The ABC's of DND: G is for...

This week we are talking about the big lads. No really. Massive. Mountain-sized. "I cast Fly because I refuse to deal with stairs anymore" levels of big.

There is something wonderfully old-school about giants. In a hobby overflowing with eldritch horrors, interdimensional nightmares, and creatures that require three paragraphs of explanation before they even attack, giants are refreshingly straightforward. They are enormous. They hit things with trees. Sometimes they throw boulders because apparently gravity is just a suggestion when you are twenty-five feet tall. And yet, I think giants get overlooked. Maybe it's because dragons steal all the attention. Dragons have the branding. Dragons have the merchandising. Dragons have somehow convinced everyone they deserve to be the poster child of a game that is, technically, half named after them. Meanwhile giants are standing in the corner quietly wondering if anyone wants to hear about their fascinating ancient civilisation before someone inevitably pokes them with a sword. So this week, we're fixing that. Because if you have never run a proper giant encounter, you are missing out on one of the most cinematic experiences in D&D... The first thing you notice isn't the giant. It's the footprints. Each one is deeper than a grave, pressed into the soft earth with enough force to create little ponds from the previous night's rain. Trees lie snapped like matchsticks. A farmhouse stands abandoned, its roof torn clean away as though a child had peeled the lid from a toy. The silence is wrong. No birds sing. No insects buzz. Even the wind seems reluctant to cross the valley. Your ranger kneels beside the nearest footprint. Fresh. Less than an hour old. The wizard quietly suggests maybe this wasn't the best shortcut after all. Then comes the sound. Not a roar or a battle cry. Just… Thunk. A heartbeat later the ground trembles beneath your boots. Thunk. Dust trickles from the branches overhead. Thunk. Somewhere beyond the treeline, looming in the mist, something enormous is walking towards you with all the urgency of someone heading to make a cup of tea. And then it steps into view. Thirty feet of muscle wrapped in patchwork hides, carrying what appears to be an entire oak tree as a club. It sniffs the air with mild curiosity before grinning, revealing teeth the size of daggers. "Oh good," the bard mutters. "It's seen us." Giants are brilliant because they immediately change the scale of an encounter. Most monsters exist within the battlefield. Giants are the battlefield. In our own folklore in England, it is no surprise that Giants have become synonymous with the landscape itself. Where some creatures inhabit the land, Giants are beings of the very earth and sky itself. Suddenly rocks become ammunition. Buildings become improvised cover. A fallen cart is no longer scenery but the only thing between you and being flattened into decorative pavement. Players instinctively stop thinking in terms of attack rolls and start thinking creatively. Can we collapse the bridge? Can we lure it into the swamp? Can we climb onto its back? Can I cast Enlarge on the barbarian so he can finally fulfil his lifelong dream of punching something his own size? (Yes. If you have any sense of fun, the answer should always be yes.) Giants encourage problem solving in a way few monsters can because fighting them head-on often feels like the worst possible idea. Which, incidentally, is exactly how it should feel. One of my favourite things about giants is that they're far more than oversized humans with anger management issues. They also come pre-loaded with a glorious and haunting lore of their own. Every type of giant has its own culture, beliefs and way of seeing the world. Cloud giants are aristocrats obsessed with wealth, omens and status, living in castles that drift through the skies as if the concept of paying property tax simply never occurred to them. Stone giants see dreams as more real than waking life, spending centuries carving impossible sculptures into the walls of vast underground kingdoms. Fire giants are master smiths whose entire civilisation revolves around conquest, industry and proving strength through craftsmanship as much as warfare. Frost giants believe glory is earned through mighty deeds and spectacular victories, which admittedly sounds exhausting but does explain why they keep trying to wrestle dragons. Even hill giants—often dismissed as the dim-witted cousins of the family—can be terrifying when played correctly. Hunger drives everything they do. They don't raid villages because they're evil. They raid villages because they're hungry. You just happen to be between them and dinner. The best giant encounters aren't always fights either. Imagine negotiating with a cloud giant who views your entire kingdom the way you might view a particularly industrious ant colony. Picture earning the respect of a frost giant jarl by surviving a hunt rather than winning a duel. Or discovering that the "haunted mountain" your players have been exploring is actually the abandoned home of stone giants who vanished centuries ago, leaving behind statues that look suspiciously like terrified adventurers. Giants can also be a key way to impart information to your party. They have history, ancient history. They remember wars that humans only know through half-forgotten legends. They can have grudges older than entire nations. That gives them something many monsters lack. Perspective. I often avoid talk about mechanics in these articles but it is also worth mentioning how wonderfully flexible giants can be for building encounters. Need a memorable boss for a low-level party? Hill giant. Want a military commander capable of laying siege to a city? Fire giant. Need an arrogant noble whose castle literally floats above the clouds? Cloud giant. Fancy turning the weather itself into an enemy? Storm giants have entered the chat. Better still, giants punch well above their challenge rating in terms of spectacle. A dragon is terrifying because it can breathe fire. A giant is terrifying because it casually picks up your horse and throws it at your cleric. One of those is mathematically impressive. The other becomes the story your group is still laughing about six months later. Another thing I particularly enjoy is leaning into the environmental storytelling before the players ever meet the giant. Show the aftermath first. A bridge crushed flat by a single footprint. Boulders embedded in castle walls. Trees bent sideways where something impossibly large forced its way through the forest. Villages built around rituals designed to appease whatever lives higher in the mountains. Even the distant rumbling of a quiet snore, which shakes your bones. By the time the giant finally appears, your players have already built it up in their minds. Half the work is done before initiative is even rolled. And there is simply no description which can be better than the picture your players have painted in their own heads. Plus it doesn’t hurt to remind a part just how small their characters really are in the world. D&D heroes have an unfortunate tendency to become convinced they are the biggest thing in every room. After enough adventures they stride into ancient ruins with the confidence of people who have survived three near-apocalypses and once successfully talked a lich into monologuing long enough for the rogue to steal his phylactery. Giants have a unique way of correcting that attitude. Sometimes the monster doesn't need complicated mechanics. Sometimes it just needs to be able to look down at the party wizard, sigh deeply, and ask, "...Are you finished?" Before attempting to solve the problem with what can only be described as aggressive landscaping. And honestly? That's why giants deserve far more love at our tables.