The first of the Slave Lords modules that go from A1 to A4, this is honestly one of my least favourite of the early adventure modules and for one particular reason. This was clearly planned for tournament play and while I understand that plot and lore might be secondary in that context, this release is mainly for people playing at home in the context of a campaign and this whole module doesn’t even have a single named enemy. 

There is no hook for the players and even when there are clearly interesting elements within the dungeon, such as what is clearly a temple to Gruumsh (although his name is never mentioned) the module does not use any of that for some juicy storytelling. All of the story development is up to the DM, and while that can be a good thing, it should also be an option for the DM to give the story their own style and change it at will, rather than be made to create it all out of whole cloth because of an absence of effort on the part of the module that they have acquired. What we get here are maps and general descriptions of rooms and while there are a couple of cool setpieces there is little motivation for the players if this is played straight out of the page.

Other modules in the A series would be much better about this, and later on when Scourge of the Slave Lords comes out in 1986, compiling A1 to A4, a new story is added to fill this very apparent gap. While that story might not be great, at least it’s giving the DM some options. However this same month another Pit themed adventure module came out, this one starring a certain Spider Goddess which we will look at next time.