dungeons & Dragons in both its Basic and Advanced formats. One of the most significant ways it did so was through the publication of numerous adventure modules. Indeed, by dint of the sheer number of them released, adventure modules would effectively become TSR's signature products.

Among the modules published in 1980 was Harold Johnson and Jeff R. Leason's The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan. Designated module C1 (for "Competition"), the module is highly regarded for both its exotic Mesoamerican-inspired flavor and the cleverness of its many tricks and traps. Johnson and Leason originally wrote the module for use at the Official Advanced Dungeons & Dragons tournament at Origins '79, hence its "competition" designation. For that reason, it includes an extensive scoring system for tournament use, as well as a strict real time limit of 2 hours to complete.

In addition, the module includes the following in its "Notes for the Dungeon Master:"

It will be noticed that encounter descriptions are divided into boxed and open sections. The boxed sections contain information which should be read to the players; the rest is information for the DM. In most cases, the same players' description is used no matter which direction the party enters from, but 2 cases require that special descriptions be read depending on the direction from which the party approaches the encounter area. The DM should be aware of this and be careful to read the proper players' description.

The players' descriptions are provided because many of the encounters require specific actions on the part of the group. Hints of what may be done are given in this text and the DM should only provide vague information if questioned. Plauers will be to see the exact contents of a room unless noted.

Unless I am mistaken – and please correct me if I am – this is the very first published appearance of the dreaded boxed text in any TSR module. 

Within the very specific context of a module written for tournament use, particularly one with a strict real time limit, the inclusion of boxed, descriptive text makes a great deal of sense. After all, it would be unfair to the players participating in the tournament if some referees were more loquacious than others in their descriptions, time being a valuable resource. Fairness would likewise demand that each group of players be given the exact same descriptions of the dungeon's rooms. Once again, I say this makes perfect sense within this very specific context.

The trouble, I think, arises when TSR, in an effort to publish a large number of modules over a short period of time, turned ever more often to those originally created for tournaments. In this way, the style and presentation of tournament modules, including read-aloud boxed text, came to be seen not as unique features of tournament modules as such but simply as features of D&D modules in general. This is especially notable in modules published for the Basic and Expert versions of D&D, but, over time, it comes to be standard even in AD&D modules.

The lasting impact of the D&D tournament scene cannot be overstated.