Dragons, Giants, and Obelisks

New publications from the D&D Team have been slow this year (Tales From the Golden Vault was their last publication back in February), but they are now making up for lost time in the back half of 2023. A string of books have been released rapid-fire with more on the way. These first three books each fall into a different aspect of D&D books - lore, supplements, and adventures. The Practically Complete Guide to Dragons is a rules-light, lore-heavy book that acts as a good companion to Fizban's Treasury of Dragons. Next, Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants is a rules-heavy supplement that provides everything you need to include giants, giant kin, and giant treasure into your D&D Campaigns. Finally, Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk is an expansion on the original starter adventure, Lost Mine of Phandelver, that takes adventurers into a full campaign ranging from levels 1-12. We'll take a look at each of these and help you decide what works best for your gaming and worldbuilding needs.

The Practically Complete Guide to Dragons

Art by Clint Cearley

The Practically Complete Guide to Dragons is a compilation and updated release of several books in the Practical Guide series. This series came out in the late 00s as the 3rd Edition of D&D was wrapping up to make way for the 4th Edition. They were rules-light books aimed at a younger crowd that aimed to provide lots of interesting lore and facts about the worlds of D&D, without all of those rules getting in the way. My family owns several of these books and our kids have loved just reading through them over the years. The Practically Complete Guide to Dragons combines information from three of those books: A Practical Guide to Dragons, A Practical Guide to Dragon Riding, and A Practical Guide to Dragon Magic. It does this under the premise that this content is the compiled work of Sindri Suncatcher, one of the few Kender wizards to have ever existed in decades of Dragonlance canon.

Art by Kieran Yanner

 The book details the various types of dragons - their characteristics, lairs, magic, and treasure. There is also information on encountering and even riding dragons as well. All of this is written to be accessible to anyone who wants to learn more about the dragons of D&D but doesn't need the stat blocks. In older versions, this information might have been combined with the game material in Fizban's to create a supplement that caters to both needs but by creating two separate books for lore and game material both are given the space to breathe and expand. There is some overlap between the two, especially in the "basics" of dragons. But, there's enough new information to make it worth the price if you want to go deep into dragon lore. The notes from Sindri are fun and exactly what you would expect a Kender dragon expert to write.

Overall, this is very much for the worldbuilder or the lore delver. If you aren't interested in that or if you want more game stats, you might pass on this or pick up Fizban's instead.

Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants

Art by Cynthia Sheppard

When Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants was announced, my initial reaction was "Do we need a whole book about giants?" But, after seeing the final product I can understand the need for it and have already found use for it in my home campaigns.

Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants is strictly a sourcebook about everything related to giants - a new subclass, new feats, new spells, new equipment, new adventure ideas, and of course, new giants and giant-related monsters. This is a rarity in 5e books from WotC. Most of the books they have published over the years are one-part supplement, one part campaign - leaning more towards one than the other in most cases. Bigby joins Fizban's Treasury of Dragons as being strictly a supplement about one type of creature and provides the same variety of game options that you might find in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything.

Giants can be as difficult as a dragons to find a place for them in your campaign world. Unless there is a specific need for them, they are often too big to have roaming about the countryside. Additionally, their nature of living in extreme environments (high in the sky, deep under the ocean, volcanoes, etc) makes it hard to work them in to low-level play. Bigby solves some of those problems by providing an entire chapter just on the history, culture, and social structures of giant society in D&D.  While you may have your own giant lore, understanding the ways that D&D's giants interact with each other and the world around them might give you some worldbuilding ideas to freshen things up.

Alternate Cover by Olena Richards

Content that I have already found useful in my home games is the deeper explanation of Rune Magic and the Rune Shaper feat which gives a basic framework for using runes as a method of casting spells. This combined with the runic magic items found later in the book gives me plenty of content to drop into my world where the great giant civilizations passed into legend centuries ago.

My favorite monster is the bag jelly, an ooze that grows and feeds on the rotting material often found in a giant's bag of stuff. Giant animals from fiction like a giant goose and a giant grinning cat are included for flavor and let you bring a bit of folklore into your games. Giants have a rich history of folk tales in nearly every culture on Earth and you can bring those into your homebrewed world if you so choose.

Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants is worth the cost if you are looking to build out the giant side of your world. If you aren't interested in giants it is not universal enough to pick up for full retail.

Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk

Art by Antonio José Manzanedo

Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk revisits the much-loved Lost Mine of Phandelver from the original 5e Starter Set now as  5e is wrapping up. Expanding on the original, Shattered Obelisk contains the original adventure campaign that ended with adventurers at 5th level and goes deeper (literally) taking them all the way to 12th level. But in doing so, it turns a very straightforward starter-level adventure into a bizarre, twisted campaign of body horror and twisted imagery.

The original Phandelver was praised as providing everything you needed to get an understanding of what D&D was. It featured a solid starting town - Phandalin, a wilderness for exploration, a logical escalation of threats as the adventurers level up, dungeons to explore, and even a dragon to fight.  It stays in a relatively small area and doesn't stray into the wild, unfamiliar corners of D&D that might be confusing or overwhelming for a new player.

Alternate Cover Art by DZO

The Shattered Obelisk, on the other hand, takes those new adventurers from the safety of classic fantasy and introduces them to cosmic horror. After wrapping the climax of The Lost Mine, the party returns to Phandalin to discover that it is being affected by energy from the Far Realm, a plane of bizarre alien nightmares. This is happening because a group of mind flayer fanatics is seeking to transform the world into their image. The adventures take the party into the Underdark to confront the Ilithids and ultimately to the Far Plane where they must halt these plans once and for all.

After reading through it, I was left with the question if this still makes a solid starter campaign. Does Shattered Obelisk answer the question of "What's next?" after Phandelver? The answer is that it depends on the players.

Readers who have played Baldur's Gate 3 might recognize the themes here of a dramatic shift from goblins and dragons to mind flayers and aberrations. It's no surprise that this book was released near the same time as the popular video game given some similarities. This makes for a convenient bridge for new players making the jump from the screen to the tabletop. It also might feel familiar for those who are coming to D&D from Stranger Things as the denizens of the Far Realm and its infecting influence on the town mirror aspects of the Upside Down, its own "Mind Flayer", and the effect it has on the world as well.

Art by Hex Sharpe

But for those who are coming into D&D because they want to play traditional medieval fantasy, they might be better off branching off to another official D&D campaign after The Lost Mine wraps up. There are campaigns set in the Sword Coast like Waterdeep: Dragon Heist or explore other parts of the Forgotten Realms like Tomb of Annihilation or Icewind Dale.

What does Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk offer for those who are running their homebrewed campaign world? There are of course lots of new aberrations to add to your world to make it weird and bizarre and some nice magic items like the Flayer Slayer, a greataxe made for fighting aberrations and especially mind flayers. But, the most useful content from this may be the Mind Crystals. These are single-use consumables that allow a spellcaster to apply a metamagic option to a spell as it's being cast. These make for great treasure and give spellcasters something to look for while the fighters are claiming magic weapons.

Art by Andrey Kuzinskiy

WorldBuilding Wrap-UP

Each of these books brings something specific to the table and each does it well. However, the content won't be something that every DM has to have. From a homebrew, worldbuilding perspective, Phandelver and Below probably has the least to offer due to the nature of it being a prewritten adventure campaign. However, for starter DMs, that also makes it great because it is an easy-to-run adventure. Bigby Presents is probably the most useful from a DM perspective with both lore and game material but it is again specific to giants, meaning your mileage may vary. Finally, The Practically Complete Guide to Dragons is great reading material for worldbuilding inspiration but DMs will not find any game material to drop into their campaigns.

You can find all of these books at your Friendly Local Game Shop, digitally on D&D Beyond, or via our Amazon affiliate links which will help support this site.

Special thanks to Wizards of the Coast for providing the review copies for this article.