What do we know about 'Revenge of the Giants'?

[crash_beedo]

That's hilarious - *exactly* what I was expecting to use as the mini for the 'Torians' from Revenge of the Gianst, too - the Loyal Scragglemaws. (And they're large!) They even fill a similar role to the flavor text - their previous role was faithful guardians of the eternal city.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

The three main complaints I've heard are 1) the plot is pants on head retarded, 2) way too much combat with way too many samey monsters who's minis are way too rare, and 3) the skill challenges are few, which may be a boon, as, at least in this module, they're completely screwed up.

Thoughts to these?

 

[ExploderWizard]

The three main complaints I've heard are 1) the plot is pants on head retarded, 2) way too much combat with way too many samey monsters who's minis are way too rare, and 3) the skill challenges are few, which may be a boon, as, at least in this module, they're completely screwed up.

Thoughts to these?

I bought the adventure recently and have started reading it. I read the intro, skimmed the new monster stats and read the first series of encounters.

This module has tripped the fail-o-meter I won't go into detail yet because I can't seem to locate spoiler tags.

Generally the 4E system isn't a big favorite of mine but looking at what has turned me off so far isn't really mechanical. After reading the first several encounters, I took a deep breath and imagined the adventure translated into Basic D&D stats. Going over the material briefly again with those stats in mind I wasn't any happier with the content.

Getting to the individual questions:

1) Yes
2) Kind of. The mini thing isn't a concern for me since I use my own painted figs.
3) No comment. I have not read the skill challenge sections yet so I have no informed opinion.

 

[TerraDave]

Regarding the maps: I thought it was an intentional link back to the originals.

Regarding the plot: I wonder how woven this is into the whole thing?

 

[hexgrid]

The three main complaints I've heard are 1) the plot is pants on head retarded, 2) way too much combat with way too many samey monsters who's minis are way too rare, and 3) the skill challenges are few, which may be a boon, as, at least in this module, they're completely screwed up.

Thoughts to these?

Plot- definitely not ground breaking (bad guys want to release an imprisoned big bad, and have to retrieve several artifacts to do it) but serviceable, IMO.

Combat- yeah, there are a lot of combat encounters. You could (and I will, if I run it) leave many of them out without effecting the overall plot of the adventure. And yes, running the adventure with a full array of appropriate miniatures would be an expensive proposition.

Skill Challenges- there are several of them. They seemed well put together to me, though I'd probably skip a few.

My main complaint about the adventure is that some of the important plot details (like how the PCs might progress from one set of encounters to another) are vague, and are scattered around the book, making them hard to keep track of.

Also, this adventure has lions people called Torians. I wonder, is this a direct reference to Arcana Evolved's Litorians (also lion people), or are they both referencing something else?

 

[davethegame]

The biggest problem I had with the skill challenges was that they most (if not all?) took the form of: "Round 1: Everyone rolls this skill, if majority pass, get a success, Round 2: Everyone roll this other skill..." thus completely taking the decision making and roleplaying out of it. I wouldn't have minded it for one or two challenges, but the majority seemed to be this style.

 

[Herschel]

I paged through it a bit already even though the group I'm targeting to it just hit level 6. There are a number of combats, but there needs to be. It looks like it's pretty open, so I'm not sure how many will actually be used. At about 9 battles/character level that's 54 battles on average in a 6 level swing (approximately 3 battles/session, 3 full sessions per level obviously modified for encounter level, etc.).

I haven't looked at the skill challenges yet, but I rarely run them as written thus far anyway. I usually add or subtract from them as the mood strikes me.

 

[Dragonbait]

I own it.

My personal issue with the book: The story is difficult to follow. The GM needs to read EVERYTHING carefully. Many plot points are in the skill challenges while others are written on the few pages of descriptions and others are written in the various strategies of the monsters in combat. It's a strange way of organizing things.

 

[Obryn]

I'm running my group through P1 right now, and had considered hopping over from the current WotC H/P/E series to this.

I have P2 and P3, but don't have this.

For those who have familiarity with both... Would you say Revenge of the Giants is better or worse than Demon Queen's Enclave and Nightwyrm Fortress? I've heard good things about the latter two of these, and so far bad things about RotG, but want to check. Is it worth a purchase?

-O

 

[Crothian]

I own it.

My personal issue with the book: The story is difficult to follow. The GM needs to read EVERYTHING carefully. Many plot points are in the skill challenges while others are written on the few pages of descriptions and others are written in the various strategies of the monsters in combat. It's a strange way of organizing things.

The book needs a page to organize all the plots. Just a few sentences of what is going on and then reference an encounter or page number. Something like that should practically be mandatory in nay large complicate adventure like this one.