In a continuing run of retrogamer reviews, this is the beginning of the famous "slavers" series AD&D modules, originally run as a tournament game at Gencon XII in 1980. It is produced as as standard TSR module, but with only 24 pages to go with the cardstock and maps on the inside. The cover art is quite evocative, with a halfling thief climbing walls and a bearded female dwarf along with their yellow-robed wizard taking on an aspis. The interior art is acceptable and appropriate to the text. The usual complaints are submitted concerning the use of small sans-serif font. Also included are a number of characters from the the tournament play, tournament scoring and maps.
As can be expected the backstory is fairly simple: It is time to put a stop to the marauders! For years the coastal towns have been burned and looted by the forces of evil. You and your fellow adventurers have been recruited to root out and destroy the source of these raids. OK, it's a little more complex than that, but not much more; of course, it part of a series as well. A good DM should also develop the fact that the dungeon crawl is within an old temple complex a little more as well.
Whilst the tournament map makes very little sense whatsoever for the building that it is claimed to represent, some good filler work has been done with the module proper, even though some of the toughest opponents in the complex are located in said areas. It largely looks and feels like an old temple, although a couple of the rooms need to be expanded slightly to stop the problem of 20+ foot thick interior walls. Reasonably advanced for its day is the inclusion of appropriate reactions by various denizens to the neighbours in their environment and, if alerted, to PC actions.
As is often the case, there is a worked upper level and a partially worked lower level or dungeon. It is in this area that the noble PCs have the opportunity to rescue some poor captured slaves, encounter some rather advanced and improbable machinery that is holding them captive and meet the ant-like intelligent aspis (who regrettably are treated only as enemies). This is also the area where one finds the necessary documentation to proceed to the second module in the series.
"The Slave Pits of the Undercity" is a dungeon crawl, but it is a fairly good one. Like most TSR modules, it is terribly underdeveloped, but with some opportunities to place it sensibly in a wider campaign with some moderate modifications (most recently I used as part of "historical fantasy" and placed in the Scilly Isles just after the Norman conquest of Britian). The challenges can be tough in some cases, but of appropriate difficulty overall, and the tournament scoring adjustments are quite sensible as well, for the purposes of the game. Overall, quite an acceptable product.
Review Summary