Dungeons and Dragons has plenty of great adventures for its 5th Edition, from the iconic Curse of Strahd to Descent into Avernus or Rime of the Frostmaiden. As 2024 rules update the game and make big rule adjustments, some of these adventures may get remastered as new books to adapt to the changing TTRPG. While fans clamor for their favorite adventures to be featured in re-releases, one underrated book may deserve it more than others.
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Already, Eberron: Forge of the Artificer remasters content from one of 5e’s most popular setting books — Eberron: Rising from the Last War. The Eberron steampunk was introduced again to modify classes like the Artificer and adjust a variety of play content to better reflect 2024 rules. New species replacing 2014 races and backgrounds for character creation are just a couple examples of what the new Eberron book did, which could be repeated to help update more older books from the 5e library.
Storm King’s Thunder Is A Hidden Gem Among 5th Edition Adventures
Released in 2016, Storm King’s Thunder is a Giant-themed D&D adventure that remains one of the lesser known books for the TTRPG’s 5th Edition. The story of this adventure revolves around the heirarchy of Storm, Fire, Cloud, Hill, and Stone Giants, and the invasion of larger than life foes into the Sword Coast. With the king of the giants, Storm King Hekaton, having gone missing, it’s up to a group of rag-tag adventurers to delve into giant society and mysteries to stop a war of epic proportions.
Storm King’s Thunder has often been praised for its sandbox-style approach to storytelling, allowing players to engage with content they find the most interesting in the adventure. The tale of the game branches into multiple paths depending on what Giants players want to pursue from the fabled Ordning that dictates Giant culture. The book itself also includes a lot of expanded content, including Giant magic items and boons that can boost character strength.
Unlike some other 5e stories, such as Tyranny of Dragons and Princes of the Apocalypse, this adventure doesn’t let its open ended story overwhelm players with too many options. Taking players from Levels 1-10, Storm King’s Thunder is a great example of an adventure that can work for beginners or veteran players alike, ranking up from a low-level to mid-level story relatively quickly.
Giant-Themed Stories Are Incredibly Rare In D&D For Larger Than Life Stories
Giants are a bit of an oddity in D&D, representing an expected facet of any fantasy, but rarely used in adventures across anything official. Storm’s King Thunder remains the only adventure that solely focuses on Giants, diving deep into their society for players to interact with. The only other content that has expanded upon Giants in the game is Bigby Presents: Glory to the Giants, an important supplemental book that allows Dungeon Masters to craft their own Giant adventures.
Glory to the Giants added new Giant-themed Feats and subclasses too, giving characters options to represent the scale of Giants. Becoming a Giant Foundling with traits from specific Giant types, or becoming a Path of the Giant Barbarian who can grow in size are just some of the features offered in that book. However, when compared to Dragons, the supposed rival of the Giants, the Giants are hardly shown outside those two books.
With the exception of being put in rare monster encounters, Giants are hardly seen compared to the Undead, Monstrosity, or Aberration enemy types in most D&D games. In fact, you’re more likely to see a multi-eyed Beholder or Spectator before a Giant within some adventures. This could be due to how Giants are far too imposing to just have naturally in games, but it’s surprising how more stories don’t try to find a work around.
Remastering Storm King’s Thunder Can Fix Lackluster Elements Of Rarely Seen Giant Stories
Despite its existence as the only adventure with Giants at its center, Storm King’s Thunder is far from perfect. For example, the branching paths for different Giant types are all well designed, but players only get to visit one of them during their journey. Given the massive scope of the Giants and the depth of their unique culture compared to other “enemy” types in D&D, it’s unfortunate that you don’t get to explore more of it.
Furthermore, Storm King’s Thunder doesn’t work as well without the content from Glory to the Giants, which has a lot of out-of-date content if you’re trying to play with 2024 5e rules. This all builds to justify a remaster of some sort that combines the two books together, expanding the Giant adventure to truly represent the peak of what its premise tries to provide. Perhaps making it a Level 1-15 adventure similar to the Demon-focused Out of the Abyss would work in Storm King’s Thunder‘s favor.
Delivering an excellent Giant story might craft an amazing 5th Edition story, even if it does rehash elements of the original Storm King’s Thunder. Simply changing the Giant Feats into 2024 Backgrounds and re-creating the Path of the Giants Barbarian would also be welcome as minor changes in some other book. Giants are, frankly, underrepresented in D&D content, so more adventures involving them could be fantastic for a classic fantasy trope that gets ignored far too often.
What 5th Edition D&D adventures do you want to see get remastered? Leave a comment below or join the conversation in the ComicBook Forum!
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