A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement The Giant’s Cottage

The Giant’s Cottage is a role playing game supplement written and published by Ethan Dunning for use with Old School Essentials. As such, it is covered by the Open Game License and some parts are considered to be Open Game Content as a result.

The supplement is available as an 18 page Pay What You Want PDF from DriveThruRPG. One page is the front cover, one is blank, one the Table of Contents and two the Credits and Open Game License. There is also a zip file which contains eight png files, two maps in four different versions, with and without a grid and with and without numbers for each.

The first two pages of content have maps of the cottage.

The Introduction explain the characters are exploring the cottage of a hill giant and that this is an adventure for characters of 1dt to 4th level. Not all encounters will be balanced and, though intended for use with OSE, should be adaptable to other OSR systems. It was originally designed to supplement The Black Wyrm of Brandonsford, but details related to that have been changed, but could be altered back.

Adapting to Your Campaign has three hooks that can be used or adapted.

Adventure Overview has three adventure hooks, two of which relate to the previous section, and a list of the treasure and its page numbers.

The Giant’s Cottage covers the cottage itself, starting with the exterior, then the interior and underground.

Random Event Tables has d6 table of random events for the cottage exterior, interior and underground.

The Giant’s Cottage in Review

The PDF is bookmarked with major and minor sections linked. The Table of Contents is to a similar level of depth and is hyperlinked. Navigation is very good. The text maintains a two-column format and appeared to be almost free of errors. As well as the colour maps, there are some monocoloured illustrations. Presentation is good.

Though this is an adventure set in a single, comparatively small, location, there is a lot of content to it, as well as different threads that could be followed up on, making it a goodly sized adventure, though still more of a sidequest than a full adventure. There are plenty of dangers, and some could be very hazardous for an overly confident party. The Giant’s Cottage is a nice little adventure and it can be found by clicking here.