This is Giants (1987), another Role Aids sourcebook for D&D. The accent color is a sickly sort of yellow. Aficionados of miniatures might recognize that cover painting as being by Ray Rubin and previously adorning the box containing Grenadier’s Two Headed Giant from the Dragonlords line. A bunch of the interior illustrations also come from Grenadier boxes. Like Undead, though, I don’t see any obvious reference to Grenadier products in the book.

The taxonomy of giants matches the Grenadier line as well: chaos, dwarven (?!), fire, forest, frost, hill, sea, stone, storm, two-headed and death giants, as well as titans. The book provides some cultural details for each type, as well as example homes. The death giant’s “necromanor” is one of the stupidest lairs I’ve ever seen. I love it. I do wish there was more information on the dwellings though. Some of the odder ones, like the massive pyramid of the titans, are hard to conceptualize (something further complicated by the cryptic and possibly sloppy map insets). There are even some ill-advised rules for giant player characters.

This is the last Role Aids sourcebook before the line went on hiatus for a few years (plenty more adventures to go through, though). Both here, and in Undead, there is a sense of chaos. Not that anything goes, but maybe that nothing really matters? A rueful futility? I dunno, they’re definitely odd, slapdash, a little frantic and unconcerned with details or consistency. This, strangely, makes them better rather than worse, I think. I enjoy how erratic they are.