One of the problems encountered by D&D is that it shoves a bunch of monsters from unrelated world mythologies and expects them to play nice. Giants are a perfect example. D&D arbitrarily limits creatures of the giant type to giant humanoids, ignoring the diversity of giants in myth. Furthermore, there isn't an actual distinction between giants and humanoids besides giants being humanoids of at least "large" size in the game rules. Why are they not a humanoid (giant) tag?
In mythology, giants were distinguished by having fairly clear origins. Norse giants were the children of Ymir and ranged from humanoids, to multi-headed humanoids, to giant animals like Fenris, Jormungand and Sleipnir. There wasn't a clear distinction between giants and half-giants, either. Greek giants were the children of Gaia, and similarly included non-humanoid monsters like Typhon and Leon. The Fomorians, who might have been giants but it's difficult to tell, had only vague origins in the wilderness. And so on.
D&D's giants don't have a clear reason to be giants. Even Trudvang has a better distinction by making them into elemental beings leftover from the creation of the world. (Which I am totally using, by the way.) So my idea for giving them a distinct origin, which justifies being their own type, is to treat them as the children of the primordial titans or primal creation or whatever the equivalent is and that is why they have an elemental affiliation too. Humanoids are either their degenerate descendants (a la Warcraft), created from weaker stock or such (e.g. in Sumerian myth humanity was made from the blood of Tiamat).
No comments:
Post a Comment