#JULYGANTIC: Giant's Rapture

Giant’s Rapture is designed for 4-6 characters of 6th to 8th level, and is definitely an homage to Against the Giants.  Although there is an overall quest, the three sections of the adventure involve stone, frost, and fire giants respectively.  The author asserts that each section is designed to run in a three-hour timespan, since it was used for tournament play at GenCon 2013 - if this bears up, then they’re good for convention or public play.

Let's read through and see what we can see.

SPOILERS FOLLOW

1. Considerable background about warring kingdoms; bottom line is the PCs will be part of a group escorting a Count’s daughter on her way to be wed (in exchange for troops and support in an ongoing war).  Everybody loves an escort mission, right?

2. The rewards include patents of nobility and potentially land.  Glad to see this.  C&C is more explicitly grounded in medievalism than some versions of D&D.

3. Nice details on the drovers, the wagons, and the princess herself - whose identity will have to be kept secret the entire journey.

4. The overall journey will take multiple weeks!  Presumably in the tournament/con version we are “skipping to the good bits”.  In home play, perhaps you’d want to game out more of that journey, although the module says the roads are generally safe.

5. In order to pass through the Great Wall, the party must either deal with hobgoblins, or - presumably deciding the well-entrenched hobgobs are too great a foe - try the southern gate, which ends up putting them in stone giant territory.  Thankfully the stone giants who guard that gate are content to allow passage if the PCs surpass some physical challenges.  The author suggests using the challenges to engage the entire party membership, and running them all in parallel.

6. During the stone giant challenges, the party will wrestle a giant, capture an air elemental, deal with a banshee, move a living boulder, and clean out a cockatrice nest…after which the stone giants let them through the Wall.

7. The second portion of the adventure is as much about dealing with inclement weather and driving carts through snow as it is with facing frost giants, but eventually the group is attacked by frost giants in sleds.  The frost giants might capture the princess.

8. Regardless, when you get to your destination and hand over the princess to the knights who are supposed to escort her to their kingdom, the knights get jumped by fire giants and you end up having to chase/rescue the princess anyhow.

9. Within the Kiln Halls we encounter fire giants, salamanders, hellhounds (this all feels familiar, surely)... and the princess is guarded by a fire elemental.

10. This adventure has a lot of magical items in it.  I was legit surprised at how much stuff.  Some of them have interesting added details (you can wear the frost giants’ magic bracers, but you’ll be afflicted by their memories).

Overall?  It’s okay.  I could see yanking out the fairly-interesting stone giant encounter, or using the fire giant hall as a drop-in lair.  Giant’s Rapture is 100% an homage to Against The Giants, for good or for ill.  I can see how it was likely a fun tournament sequence at GenCon (although I note there’s nothing in here about scoring or running it as a tournament yourself).