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<blockquote data-quote="hastur_nz" data-source="post: 7090133" data-attributes="member: 40592">[MENTION=3555]Stormdale[/MENTION] is correct - all the old modules had the barest bones of any &quot;plot&quot;, in a very short intro, but also scattered through the module text.&nbsp; Rather than the more modern style which started in 2e, and presents you with a huge &quot;book&quot;, that's interesting to read but hard to actually run at the table because &quot;plot&quot; is scattered all over multiple pages, the old-school adventures presented a minimal amount of information, and only &quot;came alive&quot; through much imagination and/or ad-lib at the playing table.&nbsp; If you read G1 closely, and think about it in the context of the set-up and also G3, you see how the giants have various loose alliances, their lairs are not 100% &quot;their own&quot; (various legacy factions, locations etc), and so on.&nbsp; What might seem fairly random, obviously had some level of planning from Mr Gygax, but he didn't bore us to tears with a novel-length back-story.&nbsp; Whether much of the &quot;back story&quot;, whatever that is, comes out in play, will vary wildly from table to table.&nbsp; It's up to the DM and Players, to breathe life into the story and make it their own.Personally, I ran G1-3 converting myself to 3.0, where from memory giants were 10'x10' although without my old books I'm not 100% sure there; also in AD&amp;D I can't remember how much space the various Giants were expected to take up (I believe they were Large, but exactly what that meant was up to the DM's interpretation of the DMG, houserules etc).&nbsp; When I converted it to 3.0, I didn't change the size of the maps, but I did strip out a lot of monsters especially in G2; so if the 5e version has done that too, which it seems to have, I say &quot;all the better!&quot; especially as the original adventures were generally designed for around 8 player characters (and quite possibly various henchmen etc as well, given we're talking about &quot;name-level&quot; PC's).&nbsp; From memory, with around 5 players, and a few less monsters, my 3.0 conversion was very tough and taught the players respect for big foes, but ultimately it ran quite well and 10'x10' giants in the old maps worked just fine.As for the 5e conversions, while yes it's stupid that they haven't matched the 5e scale of Giants, to the &quot;AD&amp;D scale&quot; of the old maps, personally I think the problem is how they changed all Giants to be Huge in 5e.&nbsp; For me, I'd much rather have most Giants still be Large.&nbsp; For starters, I have a lot of cool Hill and Fire Giant minis that are Large, and while a few of my Ogre minis are bordering on &quot;too big&quot;, I feel my Large-sized giants are big anough.&nbsp; Also, in every adventure I've run using Giants, I use multiple, and having multiple Huge minis on the table, makes for a very unwieldy table top - maps need to be huge, and/or your giants can't maneuver.&nbsp; I'm running Storm Giants Thunder currently, and no giants have appeared yet, but when they do I think I'll leave them size Large (same stats, just smaller sized minis on the table).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="hastur_nz, post: 7090133, member: 40592"] [MENTION=3555]Stormdale[/MENTION] is correct - all the old modules had the barest bones of any "plot", in a very short intro, but also scattered through the module text. Rather than the more modern style which started in 2e, and presents you with a huge "book", that's interesting to read but hard to actually run at the table because "plot" is scattered all over multiple pages, the old-school adventures presented a minimal amount of information, and only "came alive" through much imagination and/or ad-lib at the playing table. If you read G1 closely, and think about it in the context of the set-up and also G3, you see how the giants have various loose alliances, their lairs are not 100% "their own" (various legacy factions, locations etc), and so on. What might seem fairly random, obviously had some level of planning from Mr Gygax, but he didn't bore us to tears with a novel-length back-story. Whether much of the "back story", whatever that is, comes out in play, will vary wildly from table to table. It's up to the DM and Players, to breathe life into the story and make it their own. Personally, I ran G1-3 converting myself to 3.0, where from memory giants were 10'x10' although without my old books I'm not 100% sure there; also in AD&D I can't remember how much space the various Giants were expected to take up (I believe they were Large, but exactly what that meant was up to the DM's interpretation of the DMG, houserules etc). When I converted it to 3.0, I didn't change the size of the maps, but I did strip out a lot of monsters especially in G2; so if the 5e version has done that too, which it seems to have, I say "all the better!" especially as the original adventures were generally designed for around 8 player characters (and quite possibly various henchmen etc as well, given we're talking about "name-level" PC's). From memory, with around 5 players, and a few less monsters, my 3.0 conversion was very tough and taught the players respect for big foes, but ultimately it ran quite well and 10'x10' giants in the old maps worked just fine. As for the 5e conversions, while yes it's stupid that they haven't matched the 5e scale of Giants, to the "AD&D scale" of the old maps, personally I think the problem is how they changed all Giants to be Huge in 5e. For me, I'd much rather have most Giants still be Large. For starters, I have a lot of cool Hill and Fire Giant minis that are Large, and while a few of my Ogre minis are bordering on "too big", I feel my Large-sized giants are big anough. Also, in every adventure I've run using Giants, I use multiple, and having multiple Huge minis on the table, makes for a very unwieldy table top - maps need to be huge, and/or your giants can't maneuver. I'm running Storm Giants Thunder currently, and no giants have appeared yet, but when they do I think I'll leave them size Large (same stats, just smaller sized minis on the table). [/QUOTE]

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