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On the WotC website they do the Map-a-Week feature. In June they gave maps of a Frost Giant Stronghold. Just today they gave what appears to be the first level of the Hall of the Fire Giant King.
Given WotCs penchant lately for updating old adventures to 3.5, could they be preparing us for a revised Against the Giants series? Lets's hope so.
I played through a conversion of the "Liberation of Geoff" version and all I have to say is -- level up before you attempt it!
Giants have gotten much, MUCH tougher than they were in 1e...
-The Gneech
King Snurre growls, "Ye will make a nice scrunchy sounds when I eat your bones little humans. Fruppi! Prepare the pot cause dinner has arrived."
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Yeah...it would be too kool to see a remake.
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I played through a conversion of the "Liberation of Geoff" version and all I have to say is -- level up before you attempt it!
Giants have gotten much, MUCH tougher than they were in 1e...
-The Gneech
Ain't that the truth... If I remember correctly, the glacial rift of the frost giant jarl contains something like 87 frost giants, as well as that mated pair of big white dragon and packs upon packs of winter wolves. MAN, that's going to be rough, even after you liberate the storm giant!
I ran these three modules under 3.0 rules... it would have been great to have had the maps that have just been posted, those original ones were nowhere near as nice or clear.
The first thing I changed was to reduce all the Giant's "standard build" by 4 HD, to take them back to how they were in 1st edition. This reduced their CR by 1, and made them not quite so lethal (but only just). Obviously I gave a few of them levels of Fighter, Warrior, occasionally Barbarian and even had Queen Fruppy as a Dwarven Defender (giants are really just over-sized dwarves).
The second thing I did was strip out about 50% of each module. they are just way too big to run in 3.x, the players will end up near Epic Level by the end with all that XP! Not to mention it can easily get boring beating up the 100th group of giants. And of course I also stripped out a *lot* of treasure, something like 75% of it was taken out, and even then it was (on average) above that expected for the EL's, especially with things like a ring of wishes. I left that in, but not with 3 wishes, just 1 or 2 I think, and they needed it pretty soon thereafter.
In fact that was the one thing I discovered too late, the dragons in 3.0 were too low in CR - I thought the pair of white dragons, as listed, would not be enough of a challenge for my PC's, so advanced them both by a couple of HD (about 1/2 way to the next age category). That was a mistake, my group was ambushed by the dragons in the middle of the rift, and quickly headed for a TPK as the party wizard died almost in the first round and the group had no real way to fight the dragons and was too far away from an exit to get away. They were only saved by wishing themselves back in time... back to the start of the fight, which once again was brutal for them, but this time the wizard didn't die so could use walls of force and so on to help even it up a bit. But even then the dragons killed at least one PC (maybe two), and by the way my group had something like 6 or more PC's in it and at this stage was something like 12-13th level. In fact, one dragon retreated to its lair with a dead PC. The players were pretty strung out by that chain of events - two fights (well, the same one twice over) they really didn't think they could win, and even when they did win it was a bit of a stalemate because one dragon dies as did at least one PC (they could hear the dragon crunching through the dead dwarf's armour, ouch). Needless to say they were pretty happy when they cornered the dragon in its lair the next day, and took that one out too. Even then, that was a pretty close thing too.
I must say, near the end of the series, my players were getting pretty jaded about slaughtering giants - genocide on the giant population, they called it. And by the time they hit the Hall of the Fire Giant King, they were more like 15th level, and could slice and dice giants like you would not believe - two tough fighters, a cleric with summon monster 7, a magic user with all sorts of "buff the fighter" spells as well as his own good spells, and someone cast "spike stones" at the entrance to the halls which took out a cast number of fodder in about one round. Luckily the Drow came along near the end and spiced it up a little, otherwise my players would have died from the lack of challenge the Fire Giants could give them. Heck, I even had the Fire Giant Cleric petition his deity (after all, the halls are called Muspelheim or whatever), and his deity actually made a cameo appearance where he made the cleric a 0-rank deity (!) - of course the PC's still cut him down, it just took an extra round or two (and gave them even more to brag about).
I'd have to say that converted to 3.5, it need huge re-engineering to work because of the challenge balance, XP and treasure reasons I outlined above. But you can do it yourself without vast amounts of effort being required - just photocopy the original modules, take out a pen and cross out lots of it, and work up the foes converted to 3.5 (I use init cards, so just did them that way).
MAN, that's going to be rough, even after you liberate the storm giant!
You just reminded me... by the time my group freed the storm giantess, they were feeling pretty buff so declined her offer of help and continued on without her. Probably just as well, they certainly were pretty tough by this stage, at least against any giants. I used a couple of "filler" NPC's too, taken from the original module's suggested PC's. My players hated their names ("Fonkin Hoddyspeak - what sort of name is that for an Elf?"), but found them useful helpers because 4-5 PC's wasn't really enough against so many numbers of enemies.
Combats had to be run pretty smartly though, it's easy to get bogged down and have one or two fights take the whole 4 hour session.
I guess my party was also lucky they didn't find that ancient red dragon too... to this day, I wonder what might have happened there... I guess either lots of dead PC's, or else they would have remembered the smaller white dragons and just handed over all their treasure like he asked...
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In my opinion, you can never have too many storm giant allies. Of course, that might just be me...
Still, even though I really liked the whole series, the fire giant section tends to alternate between boring (hooray... more giants) and absurd (the red dragon is the stupidest monster placement ever). However, some of the set pieces are classics - fighting 57 trolls at once in total darkness was pretty hardcore, and the Drow were still scary back then. Also, the cloud giant lair is absolutely fantastic, and their leader is one of the fiercest enemies I've ever thrown at my PCs (that magic flail of hers is SCARY!).
All in all - very uneven, but at times absolutely, inimitably great.
Also, the cloud giant lair is absolutely fantastic, and their leader is one of the fiercest enemies I've ever thrown at my PCs (that magic flail of hers is SCARY!).
Cloud Giant Lair? I don't remember a Cloud Giant Lair in G1-G3?
Oh yeah anyone got some kind of a firm hint on whether there are plans for against the Giants 3.5?
My PCs are going to be running through that series eventually and I'd love to use an official version if its set to come out in the next 8 months or so but if nothing like that is due then I'll set about converting the 1st edition module (Though I think I'll rework those nice WOTC map a werek offerings down to a 5' scale, do them in isometric and use them.
The Frost Giant lair looks like it will make a very interesting 3D map as it has a lot of elevation change in it.
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Also, the cloud giant lair is absolutely fantastic, and their leader is one of the fiercest enemies I've ever thrown at my PCs (that magic flail of hers is SCARY!).Cloud Giant Lair? I don't remember a Cloud Giant Lair in G1-G3?
There isn't one - however, in the Silver Anniversary reissue, the three adventures are linked together better and includes a number of extra encounters. The last one: the final confrontation with the cloud giant overlords of the giant invasion. It is very cool, but also kinda tough...
There isn't one - however, in the Silver Anniversary reissue, the three adventures are linked together better and includes a number of extra encounters. The last one: the final confrontation with the cloud giant overlords of the giant invasion. It is very cool, but also kinda tough...Also, the cloud giant lair is absolutely fantastic, and their leader is one of the fiercest enemies I've ever thrown at my PCs (that magic flail of hers is SCARY!).Cloud Giant Lair? I don't remember a Cloud Giant Lair in G1-G3?
Though I liked the Silver Anniversary upgrade, I thought that adding the cloud giants just confused the issue. Who was motivating the invasion, manipulative cloud giants or manipulative drow?
Since I always saw G 1-3 as the lead-in for D 1-3/Q 1, I like the switch from "hunt the giants" to "hunt the drow." (How about an update of those classics as well? Maybe even some detail on all the other stuff off the drow map? )
I did like cloud giant overlord encounter in its own right and lifted it for use elsewhere.
Oh yeah, and I did run G3 as a "high level test" right after 3rd ed came out. I used simple replacement.
Ouch!
The party of six was severely challenged at the entrance by the guards using full attacks.