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For day 2 of the 12 Days of D&D, I’ve chosen Dungeon Module G3: Hall of the Fire Giant King (1978) from TSR. This is the third in a series, following G1: Steading of the Hill Giant Chief and G2: The Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl. #CuratedQuarantine
All three were run as the official D&D tournament modules at Origins ’78. So why did I pick G3? Well, young Chris didn’t have much money, so I never had G1 and G2 in my early years as a roleplayer. #CuratedQuarantine
I didn’t actually play those modules until I got to college, in fact. So we skipped them and jumped right to the Hall of the Fire Giant King, which I remember fondly. #CuratedQuarantine
The orange cover really stands out in my mind, as does Dave Trampier’s illustration of King Snurre, my old foe. G1-G3 were the first stand-alone adventures that TSR published for D&D. #CuratedQuarantine
You’d think they’d have started with low-level modules to help people get campaigns going, but I suspect the priority was to create challenging tournament modules first, with less concern about an overall product plan. #CuratedQuarantine
It’s not like D&D fans were spoiled for choice in adventures in 1978 in any case, and they responded by buying the series in huge numbers. Since so many early fans played these modules, it created a shared experience among them that proved powerful & lasting. #CuratedQuarantine
I remember having discussions about this when I was working at WotC during the development of D&D 3E. There was an attempt then to recapture that sense of shared experience, though I think 5E has been more successful at it. #CuratedQuarantine
G1-G3 were short adventures. The first two were 8-pages each, and Hall of the Fire Giant King was 16. Really, a scant few pages to create such memories in so many people. #CuratedQuarantine
There was a linked plot that tied them together, led to the D series, and then culminated with Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits. G1-G3 were released as a single 32-page module called Against the Giants in 1981. #CuratedQuarantine
Then all seven modules in the extended series were collected into a single campaign book, GDQ 1-7 Queen of Spiders, in 1986. Later editions would continue to revisit this material in various ways. #CuratedQuarantine
