How does one justify the existence of a race of giants with a similar technological/social level to the smaller races...

I'm just going to start calling you Justin.
Fuck off Justin, I'm the DM.

Okay on a large scale it's difficult but if a single giant was like 'fuck this' they could cause serious damage.

Well certain systems (like D&D) have classes that can literally make food and water out of thin air, so it isn't crazy to assume that sort of thing could be done for these races if they have similar magic. As for why they don't wipe out everyone, possibly because they're not as reproductively inclined, or have more cool temperaments and no war desires.

They would probably make good party members. Imagine the synergy that you could do with a team you could keep on your person.

pastebin.com/6w6v0EH7

>Brobdingnag
You just answered your own questions. Well that and every other giant story.

Isolation would prevent them from dominating. Large people don't need infinite resources, they just need appropriately abundant resources. Trade should be difficult because of aforementioned isolation, but there are fun and creative ways around this.

For aliens, being giant doesn't help them in space combat. Giant soldiers might dominate on the ground but they need a lot of help to get there.

>What would prevent them from dominating every other race?
The answer is right here:
>How would they be sustained without infinite resources?
Giants would need ridiculously fertile lands to farm in large enough quantities to sustain a similar level of civilization to other races. So human (and other assorted small folk) lands would be almost unlivable badlands to them. They woundn't see the point of conquering it.

The amount of bad giants could be balanced out by the amount of good giants. For every prick there's a saint.

Best way to scale up the requirements for a giant? It's natural to go for cubed because of the square cube law but squared makes things slightly more manageable. So a 12x larger giant instead of needing 8,800 big macs a day (12^3 * 10,500kj / 2,060kj) they'd only need 734 (12^2 * 10,500kj / 2060kj)

>For every prick there's a saint
I assure you, the ratio is not 1:1. It is nowhere fucking near.

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This, I like.

The truly big giants are largely supernatural and incapable of leaving the mountains. Stepping off the solid rock causes them to sink into ground and drown.

Biologist here, if all things are equal bigger species will have more biomass than small species. In other words 1000lbs of food will support a 1000lb rhino while 1000lbs of food will only support 870 1lb squirrels. Thus the same acreage of equally productive land will support a couple giants better than tens/hundreds of humans. Nevermind the fact that giants don't need livestock as much to cultivate their land thus reducing the caloric drain trying to feed draft animals

I know that, but they can’t help it if their planet lets them get big. Of course, smaller species would find buying their ships a good deal, even if they have to modify them

They would probably have to live in some kind of symbiosis with the smaller races societies.

If the crops are normal sized, how do the giants harvest and process them?

How do humans harvest berries?

An apple would be like a small grape to them

But if a giant takes between 100 and 1000 times more food to feed than a human, it stand to reason that a single giant would need to be roughly that much more agriculturally efficient than a single human. I don't see them gaining that efficiency by picking apples in the same manner as humans do, but maybe they have some techniques or tools that allow them a pace more in line with their size?

>If you do get into a war with giants just burn their crops and they will quickly die from mass famine.

Not any more than a scorched earth policy against anyone else.

Here's a berry picker. Maybe something similar could be used for larger fruits?

>How does one justify the existence of a race of giants with a similar technological/social level to the smaller races?
similar intelligence & technological osmosis

>What would prevent them from dominating every other race?
numbers, logistics (use significantly more supplies, square/cube law)

>How would they be sustained without infinite resources?
smaller numbers

> How difficult would trade be between them and everyone else?
Depends on the setting

Those tend to damage berry bushes. I don't see a tree surviving being harvested like that.

Maybe something along the lines of laying a cloth below the tree and shaking it gently?

Of course it bears to reason that our crops didn't simply come out of the wild the way they are now. Giant crops would be bred/adapted to be more suitable for giants.

>How does one justify the existence of a race of giants with a similar technological/social level to the smaller races?

Everything else would have to be to scale, which gets weird thanks to square-cube law.

>What would prevent them from dominating every other race?

Relatively smaller areas not being worth the trouble. Would you want to conquer a small parcel of land inhabited by 12" humans? Full of 1/6 scale crops, animals, and so on? Hell, its not so much a conquering as an extermination to get more farmland for your giant farms and giant trees.

>How would they be sustained without infinite resources?

Same as everyone else.

>How difficult would trade be between them and everyone else?

Well you're restricted to trading being mostly with things that can scale up or down, such as liquids or materials or foods. You'd probably see the smaller folk trading items that require intricate detail for the giant folks' large chunks of material. Really depends on the logistics of the world you cooked up.

Maybe they would instead rather cultivate plants that's less convenient for humans to grow and process? Like absurdly large root fruits that would be too much of a bother for humans to cultivate?

Typically I assume they hail from a 'world next door' not unlike the realm of the fae, where things are quite a bit more innately magical and flora/fauna's size can range to a much greater degree than in the material plane, depending on the setting this can range from an actual fairyland plane to elemental planes or the like. Most giants in the material plane stick to outposts where travel between their home plane and the material can be a easy as turning the right (or wrong) direction, as as you have noted, the material plane doesn't really have the resources to supply them beyond very low population density even with the rather high amount of megafauna in many fantasy settings, making expeditions into it mostly an excersize in futility for them, though if an inhabitant of the material plane can afford (and convince) them to work for them/trade with them, they are excellent craftsmen and laborers, which due to a mix of innate magic and innate skill, can do many men's worth of labor in a day, even working on such a fine detail/making small scale things to put most masters to shame

Alternatively, the setting has enough fantastical elements (mostly megafauna/flora) to support a small but stable population of them, in which case they're mostly isolationist, not expanding for reasons

Magic doesn't scale with size in D&D, your create food and water spell would still be starvation level rations for a giant

Actually probably would hurt them up in space, larger size = more life support equipment needed
Though yeah, they'd make great ground troops

Mirrina was a kindly young thing, beautiful and warm as a spring day throughout the coldest winters. Had she not been nigh on sixty feet from toe to top she'd be the flawless picture of a dainty young maiden.
The lass didn't confine her beauty to appearances though, right to the core she was a gentle soul. As innocent as a babe she'd fawn over grown men like a girl to puppies, and rub their gruff heads all the same. Mirrina was also not one to dote in luxury, and the gracious giant made good use of her comfortable demeanour.
Many nights she could be found in the wilderness, lugging around a weighty satchel of ale barrels, grain silos, linen by the yard, and neatly handmade pillows. During these excursions the colossus scouted around for weary travellers to cosset and coddle; once offered even the hardiest stoics' knees melted into her soft hands at the prospect of a toasty meal and a rest in her bosom.
Mirrina was a blessing to all those that she met, and she asked nought in return except the occasional nap in a farmer's barn and the gratitude of a quenched human.
If ever you find yourself with tired legs, pray the great ol' maiden offers you board.

Thread ded, post giants maybe?

The best giants are either herders with megafauna herds, or giant polynesians. Coconuts could be eaten whole, bananas eaten in bunches, nudity is fine and they hunt whales and giant squids.

For sci-fi I like the explanation that the 'normal' races deliberately shrank themselves for the sake of efficiency. Being 'giant' is often a handicap but it turns into an advantage whenever technology can't be relied upon.

The ogostics involved in feeding them would probably stop tgem from conquering much of anything. Even if they have giant crops they would be basically bound to the land farming.

Hands and tools. A human hand scaled up to elephant size can still grab an apple and a giant man with a giant scythe can cut through a ton a wheat.

Scale is scale, they see a beach where we see a mile or two of desert. They grow a small european kingdom when we'd grow a field. They weave a kilometer of giantcotton up for one set of curtains.
> Idea for a campaign; trying to get out of a giant's farm, DM challenge is getting the players out without them realising it's actually just pic related

>probably the biggest factor
Not really. If you look at gestation period an elephant has a gestation period about 2.5 times that of a human leading to an assumed population advantage of 2.5 to 1 in favour of humans. However an elephant needs to consume 35 times as many calories as a human meaning a village will need enough food to feed a town of humans, and a large city for giants would need enough food to feed a modern country. It is honestly doubtful that cities of giants could even exist as the distance food would need to travel to reach the city would be obscene. The giant equivalent to ancient Rome (just the city) would need the same food as all of modern Canada, but pouring into a single city. For a scale of understanding that would be the equivalent to any one of these
>1.3 billion apples
>54 million loaves of bread
>114 million 8 ounce steaks
Every single day.

That's a bit boring, why not make them different in more ways than size?

But of course, there is always the ecological reason why big animals aren't that common: They need to eat much more, and the environment doesn't just magically produce more food just because they're bigger.
Their size wouldn't increase their ability to get food proportionally to how much more food they will need.

They could just be a ruling caste.
>A tribe of giants march into a country and crush their army
>Declare themselves kings and dukes
>Run the kingdoms, demand food and lead armies in the event of war

>That is the Orontid Empire formed by the giant warlord Arjuna the World Consumer 800 years ago
>Since then his descendants have ruled the kingdom
>Invasion forces don't just have to deal with the human warriors who number in the tens of thousands, but hundreds of high ranking noblemen within the army each of them a giant the size of a house

>the 'normal' races deliberately shrank themselves for the sake of efficiency
That actually does kinda make sense if the race in question is mostly a space bound one in a soft scifi setting, would make it a pain on a planet though

Kind of interested why some races would not be able to though
And how they interact with the others

Escape from a giant's house is actually a pretty cool idea, would play

I’ve wantes to run a Borrowers campaign forever and a day now.
No real combat, other than maybebwith insects or mice, just lots of scrounging and exploring around a mansion and trying to avoid the humans

It's a fun concept, would need a lot of puzzle solving/social encounters to keep players engaged though and that can be a pain

I was thinking of doing them like how dragon people are done in Fire Emblem. They're a rare, isolated race that lives for millions of years and grow extremely slowly compared to humans. Normally they're peaceful, serene, and wise, but quick to defend themselves if one of them is threatened. However, as they get older and millions of years old, they start slowly going insane from pure boredom. This means older giants must be killed off by younger ones or other races to make sure they don't ravage a whole country. Naturally, this causes other races to fear and even hate the giants and makes them start hunting all of them down, even the young ones, out of fear for when they eventually go insane. This is why they must stay isolated and create small communities so they can self-sustain themselves, but many would probably also be nomadic because of just how much food they would need to survive.

>Being 'giant' is often a handicap but it turns into an advantage whenever technology can't be relied upon.
So mech suits or something are commonly used when on planets?

Wouldn’t Giants just think that being big the normal and everything is just small? I could see them rethinking it if everything else in the galaxy is smaller and makes it hard to get ships and supplies not meant for them

I usually include Mecha like this. A general purpose robot that smaller people can repurpose to move around in. Look at it, you can already imagine a tiny pilot there

In a sci-fi setting, a lot of the communication issues are pre-solved. If you were doing construction work around 60’ tall people, you’d make sure to have a radio and those neon vests. Toss in some AR stuff where you get an arrow pointing down at you and you’d be pretty safe.

Of course, I usually toss in some fun stuff. Just imagine what it’s like if they give you a ride in one of their cars?

I imagine most of them live on planets and don't need to travel all that often, while the rest deal with the inconvenience because they're still in demand when things go wrong.

You’d wind up with situations where people forget that the alien pecies is normally Huge or something. Imagine answering a Help Wanted or dating ad and forgetting that information, on top of any other difficulties.

Very carefully.

Or visiting an alien colony and finding that you have to stay indoors because of the local wildlife.

>Toss in some AR stuff where you get an arrow pointing down at you and you’d be pretty safe.
That's a pretty clever idea actually, I wonder why more settings don't use AR

That’s the best part of dealing with a Science Fantasy Giants. There is so many ways you’d try to deal with that. Imagine !Tiny Humans wearing spiky bug suits in a high-oxygen world filled with Massive Bug people who find it cute.

We’re still trying to deal with how to include it in real life, so even authors would have some difficulty with it. I could see an arrow pointing down if there are a few tiny people around, but probably a generic warning of “Watch Your Step” If there are too many to list indicidually

>Campaign Idea: A giant sorceress kidnaps the party and forces them to play games for her amusement that are not unlike dungeon crawls.

A bit recursive, but I like it

It makes sense that they would, but I think that the cheaper suits would be relatively clunky and a suit that can match a giant would cost more than hiring a giant. A compromise might be to have several cheap mechs with one giant to handle any delicate work.

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I think I recall another campaign along those lines that someone suggested where a Cloud Giant !Thor misinterpreted his father's direction and brings some small races to their big city and just parties and dungeon dives with them.

I'd imagine this playing out like the card game duels in anime. The Sorceress brings a shrunken person to fight for them with all these new rules and abilities and beings they have to deal with. Making allies would be just as important as trying to befriend the Giant and deal with their situation.

I keep getting a weird anime vibe from it.

Once you get space travel, a lot of the stuff is already solved. Besides, a Giant race would make "giant" robots because that would be a size that works for them. The market would probably have a bunch of them and sell them for cheap. Imagine more mass-produced general purpose models instead of Custom Gundams.

I think the interface would be the limiting factor. Even if the motors can physically do it, it would be difficult to control the machine as well as someone controlling their own body. The fancy robots probably wouldn't look much different from the cheap robots but the real cost would be in the feedback systems.

>Massive Bug people who find it cute
I like the idea that the scary giant aliens turn out to have strong protective instincts and are really quite harmless once people get used to them.

It's a nice subversion

>Strongly dislike size difference greater than 10x-15x
>Find that pic oddly hot

I would like to see pole dancing giants.

I don't have the pic saves (or remember if it's SFW or not), but I remember a pic of couple of tiny guys on a raised shelf/table at a giantess strip club

>Giantess lap dance

Maybe something like G-Gundam's or Pacific Rim's full body tracking would do? At the same time, I wouldn't necessarily use them for every day activities. Like some of the people have suggested, mostly to just do the initial work when setting up a colony/terraforming.

Of course, there would be other issues if you had to use them in Giant towns and cities with lots of moving people.

I really wished Macross had done more with the Voldra

Quick google turned up this. Was it this one?

Yes, thanks

>Of course, there would be other issues if you had to use them in Giant towns and cities with lots of moving people.
Probably best to have a friendly giant to help you in that case

But can you deal with all the Giants looking at you, the kids waving and wanting to pick you up, the supersized Bugs stopping your friend so they can get a selfie with the little alien? Could you handle the attention?!

>the galaxy is home to thousands of civilized species
>only a few developed the technology to protect themselves from a shrink ray

If a human nuts inside a giantess and impregnates her will their children be manlets?

No!

Offspring height primarily depends on the mother, so no.

Have them confined to a single island in the most inhospitable ocean in the entire world, making them a rare sight out in the world

The giants in /my/ donut steel setting are essentially just colossal sorcerers who wound up so powerful that nothing in the lands could touch them, so they got extremely lazy and conjure food for themselves of varying qualities. There's a castle in this mountain that takes hours to walk through, that is completely unguarded and unprotected because the trip up there prohibits the vast majority of races from so much as reaching it without a herculean effort, and even fewer who would take any benefit approaching it, with even less who would be able to take anything worth taking. Although their ultimate "Treasure" is this overwhelming banquet that all of the races of the world are given immediate access to, should they reach the top. Since the giants have grown somewhat fat, they just lazily set a (what is to them a very, very small) dinner table up for the "Little Ones" and just conjure bowls of egg and spice soups placed next to fried avian and multiple superbovine steaks, all accompanied by wines and cheeses the likes of which make any would-be thief or intruder into a thankful follower. Dragons and Demons will regularly attempt to breach the castle and eat their fill, but the Giants just keep making more and more food until they get too fat to fight and throw them off the mountaintop.

Every single thing in this setting is defined by food, food consumption, food creation, and races who interact with food.
If you can't excel in the world of food manipulation, you are literally a scum race and will typically wind up purged by other races for being a detriment. Even Goblins make a fine mushroom bisque.

Because humans managed to become so overpowered in my setting giants have become reduced to servants, blacksmiths, sentinels and sexual slaves. Whenever they attempt to start a society, they are immediately killed/captured by humans.

>BRRRAAAAAAPPP
>spectators are deaf now

What is the rest of the setting like?

If they can make it to the modern age, I wonder how they'd be treated. Would they get Giant land for themselves only, but they'd have to stick to ancient trails to move around? Would regular sized people be allowed to enter, or would they have to stick to the sides and helicopters?

I like that

Probably have their own lands, but mostly isolationist

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Post more

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A bit bigger than I'd like

Looks to be a good max size actually

It's a decent max. Bug enough that the difference can't be worked around easily, but still small enough that they can interact and talk and play

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Dolores is best daughterfu

Is this real?, does this mean that I'm damning my kids to be manlets thanks to my shortie fetish?

NICE

>What would prevent them for dominating every other race?
Their population is incredibly small compared to normies and on the decline even from there due to increasing sterility rates and declining fertility.
>How would they be sustained without infinite resources?
They aren't. They've begun warring with and cannibalizing each other (which has in turn fueled their technological process through a self-imposed Darwinian "survival of the fittest" racial societal structure).
>How difficult would trade be between them and everyone else?
Very. Most giants would only seek out tiny things as trinkets and would be loathe to give out their valuable goods out of fear of their fellow big bois and grills.