#JULYGANTIC: Giantcraft

 Giantcraft is the 2e-era supplement that gives us the history and culture of giant-kind in the Forgotten Realms.  While it might provide some inspiration for your game, it's of particular value to DMs running giant-focused stuff in the Forgotten Realms.  In hindsight, they should've made this pdf free when Storm King's Thunder came out as a promotional tool.  Of interest, it's penned by Ray Winninger, current grand poobah of D&D.

Let's read!

1. Deep history exposition on giants - their creation myth, their civilization of Ostoria, etc.  Kind of wish I'd had this when I was running DDAL Season 5 material.

Dammit, Ray

2.  Supplemental rules and tables for giant combat, rock-throwing, and all of that stuff.  Could come in handy if you're running giant-heavy or trying to insure they're a serious threat.

3. Some notes on giant language.  All giants in FR speak the same mother-tongue, which is either interesting or boring, depending on how you look at it.

4. A couple solid tips for playing a giant NPC.

5. The VERY IMPORTANT chapter about how to play giant-kin (firblog, verbeeg, voadkyn) PCs.  This is 2e, baby, THIS is why you bought this book.

6. Giant religion & gods

7. Rune magic!  Including a variant wizard.

8. Full chapter on the Ice Spires region, including various giant lairs.  And a couple new monsters.

Giantcraft is tremendously Forgotten Realms-focused, which is no sin since it's coded as a Realms product.  Its usefulness to a non-Realms DM will be more limited, but there are some things in here you could steal - the lairs, for example.  If you are a FR DM or are running Storm King's Thunder or even Liberation of Geoff and want "more giant stuff", Giantcraft is worth looking into.  All that 'giant hierarchy' stuff from SKT starts here.

This image is not from 'Giantcraft'.  See, back in second edition, fire giants did not yet look like rejected Masters of the Universe figures.  I think that was a side effect of 'Die Vecna Die' maybe.