From Kuroth's Quill -
grodog's AD&D blog

"From Kuroth’s Quill" is grodog's regular design column covering the elements of adventure design (and more-specifically dungeon design, given my interest in that topic). I will also wander through the design of spells and magic items; monsters, traps, tricks, and treasures; PC and NPC classes; planes and pantheons; and likely other topics as well. In the blog, I hope to provide practical examples that will be useful in campaign play, to show theory in action.

Showing posts with label origins. Show all posts

17 October 2018

Kellri's 18 Module Challenge - Day 16: G3 Hall of the Fire Giant King by Gary Gygax

Day 16 - My Favorite Gary Gygax Module: G3 Hall of the Fire Giant King

Whither Day 15?---Blogger ate my post on The Court of Ardor for MERP, and I've not recreated it yet. Trying to stay as on-track as possible....

G3 Hall of the Fire Giant King (TSR, 1978) is Gary Gygax's final adventure in the initial trilogy of GDQ modules that made him a household name among every generation of D&D players.

"The Battle for Snurre's Hall," a play account from all three rounds at Origins 1978 was published in The Dragon #19 (October 1978), and it speaks well to the trials and tribulations faced by the players in this scenario.

Why I Love G3 Hall of the Fire Giant King!

It's a meat-grinder, it's a small moon, it's a TPK trivializer!

G3 is a wonderful capstone to the G1-3 Giants series of modules, while at the same time it acts as the introductory bridge into the even-more-brutal threats to be faced in its sequels, the D1-3 drowic underworld trilogy. (Perhaps Gary intended the final series of Q adventures to be a Q1-3 trilogy as well?; hmmm....). G3 pounces upon the PCs who've progressed through G1 and G2, ratchets up the level of challenge, and spits them back out by introducing many new and horrific ways for the players to bemoan the beat-down it delivers:

King Snurre Ironbelly (who fights as a storm giant!), his delightful, decapitating wife Queen Frupy, their pet hell hounds, pyrohydra (!!), and huge ancient red dragon (!!!), and other courtly attendants
A series of interesting prisoners who may, or may not, aid the PCs in their pursuit of vengeance against the giants, including:

An olven noble and her retinue
Obmi, the infamous dwarf from Castle Greyhawk and the Gord novels, first sees print here, complete with his now-under-powered gnoll retinue ;)
A stupefied titan
A comely human female thief, likely to ally with the PCs in the short-term
And various other monsters that are likely to attack and/or betray their rescuers at the first opportunity

The Temple of the Eye---a fully-functioning temple to the Elder Elemental God, complete with Lovecraftian tentacles, madness-inducing/wish-granting sacrifices, and more!
Ropers, gnolls and trolls en masse as shock troops, wererats, ettins, and of course fire giants and hell hounds by the dozen!
As with each of the previous adventures, careful players' PCs will learn more about the fountainhead behind the incursions of the allied giants into Geoff, and are likely to come face to face with pure, unadulterated EVIL (don't touch it!)---of course, the drow!:

The drow are, naturally, one of the highlights of the entire series, but in G3 they offer a first, befuddling taste of what is to come in the characters' insane descent toward Erelhei-Cinlu and beyond:

Eclavdra, Evil High Priestess of the Elder Elemental God and House Eilservs (in anagram, "serviles"?)
Nedylene, Despana second-in-command, and foe to the Eilservs
Mind flayers spying on both, and being ignored by the drow!

Three Runners Up

This selection is more difficult than it should be, since Gygax wrote so many great modules, but I'll go with these as my selections:

D1 Descent into the Depths of the Earth (TSR, 1978) - Picks up the gauntlet the drow throw down in G3, luring the PCs deeper beneath Oerth to their (assumed) doom!
EX2 Land Beyond the Magic Mirror (TSR, 1984) - I love Murlynd's home, and the whimsical play of romping around in Alice's Wonderland (here as well as in EX1 Dungeonland!)
S1 Tomb of Horrors (based on the ideas of Alan Lucien) - Classic, classic, classic!

More-properly D3 Vault of the Drow, S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, S4 Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, and WG4 Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun also deserve places on this list, but since there are only three slot, and I've already featured some in other entries....

My other posts in Kellri's 18 Day Module Challenge:

03 October 2018

Kellri's 18 Module Challenge - Day 5: S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks by Gary Gygax

Day 5 - A Module that Needs to be Played by a BIG Party: _S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks_ by Gary Gygax

Like its predecessor S1 Tomb of Horrors (TSR, 1978), S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks was first published to support TSR's "D&D for Prizes" tourney at Origins II in 1976. The module we know and love wasn't formally printed until 1980:

S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks:
1976 Origins II tournament version,
above a copy of TSR's 1980 first printing module.

Why I Love S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks

S3 is one of the most highly-lethal adventures I've run, and probably surpasses S1 Tomb of Horrors for the droves of PCs sent to early graves beneath its chromium lights
High-tech lasers, grenades, power armor, robots, and androids abound that will (appropriately) perplex and befuddle the players while folding-spindling-and-mutilating their PCs with with efficiency!
Introduces oodles of new and unique monsters (both flora, fauna, fungi, and more!), including some personal favorites---aurumvorax, froghemoth, gas bats, russet mold---as well as rarely-encountered iconic monsters like the eye of the deep, intellect devourer, and the iconic illustration-booklet-cover mind flayer!
Features some of Rob Kuntz's best design work: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks builds upon materials from the Expanded Castle Greyhawk, including from Kuntz's Garden of the Plant Master/Garden of Tharizdun level, as well as the infamous Machine Level
The 1980 publication of S3 was TSR's only adventure to include color interior artwork all rendered by the incomparable Erol Otus, who's fabulous pieces feature throughout the art-heavy book as well:

S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, TSR 1980

Three Runners Up

The lethality-factor isn't the only criteria that requires a large party of PCs to tackle an adventure---extended forays without the ability to reprovision require more redundancy in a party as well as a higher-reliance on clerics and druids to create/purify food and water, too. Many classic adventures feature such extended expeditions, including the G-D modules, X1 and WG6 for their rapacious and dinosaur-infested wilds, and the unforgiving deserts of X4-X5-X10, but in the end, I settled on the following three:

"The Dancing Hut" by Roger E. Moore (TSR, March 1984 in Dragon Magazine #83): what's not to love about the scariest witch in the world and her multi-planar tesseractian, self-defending, and senient mansion-turned-death trap? If you want to add some further twists to the adventure, you can leverage David Nalle's "The Bogatyrs of Old Kiev" article from Dragon #53 and/or Lisa Smedman's 1995 Dancing Hut of Baba Yaga (TSR, 1985), in addition to its original artifact entries in Eldritch Wizardry and the Dungeon Masters Guide.
S1 Tomb of Horrors by Gary Gygax (TSR, 1975, 1978, 1981): the classic PC shredder---its provides 20 pregens for a reason!
WG5 Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure by Rob Kuntz (TSR, 1985): Kuntz's classic 3-level dungeon, later expanded through the Maure Castle series of levels via Dungeon Magazine