A2 Secret of the Slavers' Stockade: After-action Review

"Module A2: Secret of the Slavers' Stockade" is part of the A-series of modules, later compiled into the super adventure "A1-4: Scourge of the Slave Lords." The A-series modules were originally a set of tournament modules for GenCon XIII which were later expanded by TSR into full dungeon modules with a little more meat and a little less linearity.

A while back I cajoled a friend of mine to run the A-series for our group so that I could experience them as a player before I run them myself ... our group usually plays 5e (it's the Jungles of Chult group, and we also crawl in this referee-friends homebrew dungeon with a different set of characters), so we don't do the A-series games often, but we did finally do the first half of A2 last night (A1 we did last year some time ...).

In A2, the characters, having dealt with the temple and "undercity slave pits" detailed in "A1: Slave Pits of the Undercity", move on to deal with the slavers' fortress-stockade in the hills above the city of Highport. The first half of the module A2 deals with the fortress itself, while the second half deals with the dungeons beneath (they were originally separate parts of the first round of the tournament at GenCon XIII).

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So last night we tackled the upper stockade, which is basically a fortress full of hobgoblins. The walls are manned by regular posts of guards, there's a full roster of hobgoblins in the barracks (which number we learned about partway into our foray), and it generally seems like a tough nut to crack for players trying to infiltrate their way in. We were given a couple goals: 1) free the slaves (for a pittance per freed slave or a major boon for all of them freed), 2) a bounty for each hobgoblin killed, and 3) a serious bounty for proof that the slaver leadership was dealt with.

Given those goals and looking up at the blank face of the walls ... we were paralyzed by a lack of information. We searched the dry moat around the fortress for secret entrances to no avail (and magically slept some guard dogs along the way), and ultimately decided to climb our way up into the gatehouse with a thief with a rope.

We managed to distract guards on the walls with an illusion of apes attacking the walls (supported by another attack of real apes elsewhere on the walls) and make our way to the nearest door ... and heard voices behind it. Still wanting to be sneaky, we went around to the other side of the gatehouse, and there ambushed a couple of door guards and a "squelcher", a goblin thing that left behind oily black footprints (turns out it was a "boggle"). We killed them under a silence spell; then dithered long enough that more guards showed up and we had to fight them, and then they went to ring a gong.

This almost alerted the entire fortress, except my Elf character knows the hobgoblin tongue, and she called out that it was all a false alarm, and our referee was generous with the reactions that he rolled.

Ultimately, we managed to capture a few hobgoblins, and another character of mine, a thief/magic-user, charmed one of them with a spell. This was our breakthrough; we talked the fellow into taking us to the leadership so that we could talk through a business deal, and he went for it. While he led his one friend along seeking the leaders, the rest of the party followed behind under cover of invisibility 10'.'

Finally, we found ourselves in a courtyard with a fountain; a number of clearly badass NPCs showed up wondering who we were. A brief parlay ensued (actually, they offered to join my main character's chaotic cult with an absurdly high reactions roll ... but the rest of the party wanted to kill, and so they fireballed the bad guys while my guy's tears of failure and loss turned into steam from the fireball in front of him). And with that show of force and murdering of the leadership, we impressed the hobgoblins into surrendering the slaves to us and possibly hiring themselves out as mercenaries for my cult.

Whenever we play again, we'll be tackling the dungeon ...

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Long story short, we didn't actually interact with very much of the module. We interacted with maybe half a dozen of 39 or so keyed locations on the map for the stockade. So from a player side I can't speak to the wealth or dearth of good material ...

What I can say is that I seem to recall reading somewhere (can't find it now) that A2's stockade was a notoriously difficult module to tackle for players, given that it's a fortress full of alert guards, and without much information where to aim a decapitation strike or to seek for treasure. It seemed to live up to that trouble in our play-through--sure, we had a generous DM who allowed our pathetic attempts to call off the alarm work, but if we hadn't done that, we'd have faced the entire garrison of hobgoblins, and even the -2 AC of our pregen ranger might not have saved her skin. Plus, one of my characters has a ring of invisibility, which is about the most useful thing ever for sneaking and all.

On the flipside, though, we dealt with the leadership easily once we got them out into the open where we could fireball them from surprise (hold person knocked another badass NPC out too). So the session was also a reminder that player chutzpah is probably more important a thing than any character's attribute scores ...

But the REAL thing I wanted to comment on was ease of use at the table--because it was clearly NOT easy to use at all, and made it clear to me that I'll have to do a lot of prep work with this module before I actually run it. Our game ran for maybe five hours, but the amount of material we covered could probably have been done in three. Our poor referee had to keep flipping back and forth through the book, digging through the room descriptions for key information.

The map of the stockade is split with two different color-codes. Half is shaded blue, the other half left white; we originally thought that must mean that a space is open to the air or not, but in retrospect I suspect it actually delineates tournament areas from module areas. In A1, at least, the module declares which areas are which; but A2 has no such delineation, letting the referee muddle through on his own (unless I'm blind and it does say it somewhere in the description).

Beyond that, it seemed like several rooms involved his checking the map several times for orientation, and checking the description to make sure he had everything prepped in his head. And still sometimes he had to go back ... e.g. the module is "supposed" to open with the characters climbing a rope up the wall left behind by an escaped slave; but our referee, reading that a rope hung below a guard post, assumed that each guard post must have a rope hanging from it. Only later did he redact it (fortunately without us having climbed any yet), when he finally read the relevant information that it was the escaped slave's rope.

All in all, it was a fun adventure--infiltrating a fortress was definitely a test of our wits! And it seems like the information within was solid, just not well-presented. Perhaps with a little more preparation (or editing), this module could be run smoothly and would provide a great challenge for characters who think they can solve every problem ...

Are Goblins Just the Worst?

On Monday, Kotaku published an article by Cecilia D'Anastasio entitled, "Goblin Fights In D&D Are The Worst," in which the author argues just that--that in D&D, goblins are just low-level mooks arrayed before low-level characters just so that the characters/players can have what is essentially a no-risk fight and means of gaining experience: "Repeat [to hit rolls] ad nauseum until, huzzah!, the goblins have died. Your dungeon master ... informs you that you have been awarded some experience points. Your party licks their wounds and continues on their journey."

She claims that these goblin fights are boring, standing as stagnant interludes between moments of what the game is really about, i.e. (asking ironically), "How am I supposed to break up long periods of players developing their characters, puzzle-solving, discovering lore and fighting magical monsters?" It's strange to me that D'Anastasio doesn't see that goblins are magical monsters, and doesn't conceive of the possibility that the presence of goblins and whether they fight might be a means of puzzle-solving ...

My attention to this article was directed by David Rollins at blog Searching for Magic in his post "The Ecology of My Goblins or, How to Make Goblins Fun!" He takes issue with D'Anastasio's characterization of goblins, and I agree wholeheartedly with his rebuttal.

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But I must admit--I do actually agree with D'Anastasio to a large degree. Battles without stakes are boring, and I don't play D&D just for the visceral joy of seeing dice roll across the table--I play for the visceral joy that a character's survival depends on that die roll! If goblins are being used by a referee just to be a no-risk fight, and I'm forced to slog through every round of it, and the goblins fight to the death, and none of it matters, I tune out. I've played in games like this; I played in a Pathfinder game where my paladin was blinded, but I refused the possibility to have him cured and had him run into the vanguard of every fight against Orcs just to test how far the referee would bend the rules not to kill him (he survived every fight; the absurdity was the only reason I was entertained).

This article piqued my interest because the last two games I've run in my Greyhame Dungeon Game have both involved goblins (Expedition 16 and Expedition 17; I haven't yet written up the latter). Expedition 16 involved what was basically a massacre of goblins; the characters entered the dungeon with a veritable army of wardogs and hirelings, and all together slaughtered some thirty goblins--but this was not "I miss," "I hit," "I miss," "I hit," ad nauseum, this was a running battle with groups of goblins panicking from bad morale rolls, running to the next goblin post for reinforcements, and/or going through side corridors in attempts to outflank the party. Nothing worked--the goblins were just too weak.

Expedition 17, meanwhile, involved only a couple of characters and their few hirelings and wardogs. During their first entrance into the dungeon, the party was overwhelmed by a large number of goblins, and after both dogs and one of the hirelings were killed, the party had to retreat. Outside the dungeon, they regrouped with a couple more dogs; then, going back into the dungeon, they were ambushed by the same large force of goblins. Another dog and the other hireling were killed, and it looked like the survivors would soon be goblin-arrow pincushions; but to my surprise, the two characters and their last dog fled downstairs to the next level of the dungeon, only escaping by lighting oil on fire behind them on the stair. After that, it was only by good luck that they found another exit from the dungeon so that they didn't have to face the goblins again.

I recite these examples as clear counterexamples to D'Anastasio's claim that goblin-fights are the worst. Both of these games were exciting--for different reasons!--and both involved goblins.

a couple of Free Goblins

So I agree with D'Anastasio in a general way that pointless fights are boring--but on the point of goblins I completely disagree, because the presence of goblins do not a pointless fight make. Goblins can be as boring as the Orcs that my blind paladin fought in that Pathfinder game, or as interesting as Rollins' weird hive-goblins, Jeff Rients' goblins with their goblin-doors (I keep forgetting to use these), or my own goblins who are certainly easily routed cowards, but who can also overwhelm and kill foolhardy adventurers (and they can cast magic and do other things too ...).

The relevant question to ask is not "Are there goblins?" but "Why are there goblins?" If the answer to the why of goblins is just to have no-risk fights for low-level characters, then fighting them is bound to become boring (but honestly, if that's the goblins' only point, if you're playing D&D, the game of tactical infinity, why don't you avoid fighting the goblins?).

What if the goblins are the type that steal children, and the fight
against the goblins determines whether you save the kids or not?

But in my game (and in Rollins' game, and in Rients' game, etc. etc.) goblins have probably been chosen because they specifically interest the referee. I know in my game, that's the case. I use goblins for a variety of reasons: goblins kidnap children (adventure hook--save the children!); goblins are the friends of wolves and werewolves (another hook in the monsters they associate with); goblins are either the slaves of Elves (and maybe sympathetic to the PCs?), or Free Goblins (both a player class, and a further adventure hook in that goblins hate Elves); higher level goblins cast weird magic (including goblin doors, probably); goblin kings are strange and powerful and as beautiful as Elves (or at least David Bowie); and let's be honest, fighting goblins in an old school game where a referee is willing to see characters die is just not boring!

the Goblin King

Goblins are great! Use them, please, in great numbers and in great varieties. Make them interesting, and make sure interactions with them (fights and otherwise) matter.

Goblins are incredibly versatile monsters, by the way; I've seen lots of different goblins in modules, including fungus-goblins (Tomb of the Serpent Kings) and blue goblins (Mortzengursturm the Mad Manticore of the Prismatic Peak) and Batiri jungle goblins (Tomb of Annihilation); and don't forget the goblins of other media, especially Labyrinth, and even Blix from Legend.

Hoard of the Dragon Queen (2014, D&D 5e) -- a Review

I've been looking at my copy of "Hoard of the Dragon Queen" (2014) again, and recently ordered "Rise of Tiamat" (also 2014 ... God help me), because my friends and I were all a little disappointed that I let the adventure peter out at Chapter 4 (and there were 8 chapters in "Hoard ..."), and I recently saw some reviews of Pathfinder "adventure paths" at Against the Wicked City (this in particular) that suggested a way to "sandbox" the Pathfinder games--and I was hoping to do the same with "Hoard ..." (and I was wondering why I let it peter out to begin with?).

I originally picked up "Hoard of the Dragon Queen" (HODQ) out of a kind of forward-looking nostalgia--I wanted to be able to say that "we had played Hoard of the Dragon Queen when 5e first came out" the same way that someone might talk about first seeing the Drow when they first appeared in the TSR "Against the Giants" modules. It was when 5e was first coming out, and I had agreed to run a game for my group (and we're still playing 5e together, just not HODQ), and this particular module seemed appealing because my own character in B/X is the originator of a different kind of dragon cult (dedicated to the Black Dragon, whose wings are the night, whose scales are the stars, and whose darkness will one day cover the earth ...).

But the game petered out less than halfway through the book ... Why?


SPOILERS


... Surely everyone knows by now that a dragon attacking the town is the first thing that happens ("Chapter 1"); but when I ran this thing, I first sent the players on a normal dungeon crawl from town. Only on their return did I sprang the dragon-attack, because to me that felt more natural, that they were returning to town, rather than just arriving.

After the dragon attack, the players are instructed (by "important" NPCs) to go on a fact finding mission to the camp of bandits allied with the dragon ("Chapter 2"), thereby discovering that the bandits are amassing treasure to take away to help summon Tiamat, queen of dragons ... and then they're supposed to return to the camp afterwards, to find the bandits already gone and to explore a dungeon there ("Chapter 3"). But as soon as my players found out that the bandits meant to haul their stolen goods to Baldur's Gate (and beyond), they elected to try to cut the bandits off on the road, completely ignoring the dungeon in "Chapter 3" of the book.

So I made up (out of whole cloth) an overland adventure to get the players from the original town to Baldur's Gate, with their speed determining whether they catch the bandits or not. By good choices and by luck, the players arrived in town around the same time as the bandits ... and my group being who they are, they tracked the bandits down to their inn in-town and burned the building down around them!

That was the last session in the "Hoard of the Dragon Queen" that we played--not because I was at all discouraged by the PCs' actions (you better believe the authorities were going to come after them, and the dragon cult too!), but because as I read further into the book, I couldn't see how this would affect anything "up the line". (And yes, this means that we actually only played the first 2 of the 8 chapters in this book--shhh, my players don't know that!)

See, "Chapter 4" is a whole "on the road" thing about how the PCs hire themselves into the same caravan as the north-going bandits and just kind of tag along, with some filler encounters along the way--and with the bandits' and their loot already burned in a fire, this clearly wasn't going to fly!

Then "Chapter 5" is a roadhouse where the caravan stops, and under which exists a secret tunnel to a swamp-castle ("Chapter 6") through which all that treasure gets secretly ported by lizardmen ... (still not relevant to the situation as it developed) ...

And in "Chapter 6" the PCs are supposed to assault the castle to find the teleportation circle in its bowels that lead to ... a hunting lodge in some mountains ... (wait, where'd the treasure go?) ...

"Chapter 7" is a description of the hunting lodge, which is ... bypassed by the treasure the PCs are supposed to be following? (actually, by this point, the treasure for the titular hoard is an after thought ... really the PCs are just supposed to follow the crumbs to "Chapter 8" to fight some things in a floating ice castle) ...

"Chapter 8" is the floating ice-castle, which can be reached without even bothering the hunting lodge (I don't mind the sandboxiness to that, exactly, except ... why isn't the treasure just ported directly to this castle, where it's supposed to end up anyway? Why all that "on the road" crap to some other place--unless it's just level-grinding filler??).

In retrospect, clearly, I just should have made up some adventures that explain everything, and still taken the PCs to the flying ice-castle ... I guess ... except that would have defeated the purpose of buying a book with an adventure I ostensibly wanted to run, instead of just making it all up myself.

... All that said, looking at "Hoard of the Dragon Queen" again, I think I can see a way to make it into a sandbox about cutting off treasure-caravans and disrupting the Cult of the Dragon in that way ... and now I'm waiting for "Rise of Tiamat" to arrive in the mail, to see how functional or dismal my attempt at rewriting everything might be.