One of the odder products I’ve seen recently is this free adventure from Wizards of the Coast, Giants of the Star Forge. A companion adventure to Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants, this adventure is for level 16 characters and should take a single 3-or-4-hour session to play. Or possibly longer. I’ve seen how some groups take a long time to resolve combat.

I say it’s odd because it lacks the care that goes into many of their adventures. Of course, it’s free, but it has several puzzling design decisions.

The adventure begins with a low-level knight (CR 3) approaching the party to hire them to rescue his uncle – a renowned smith who a giant has kidnapped. What’s wrong with that? It works. However, for a level 16 party, I wish the adventure treated the party members as People of Importance. Having someone more significant – like a King or a City Council – talk to them would emphasise that they’re now respected adventurers.

The knight suggests that the party visit a monastery and enlist the help of the monks, who have special training to fight giants. I wonder why the knight didn’t go to the monastery and get the monks’ help to save his uncle.

At the monastery, they learn a little about the mountain. To gain the monks’ aid, they must win various competitions. I’m sorry, what? This section entirely seems like something from the wrong adventure. Something with a little less urgency about it. “I’m sorry you had to wait before we rescued you, but we were seeing who could climb up oiled ropes the fastest!”

It is not like the monks help a lot. They will leave after allowing the party to bypass the subsequent encounter. If the party doesn’t have the monks, they’ll have to sneak by fire giants and a dragon. If they fail to do this, then two giants attack them. At the party’s level, fighting the giants isn’t that hard. (Two CR 9 monsters against the party). The thing that puzzles me is the setup. The giants and dragon are in a group, skirmishing with each other and circling the crater’s rim. The rim has an approximate circumference of 3,000 feet. Fire giants, at a run, move at 60 feet a round. It will take them over 20 rounds to get to the heroes if the party wait until they’re on the opposite side!

Honestly, the potential of negotiating with the red dragon is the highlight of the adventure for me. It just is unlikely to occur as written.

The next part of the adventure details the characters approaching the kidnapped artisan and his captor. There are a couple of environmental challenges and a few lesser combats, which is to say, seriously under-levelled for the party. A pair of CR 7 monsters are not the greatest of threats. This may be fine. I enjoy having light threats in a high-level adventure to allow the characters to demonstrate their superiority. But, so far, we haven’t got a single challenging combat.

That comes in the final encounter where you rescue the smith from his captor. Four level 16 characters against a CR 18 monster – which does not have legendary actions. However, there are some punishing environmental effects. You may or may not find this a significant fight.

So, what do I think of the adventure? If you answered “not much”, you’d be right.

But here’s the thing: I’m sure this adventure isn’t written for me. It’s aimed at less experienced players looking for a taste of higher-level play. There’s nothing too complicated in it. There’s a variety of challenges and a suitable goal.

It was designed using an open process, showing where it found elements in Glory of the Giants to use in the adventure. That’s commendable, though I wish more thought had gone into how they fit together. I wonder what happens to a DM running a wizard who stands at the top of the crater and declares, “Teleport!”. Though the encounters skipped aren’t the most memorable.

You can run it in a session or two and use it to set up further adventures – although, hopefully, better ones than this.