I’m less interested in the contents of the linked free adventure, and the below design notes on the adventure.

Design Note

If you have Glory of the Giants, you can follow along with the process we used to create this adventure. The basic adventure seed—“a fire giant captures a renowned Humanoid smith”—comes from the Fire Giant Skill table (chapter 2), with additional inspiration from the “Magnum Opus” adventure idea connected to the Star Forge (chapter 4). The name of the giant villain comes from the Giant Names table (chapter 2), and the encounters within the Star Forge are inspired by the Fire Giant Encounters table (chapter 3) and the Elemental Fire Encounters table (chapter 3). The map of the Star Forge is in chapter 4. The giant wrestlers of Fireside Monastery are firbolgs (chapter 6), and several other monsters in the adventure come from the bestiary in chapter 6 (cinder hulk; fire giant forgecaller; fire giant of Evil Fire). Information about fire giant bags (chapter 5) fills out the treasure characters might acquire along the way.

WotC is demonstrating how to use this book to make your own adventures.

They should have done the same for Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft, then maybe people would have understood that it was tip-to-stern the best DM toolkit they released yet.


As always, I have posted this link to /r/dndnext, please feel free to upvote it there to raise visibility.