Overview
This is a MonkeyLungs review of a Sword Coast Legends player made module, “Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, G1” by module author: HighPlains DrifterDisclaimer: Module review series is currently taking a time out. The limitations of the tool set have worn me down and, for now, I won’t be devoting as much energy into SCL. I will keep playing and am looking forward to RoD and I will probably grab the console version for some co-op but for now my epic quest is taking a breather.
Sword Coast Legends Module Review
Module Title: Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, G1
Author: HighPlains Drifter
DM Required: NO
Editable: NO
Recommended Level: No level recommendation listed in the module description but the author explained to me that level 7 – 12 was the target range. I went in with a level 9 Rogue (very close to level 10) and finished the module just a little ways into level 11.
Completion time: I finished the module in 2 hours, 25 minutes.
Thumbs Up? Thumbs Down?
Thumbs Up for:
Players looking for a dungeon crawl, overland smack ’em down, beat ’em up with a bit more story than a standard dungeon crawl, some stout enemy groups, and a fair amount of treasure and XP, should have a pretty good time. A bit light on story and non combat interaction though, this may be exactly what you are looking for.
Thumbs Down for:
Folks looking for a slightly less combat focused adventure. Folks who don’t like the large maps.
Review
First off, make sure you read the description to the module. This serves as your intro to the back story. Tasked with assisting some local lords with a giant problem, of giants attacking farms and villages, you head out to to put some big guys down hard, and since they are big they should fall harder. A little more setup to the story could have helped for players tackling this on their own with no DM here but ample use of the imagination in conjunction with the informative module description works as well. Your first order of business is to investigate a burning farm, kill any interlopers and search for clues, then head off to the closest village and try and assist them.
Turns out you are a bit late, the giants have wreaked some havoc and your new mission, after some interaction with a few locals, is to get to the source of the problem and mete out a little justice along the way. The enemies here can take a punch but being mainly bruisers, as is fitting for the story, they are easily controlled with a solid wizard. Because of the stout nature of the enemies and their punch packing proclivity I would suggest going in at least level 7 so you have some abilities to assist with locking down groups of foes. Also bring a Rogue or someone with decent training + wisdom for searching for traps and unlocking doors and chests.
The meat of the meal here is getting from objective to objective while fighting groups of moderately tough enemies. Think of this like a dungeon crawl with more of a story and you will have fun. It’s still a little rough around the edge with quite a few typos present in the text and it routinely uses very large maps without adding much density of interaction, but I was still happy to stab a few more giants and put an end to their abuse of the local populace. Each location usually has a side quest or two to get involved in for those adventurer’s that want to go the extra mile in lending a helping hand.
I can see this being greatly enhanced with a DM to play the role of some of the NPC’s and the module creator has placed DM items in the form of little floating magical light placeable’s around the module with what I presume are instructions and background information for a DM. Because I played this with my own computer controlled party in single player mode I did not make use of these but it is a nice touch that they are there.
The storyline, while simple in scope, works very well for SCL. There is no forced background thrust upon the player, no outlandish tale of world ending events, just a populace in need of some adventurers and a giant menace to quell. This module would work well thrown into any campaign as a larger side quest and probably is best played in that way with a group of friends and a live DM. Some of the large overland maps could be smaller, some of the areas could use some more decoration, and I wouldn’t mind a bit more text to help flesh out the story but overall I had a fun time, killed some giants, gained a level, and earned some loot along the way.
Steading of the Hill Giant Chief is a remake/re-imagining of a 1981 classic D&D module by Gary Gygax remade into the Sword Coast Legends framework by HighPlains Drifter.
Reminder
Please remember to rate each module you play with the in-game rating tool and maybe head on over to the SCL forums and leave some feedback for the module author of the module you played. Link to SCL Looking for Adventure forums follows:
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Review Score Disclaimer
Currently the dialogue editor for Sword Coast legends is woefully deficient. Dialogue response choice for players are limted to two choices: 1. We accept! and 2. Not right now.
This is something that weighs heavily on any module and is not the fault of the module author. As such, I am not factoring this into the reviews even though the lack of any real dialogue options is a detrimental factor to the overall experience. Hopefully this is something the developers eventually rectify. However all of the most enthusiastic module creators, the early adopters, the die hard supporters of this game will have already been dealt the short end of the stick.