While Giants are frequently mentioned for Fantasy campaigns, how would you use them in a Modern Era campaign?
How would they fit into modern society if they still had benefits like living 1000 years? How would governments and societies change if they had such long lived and noticeable members?
The question is actually how dependent they are on humans to live a halfway decent life, being large comes with a lot of complications.
They almost require an industrial civilization to live, which is exactly the kind of civilization that they have a lot less to contribute in. If they do have some reasonably respectable place in society however you need to breech the uncomfortable subject about modern liberal and progressive values. Centuries old people will have centuries old values, plus a whole lot more refined rethoric than any small being in defending them.
I'm not saying that any value system is objectively more ethical than another but I do think too much worldbuilding and thought might get you accused of conservative /pol/ wanking.
Consider this -
Humanity has driven extinct many species that proved to be a nuisance to us. The Wooly Mammoth, the gray wolf, countless species of cat great and large. A race of giant humanoids would live only as long as it took us to find the means to exterminate them. I cannot see any kind of positive co-existence for either party.
Think of how powerful civilizations have treated their lessers through all of history. A race that is many times our size, of approximate intelligence and able to form into functioning social structures would be cruel masters indeed.
Ultraman. All that needs saying. The japanese do giants in modern settings better than anyone else.
There are plenty of species we didn't drive to extinction.
We just need to not be in conflict over resources and not edible. You could explain it by saying giants and humans are similar enough that eating each other gives cannibalism disease and giants live in much colder environments naturally.
Ultramen are only giants on Earth, which I would say is a Modern Era campaign, when their host transforms into them. Otherwise they're in hyperspace.
Their own planet is some fantastic crystal land, I don't know if they go into it very much. Point being 'existing for three minutes at a time' isn't a solution.
If giants form civilizations in a similar way to humans, I think you'd see more mundane geopolitics, with multiple countries of both species, instead of an all out extermination or subjugation from one side or the other.
I can't stand the spandex suit and bughead helmet aesthetic of live action japanese hero shows.
>tfw laborer responsible for hauling fresh giant shits to the landfill because we can't waste the city's entire water supply on a single flush
The thumbnail made me think it was supposed to be Captain Ayy Lmao for a moment.
Historians, obviouly, assuming that they and humans are the only other races on Earth. To have a direct link from history 500 years in the past is a very valuble resources indeed.
>How dependent are they on Humans
I'd say a lot, if they even want some of the creature comforts we have today, like modern lighting and heating.
>Worrying about /pol/
What if we added some outside force, like the Kaiju attacks from Pacific Rim? If the monsters attack and adapt, that would lead to them having a different mindset, wouldn't it?
A dependent relationship would also be a possibility. Humans could be more efficient and better at large scale agriculture, which makes working together a better deal.
>I'm not saying that any value system is objectively more ethical than another
Coward
Giants, depending on how active they could be, would probably become celebrities and royalty pretty easily. It's not like you can ignore them when they are near, and if their presence affects other magical creatures, you could have a pretty wild and crazy area
Love that series but what a weird ending
True, while large size and strength has it's advantage, economies of scale would also be a massive boon
this. Also, where would they get food from?
That might be one of the reasons Humans and Giants get along so well. Being able to arm, heal, and just help the Giants when fighting against all the beasts of the world would quickly cement an understanding.
From all the monsters they kill.
Plus, since more land can be dedicated to farming since they don't have to worry about suburbs, food production would increase.
In humanities history giants were revered, stories about legendary kings often involve them getting counsel with a giant.
Giants are less social than humans. To survive they need to keep up a certain level of isolation, as throughout time multiple giants living close to each other would deplete a habitat of its resources rather quickly.
Their lifestyle usually consisted out of herding cattle in the mountains and they never had the chance to develop an advanced specialized society like humanity. They didn't have access to a lot of stuff humans had, like organic materials. They didn't have paper, their writing being etched in stone and clay tablets. Not for bookkeeping or practical purposes, but philosophy, mathematics and creative writing.
This all changed when the two species began to make contact more often. Giants discovered that there was much to gain from contact with humans either for trade or extortion and humans began to develop a less mythical and magical view of giants.
Giants and humans will never interact the way humans do with each other. Giants have their own language, which is used by human scientists and in pretensious slogans as a sort of lingua franca. Talking to a giant is always a formal occasion, they're ancient beings with centuries of knowledge and experience and the raw intelligence to process it all. They're in every way superbeings.
Giants absorb a lot of knowledge over their lifetime, if a research is important enough and the internet can't help it's common practice to ask a giant.
When it comes to warfare giants aren't much use in today's industrialized landscape, they're big targets. They also breed a lot slower than humans and consider the loss of one of their own to be a greater tragedy than the loss of many human lives.
Giants can get so old that often the city they live in considers them part of their historical heritage, like a medieval church or brewery. They're not omni-present either so a giant can be a tourist attraction, as long as you don't insult the dignity of the giant too much by treating them like a zoo animal.
A giant is an institution, they require upkeep from the human state in order to live, but they give back to society in more immaterial ways. They carry knowledge and wisdom, being the biggest contributors to science and making places that commit their tax dollars to supporting them more competative and they're part of the heritage of their place of origin, able to connect events from throughout time and tell personal anecdotes from centuries ago, giving the place more cultural prestige.
In earlier days it was kings that sponsored giants, both as a charity and to show off their wealth. Later republics and democracies discovered that trying to get rid of the giants will hurt your international significance, so giants became a state responsibility.
Rich individuals and large corporations are showing interest in sponsoring giants themselves in order to leave some memory of themselves behind for future centuries or derive competative advantage from having a direct line to a living supercomputer. The idea is scary to people but very tempting for states suffering a deficit during hard economic times.
Humans they govern/protect farming for them?
This is good, I like this, you used this before or it just off the top of your head?
This is top of my head stuff. I do have these screencap of somebody going in-depth on dragon bankers, which I think is relevant to the conversation.
In general agents with very long lifespans are going to affect the economy in radical ways that I'm not able to predict. Think about great accumulations of wealth and very long-term value decisions or investments. That affects how everyone around tem does business too. That is, if giants participate in the general free market. Which isn't self-evident if they don't have a history of controlling materials or land.
Makes senses, long lived beings would have more of a focus on the long term
I'm kind of wondering, would the presence of such stable beings lead to development or stagnation? Even with magic monsters showing up on occasion, would people find a need to change if something so big and monumental does not?
Definitely stagnation. When you consider that governments forcing banks to lower lending barriers against their own interest and long-term stability is to battle income inequality you'd probably end up with pretty rigid social structure too. Not a lot of social mobility.
Giants are also the anti-internet. Centralized instead of decentralized. You control the knowledge in an area just like you can control land. That pulls society towards a more hierarchal system.
You might end up with the paradoxal contrast of advanced science and technology but a to us backwards society.
Magic monsters showing up is a bit weird. Are the giants specifically there to stop them? Sounds like a situation engineered by a deity.
Taking inspiration from some of the deity threads we’ve been having, how about making it a group of deities that empower people AND monsters in an attempt to prove their superiority?
Have them model some societies with subtle and not so subtle pushes into their ideal, but also have them responsible for throwing monsters against other cities and societies. They push each other to improve every time.
Sounds like an rts game
The presence of multiple deities and even pantheons let’s you mix and match things to how you’d like. Imagine something like the Egyptian deities getting together to make a monster at throwing it against the lands of the Greek pantheons.
It’s not a direct battle, at least to the people of the world. You can work with someone who lives/empowered/prefers another group of deities no problem, but they themselves are constantly competing. Imagine if Veeky Forums was a deity and had a world to play their board games on.
Now that I think on it, I’m reminded of the Hercules cartoon. The way Hades sends monsters at people, but they still invite him to all the deity get-together and barbecues. There was even an episode where Herc fought the giant Eqgyptian pantheon.
They probably shouldn’t get directly involved, pride is all that is at stake for them, but that pride still pushes them to help out their societies and Giants in their lands, or who were given power by them, probably has some signs of their influence.
Assuming near- or actual immortality, I could see installing giants as leaders or advisors to take advantage of the experience, perspective and long-term thinking that comes with a lifetime measured in millenia.
>Magic monsters showing up is a bit weird. Are the giants specifically there to stop them?
Kek
Not really the giants might remain stagnant but humans will still have reasons to develop new inventions and ideas to improve their own lives.
How do you think a small country like Hungary would be like if they got a Giant to be the perpetual Vice-President?
That world would have so many monster movies
>That world would have so many monster movies
...Costumes would be expensive as hell though
I'd imagine the destruction effects would look pretty cool, though.
For such a setting, I’d ask how many Giants there should be. Enough for every city of note to basically have a super hero team, only a handful per country?
I think either or would work, I'm getting the impression they're fairly uncommon from a lot of the lore being written, though for a superheroish setting I'd say fairly common should be the norm
I think the presence of monsters would make it harder for the Giants to live out their full lives.
Possibly, though it would promote a warrior culture
If the technology is modern age, are the monsters vulnerable to modern weapons?
Yes.
You'd need plot magic for giants being a line of defense to make sense. Just like in pacific rim.
What would be the implications then, if societies that had depended on giants for thousands of years started building machines that could do the same thing?
The more common the attacks become, the more prevalent the belief becomes.
Magic monsters might not have a singularly locatable entry point. A single, or even a group, of capable Giants might still be necessary if the defenders don’t have good weapons.
Plus, there might be Swarm tactics involved with some monsters. If a Beast attacks with the side of Humans sized Were-Rodents, that will take away from the amount of power able to be brought against it.
You have to remember that precision weapons a short time ago. You wouldn’t want to use too many of them in cities, so there would still be a need to keep some nearby.
At the same time, you might actually see something of an expansion of Giant culture. Now that they are freed from monster attacks, they might go out into the less developed areas and make them suitable for them. So now even going out into the woods might lead to a Giant Mansion.
A good thing that can be done to keep Giants relevant is to use Evangelion monsters. Ones capable of strange, magical attacks besides being a typical blaster wizard.
Imagine something crazy, like some owl monster that can turn day into night and Humans caught under its shade risk being turned into monsters as well.
A Giant, rampaging Bull thing that has been trampling the countryside thanks to its ability to blink through weapons and walls. You need a Giant to take it by the Horn so the Soldiers can attack it.
A Siren that can increase gravity in a localized area. You need to stop her singing, then you have to deal with all her Hydra like mouths.
They can spawn near important areas, so carpet bombing civilians and the factories where the weapons are made is not a possibility
As much as Humanity fuck yeah as you want to sound, you're effectively trying to say Humanity would find a way to exterminate Wooly Mammoths, if they had the intelligence of Humans.
Which would be fucking impossible.
Imagine if you will, Stone Age Man and Stone Age Giant.
A giant can pick a tree from the ground, and now he has the means to effectively devour an entire tribe of Humans.
If he picks up smallish rocks, no less than a pebble, he can kill hundreds of tribes.
No fuck that honestly.
Giants don't need a purpose for existing, they aren't a product. You don't stop the assembly line if they stop being useful.
In a changing modern world giants, many of whom are old enough to remember the old feudal eras, notice their relevance becoming less and less. In this age of high firepower and cyberwarfare, what is their place in society? The colossi that were once the lynchpin of a nation's power each on their own are trying to reinvent themselves.
What are the feelings of the different generations of giants on this, what's their relationship with humans?
Build on that for your story.
They have to start finding occupations that make use of their unique properties that aren't being automized.
That can't be easy, from the giants' perspective every modern invention is happening in quick succession. In the timeframe they think in there's no real career to commit to. They're all probably just waiting for the inevitable post-scarcity or nuclear winter they're going to live to see.
In the meantime they're stuck being the living heritage of their hometown. Like very minor aristocrats in a ceremonial position. Entertaining tourists and talking about politics on the media.
If they get too frustrated with their fading relevance, you might see some identitarian politics. Giants, especially young ones, can get radicalized and violent. When I think about it, they don't even have to be terrorists to be violent, statistically there has to be some mean bullies among them. What's the policy on those?
You could do some cool things where the really old ones have the city grow around them, in a way. It would be hard for them to get out after a while.
Maybe the younger ones are just pushed and prodded by the people to head out towards the outlier areas. Eventually the peer pressure and disrespect, even from people smaller than your knee, would get to a bully. They might try to push their influence on smaller towns that can’t afford, or merit, protections.