Giff Lore and Firearms

 Presumably with the Spelljammer box set coming in less than a month, WotC has transitioned from explaining the various elements of D&D that are referenced in Stranger Things (including the Shadowfell, which plays a similar role to the Upside-Down on the show, and which didn't strictly exist until 4th Edition in the late 2000s, but which had rough equivalents going back to the beginning) to now hyping up the new, outlandish campaign setting that we haven't seen published in about 30 years.

All the "Travelers of the Multiverse" races are getting printed in the book, but it does look like feedback has allowed for a bit of change to them. Astral Elves got the first video, but the next was about the Giff, which I believe are becoming a playable race for the first time.

In the Unearthed Arcana form, I found the Giff fairly underwhelming - just a couple of features that weren't generally better than what other races could get - a swim speed but no water breathing, and a boost to melee damage but not ranged... for a race that is so tied to firearms.

And so, here, we find that the revisions that will make it to print appear to have been souped up a little.

Like the Githyanki and Astral Elves, the Giff spend a lot of time in the Astral Plane - meaning you might have a very old Giff character.

The Giff's role previously (and as introduced in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes and a reprint/revision in Monsters of the Multiverse,) is that they're often found working as mercenaries, and have an obsessions with firearms and explosives.

While most racial features that are cultural, rather than physiologically innate, have tended to be moved out of racial traits in recent printings, the Giff affinity for gunpowder is apparently an in-born trait related to one of the forgotten gods that created them. Yes, these hippo people (who I think should exclusively talk with boisterous English accents, if you ask me and probably most people) are divinely gifted with a propensity for boomsticks, and that apparently manifests in the ability to do bonus damage with firearms - I would presume a limited number of times per day.

What I find really interesting about this is that this would seem to require the presence of firearms in a campaign in order for the Giff to be able to make use of this racial feature. We, of course, don't have the wording on how the feature works (I could imagine it might apply to all ranged weapons in a campaign where firearms are not commonplace) but it does seem that Spelljammer, with its limited sci-fi elements (it's more accurately fantasy in space, but so is Star Wars and that had futuristic technology) might make firearms a common thing - even part of the setting innately.

The Giff story is also pretty interesting - they don't know what planet they're from, and while they have gods - including this god of firearms - they don't actually know who they are. Given the way that deities in D&D tend to require the worship and belief of mortals in order to exist, I wonder if these gods are even still alive. The Astral Plane is where dead gods float on eternally after they are no longer worshipped, so perhaps the Giff presence there is related to that.