How Ogres and the like show up in-world (RPG Blog Carnival)

Advantage on Arcana gives us this months prompt Cyclopes, Ettins, Hill Giants, and Ogres for the RPG Blog Carnival and asks that we come up with something that makes those named monsters more than varying sized bags of dumb, mean aggression.

In much the same was orcs, goblins, hobgoblins, and bugbears need a bit of work to distinguish between each other and that mostly being in how they show up in the game, you can take the same approach with these giant-kin. For the goblinkin, you get the more chaotic ones (orcs), ordered ones (hobgoblins), small sneaky ones (goblins) and big sneaky ones (bugbears) which is not bad but we can do better.

Some factors I have talked about before are lifespans - giants are around a long time - and the constant requirements for these big guys to fuel big frames with big feasts.

Thoughts on our candidates

Cyclopes I think are the easiest one because they are classically children of the gods and enmeshed in the whole divine court. Maybe they live a little bit out of the way, a big rustic dude with their own local business going on but one can always lean into the fact that they have big, weird cousins - gods and monsters both. Slay or grievously irritate a cyclops and you can be sure there will be consequences, probably coming down some strange route like the local god of revellry spoiling all wine in your presence.

They are quite long lived and have been part of this familial too-ing-and-fro-ing for all that time so one could see them as sources of odd lore and strange current gossip. They should be plugged into the local mythical environment in the same way hags are seen to be connected with the fey. Stewards of lore, begrudging or not, but part of it nonetheless. For Cyclopes, crack out your favourite bits of Greek mythology and have them be involved.

Ettins would be the ones, if any, I would leave as closest to the big, mean, simple aggressor. Less because they are dumb but because they are hamstrung by their two heads fighting themselves. An encounter with an Ettin is going to be like running into the angriest local pair of housemates, stuck together for a lifetime, wedged beneath each others skin, with their nerves already frayed to a hair-trigger.

One could play with each head having half-control of the body, or one being the reasonable and savvy one but it is the other ornery one in charge of their body. There is a struggle one can play with there to get around or gain cooperation from Ettins. Another aspect is the sleep-wake cycle, with the heads being offset and treasuring the short peace they get without the other. Sneak in and talk to one head without waking the other.

Next you run into the Hill Giants - and these have a persistent culture. They have like their place in the Ordning and they have plans. They have a permanent scheming underdog vibe. They perceive themselves to be the bottom of what they perceive as their of their peers and so they have to get up to schemes to try and redress that balance. They are also very active in pulling together other allies, dominating monsters and generally building forces in a way other giants do not tend to.

It would be reasonable to have a whole range of archaic courtesies and traditions come into play - no guest can be harmed at a feast, a host can ask a favour of any guest - etc. Classic fairy tale things fit well with giants. One could argue that this framework of tradition and practice might make hill giants much more capable as a group than their individual prowess might suggest. They fall into ancient traditional roles and things get done.

Giants in fairy tale had the original golden goose, a magic harp, and gifted things like magic swords, cloaks and boots - the hoard of magical treasures they like (the former) and cannot use (the latter) could be quite substantial. Quests for items known to be in the careless possession of giants could be a way for this to show up.

An alternate approach would be to say this makes them like goblins but much, much bigger. Take all of the chaos-mongery of goblins and just scale it up and say that is what hill giants are up to. All sorts of badly executed plans to make them equal to storm and cloud giants.

Another thing to play with is 'crewed' giants - hang some netting over their outfit and suddenly humans can climb on them, sit on their shoulder or the like much as a human could have a monkey. Keep a literal pocket sorcerer. Or have goblins or halflings - smaller again - with blowpipes or polearms, fighting their giant like sailors on ship. See the Temeraire books with crewed dragons for notions.

I always loved the old rule that cropped up in Dragon Magazine for AD&D that sufficiently strong things could overcome weapon immunities - specifically a werewolf or vampires immunity to non-magical damage could get overcome by a giant walloping them with a sufficiently large tree. I found that a nice expression of how giants are operating on a different scale.

Lastly we have Ogres - similar to hill giants in that they are often found in groups and ogre clans and warbands are a typical thing. You can run ogres with the werewolf rule - the problem is not so much the one ogre you can see, but all of their pals that are out there. There is good inspiration for such ogres in wargame mini collections from Warhammer through to Confrontation or any of the other miniature ranges. You can tweak these off 'mean, mindless aggression' towards cunning raiders, perhaps light on the grand strategy but more than good enough on tactics that use their brute force advantage.

Another possible angle to take with Ogres is them being the offshout of humanity that is being slowly outcompeted by their smaller, nimbler cousins - like being driven to extinction by halflings. This is how Ogres view the humans they keep running across, chasing them off good hunting grounds, boxing them out of forests and fields and generally assaulting them for the minor crimes of snatching up people and lifestock for the pot. Ogres are living in a world of permanent lean times from their perspective - where once there was rich hunting and gathering, now they are facing a swarming apocalypse.

One thing that often comes through with Ogres is getting mixed up with cults, worship of dark gods and/or a susceptibility to mutation and corruption. Whether driven by a hunger for personal power or a heedlessness of consequences does not matter, those various fonts of grim power form anchors for groups of ogres.

I like Warhammer Chaos Ogres as a good, scary example of what Ogres can be. Wargame ogres also seem to have an affinity for hand-carried plundered cannon, make of that what you will.

How they turn up

Cyclops and Ettins are both going to be relatively solitary and out in the wilderness. Ettins are just barely getting by, trying to cope with living with themselves and are just unfortunate to run into. Cyclops know and are part of things around them - living their rustic life, occassionally hosting visits from the range of their kin, dealing with prophecies, tutoring demigods and the like.

Hill giants can be the solitary giants of fairy tale, beholden to ancient conventions and being about almost incomprehensible traditions or they can show up as the communities that follow the Ordning, occupy fortresses from times long past, and scheme and plot for power to force their larger cousins to respect them. Their hoards and homes might be the focus of some adventures, with the goal being to avoid the giants themselves entirely.

Ogres also turn up communally, either in the more typical solitary brute among a group of other monsters or as part of a warband, raiding and plundering. They are going to be the most angrily aware of humanity, viewing them as a dangerous, invasive pest. Among all these giant-kin, the ones you are are most likely to encounter coming at you proactively will be Ogres, such as when they smash open the inn you are staying at to raid the supplies and guests for their pots.

Never forget that all of these can chuck rocks to deadly effect at significant range but also that a spear-thrower is stone-age technology and makes any of these giant-kin into a walking ballista.