With its impressive 50 years of history, Dungeons & Dragons is more than a game: It’s a rich cultural phenomenon, and its complex past is often just as interesting as its present. D&D is also not a static game, as it has had different iterations with wildly different rules over the decades. Old adventure modules have a beautiful charm — not just as artifacts of the past, but as pieces of D&D history, so it’s normal that modern players often want to take a crack at them.
Wizards of the Coast periodically releases older modules with rules updated to the latest iteration of the game, which is currently the 5th edition (with its 2024 “expansion”). Many classics have received this treatment, and some can be found in anthology books such as Tales from the Yawning Portal. However, the campaign that was voted by Dragon magazine in 2004 (the game’s 30th anniversary) as the greatest D&D adventure of all time has yet to be adapted for 5e in its complete form.
Queen of the Spiders is a compilation of seven interconnected adventures that create a fast-paced, far-ranging campaign that leads players from a mountain fort infested by giants to the chaotic madness of the Abyss. It all starts with the classic trilogy Against the Giants, three modules authored by Gary Gygax in 1978: Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl, and Hall of the Fire Giant King (also known as G 1-2-3). These modules actually appeared in the Tales from the Yawning Portal anthology in 2017, fully adapted for 5e rules. However, as D&D history buffs know well, the story doesn’t end there, but the follow-up modules have never been adapted to 5e.
In Against the Giants, a group of high-level characters is recruited to put an end to a series of incursions from evil giants that are ravaging the civilized lands of Grayhawk (but the module can be adapted to any existing or homebrew campaign setting). What I always found interesting about this premise is that it’s surprisingly brutal. The party is not tasked to investigate the raids, nor is a diplomatic solution ever presented or remotely possible. The introduction to Steading of the Hill Giant Chief makes it clear that this is a punitive expedition. You have to hit the giants so hard that they will dread even the thought of bothering the territory again. It’s as classic D&D as it gets, even in its 5e version: find the monsters, kill them, explore the dungeon, get the treasure. It’s not for everyone, of course, but it’s interesting to compare it to modern modules to see how the game has changed over the decades.
What sets these modules apart is that there is actually some plot, but it’s subtle. Steading of the Hill Giant Chief teases that different types of giants (who usually don’t love each other) are banding together for these raids, but this oddity is soon forgotten as players try to survive the brutality of an entire fortress full of powerful monsters. When they get to the end, they discover an important clue that leads to the next module, Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl. At this point, the party is fully committed to exposing the mysterious force behind the giant alliance. However, there is also the option to start with this module and have the party hired by local nobles to storm the Frost Giants’ fortress. Regardless, it ends in the same way as the first, as the party has the option to reach the final destination, the fortress of King Snurre Iron Belly in Hall of the Fire Giant King. That’s where they find out that the real masterminds behind the giants’ attacks are none other than the drow, the scheming dark elves who make their debut here after appearing in the 1977 Monster Manual. The module ends with the option for the party to pursue them into the Underdark (then known as Deepearth).
This is where the 5e adaptation ends, but there are four more modules in the Queen of the Spiders series, detailing the characters’ pursuit of the drow in the Underdark, which introduces many iconic denizens of that environment, all the way to the drow city of Erelhei-Cinlu. Finally, the party can cross to the 66th layer of the Abyss, the demonic plane that houses Lolth, the spider goddess of the drow, and end the campaign with an epic confrontation with a divine being — again, a mark of the tone of classic D&D adventures. The modules are D 1-2-3, Descent Into the Depths of the Earth, Shrine of the Kuo-Toa, and Vault of the Drow, and Q1, Queen of the Demonweb Pits. All were authored by Gygax, except for the last module, written by David Sutherland.
Against the Giants is, in a sense, older than the game, as Gygax wrote it to “take a break” between the Monster Manual (1977) and the Player’s Handbook (1978) of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (but the original version of the game had been around since 1974). He also wrote the D series right after the Player’s Handbook, again as a way of relaxing from that intense rules-crafting exercise.
This timeline means not only that Steading of the Hill Giant Chief was the first adventure module ever published by TSR, but that this whole campaign is deeply connected to the genesis of the game in its first official and mature version. (If you want to know more about the early editions of D&D, here is a good resource.) Many of the concepts that shaped the path of the game were on display in these adventures, and true geeks will surely appreciate the first appearance (in a module) of iconic monsters such as drow, mind flayers, kuo-toa, and svirfneblin, and of the Underdark location.
Mechanically speaking, the first five adventures are all massive dungeon crawls, but always with some added flavor that made them so memorable. Modern players will have a hard time diving into Against the Giants as they would in any 5e adventure. The characters are high-level, but they are also trying to wipe out three fortresses full to the brim of dangerous monsters. Giants may not have the most complex attacks, but they hit hard and have a lot of hit points: facing too many at the same time can wipe out any party. The characters have a safe base outside each fortress, but the modules specify that, if they’re not careful, the giants can follow their tracks there and attack while they’re resting. Another interesting element is that each fortress is divided into one giant-made level, with halls, rooms, and temples, and one level made of natural caverns. The latter allows for the appearance of different types of monsters and even some ecological elements about how these interact.
This natural dungeon/ecology factor is on full display in D1 and D2, where the real antagonist is the Underdark. However, modern players should not expect something as detailed and nuanced as Out of the Abyss. This is essentially a hexcrawl populated with deadly random encounters, as well as some fixed encounters designed to advance the story.
Gygax loved to populate his dungeons with different kinds of monsters, and his imagination is on full throttle in the fertile terrain of the Underdark. However, the ecology of these creatures is still undeveloped, and they do little but wait for the player characters to pass by. Shrine of the Kuo-Toa does elaborate a bit on that point, focusing most of its plot on the interaction between the kuo-toa (an amphibian race inspired by Lovecraft’s works) and the drow, and how the players can fit into that. Still, both modules provide an extensive wilderness area that, rather than being populated by event-tied NPCs (with few exceptions), is fleshed out through random encounters, a concept that may seem alien to modern players but was more or less the norm at the time.
Vault of the Drow is where the campaign really steps outside of the box. This is an open-ended, almost sandbox adventure, where players are thrown into “a dark fairyland” (in Gygax’s words) where demons and undead walk the streets. They have to survive the scheming and backstabbing that run rampant among more than 12 drow factions.
Wits, deception, intelligence gathering, and diplomacy are all necessary for the characters to get to the final location and end the drow threat to the surface. The party feels constantly in danger, as the smallest misstep will lead to a gruesome, painful, and long death. This is no City-State of the Invincible Overlord, but it’s still one of the earliest and most evocative examples of “fantasy city for RPG.” Gygax gives a lot of factual details about the factions (their rankings, military forces, etc.) but doesn’t flesh out any NPCs, as usual. Still, he establishes the drow as the archetypal “race of evil people” that inspired so much of the following D&D and D&D-related products. (Drizzt Do’Urden, for example, owes his existence to this adventure.) And that’s why Queen of the Spiders will likely never see the light of day as an adaptation to current rules.
Wizards of the Coast wrote in a message for the digital edition of these modules, whose rights it still owns, clarifying that their content “does not reflect the values of the Dungeons & Dragons franchise today. Some older content may reflect ethnic, racial, and gender prejudice that were commonplace in American society at that time. These depictions were wrong then and are wrong today.” In 2021, the lore and depiction of drow in D&D were changed to adapt to these values, making the “evil drow” just a small faction of Lolth cultists rather than an entire species.
The final module in the campaign, Queen of the Demonweb Pits, is, unfortunately, the poster child for not living up to hype. Not only does it not make sense story-wise for the characters to go after Lolth, but the depiction of the 66th layer of the Abyss is far from the vision of madness populated by Giger-inspired horrors it should be. A spaceship and a giant spider robot are not the way that this epic campaign should have ended, but blame Gygax for not finishing what he started.
While it has its flaws, Queen of the Spiders is a fundamental piece of D&D history with an enduring legacy. You may love or hate Gygax and his style, but there is an undeniable feeling of fear and wonder here. Players start by carefully infiltrating and surviving giants’ strongholds, leading to an epic bloodbath in G3. When they think it’s all over, the Underdark opens up in front of them, an unexplored wilderness devoid of light and filled with creatures unseen at the time. And then, when they believe they can bull rush through everything, a whole city of hostile creatures appears, where the characters have to switch tactics to subterfuge and cunning.
These modules are a history lesson in the game design philosophies that built the foundation of D&D. As a collector and a nostalgia-fueled history geek, I love reading these old modules, even if I don’t get to play them. The rules of 1e AD&D can be daunting for modern players used to the pleasant simplicity of 5e. I still suggest giving the adapted Against the Giants a go, however. If you enjoy the old-school vibe it transmits, then maybe you’ll try your hand at delving into the Deepearth. Just be careful of the out-of-nowhere lich.
