Weekly Wonders – From the Bags of Giants by Alex Riggs and Joshua Zaback is a role playing game supplement published by Necromancers of the Northwest for use with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. As such, it is covered by the Open Game License and some parts are considered to be Open Game Content as a result.
This is a nine page PDF that is available from DriveThruRPG for $1.49 but was purchased at a greatly reduced price as part of a special bundle. Two pages are the front and rear covers, one page is the front matter and Credits and one page is the Open Game License.
The single paragraph Introduction explains that the supplement has four tables of items that could be in giants’ bags as well as four unique magic items that can also be found.
It then starts with the four items. The giant’s harp is a very large harp found in the bags of cloud giants. A single Medium creature cannot play the harp, but a pair of Medium or smaller creatures can. The pair needs to make a Performance check each, and the results are combined. There are a number of abilities that can be activated once per week, depending on the result: recovering hit points, dispel magic, heroes’ feast, panicked, summon ghaeles or trumpet archons and miracle. Any ability that they have a result equal or greater than the ability’s number can be activated.
The pearl of delights, associated with fire giants, only looks like a pearl. It can be used to 5,000 gp of gems of the user’s choosing once per week. This isn’t the ability to create unlimited treasure; there is a 10% chance the pearl shatters each time used.
Vilnar the giant killer is a sling bullet can detect giants and has the chance to automatically kill them if he deals damage. The bullet is intelligent, and wants to kill giants, but cowardly, as doing so means he is destroyed. However, on destruction, Vilnar can be reincarnated, using the spell, as an arrow, a bolt, a sling bullet or a random creature of the GM’s choice. Presumably the new version, if it isn’t a creature, has the same powers.
The winged helm is associated with frost giants. It increases any of the wearer’s speeds, provides a chance of protecting against critical hits and can transform the wearer into a giant eagle for 1 hour a day, which need not be used consecutively.
The main part of the supplement is four d100 tables, for cloud, fire, hill and frost giants. Each has 100 different items listed, including the new magic items. These range from interesting to magical to bizarre to, in one way or another, junk, and includes living creatures.
Weekly Wonders – From the Bags of Giants in Review
The PDF is very well bookmarked for its size. Navigation is very good. The text maintains a two column full colour format and no errors were noticed. The supplement lacks any illustrations bar the page backgrounds. Presentation is okay.
The wording for the giant’s harp and Vilnar the giant killer is not as precise as it could be. With the giant’s harp, it is stated that a pair of creatures smaller than Medium can play the harp – but there is no lower limit. It does seem unlikely that, for instance, a pair of Fine creatures will be able to use it, but there is nothing to state such. For Vilnar, it is not explicitly stated that he will be reincarnated with the same abilities. Finally, the pearl of delights may not create unlimited treasure, but if the dice roll right, it could create an awful lot of it.
The tables are probably the most interesting part of the supplement, and do not really need to be used just for the giant they are aimed at. Actually, there is nothing in them to really link the potential contents to a specific type of giant. It does seem a bit odd to find sleeping creatures in the bags, especially intelligent ones. Weekly Wonders – From the Bags of Giants is an okay, but not stunning, way of filling a giant’s bag and it can be found by clicking here.
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