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<blockquote data-quote="KirayaTiDrekan" data-source="post: 6335670" data-attributes="member: 6755061"><p><span style="font-size: 12px"><strong>G3: Hall of the Fire Giant King</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 12px"><strong></strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 12px"><strong></strong><span style="font-size: 10px">Originally published July, 1978</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 12px"><span style="font-size: 10px"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 12px"><span style="font-size: 10px">Version being read and reviewed: <a href="http://www.dndclassics.com/product/17037/G13-Against-the-Giants-1e?term=G1-&it=1" target="_blank">G1-3: Against the Giants</a> (PDF) (March, 1981; PDF added to <a href="http://www.dndclassics.com" target="_blank">www.dndclassics.com</a> January, 2013) by Gary Gygax</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 12px"><span style="font-size: 10px"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 12px"><span style="font-size: 10px">First things first - SPOILER ALERT!!!!</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 12px"><span style="font-size: 10px"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 12px"><span style="font-size: 10px">Still here?</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 12px"><span style="font-size: 10px"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 12px"><span style="font-size: 10px">Ok, here we go.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 12px"><span style="font-size: 10px"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 12px"><span style="font-size: 10px">From icy cold to hellish heat, its time to visit the fire giants. Both G1 and G2 have included notes at the beginning about the party being able to find a relatively safe hidey-hole near the adventure site to stash their supplies and retreat to rest and level-up as needed. G3 includes a similar note but this time its a bit less safe, with a cumulative risk per excursion that their temporary hidey-hole will be discovered. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 12px"><span style="font-size: 10px"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 12px"><span style="font-size: 10px">Since this adventure has two "big bads" - the fire giant king, Snurre, and the mysterious evil behind everything, your party actually gets to take down Snurre in the 3rd room of the adventure. At first this seems a little anti-climatic, but, we do get to meet...</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 12px"><span style="font-size: 10px"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 12px"><span style="font-size: 10px">Drum roll, please.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 12px"><span style="font-size: 10px"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 12px"><span style="font-size: 10px">The Drow!</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 12px"><span style="font-size: 10px"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 12px"><span style="font-size: 10px">I'm not sure if they appeared in any periodicals before this point, but this is their official debut as far as my read-throughs are concerned, except for a vague reference to them in the Elf entry in the Monster Manual. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 12px"><span style="font-size: 10px"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 12px"><span style="font-size: 10px">Before we get to the dark elves, let's take a quick look at the rest of the adventure. Snurre's wife, Frupy, reminds me very much of Dolores Umbridge from the Harry Potter series for some reason. Her precious "babies" (giant weasels" and her general demeanor just strike me as amusingly cloying, with a streak of cruelty and vanity. In addition to the fire giants dwelling here, we have hell hounds, a chimera, an evil dwarf, ettins, trolls, a red dragon and a few other critters. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 12px"><span style="font-size: 10px"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 12px"><span style="font-size: 10px">There are story hooks and interesting NPC interactions here, making up for their absence in G2. First and foremost is a rival contingent of drow who oppose Eclavdra and may be potential allies of convenience for the PCs. Then we have the thief. In the prison, in addition to an elf noble and her entourage, a couple of centaurs, some naughty gnolls, a crazy troll, and some skeletons, we have a nameless human thief. Though she only gets a paragraph, this character screams recurring character to me as she likely joins the PCs only to rob them blind and take off at some point. The brazen thief is a classic archetype, but I find her inclusion here to be a nifty little quirk with a ton of story potential. Another potentially interesting development are a trio of mind flayers who are not involved in whatever the drow are plotting. They are just observing the situation and keeping their distance. Why? Potential plot twists abound just by their mere presence.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 12px"><span style="font-size: 10px"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 12px"><span style="font-size: 10px">So, drow.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 12px"><span style="font-size: 10px"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 12px"><span style="font-size: 10px">The dark elves get a Monster Manual style entry in the back of the module, along with a couple of new spells, with notes on their spell abilities, typical classes, special arms and armor (which rots away in sunlight), poison-use, and light sensitivity. Their origin story here is pretty generic with no mention of spiders or Lolth. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 12px"><span style="font-size: 10px"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 12px"><span style="font-size: 10px">The drow have, over the years, reached near-iconic status in D&D, surpassed only by unique D&D monsters like the beholder and, of course, dragons. A lot of that is thanks to Drizzt Do'Urden who is still ten years of products away from making his debut on my reading list (assuming I include the novels). What we do have are the beginnings of the matriarchal aspects of their society, with their ability scores and spells varying based on gender, with drow females generally being more powerful. If you've been reading along with me so far, you know that gender issues are pretty important to me and thus drow are problematic and always have been. They are based, somewhat, on Nordic myths of the Svartalfar, but that doesn't quite excuse them for being inherently sexist in their portrayal. As an aside, I should note that, while I am critical of drow and the problems they represent, I still use them in my own campaigns. I have worked around the issue of their typical portrayal as evil matriarchal dominatrixes by making all elves in my homebrew setting matriarchal. Its sort of a bandaid solution, but, it works for me, at least for the moment. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 12px"><span style="font-size: 10px"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 12px"><span style="font-size: 10px">The adventure itself concludes with a note about potentially continuing the campaign with D1, in pursuit of any drow that managed to escape. When I run this adventure, I will, again, be removing the dragon for campaign reasons and I'll definitely be using the drow rivalry story hook, as well as the thief prisoner, who I think will follow the party into D1, lured by the potential for loot.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 12px"><span style="font-size: 10px"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 12px"><span style="font-size: 10px"></span></span>Next up: D1: Descent Into the Depths of the Earth</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="KirayaTiDrekan, post: 6335670, member: 6755061"] [SIZE=3][B]G3: Hall of the Fire Giant King [/B][SIZE=2]Originally published July, 1978 Version being read and reviewed: [URL="http://www.dndclassics.com/product/17037/G13-Against-the-Giants-1e?term=G1-&it=1"]G1-3: Against the Giants[/URL] (PDF) (March, 1981; PDF added to [URL="http://www.dndclassics.com"]www.dndclassics.com[/URL] January, 2013) by Gary Gygax First things first - SPOILER ALERT!!!! Still here? Ok, here we go. From icy cold to hellish heat, its time to visit the fire giants. Both G1 and G2 have included notes at the beginning about the party being able to find a relatively safe hidey-hole near the adventure site to stash their supplies and retreat to rest and level-up as needed. G3 includes a similar note but this time its a bit less safe, with a cumulative risk per excursion that their temporary hidey-hole will be discovered. Since this adventure has two "big bads" - the fire giant king, Snurre, and the mysterious evil behind everything, your party actually gets to take down Snurre in the 3rd room of the adventure. At first this seems a little anti-climatic, but, we do get to meet... Drum roll, please. The Drow! I'm not sure if they appeared in any periodicals before this point, but this is their official debut as far as my read-throughs are concerned, except for a vague reference to them in the Elf entry in the Monster Manual. Before we get to the dark elves, let's take a quick look at the rest of the adventure. Snurre's wife, Frupy, reminds me very much of Dolores Umbridge from the Harry Potter series for some reason. Her precious "babies" (giant weasels" and her general demeanor just strike me as amusingly cloying, with a streak of cruelty and vanity. In addition to the fire giants dwelling here, we have hell hounds, a chimera, an evil dwarf, ettins, trolls, a red dragon and a few other critters. There are story hooks and interesting NPC interactions here, making up for their absence in G2. First and foremost is a rival contingent of drow who oppose Eclavdra and may be potential allies of convenience for the PCs. Then we have the thief. In the prison, in addition to an elf noble and her entourage, a couple of centaurs, some naughty gnolls, a crazy troll, and some skeletons, we have a nameless human thief. Though she only gets a paragraph, this character screams recurring character to me as she likely joins the PCs only to rob them blind and take off at some point. The brazen thief is a classic archetype, but I find her inclusion here to be a nifty little quirk with a ton of story potential. Another potentially interesting development are a trio of mind flayers who are not involved in whatever the drow are plotting. They are just observing the situation and keeping their distance. Why? Potential plot twists abound just by their mere presence. So, drow. The dark elves get a Monster Manual style entry in the back of the module, along with a couple of new spells, with notes on their spell abilities, typical classes, special arms and armor (which rots away in sunlight), poison-use, and light sensitivity. Their origin story here is pretty generic with no mention of spiders or Lolth. The drow have, over the years, reached near-iconic status in D&D, surpassed only by unique D&D monsters like the beholder and, of course, dragons. A lot of that is thanks to Drizzt Do'Urden who is still ten years of products away from making his debut on my reading list (assuming I include the novels). What we do have are the beginnings of the matriarchal aspects of their society, with their ability scores and spells varying based on gender, with drow females generally being more powerful. If you've been reading along with me so far, you know that gender issues are pretty important to me and thus drow are problematic and always have been. They are based, somewhat, on Nordic myths of the Svartalfar, but that doesn't quite excuse them for being inherently sexist in their portrayal. As an aside, I should note that, while I am critical of drow and the problems they represent, I still use them in my own campaigns. I have worked around the issue of their typical portrayal as evil matriarchal dominatrixes by making all elves in my homebrew setting matriarchal. Its sort of a bandaid solution, but, it works for me, at least for the moment. The adventure itself concludes with a note about potentially continuing the campaign with D1, in pursuit of any drow that managed to escape. When I run this adventure, I will, again, be removing the dragon for campaign reasons and I'll definitely be using the drow rivalry story hook, as well as the thief prisoner, who I think will follow the party into D1, lured by the potential for loot. [/SIZE][/SIZE]Next up: D1: Descent Into the Depths of the Earth [/QUOTE]
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