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Aerie of the Slave Lords #A1-4
Scourge of the Slavelords
A Collection of The Slavers Series of Secrets of the Slaver's Stockade, Slavepits of the Undercity, In the Dungeon of the Slavelords, and Assault on the Aerie of the Slave Lords.
128 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1986
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34 people want to read
About the author
David Zeb Cook
90 books78 followersDavid "Zeb" Cook is an American game designer best known for his work at TSR, Inc., where he was employed for over fifteen years. Cook grew up on a farm in Iowa where his father worked as a farmer and a college professor. In junior high school, Cook playing wargames such as Avalon Hill's Blitzkrieg and Afrika Korps. "I was primarily a wargamer, but there wasn't any role-playing available then," although in college, he was introduced to the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game through the University of Iowa gaming club. Cook earned his B.A. in English (with a Theater minor) in 1977. He married his high school sweetheart, Helen, with whom he had one son, Ian. Cook became a high school teacher in Milligan, Nebraska, where his students gave him his nickname of "Zeb"; the name derives from his signature, which is dominated by a stroke resembling a 'Z'.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 8, 2010
My most favorite adventure set from Greyhawk. Absolutely priceless. =)
April 23, 2019
Well now, this is a deeply troublesome book.
The history of the book is interesting (more detail here https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/...
) in its origins as six 3-4 hour tournament dungeons leading to what might be the first "you wake up in a dungeon with none of your stuff" adventure where the goal is survive and escape. They originally had no connective tissue between adventures because this was back in the day when tournament play was all about pitting player skill with PC resources against tricks, traps and combats rather than role playing, information gathering, mystery solving etc. The final segment even stripped out 90% of the PC resources, so it was all on the players.
Now, that's great if that's your jam, but it's hardly everyone's jam. Still, the modules are 'classics' and I've used them before back in the 80's when my players spent a lot of time killing slavers (because that's what one does). I secured this larger compiled module for my consciously-retro 13th Age game and read through the added 'connective tissue' between the modules. It's a bloody mess.
Look, I get that the 6th segment of the tournament ends with the PCs being auto-captured so they can be tested in the 7th (and final in the tournament) segment. The Slave Lords aren't patsies, they knew the PCs are coming, they set up a sleep gas trap, the players wake up with a chance to escape. Some players will hate this (and the module does provide for "or, let them fight 7 higher level NPCs and let the chips fall where they may", which is good), but most will get it, especially given the tournament origins. The problem comes with the connective tissue mainlining a Conan-esque corrupt world sensibility, sticking another "the players get captured no matter what they do" scene before the first tournament adventure and then have them stripped, manacled, scarred and chained to an oar on a slaving vessel from which they have to escape while the villains taunt them, steal 2/3rd of their gear and through 1/3rd overboard. This is a huge strip of PC agency, way more than at the end of the adventure. Then ending the entire module with a deus ex machina unconnected with the players is a giant narrative failure.
There are so many better ways to run this concept, and in some ways the failures of the module make it easier to fix. This isn't a book I recommend to anyone who isn't an experienced DM who knows how to update what's wrong with it. (The link I provided to DrivethruRPG is to a later release that for AD&D 1E, but with some 5E playtest elements; that one might be better narrativly.)
The history of the book is interesting (more detail here https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/...
) in its origins as six 3-4 hour tournament dungeons leading to what might be the first "you wake up in a dungeon with none of your stuff" adventure where the goal is survive and escape. They originally had no connective tissue between adventures because this was back in the day when tournament play was all about pitting player skill with PC resources against tricks, traps and combats rather than role playing, information gathering, mystery solving etc. The final segment even stripped out 90% of the PC resources, so it was all on the players.
Now, that's great if that's your jam, but it's hardly everyone's jam. Still, the modules are 'classics' and I've used them before back in the 80's when my players spent a lot of time killing slavers (because that's what one does). I secured this larger compiled module for my consciously-retro 13th Age game and read through the added 'connective tissue' between the modules. It's a bloody mess.
Look, I get that the 6th segment of the tournament ends with the PCs being auto-captured so they can be tested in the 7th (and final in the tournament) segment. The Slave Lords aren't patsies, they knew the PCs are coming, they set up a sleep gas trap, the players wake up with a chance to escape. Some players will hate this (and the module does provide for "or, let them fight 7 higher level NPCs and let the chips fall where they may", which is good), but most will get it, especially given the tournament origins. The problem comes with the connective tissue mainlining a Conan-esque corrupt world sensibility, sticking another "the players get captured no matter what they do" scene before the first tournament adventure and then have them stripped, manacled, scarred and chained to an oar on a slaving vessel from which they have to escape while the villains taunt them, steal 2/3rd of their gear and through 1/3rd overboard. This is a huge strip of PC agency, way more than at the end of the adventure. Then ending the entire module with a deus ex machina unconnected with the players is a giant narrative failure.
There are so many better ways to run this concept, and in some ways the failures of the module make it easier to fix. This isn't a book I recommend to anyone who isn't an experienced DM who knows how to update what's wrong with it. (The link I provided to DrivethruRPG is to a later release that for AD&D 1E, but with some 5E playtest elements; that one might be better narrativly.)
July 19, 2014
One of the classic Dungeons & Dragons adventures
10 June 2012
This is actually a collection of four modules (adventures for the Dungeons and Dragons game system, and in this case, 1st edition) which were based around the theme of infiltrating and destroying a slave ring. The modules were originally published separately, and were also designed as a tournament (I have played a couple of D&D tournaments, but never really got into the competitive nature of it. In the end I preferred the social Saturday game).
As mentioned, there were four modules in this series and the actual campaign (another D&D term which refers to a collection of adventures in which the players play through using their same characters, and whether there is an overarching story on not really depends) includes a couple of more of these adventures, with the Temple of Elemental Evil being the first and Queen of the Spiders being the conclusion. From what I remember of this adventure though it seems to involve you first of all busting open a slave market, and then travelling to a fort where slaves are brought and processed. The third adventure I cannot remember, and the fourth one involves you going to an island to deal with the big bosses, otherwise known as the slavelords, who are in charge of the operation.
As I look back on this collection of modules it makes me wonder whether the whole concept may be a little anachronistic. The reason that I suggest this is because in our day slavery is considered bad, though when we think of slavery we usually think of chattel slavery such as what was practised in the Southern States prior to the civil war, and the fact that Negroes were considered to be subhuman. We also think about how Negroes were abducted from their homeland and sent thousands of miles away to a world not of their own, never being able to return to their homeland, and if they did manage to do so, they would discover that their home no longer existed. In a way maybe it is because of that memory that stokes the desire to produce anti-slavery literature.
However, if we go to medieval Europe we discover that slavery did not exist, it did not need to. There is no concept of taking prisoners and selling them as slaves, it simply did not happen. As for the aristocracy, they had serfs, which were owned by the lord and worked for the lord, but in many cases they were not slaves. Yes, they were tied to the land and could not leave to do their own thing, but still, they were not slaves. This is the period during which Dungeons and Dragons is supposed to be set: knights in shining armour and damsels in distress - the age of chivalry. However, slavery did not exist in the way we understand it, and even if it did, people generally did not care about it.
However, go back to the ancient world, a world were polytheism was the norm (as opposed to Medieval Europe, which is something that Dungeons and Dragons simply did not get) we find that slavery was the basis of their economy, and being a slave was not necessarily a bad thing. In many cases slavery in the ancient world is like wage slavery today. The bosses did not want to work or to do menial labour, so they have slaves to do it. Employment contracts as we understand them once again did not exist. Either you were a slave or you were a freeman, and if you were a freeman, you generally did not work for somebody else (unless of course you were in the army, and even then, in many cultures, such as Athens, being in the army was a matter of civic duty than being the employment opportunity that it is today).
So, while I am not necessarily concerned about the anachronism that is portrayed in the module, I do feel that we need to be aware of it. In many cases the writers of Dungeons and Dragons have always shied away from slavery, however we do notice that slavery does appear as a normal part of a fantasy would with the development of Darksun. Pretty much in every other setting, slavery was bad and was practised only by evil races such as the Drow.
10 June 2012
This is actually a collection of four modules (adventures for the Dungeons and Dragons game system, and in this case, 1st edition) which were based around the theme of infiltrating and destroying a slave ring. The modules were originally published separately, and were also designed as a tournament (I have played a couple of D&D tournaments, but never really got into the competitive nature of it. In the end I preferred the social Saturday game).
As mentioned, there were four modules in this series and the actual campaign (another D&D term which refers to a collection of adventures in which the players play through using their same characters, and whether there is an overarching story on not really depends) includes a couple of more of these adventures, with the Temple of Elemental Evil being the first and Queen of the Spiders being the conclusion. From what I remember of this adventure though it seems to involve you first of all busting open a slave market, and then travelling to a fort where slaves are brought and processed. The third adventure I cannot remember, and the fourth one involves you going to an island to deal with the big bosses, otherwise known as the slavelords, who are in charge of the operation.
As I look back on this collection of modules it makes me wonder whether the whole concept may be a little anachronistic. The reason that I suggest this is because in our day slavery is considered bad, though when we think of slavery we usually think of chattel slavery such as what was practised in the Southern States prior to the civil war, and the fact that Negroes were considered to be subhuman. We also think about how Negroes were abducted from their homeland and sent thousands of miles away to a world not of their own, never being able to return to their homeland, and if they did manage to do so, they would discover that their home no longer existed. In a way maybe it is because of that memory that stokes the desire to produce anti-slavery literature.
However, if we go to medieval Europe we discover that slavery did not exist, it did not need to. There is no concept of taking prisoners and selling them as slaves, it simply did not happen. As for the aristocracy, they had serfs, which were owned by the lord and worked for the lord, but in many cases they were not slaves. Yes, they were tied to the land and could not leave to do their own thing, but still, they were not slaves. This is the period during which Dungeons and Dragons is supposed to be set: knights in shining armour and damsels in distress - the age of chivalry. However, slavery did not exist in the way we understand it, and even if it did, people generally did not care about it.
However, go back to the ancient world, a world were polytheism was the norm (as opposed to Medieval Europe, which is something that Dungeons and Dragons simply did not get) we find that slavery was the basis of their economy, and being a slave was not necessarily a bad thing. In many cases slavery in the ancient world is like wage slavery today. The bosses did not want to work or to do menial labour, so they have slaves to do it. Employment contracts as we understand them once again did not exist. Either you were a slave or you were a freeman, and if you were a freeman, you generally did not work for somebody else (unless of course you were in the army, and even then, in many cultures, such as Athens, being in the army was a matter of civic duty than being the employment opportunity that it is today).
So, while I am not necessarily concerned about the anachronism that is portrayed in the module, I do feel that we need to be aware of it. In many cases the writers of Dungeons and Dragons have always shied away from slavery, however we do notice that slavery does appear as a normal part of a fantasy would with the development of Darksun. Pretty much in every other setting, slavery was bad and was practised only by evil races such as the Drow.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews