The Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl was published in 1978 as the second of the “Giant” series. It one of the earliest Dungeons & Dragons adventures. Incredibly, to our modern eyes, it is a mere 8 pages, with maps printed on the interior of the cover.

The plot of the adventure sees the heroes sent on a mission of revenge against giants that have been raiding the civilised nations. The first tribe of such, the hill giants, were dealt with in Steading of the Hill Giant Chief. This adventure sees the characters travel to the stronghold of one of the prominent Frost Giant Jarls involved in the raids.

There is no doubt the adventure is deadly, but unfortunately this is sometimes achieved in an arbitrary manner. It is extremely combat-heavy. Of the 51 encounter areas, fully 35 contain monsters of one sort or another, of which only one gives the possibility of role-playing and negotiation.

Steading of the Hill Giant Chief has slave orcs poised for rebellion. Hall of the Fire Giant King has the duplicitous Obmi. The Glacial Rift has no comparative encounter. A lot of combat, but not much else.

We do get the first use of dragons in an official D&D module – two mated white dragons – and woe betide the party that stumbles into their lair unprepared! We also get a ring of wishes, but that is guarded by another fearsome monster.

There are one or two relics of the original D&D rules included, such as the sword of giant slaying, which has an alignment without special intelligence. This was legal in original D&D, but in AD&D, only swords with intelligence and ego had alignments. Given this adventure was released a year before the Dungeon Masters Guide, it is not surprising to see such errors. More crop up in the other early AD&D adventures.

More than anything, the adventure is made notable by its environment: the icy caverns of the frost giants. This gives rise to some rather deadly mechanics: a 1 in 6 chance of each character slipping on the ledges, which leads to almost-certain death unless the party is roped together (and if they are, there’s still a fair chance the entire party will plummet together to their doom). A misty cavern gives a 2 in 6 chance of slipping, dropping held items, and then a 1 in 4 chance of those items disappearing forever down a crack.

Although the environment is superbly evoked, with all the detail that Gary Gygax could muster; overall I find the adventure just a bit too capricious. There’s good material in here, but it does not inspire as much as either G1 or G3.