Nice coverage of the progression of the G series. Like others, the G series were my first published modules and helped me to develop a feel for how to make my own adventures outside of the random roll dungeon.
I played through the green cover Against the Giants module back in the 80s. I died several times, but it was fun all the same. I'm preparing to run my group through the Giants adventures as presented in the Yawning Portal soon. Thanks for the video retrospective. Never enough Greyhawk stuff on youtube.
My group just finished G1 in our 5e campaign and it was outstanding. They found the black chain a couple sessions in but have yet to discover its' properties. Looking forward to seeing how G2 plays with the current rules-set. ❄
A couple scenes in G1 and G3 are directly inspired by de Camp and Pratt’s “The Roaring Trumpet.” In that story, the intruders going against the giants are Thor, Loki, and other Aesir, which makes the idea of a frontal assault on strongholds filled with giants somewhat less suicidal. That the mission is to forestall Ragnarök itself is an alternate motivation if you don’t want to use the Drow or Lolth at all.
The worst part of the Queen of Spiders iteration was the loss of the Players' Map for D1-2. I mean, they have one, but it's very clumsily executed: the cool drow runes are missing, for one thing; for another, there are fragments of disconnected tunnels "floating" on the map because clearly thinking things through logically took second place to taking the DM's map and just placing a mask over the parts you didn't want to print. But I digress. Excellent video, as usual. It seems to me on my last excursion into Queen of Spiders that there were some serious editing gaffes, with text either misplaced or missing altogether, but perhaps I'm remembering ToEE vs Village of Hommlet instead. The only downside to the omnibus G1-2-3, IMO, was the loss of some of the art from the individual modules.
Excellent video as always. Love this series of adventures/modules. I know that I have (somewhere in my collection) the original 3 monochrome modules, along with the "Against the Giants" compilation module and the anniversary edition " Liberation of Geoff". You're absolutely right in your assessment of the silver anniversary edition, it gives the dm pretty much just a bare outline of the expansion adventures and really not much else. But like I stated earlier, excellent video as always and I look forward to your next one. Happy belated New Year.
@@calvanoni5443 I just checked my D1, and I don't see them there. Are you maybe thinking of that D1-2 compellation they did? That came out around the same time as the G1-3 compellation, so I wouldn't be surprised they put them in both.
Nice ! I love when you review modules ! I remember seeing the 25th anniversay module back in the 90's in my french rpg bookstore. And I was very attracted to the artwork haha This is actually when I got hooked up on Greyhawk and a bit later became addicted with the Living Greyhawk campaign :) Just one question, if I had to buy one of the version, wich one should I pick as an inspiration source for my Dnd5 game ? Cheers
Honestly, I'd probably go with G1/2/3 Against the Giants. It's convenient because it has all three in it, doesn't have the sometimes confusing additions, and should be easier to track down than trying to get the individual ones.
Any thoughts on this sequel of sorts they did back in 4E, Revenge of the Giants? Evil giants seek to avenge past defeats by ravaging the civilized lands, and the only thing standing in their way is a renowned band of heroes. The first 4th edition super-adventure, this product is designed to take characters from 12th to 17th level. Complete within itself, this product contains 160 pages of exciting paragon tier adventure and a beautiful 2-sided map featuring key locations within the adventure.
Although that adventure does feature giants, it doesn't have any of the original G1-3 material (that I'm aware of). So it's pretty much out of scope for this particular video. As a rule, though, I'm not a fan of anything from the 4E era. I find the adventures very disjointed, with the focus on moving between set-piece encounters, rather than exploration.
Great stuff bud :-) I am new to AD&D going my own solo game I was thinking of trying this out at some stage sounds cool but I know it is meant to be pretty rough as well and alot of doing your own stuff as well like travel going back and forward think it will be good to drop into my own game I just started once I get a hang of everything solo :-)
Ive run these now often enough (purchased them back '80) that, much as Gygax points out in the DM notes, they are just a framework for me to improvise from depending on my players. At 8,8, and 16 pages these were never intended to be comprehensive the way 5e hardcover modules - not even sure that's the right word any more - with triple digit page numbers are supposed to be. They were an outline, a monster roster and maps, the DM fleshed it out and I still like that approach. In retrospect, it's probably to be expected that further, longer and more "filled in" versions would be published. WoTC is a commercial enterprise and that's the easiest way to resell the same stuff. I'll continue using my notes and beat to hell 40 year old stuff. I even revamped G1 to be Ogres ruled by an Ogre Mage although Nosnra and company still exist (TL/DR for here). These early TSR and Judges Guild modules I think helped DMs learn up faster, maybe I'm wrong? But I still subscribe to less is more for publishing adventures.
I own the green G1-3 and GDQ1-7 Queen of Spiders, ran/played them multiple times. Going to be doing a 5e version of GDQ1-7 Queen of Spiders in a future campaign. What do you think of the 5e versions in Tales from the Yawning Portal and the homage/expansion/new story Storm King's Thunder?
I like the idea of the Yawning Portal tavern with its “well” in the middle, but I prefer it to merely lead to the Undermountain dungeons, not Greyhawk.
I just did this morning, as other commenters referred to it, and I had frankly forgotten it when I did the video. It looks to be a pretty faithful conversion of the original, but has one glaring flaw; Eclavdra is identified as a Priestess of Lolth, even though she is holding a tentacle rod and the Elder Elemental God is identified by name in the Temple of the Eye! What the heck is a priestess of Lolth doing summoning the Elder Elemental God? Not only would this be completely confusing for a DM who wasn't familiar with the original, but the whole tension between the drow factions is thus destroyed, which would change the whole character of the follow-on adventures D1-3. I think this is once again a question of the editor not knowing the full nature of the original, and once again just assuming Lolth is behind it because drow. It certainly wouldn't have taken much effort to include "drow priestess of the Elder Elemental God" as a creature type.
@@GreyhawkGrognard I agree they easily could have separated her as a worshipper of the Elder Elemental God. Especially with a few new 5e elemental evil books published. I am currently running my players through the GDQ series now. They are almost done with the hill giants but I’m glad I have an original copy to reference while using the new for the encounters.
Have you ever looked through Hack Master: Annihilate The Giants, the original more humorous version of Hackmaster that was basically a modified version of AD&D? It's basically another take on G1-3. I picked up the copy I got for my brother who had the core rules for that version of Hackmaster on a vacation in the Canadian Maritimes while we were in Charlottetown, PEI.
"Tales from the Yawning Portal" has the original modules in 5th Edition D&D format. It's a straight conversion, though, and thus introduces some very confusing things, like keeping the Temple of the Eye in G3, but making Eclavdra a priestess of Lolth!
The Return of Mordenkainen! I need to send you a case of razors. Yeah, they started getting real lazy in their writing and story telling. It's a damn shame.
It looks to be a pretty faithful conversion of the original, but has one glaring flaw; Eclavdra is identified as a Priestess of Lolth, even though she is holding a tentacle rod and the Elder Elemental God is identified by name in the Temple of the Eye! What the heck is a priestess of Lolth doing summoning the Elder Elemental God?
Is it just me, or did the publishers want to erase EGG's vision from the classic series without actually editing the original series? They were either unimaginative, or lazy, or both... I don't care for the supermodules, at all, or the anniversary editions, for that matter, be they the Giants, the Slavers, or the Desert. I prefer the originals, despite whatever flaws some of them might have had. I love those old visions, those set pieces within a greater narrative, and prefer to link them together myself, and maybe reskin them, if I so choose, remaining as true to the original intent as I can. To my mind, those lame linking stories were the worst form of railroading I'd encountered. I wonder if you are of the same thought, because you don't seem a fan of those later visions, either.
The super modules were the best thing to come out if the 1st edition years but I'm admittedly one that thinks 2nd edition was the epitome of AD&D. That was the zenith
I like that you (correctly) pronounce "Drow" like row your boat not wrinkle your brow. There are 194 words in the English language that end in "r-o-w". Of those 194 words ONLY the words "prow" and those that have "brow" (brow, eyebrow, highbrow) are pronounced the 'other' way. (edit: Hurry, get in line to tell me what Frank said. Don't care.)
@@swirvinbirds1971 My correctly comment was tongue in cheek. Sort of. In the past 40 years, I've read several accounts of Gygax pronouncing it dro, and apparently the etymology of the word is based on a Scottish Gaelic word "trow". Trow apparently derives from the Scandinavian word "troll". The original Scottish Gaelic word is pronounced "dtrow" with a soft "dt" sound, and the original pronunciation sounds similar to "troll." The word is also found in Cornish and Welsh, with slight pronunciation differences. The race itself seems based on another dark elf, specifically the Dökkálfar of Norse mythology. All of that aside, when I read the word as a 12 year old in 1982, it was dro, and my gaming group has called it dro for the past 40 years. Hence, it is 'correctly' pronounced dro.
@@C.R.W I know but it's kind of a stretch to say that it is based off anything really. It's a Dark Elf and not a Gaelic Troll. From Sage Advice 4 days ago... "Drow" to rhyme with "cow" and NOT "drow" to rhyme with "row" (as in, propel a boat). This comes to us from Gary Gygax, who put drow in the game.
Actually the inspiration for dark elves in general came from the Svartalfar (ON "Dark Elves") in Norse mythology. They're the inhabitants of SvartalfheimR, and could be connected to the Dvergar (dwarves). There's definitely a mythological connection, but nobody says in a game the mythological source and the etymological source have to match. :-)
The OED gives “drow” and “trow” (the latter being the Norse origin) as rhyming with “cow.” Frank Mentzer in Dragon #93 -reflecting TSR usage at the time-agrees with “cow” as the preferred pronunciation, and “crow” as an acceptable alternate. It really isn’t “correct”; it is an alternate.
The movie “Jack the Giant Slayer” inspired me to want to play the Giant series of modules more than before.
They say that story is one of Europe's oldest pieces of mythology that's still used today for movies and cartoons ect ect.....
Nice coverage of the progression of the G series. Like others, the G series were my first published modules and helped me to develop a feel for how to make my own adventures outside of the random roll dungeon.
I played through the green cover Against the Giants module back in the 80s. I died several times, but it was fun all the same. I'm preparing to run my group through the Giants adventures as presented in the Yawning Portal soon. Thanks for the video retrospective. Never enough Greyhawk stuff on youtube.
My group just finished G1 in our 5e campaign and it was outstanding. They found the black chain a couple sessions in but have yet to discover its' properties. Looking forward to seeing how G2 plays with the current rules-set. ❄
1999, Friday night with soda and snacks, Steading of the Hill giant. The most memorable adventure I ever played 🤩
A couple scenes in G1 and G3 are directly inspired by de Camp and Pratt’s “The Roaring Trumpet.” In that story, the intruders going against the giants are Thor, Loki, and other Aesir, which makes the idea of a frontal assault on strongholds filled with giants somewhat less suicidal. That the mission is to forestall Ragnarök itself is an alternate motivation if you don’t want to use the Drow or Lolth at all.
Just waiting for my POD copy of Against the Giants - The Liberation of Geoff to arrive this week!
The worst part of the Queen of Spiders iteration was the loss of the Players' Map for D1-2. I mean, they have one, but it's very clumsily executed: the cool drow runes are missing, for one thing; for another, there are fragments of disconnected tunnels "floating" on the map because clearly thinking things through logically took second place to taking the DM's map and just placing a mask over the parts you didn't want to print.
But I digress. Excellent video, as usual. It seems to me on my last excursion into Queen of Spiders that there were some serious editing gaffes, with text either misplaced or missing altogether, but perhaps I'm remembering ToEE vs Village of Hommlet instead.
The only downside to the omnibus G1-2-3, IMO, was the loss of some of the art from the individual modules.
Thanks for all the insight! I've wanted to play this module since I was a kid, so after 40 some years....I'm going to run it solo. I can't wait.
Thaks so much for doing this! I have several version and 2e leberation version confused me. Sounds like G1-3 is the place to start.
Excellent video as always. Love this series of adventures/modules. I know that I have (somewhere in my collection) the original 3 monochrome modules, along with the "Against the Giants" compilation module and the anniversary edition " Liberation of Geoff". You're absolutely right in your assessment of the silver anniversary edition, it gives the dm pretty much just a bare outline of the expansion adventures and really not much else. But like I stated earlier, excellent video as always and I look forward to your next one. Happy belated New Year.
After the monochrome originals there's singles before the before the G1-3 collective one, they also had the tournament characters too.
Ah, cool! Do you happen to know which printing those are in? I don't see anything about that over at the Acaeum.
Oh maybe it was just the D 1-3 I'm thinking of, I have one of those still. Sold all the rest off.
@@calvanoni5443 I just checked my D1, and I don't see them there. Are you maybe thinking of that D1-2 compellation they did? That came out around the same time as the G1-3 compellation, so I wouldn't be surprised they put them in both.
Could be, I'll try to find it later. I'm at work now.
I wish we had the Q1 Gary had intended to publish rather than the one TSR published.
Check out my Q2 (on my website). It's not Gary's original, obviously, but I like to think it's better than what we got.
Nice ! I love when you review modules ! I remember seeing the 25th anniversay module back in the 90's in my french rpg bookstore. And I was very attracted to the artwork haha This is actually when I got hooked up on Greyhawk and a bit later became addicted with the Living Greyhawk campaign :)
Just one question, if I had to buy one of the version, wich one should I pick as an inspiration source for my Dnd5 game ?
Cheers
Honestly, I'd probably go with G1/2/3 Against the Giants. It's convenient because it has all three in it, doesn't have the sometimes confusing additions, and should be easier to track down than trying to get the individual ones.
Any thoughts on this sequel of sorts they did back in 4E, Revenge of the Giants?
Evil giants seek to avenge past defeats by ravaging the civilized lands, and the only thing standing in their way is a renowned band of heroes.
The first 4th edition super-adventure, this product is designed to take characters from 12th to 17th level. Complete within itself, this product contains 160 pages of exciting paragon tier adventure and a beautiful 2-sided map featuring key locations within the adventure.
Although that adventure does feature giants, it doesn't have any of the original G1-3 material (that I'm aware of). So it's pretty much out of scope for this particular video. As a rule, though, I'm not a fan of anything from the 4E era. I find the adventures very disjointed, with the focus on moving between set-piece encounters, rather than exploration.
Great stuff bud :-) I am new to AD&D going my own solo game I was thinking of trying this out at some stage sounds cool but I know it is meant to be pretty rough as well and alot of doing your own stuff as well like travel going back and forward think it will be good to drop into my own game I just started once I get a hang of everything solo :-)
Ive run these now often enough (purchased them back '80) that, much as Gygax points out in the DM notes, they are just a framework for me to improvise from depending on my players. At 8,8, and 16 pages these were never intended to be comprehensive the way 5e hardcover modules - not even sure that's the right word any more - with triple digit page numbers are supposed to be. They were an outline, a monster roster and maps, the DM fleshed it out and I still like that approach. In retrospect, it's probably to be expected that further, longer and more "filled in" versions would be published. WoTC is a commercial enterprise and that's the easiest way to resell the same stuff. I'll continue using my notes and beat to hell 40 year old stuff. I even revamped G1 to be Ogres ruled by an Ogre Mage although Nosnra and company still exist (TL/DR for here). These early TSR and Judges Guild modules I think helped DMs learn up faster, maybe I'm wrong? But I still subscribe to less is more for publishing adventures.
I own the green G1-3 and GDQ1-7 Queen of Spiders, ran/played them multiple times. Going to be doing a 5e version of GDQ1-7 Queen of Spiders in a future campaign. What do you think of the 5e versions in Tales from the Yawning Portal and the homage/expansion/new story Storm King's Thunder?
To be honest I skipped TftYP, so I have no idea how it compares to the originals or their offshoots.
I like the idea of the Yawning Portal tavern with its “well” in the middle, but I prefer it to merely lead to the Undermountain dungeons, not Greyhawk.
Have you read the G1-3 reprint in the 5e Tales of the Yawning Portal? What’s your take on that reprint?
I just did this morning, as other commenters referred to it, and I had frankly forgotten it when I did the video. It looks to be a pretty faithful conversion of the original, but has one glaring flaw; Eclavdra is identified as a Priestess of Lolth, even though she is holding a tentacle rod and the Elder Elemental God is identified by name in the Temple of the Eye! What the heck is a priestess of Lolth doing summoning the Elder Elemental God?
Not only would this be completely confusing for a DM who wasn't familiar with the original, but the whole tension between the drow factions is thus destroyed, which would change the whole character of the follow-on adventures D1-3.
I think this is once again a question of the editor not knowing the full nature of the original, and once again just assuming Lolth is behind it because drow. It certainly wouldn't have taken much effort to include "drow priestess of the Elder Elemental God" as a creature type.
@@GreyhawkGrognard I agree they easily could have separated her as a worshipper of the Elder Elemental God. Especially with a few new 5e elemental evil books published. I am currently running my players through the GDQ series now. They are almost done with the hill giants but I’m glad I have an original copy to reference while using the new for the encounters.
Have you ever looked through Hack Master: Annihilate The Giants, the original more humorous version of Hackmaster that was basically a modified version of AD&D? It's basically another take on G1-3. I picked up the copy I got for my brother who had the core rules for that version of Hackmaster on a vacation in the Canadian Maritimes while we were in Charlottetown, PEI.
No, I've got the Hackmaster rules, but never actually played it or got the adventures.
Are there updates on the original G1-3 modules for newer AD&D (or D&D) rules?
"Tales from the Yawning Portal" has the original modules in 5th Edition D&D format. It's a straight conversion, though, and thus introduces some very confusing things, like keeping the Temple of the Eye in G3, but making Eclavdra a priestess of Lolth!
This is probably a topic for one of your future videos, but what do you think of the other silver anniversary "Return" modules?
Well I did do a review of Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. Ahem.
Might get to doing some of the others, now that you've asked...
The Return of Mordenkainen! I need to send you a case of razors.
Yeah, they started getting real lazy in their writing and story telling. It's a damn shame.
Do you know how much is altered in the 5e book Tales from the Yawning Portal? It has an updated version of AtG.
It looks to be a pretty faithful conversion of the original, but has one glaring flaw; Eclavdra is identified as a Priestess of Lolth, even though she is holding a tentacle rod and the Elder Elemental God is identified by name in the Temple of the Eye! What the heck is a priestess of Lolth doing summoning the Elder Elemental God?
Is it just me, or did the publishers want to erase EGG's vision from the classic series without actually editing the original series? They were either unimaginative, or lazy, or both...
I don't care for the supermodules, at all, or the anniversary editions, for that matter, be they the Giants, the Slavers, or the Desert. I prefer the originals, despite whatever flaws some of them might have had. I love those old visions, those set pieces within a greater narrative, and prefer to link them together myself, and maybe reskin them, if I so choose, remaining as true to the original intent as I can. To my mind, those lame linking stories were the worst form of railroading I'd encountered.
I wonder if you are of the same thought, because you don't seem a fan of those later visions, either.
The super modules were the best thing to come out if the 1st edition years but I'm admittedly one that thinks 2nd edition was the epitome of AD&D. That was the zenith
Oh! I'm re-reading the novel by Ru Emerson right now xD
I did a review a while back. I was unimpressed. (Spoilers in the review)
www.greyhawkgrognard.com/2013/02/17/review-against-giants/
I like that you (correctly) pronounce "Drow" like row your boat not wrinkle your brow. There are 194 words in the English language that end in "r-o-w". Of those 194 words ONLY the words "prow" and those that have "brow" (brow, eyebrow, highbrow) are pronounced the 'other' way. (edit: Hurry, get in line to tell me what Frank said. Don't care.)
According to Frank Mentzer 'Drau' is the perfered pronunciation although both can be used.
@@swirvinbirds1971 My correctly comment was tongue in cheek. Sort of.
In the past 40 years, I've read several accounts of Gygax pronouncing it dro, and apparently the etymology of the word is based on a Scottish Gaelic word "trow".
Trow apparently derives from the Scandinavian word "troll". The original Scottish Gaelic word is pronounced "dtrow" with a soft "dt" sound, and the original pronunciation sounds similar to "troll." The word is also found in Cornish and Welsh, with slight pronunciation differences. The race itself seems based on another dark elf, specifically the Dökkálfar of Norse mythology.
All of that aside, when I read the word as a 12 year old in 1982, it was dro, and my gaming group has called it dro for the past 40 years. Hence, it is 'correctly' pronounced dro.
@@C.R.W I know but it's kind of a stretch to say that it is based off anything really. It's a Dark Elf and not a Gaelic Troll.
From Sage Advice 4 days ago...
"Drow" to rhyme with "cow" and NOT "drow" to rhyme with "row" (as in, propel a boat). This comes to us from Gary Gygax, who put drow in the game.
Actually the inspiration for dark elves in general came from the Svartalfar (ON "Dark Elves") in Norse mythology. They're the inhabitants of SvartalfheimR, and could be connected to the Dvergar (dwarves). There's definitely a mythological connection, but nobody says in a game the mythological source and the etymological source have to match. :-)
The OED gives “drow” and “trow” (the latter being the Norse origin) as rhyming with “cow.” Frank Mentzer in Dragon #93 -reflecting TSR usage at the time-agrees with “cow” as the preferred pronunciation, and “crow” as an acceptable alternate. It really isn’t “correct”; it is an alternate.