G1 - Steading of the Hill Giant (advice)

[Mystery Man]

I've never run this before, and I'm looking to incorporate some of the encounters and layout of G1 into my campaign (Forgotten Realms, Evermoors) but I'm not crazy about the whole giant in every fricken room to sqeeze the life out of my players concept. Players will be around the ballpark of level 9 by the time they get there.
I'm looking for some good story telling encounters and any extra detail. So, who's run this and what have you done to make it interesting.

Thanks.

 

[diaglo]

yes... i've run it several times.

but i used the 1edADnD rules to do it.

9th lvl is time or near time to retire in those rules.





so if you are going the way of the newer editions make sure the PCs are high enough level... say around at least 15th.

 

[Mystery Man]

so if you are going the way of the newer editions make sure the PCs are high enough level... say around at least 15th.

I have no plans to run it out of the box converted to 3.x. I'll power it down have no fear. But I'm looking for any interesting twists, flavor whatever.

 

[Henry]

One of the nice things is that by 9th level, the PC's will be able to infiltrate the Giants in ways that 1st edition parties never could. Parties of 1E characters were usually 5th to 7th level by the time they got there; 5th and 6th level characters could not Poly self into a hill giant, and their rogues were not that great at sneaking about. Nowadays, a 9th level PC party has tons of ways to infiltrate. The nice thing here is that they can get glimpses of all the NPC interactions and politics going on in those modules - some cool stuff, indeed.

OTOH, if you expect your PC's to brute force their way in, they should be in about as much trouble as a head strong party back in 1E would be - which is to say, they'd be screwed. The optimum tactics for this module in 1E was to be sneaky and hit and run as much as possible, or be stealthy and check things out. This should hold true for a 3E retelling.

 

[Endur]

I would not power the module down. I'd run it straight up.

However, to make it interesting, if the Giants win a fight, I'd have the giants strike to subdue. After all, the giants are stupid (most are int 6 or less). So maybe the giants think the PCs are some of the revolting slaves (all humanoids look alike to them). So the giants don't want to kill them, they just want the slaves to go back to work.

So you get to have fun with the PCs as prisoners and then the PCs leading a slave revolt or maybe escaping. There should be lots of ways for the PCs to escape (again Giants are stupid).

 

[Taloras]

Some advice from someone who has actually PLAYED in this in 3rd edition rules. Either power up the PCs a bit, or power down the monsters. We played through it around 9-10th level, and had some problems. we were LUCKY. Such as having the more powerful hill giant making 2 1s on his saving throws on Phantasmal Killer. Or having our rogue have a weapon that stuns on a crit (no save, the DM allowed the weapon from arms & Armour by bastion press). We were prepared, and STILL had problems. So you might want to power it down just a bit. Take out a few of the giants if you think the PCs will need it.

However, if you end up leading them to the Frost Giant area (the next one), PLEASE power down the white dragons. Dragons got a lot tougher in 3rd edition. We got clobbered by the first one. In earlier editions, it may have been even, but the dragon became a CR 15 at least....then an even older dragon on top of it....CR 17 at least. We couldnt touch either one. (AC of 40+....no pure fighter in the group.....player quit.) My rogue took 105 points of damage in the first full combat round. He had 97. He went from full to -7 in one round of fighting the WEAKER white dragon. So if you do this one as well, lower the dragons.

 

[qstor]

I agree. In a straight 3.5 conversion, I'd make the PC's about 12th level. Giants are a lot tougher in 3e. And I've heard that in converting 13/2e modules to 3e you need to bump the player levels up a bit.

I think at 12th level it would be a fun module to play in.



btw hi Endur

Mike

 

[tarchon]

We just did it last year at about 8th-9th level and we pretty much cleaned it out via clever sneaking.

 

[DaveStebbins]

It was several years ago and written for a previous edition, but the following story segments, written by Jason Zavoda, had some excellent ideas in them. It was written partly from the viewpoint of the giants, which helped, and contained some excellent ideas about the giant culture and the traps/defenses of the steading. Downside is that it's long and seemed to ramble off-topic after a while.

http://hp3000.empireclassic.com/fiction/zavoda/nosnras_saga.html

Highly recommended (though it's been years since I read it).

 

[frog]

Played it for 3.0. The party was 3 lvl 11 (cleric, wizard, fighter), 1 lvl 10 (barbarian), 1 lvl 8 (druid) and 1 dire bear animal companion.

If it weren't for the dire bear they all would have died horribly. Two of the party had wands for healing and basically spent the whole time healing the bear, barbarian, and fighter. Otherwise, toast.

The bottom level ended up in a truce with the orcs who started their rebellion when the party attacked (they figured something was up when the flamestrikes went off all over) and the party only finding the secondary treasure room. They completely missed the primary treasury.