Tuesday, April 10, 2012

4e Hall of the Fire Giant King

While I was pointing out Wizard's latest April article on Barrier Peaks Thingamajigs, I nearly forgot to report on late March's conclusion to Chris Perkin's four part revision of the Giants series modules. These 4th edition compatible modules include Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, the original adventure Warrens of the Stone Giant Thane, Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl, and now the last and most deadly in the series: Hall of the Fire Giant King. You will need a D&DI subscription to download these Dungeon adventures of course, but for aficionados of the giants campaign these are almost too good to pass on.

Chris Perkins writes: "In reimagining "Hall of the Fire Giant King," I’ve inflicted some violence to the maps and encounters to make the adventure a fun and balanced gaming experience. I hope that DMs who have fond memories of the original read this latest incarnation and feel the same overwhelming desire to run the adventure as I felt back in 1980, when I read Gary Gygax’s adventure for the first time."

Clocking in at 62 pages, there is indeed alot here Greyhawk fans should be familiar with. King Snurre's hall still remains buried deep in the Hellfurnaces region of the Crystalmist Mountains. There are major side quests to confront or capture notable villains such as the evil dwarf Obmi and the scheming drow priestess Eclavdra from the city of Erelhei-Cinlu. As if those two aren't enough there's even more Greyhawkian characters that pop up in this epic (18-20 level) finale to the giant saga. So yes, even if you don't play 4th edition, there is bound to be plenty of giant-sized resources to plunder in this adventure for any DM's campaign.

Update 5/6/2021: Updated link from D&DI to DMsGuild.

5 comments:

Greyhawk Grognard said...

"I’ve inflicted some violence to the maps and encounters to make the adventure a fun and balanced gaming experience"

Implying, of course, that prior to his "violence" it was neither fun nor balanced.

*sigh*

Unknown said...

No, implying that prior to his "violence" the adventure would not have been fun with the 4E rule set which is heavily dependent on map placement and distribution.

If you have been following the series at all you know how much the author loves the original series and how this (initially unpaid) conversion was a labor of love.

But feel free to invent negativity where there is none.

*sigh*

Anonymous said...

These adventures are amazing. I have been running them on maptools and now I plan to run them face to face with my home group. I highly recommend them to anyone using any version of the rules. The maps alone are worth the price.

Mike Bridges said...

Surprisingly I've never ran Hall in 1e either. I know from perusing this that the maps are of high quality and there is an attempt at drawing some subplots to the adventure that go well beyond what the originals surely had.

Violence is a strange word to use, but yes it probably had to do with fitting the 4e encounter/timing method. Old school of course was more about long term exploration, random encounters, etc. I can see the appeal in both products and I'm heartened at least that GH is getting progressively better treatment as we phase on into the 5e era.

Anonymous said...

On the 2nd level areas 9-16, page 24, room 9, the Barracks, how many 2 headed fire giants are there? I see two heads are named, but was there supposed to 4 names all together, as each jead would have its own name?