Review by C.J. Bunce

Hey, you’ve had enough time to recover from this weekend’s Gen Con.  With all the campaign settings and adventures we’ve seen from the Fifth Edition of Dungeons & Dragons, we haven’t seen that many supplements.  Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants is only the seventh and it’s coming your way in only one week.  You can pre-order the standard edition with cover art by Cynthia Sheppard here at Amazon now or the game shop variant with art by Olena Richards here.  Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants is a bag of tools for Dungeon Masters to incorporate the realm of Giants into regular gameplay, including several options for homegrown adventures.  If you’re a fan of new maps, look forward to a giant section of lairs–Giant “enclaves”–plus a big bestiary of Giant-Sized creatures and new magical elements.

This supplement could have been called The Ordning, a mix of influences from Eqyptian to Celtic cultural inputs, and a hierarchy and family of god-like beings clashing like the Titans of Greek mythology, all operating under the head Amman, which seems a lot like Egypt’s Amun.

Primarily about building a Giant-sized campaign, Glory of the Giants provides DMs pages of tables, story hooks, and more, from rolling for a Giant’s name and behavior, to the adventure hook itself.  Giantkind Encounter tables provide ideas for bringing in Frost Giants, Death Giants, Storm Giants, and others, and something that may or not be an obvious tie-in: Dinosaurs (sorry, no kaiju per se).  The storytelling leans against classic Us vs Giant gameplay, instead encouraging using one or more Giants as another member of your roving band.

Giant Enclave options featuring full-page maps by Dyson Logos.  Everything is, of course, bigger, so look forward to the gamut of big objects for humans used on a tiny scale in unusual ways.

Everyone loves a good sidekick, and Giants often have pets.  The bestiary includes great beings to work with like the Grinning Cat, Giant Goose, and a Giant Lynx, but oogier Gigants and Giant Ticks (not to be judgey) serve more nefarious purposes.  And if you’ve wanted to slide your comic book side into your RPG, you’ll also have lots of Hulks to play with as well as the Scion of Surtur, who is not surprisingly a ringer for the fiery Surtur of Thor: Ragnarok.  Plus… Dinosaurs as companions?  It’s all supplemental to the D&D Monster Manual.

Have you ever considered looting the bag of a Giant?  One section provides tables to determine the contents of that bag, both the valuable and the mundane.  What do you do with a four-foot diameter gourd or giant gong, anyway?   Each new Magic Item can be scaled up, but for most, size matters not.  This volume also incorporates a new subclass–the “Path of the Giant” barbarian.

The volume clocks in at a good-sized 192 pages, with two pages of concept artwork, and it seems to have a higher ratio of text to art than usual.

It’s a fun new opportunity for DMs looking to up their game in a big way.  Pre-order Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants standard edition with cover art by Cynthia Sheppard here at Amazon now or the game shop variant with art by Olena Richards here.  It ships August 15, 2023.

Keep coming back to borg for reviews and previews of D&D content all year long!