A2 Secret of the Slavers Stockade

Title: A2 Secret of the Slavers Stockade

Price: $5.99 (PDF)

Publisher/Year: TSR, 1981

ISBN: 0935696261

Author(s): Harold Johnson, Tom Moldvay

System: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 

Character levels: 4-7

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Rating: 3/5

A2 is the second in the Slavers series of adventures for AD&D. Like the rest of the series, it was originally a tournament adventure. Also like A1, it seems to have been two rounds - one above ground, one below.

It takes place in and under a stockaded keep. The setup is that the group found that this fortress is a front and a way station for slavers, not just, er, innocent caravans of evil humanoids going through a dangerous land. The group is tasked with finding out what's going on there, and to find out the next step on the path that leads to the nefarious slave lords.

Once again, an escaped slave gives you a way in - a slave climbed out of the gatehouse's second floor via a rope of rags, and as the escape wasn't detected the rag is still there. The lack of aggressive patrolling (or cleaning, or housekeeping of any kind) is blamed on the humanoids being pretty lax about security. Either way, done by the tournament, you get right up into an abandoned section of the gatehouse and then need to work your way into the keep proper. The tournament basically bypasses one of the big problems with a fortress - it's not meant to let you access the interior easily.

From there, the party has to deal with a number of monsters, lots of guards, the usual traps and set-pieces that this series features prominently. Like A1, you get a lot of excellent traps and very tactically interesting set-piece battles. One thing I forgot to mention in my review of A1 is that they give zoomed in tactical maps of those set-piece battles, so you can see exactly how the various combatants are arrayed from the start (and, possibly, show to the players to make it even more clear.) The foes use the terrain and special weapons and combined-arms tactics well. None of the big fights are solvable with just a single fireball and some good damage rolls. A few come with pre-determined starts and unavoidable NPC actions, though, which can be annoying. But not all of them, and tactically clever players versus tactically clever foes using their surroundings to give them home field advantage can't help but be fun.

The traps as equally good, and make sense in a fortress - they're generally manned traps, or ones you can see being a minor annoyance to the occupants but a major problem for unprepared attackers even if they're careful and wary. Traps backed by troops is the norm here.

The evil leaders in the adventure are given just enough development to make them stand out and interesting. Markessa, the mad scientist-wizard (and yes, there is an owlbear nearby - it's the zeppelin and monocle of magic-using mad scientists), a blind swordsman, disguised monsters, named weapons (even if non-magical) - there is a lot of flavor here. The leaders are also described in a special section up at the front of the module, too, making it easy to know who you'll need to deal with if the adventurers make repeated delves. The strategy of the fort to repeated attacks is also covered, as is what they'll do with you if you surrender (my advice is - don't.) It is sadly lacking an overall roster and notes about reinforcements, something that would be extremely valuable to a GM trying to actually deal with multiple delves without a lot of prep time in between to figure out who is left and where they go.

The expanded, non-tournament version is much more lethal. In the tournament foes won't pursue and an alerted fortress merely triggers a few (admittedly nasty) traps, and the fortress is reduced to a narrow path of set encounters. In the expanded version, there are more guards, more encounter areas, wandering monsters (including strong patrols), and pursuit will be active. So there are more enemies, more places to deal with, and they are more alert and more active. Not only that, but a few minor encounters in tournament play (like an haunted section of the fortress) are expanded to be full, and quite dangerous, encounters.

In short, the fortress is bigger (more areas to explore), had more active occupants, and what is there is often more directly lethal and complex.

There are some very cool encounters, too - a madman, slaves, the "caveling" cast-offs of Markessa, and more like that. There are some ways to bypass the traps (since the occupants might need an easier way around), and some chances to avoid combat. A few folks will live an let live, if you do so first. Others will actually ally with you, including some (at first) seemingly unlikely ones.

It all makes sense together, and it's a very cohesive fortress with a lot going on in it.

But generally, a group of 9 3rd/3rd-6th level tournament adventurers can handle the tournament portion, but no way that same group will handle the expanded fortress.