 Howdy how's it going? My name's Davy Chappy, and being tall sucks. You have to duck under everything, people always ask you to get things that are really high up, and you once had complete control over the world before your floating sky kingdom pulled a Wears Waldo on you and left your kin to fight between dragons, dwarves, and your own dumbass brothers. So today we're gonna be talking about the mighty giants, from their origins to their current place in the universe, to all the specific sects of giants that exist within the great big world of ours. As always, keep in mind that a lot of this is just my opinion. So if you feel like I'm too big for my britches, feel free to play your giant kin however you want. But with that out of the way, let's begin. Now now now, this wouldn't be a Davy Chappy video without a precariously placed advertisement just before the part of the video where I say, but with that out of the way, let's begin. So it's time for you folks to meet my good friend, Stibbles, Codex of Companions. You heard me right, move over, Joecat. My best friend in the whole wide world is an inanimate book full of original critters created to ease your eternal loneliness. With Stibbles, Codex of Companions, you can race across the countryside, collecting new animals that will fight alongside you in your quest to protect the world from devastation. And to aid in that quest, the Codex also comes with new feats, spells, and companion loyalty mechanics that will ensure that every time your enemies prepare for a fair fight, you get to say, nuh-uh-uh, this is homebrew. Plus, as an added bonus to ensure that your time spent with your buddy is as fond and memorable as possible, Stibbles' Codex of Companions even comes with a personality generator so that when your animal friend is inevitably slain by the dreadlord in a last ditch ever to protect your life, you'll know who to blame for that sad, empty pit in your stomach. Stibbles, Codex of Companions. Life is short, read a book. So, giants are one of the big spectacles of D&D, playing a role that is pretty much exactly the same as dragons, in that they're an ancient race that once ruled the world, but eventually their numbers were called hard enough that they stopped being the kings of the mountains, and now they spend their time scaring the bhajibis out of adventurers, fighting against both the dwarves and the bunks themselves in a split of inherently good versus bad Pokémon types, and apparently being really important to the turn of the earth despite being found in remote areas doing exactly dick. See, I could have just used a bunch of dragon pictures and I wouldn't have had to change one word. But, giants started out as the movers and shakers of the old world, acting out a pseudo-Norse culture, just like tons of cringy wagas, where their devotion to their god, Anam the Allfather, led them to create the first empire that the world had ever known, and they called it Astoria. While the dragons were still setting up all their furniture and getting all their streaming services downloaded, Anam busted down the front door of their apartment and flooded the place with his children, then shat on the floor and said, I own this now. But Anam wasn't an impartial parent and he didn't just have a favorite child, he had a whole list of exactly where each of his kids stood closest to him. In order of storm giants who ruled everything from the sky, cloud giants who crafted the clouds and served as the storm giants' right hand, stone giants who made mountain peaks so large that they could act as a bridge between the earth and the sky, fire giants who acted as the forges of the world, frost giants who used those forged creations to defend giant kind, and hill giants who were literally told to just go around and eat people, because giants are dicks. For a while, the giants and dragons lived in harmony, with the dragons too big to fit inside of a giant's mouth, and the giants too dull to interest a dragon's shiny disposition. All that changed one day when the evil dragon got a fire, Garrix, who definitely isn't named after anyone we know, went to the dragons and said, Hey, remember when there weren't giants shitting on the floor? Let's go back to that. And all of the dragons agreed, so the mighty ancient battle between dragon and giant began. It was a mighty battle, full of intrigue, power, and heroism. It was so cool, in fact, that nobody remembers any of it, because nobody bothered to write any of it down. But what is known is that the giants and dragons fought for a full thousand years before what was left of either side realized that these weird-ass things called humanoids, just suddenly popped up, shat on the floor, and said, I own this now. Given that neither side had the resources to even keep fighting each other, they were both forced to go into hiding, with the giants taking up the remaining realms left to them by their father, who had abandoned them after coming home to find that his children all killed themselves, trying to chase out a goddamn bird, and the dragons went into seclusion within the abandoned parts of the world, only coming out to make really terrible modules, and occasionally have furry porn drawn of them. But the memory of giants is long, and in each one of these tall, buff men, burns a passion to take back their home, rebuild their empire, and make their daddy proud. The giants of today tend to act like there's a lot going on, but believe me, before you arrived, the majority of them were just busy counting rocks, or throwing them to be more specific. Since the main Olympic sport for giants is to just have one giant, toss a rock as hard as they can, have another giant walk to where it landed, and then see if that second giant can shuck it back hard enough to hit the first. Giants really do find peace and simple pleasures. That's why a traveling giant is bound to carry around a light snack of 15 different horses, a few boulders for self-defense, or for showing off their mad hacky sack skills, and a lot of the time, their favorite toy is a caged halfling that they'll pull out of their bag every once in a while to shake it until it makes noises. This is the equivalent of a fidget spinner to giants, and the fact that it is canonized in an official source book makes me giddy to no end. But the life of a giant isn't all fun and games. Depending on what species of giant you have run into, the danger level of your encounter will vary, but it's good to remember two things. All giants believe that they are the epitome of greatness, and all giants think in the binary term of mat and maug. If doing something would be in the best interests of the ordning, which is the rule system set by an om that dictates each type of giant's preordained place within giant kind, then it is mat, and that's good. But if it would go against the rules of an om, then it is maug, and that's not good. Basically, you could convince a cloud giant not to eat you because you're, like, really into rocks or whatever, but you couldn't convince a hill giant not to do it because that's what daddy told them to do. Beyond that, fighting a giant is just a chore and a half. Besides the obvious problems of giants being very, very tall, and of rock throwing being so much of a popular sport amongst them, that if the whole taking back the earth thing doesn't work out, then they would still have a really good career in basketball, most of them have some sort of innate magical ability that makes fighting them even harder. Despite this, giants actually don't care much for magic at all since learning magic means taking a bunch of time out of their day to study the cosmic forces of the universe, and while that isn't maug in and of itself, it means that the giant isn't spending time doing the work that an om tasks them to do, and that is maug. The only exception to this rule is the practice of runic magic because it can be accomplished by carving magical drawings into rocks and rocks equals mat. All giants, especially stone and cloud giants, are commonly able to perform these powerful feats of spellcasting to great effect, even the punch boys of the hill giants. Finally, if you're a DM looking to run a giant for your own home games, then you've got a few different options depending on what style of thickness you want to present. D&D got clever with its representation of giants because there are so many wildly conflicting real world variations on them that it would be impossible to do them all justice with just one creature. So instead, they're split up into the six different styles that individually represent a famous aspect of giant legend. So for you as a DM, you'll want to pin down what spot in the story that your giant is trying to fill. Do you want a mindless wanderer that picks things up and gulps them down? That's a hill giant. Looking for a pack of big boy barbarians that roam the Scandinavian fjords? Frost giants are the way to go. Are you looking for a king under the mountain type deal? That's usually fire giants or storm giants, depending on whether you want it to be evil or good, respectively. If you're looking for inspiration in your own games or you just want to use giants but don't want to bother with writing your own stories, then you should check out the Storm King's Thunder Module that came out back in 2016. I like to think of it as wizard's second attempt at Tyranny of Dragons if Tyranny of Dragons focused on giants instead and also wasn't bad. But then I'll about do it. I hope you enjoyed this video. Be sure to check out my social media in the description below. Be sure to feed your caged halflings often or else they might not bounce and maybe support me on Patreon's that I can afford some extendable stilts and do a Vincent adultment, but for giants. But yeah, Davie out.