Half Giants: Cookie Cutter?

[Rhyden]

I give mad props to people who play HGs. I have before. It's -hard-.

And I totally agree with AC. If your HG is too smart, people will be like, OMFG!! TWINK! SMART HG!!! WTF?!!

And if your HG is too dumb, people will be like,
OMFG!! TWINK! STUPID HG!!! STEREOTYPE!! WTF?!!

There's no winning, it seems, for the big fellas. And I think they tend to appear the same because the racial role-play docs set up for them. They're very specific of how a HG thinks and acts and I just think it's difficult to play a realistic HG without straying far from those docs and the stereotype HG.

Also, if you think somebody isn't playing a HG right (which I had before I did play one), try playing one yourself. You'll find it isn't as easy as it looks.

[amish overlord]

Agreed HG are very very hard. Only done one and was a short lived one. Was a young one too who cried at times. ITs difficult to play someone who entire race isn't the sharpest tool in the shed and not go me smash ju!  Can easily play a real dumb anything else but finding the balance for an HG is very hard. They are sorta a parrot, since docs indicate they seem to learn customs and mannerisms aroudn them easily. Heck i'd say they should be able to learn accents quicker than most so they could imintate those they are around. They are very malleable to those around them but so malleable they can easily be turned by a new person.
Also difficult because of position in society, what do people higher HG's for? Mainly to smash people on head. And for most part thats what I see no one hires a half-giant bard or florist(think hightower in police academy)

Amish Overlord  

[amish overlord]

I think i thought of the perfect example from rl what a hg would be.  Forrest gump! Not tarzan or mongo the barbarian, anyone else think so. Forrest was sometimes nieve and got himself into bad situations.

the big halfgiant says in sirihish
"My momma says stupid is as stupid does."

Amish Overlord  

[jhunter]

Half-giants are one of the hardest things in Arm to play IMO. It is very difficult to find a balance between stereotypical and creative for the race without having someone bitch. I disagree with the statement someone else made earlier about them not taking any creativity to play. On the contrary, I think they take more creativity than most other roles in the game. Maybe one day, I will get one right...but I doubt it.

[rufus]

Momma said life is like a box a' chock-lates.

[Viagra_Kank]

Yeah, I've only played one half-giant, and it was really hard to do.  

My choices were to sit there quietly, or open my mouth and something stupid would come out.  My character was keenly aware of this.

[Hymwen]

Heck i'd say they should be able to learn accents quicker than most so they could imintate those they are around. They are very malleable to those around them but so malleable they can easily be turned by a new person.

I think that's a really good idea, actually. It is currently next to impossible for a half-giant to learn a new accent because of their horrible wisdom scores, and that doesn't seem to reflect realism.

[Maybe42or54]

I want to play a half giant, but I can't die. Bleh.

Anyways.

The way I've seen Half Giants is that they start out as very sterotypical, like the player behind the pc is nice and cute, but as they grow as a pc the pc becomes more and more real and less like why this thread was created. I was in the arm once with a half giant and I didn 't think it was very well rp'ed, but then I died and I thought I was saved, but then a week later (2 pc deaths) I gotm the chance to reinteract with that same freak hg and it had a major effect on me, because I had low expectations, but they really blew me away. It was fun.

[Synthesis]

Having recently played a half-giant PC, I'll say that my biggest problem was keeping myself entertained, while keeping my PC's actions within reasonable bounds.

One of the root causes of this problem was the fact that other PCs would generally ignore my half-giant, or give him a very wide berth, despite the fact that he obviously was wandering around aimlessly.  In the 6 months I played him, only three or four PCs took the time to try to get him working for them.

After a while, this got extremely boring.  Fortunately, IC events gave me a somewhat plausible reason to make a drastic lifestyle change, which let me have a little initiative.  I have to admit, though, it was extremely difficult trying to determine what was "too smart" for a half-giant to figure out, and sticking with it.  On the other hand, sometimes you just have to stretch "realism" a little and settle on a comfortable point in the grey area, just to get things done.  For example, I had found a fairly tricky route to a certain place, that almost nobody knew about...a half-giant probably wouldn't be intelligent enough to remember all the directions, every single time he went back (realism), but roleplaying being hopelessly lost in an area with few and distant quit-safe points, every time I was there was just too much to ask (playability).  So I went from point A to point B, shrugged, and rolled with it.  Somehow, the universe did not implode.

For tips on how to play a half-giant, I posted something, somewhere, in another half-giant thread.  Maybe someone can dig it up.  Maybe I'll do it.

Here's the link: http://www.zalanthas.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=214354&highlight=halfgiant#214354

[Angela Christine]

It might be helpful if you are about to play a HG to do a search on them here on the GDB, there has been a fair bit of discussion about them in the past.  It isn't official like the docs, but it can give you an idea of what other players have thought about HGs, what they like or disliked (mostly disliked) about them over time.

I was looking for something else when I found this: http://www.zalanthas.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=4238 I'd forgotten all about that thread but I think it's nifty.  There are probably lots of other nifty HG threads still in the database.

[Pantoufle]

Like AC already said, I think the biggest obstacle for half-giants is the catch-22 scneario of "too smart / too dumb" accusations by other players.  They are quite possibly one of the most difficult races to play and it's because of this fact that I think most of the anti-HG posters in this thread need to tone down their arguments a little.  I can't think of the last half-giant I encountered who was played as so inexorably stupid that I felt he went past the racial concept of "dumb".  Similarly, I can't think of the last half-giant I encountered who was played as being far too bright for his race.  I've encounted a few of both, but it's been, literally, years, and I think the stereotype of "people are playing half-giants too smart/dumb" is way over exaggerated.

To add to the difficulty I think are the contradictions in the documentation and over analysis of players.  So what if the help file says they are all innately kind and loving?  The help files also say fire elementalists inherantly hate shadow elementalists, but that decade+ old snippet of documentation certainly doesn't mean you have to play your fire elementalist as a shadow-hating maniac.  Relax.  Don't read into what ancient help files say so much.  Take what you want out of the small details, it's the more obvious ones which violating would actually be considered OOC: like elves riding kanks or dwarves without any focus.

That said, I'd like to see some added development to the half-giant race, particularly pertaining to their lack of intellect.

Is a half-giant smart enough to raise her own babies? Of course she is, even hamsters can raise their own babies (and hardly ever eat them) and there are few mammals more stupid than a hamster. But some players really and truly believe that a half-giant couldn't raise a kid, so all HG kids should be born to HGs that were in clans, and the humans or other smarties in the clan helped the HG mother take care of her babies.

Hamsters raise their own babies successfully because they have instinct.  A spider is virtually brainless compared to humans yet they instinctively know how to weave their own webs without instruction.  You cannot compare half-giants to hamsters just as you cannot compare apples to oranges.

This is just my own opinion, but I equate half-giant "stupidity" as remotely comparable to clinically retarded people.  While some may be able to successfully raise children, without doing a great deal of research on the disease, I'd venture a guess that most actually cannot (even if a hamster can).  They may be able to do things hamsters cannot, like speak languages and use tools, but their mental faculties might not be sufficient for more complicated tasks, such as rearing their own children.  I don't think the only reason half-giants lack communities of their own is simply because they don't want to, I don't think they're CAPABLE of it.  Opinions, here, obviously will vary.  In an earlier post LoD said it might be unrealistic for a half-giant to choose merchanting or in-depth crafting roles for a half-giant.  According to this logic, which I agree with, if a half-giant cannot become an adept craftsman, how is (s)he going to be able to successfully raise children on his own without any intervention of the other humanoids races?  The question is, what mental faculties are beyond the range of a half-giant's?  Unforuntately, the more in-depth you answer this, the more contradictions and restrictions you may be imposing upon the race.

[Clearsighted]

After spending a few days to quietly rethink my original position, I've come to the following conclusion, after considering the various responses.

It is not really about being too bright or too dumb.

Inasmuch as the acceptable 'way' of roleplaying a giant is so narrow.

Most of the HGs I've seen have been fine RPers. Had a fine knowledge of the game. Yet they all played in that same narrowly acceptable band.

And since it is so narrow, it is fairly easy to emulate. You are never really faced with tough character development. And there is perversly, for such a supposedly changeable race, a huge peer pressure to not grow.  It would seem to me, that if a character was dedicated enough to acquire 3 karma in the first place, they would not be the kind of person who could be satisfied with such a narrow PC. Since while the strength is nice...It must lose its novelty after a month.

Granted, if a PC tries to go above that, then they get branded as being 'too smart'. And that was why I originally took issue with the docs. Since I felt like, unlike the other racial docs, the half giants were given exceptionally narrower margins.

If you have five HG players, and they're all great RPers, but they're all RPing in the same narrowly defined band of what their peers consider acceptable HG RP, they're going to encounter the same issues spoken of by HG players in this thread. That they're ignored/forgettable. That it feels like charity to RP with them because they're so predictable. That they had difficulty taking personal initiative or finding purpose. That they eventually found it boring.

That said, I feel the militia or the Byn is probably a good place for the giants. And the best HG rpers I've ever seen (or the ones that got the most interaction and the most satisfaction out of their PCs) were ones in an heavily regimented lifestyle. Especially the Byn which does a good job of binding people together (if they survive).

So I would suspect that HGs are easy to imitate or emulate (especially if all you want is the strength) but are very difficult to take any personal, long term satisfaction from in an character development sense.

[spawnloser]

To add to the difficulty I think are the contradictions in the documentation and over analysis of players.  So what if the help file says they are all innately kind and loving?  The help files also say fire elementalists inherantly hate shadow elementalists, but that decade+ old snippet of documentation certainly doesn't mean you have to play your fire elementalist as a shadow-hating maniac.  Relax.  Don't read into what ancient help files say so much.  Take what you want out of the small details, it's the more obvious ones which violating would actually be considered OOC: like elves riding kanks or dwarves without any focus.

I have a problem with this paragraph, Pantoufle.  If the documentation ISN'T something that should be read and followed, the documentation should be changed so that it IS something that should be read and followed.  The documentation is there for a reason.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

I once said that I would never play a half-giant.

Then I did, and I realized that one could actually achieve an enjoyable character without defying the documentation. A half-giant can speak normally, if not nessessarily in great depth. A half-giant can think clearly, without thinking in scholarly terms. A half-giant can make things interesting for everyone because their lack of instant understanding and their innate curiosity begs for 'talking to strangers'.

A half-giant does not have to be an utter idiot to fit the role. He has to be slow in understanding, but not nessessarily so slow that he never gets it right. He is clumsy, but not so clumsy that he can't function in the real world. He can even lead, particullarly if he has been raised in an enviroment that relates to the sort of group he is leading. He can do all of this, and still not defy documentation. He'll probably make numerous changes in goals, some of them maybe even not even thought out, just because his curiosity piques him.

Ask your ten year old what he would do in this situation or that. You'll discover that the reasoning capabilities of a ten year old are not quite as undeveloped as you might think they are.

There's a reason that 'from the mouths of babes' has endured as a saying for so long.

[Clearsighted]

To add to the difficulty I think are the contradictions in the documentation and over analysis of players.  So what if the help file says they are all innately kind and loving?  The help files also say fire elementalists inherantly hate shadow elementalists, but that decade+ old snippet of documentation certainly doesn't mean you have to play your fire elementalist as a shadow-hating maniac.  Relax.  Don't read into what ancient help files say so much.  Take what you want out of the small details, it's the more obvious ones which violating would actually be considered OOC: like elves riding kanks or dwarves without any focus.

I have a problem with this paragraph, Pantoufle.  If the documentation ISN'T something that should be read and followed, the documentation should be changed so that it IS something that should be read and followed.  The documentation is there for a reason.

The document should serve as the foundation of any character. But I think what displays true understanding of it, is not to rely on it 100%, but to use it to build a realistic and believable character from.

[spawnloser]

The document should serve as the foundation of any character. But I think what displays true understanding of it, is not to rely on it 100%, but to use it to build a realistic and believable character from.

Okay, Krathi don't like being in the dark...and there is a reason for this.  Drovians don't like being in the light...and there is a reason for this.  Play one of either and figure out why.  That documentation cited by Pantoufle has little to do, in my eyes, with showing why the half-giant documentation should not be followed.  Of course, you build up...but you should never exclude, or we will end up with the proverbial kank-riding elf, because that is only a detail, mind you.

[Bebop]

I don't like half giants.  They are overly powerful and not enough people RP them right.  The race should be closed or as high as a mul karma.  I have HG karma and I never intend to use it just because I don't feel like trying to find the balance between someone who is smart enough to survive independantly but apparently still not that smart.  Also HGs lack any kind of cultural referance (even more so than dwarves) And being dumb, yet somehow self sufficent leaves little room for goals or much of a background.

[Angela Christine]

Half-giants are allowed to play Merchants, Elementalists, Rangers, Pickpockets, Burglars, and Assassins, not only Warriors.  On the other hand I've never met a half-giant Sorcerer, and I don't think they are allowed to be Sorcerers (the same way that city elf's can't be Rangers and d-elfs can't be Pickpockets).   They have penalties to some skills (it's hard for a 12 foot tall guy to hide or blend in to the crowd).  They generally won't be as good at many classes as other races, because their low, low wisdom means it takes an ungodly length of time to branch or master any skill (including combat skills).

That hard-coded bit of reality tells me that half-giants are smart enough to do most of the activities that those classes are known for . . . eventually.  They can be Rangers, despite the fact that tracking is tricky, extracting the good bits from a corpse is apparently highly skilled, and bows and crossbows can be difficult to master.  Lock picking is a very complex skill requiring pretty good coordination and manual dexterity, but half-giant Burglars are smart enough to do it right out of char gen.  Pick locks isn't a skill you can really learn well from "monkey see, monkey do" because when you watch someone else pick a lock you can't see what the picks are doing inside the lock.  Half-giant Merchants are smart enough to figure out what things are really worth, haggle for a better price, and eventually master a variety of crafts, perhaps eventually understanding enough about construction and engineering to build a functional wagon.  
If half-giants weren't smart enough to do all those things it would be easy enough to restrict them solely to being Warriors and Elementalists, and let them use sub-guilds to represent shallow understanding of crafting, sneakiness or other skills.  





Anyway, playing a non-warrior may help break out of the stereotype.  There is less temptation to go "Hulk smash!" when you know that your PC isn't actually very good at smashing things.   :wink:

[Rhyden]

I don't like half giants.  They are overly powerful and not enough people RP them right.  

Yeah, they're powerful. Overly powerful? No such thing in Armageddon. Some things have more power than other things. It's not fair. Yep.

The race should be closed or as high as a mul karma.

Agreed, somewhere around 4-5 karma though.

Also HGs lack any kind of cultural referance (even more so than dwarves) And being dumb, yet somehow self sufficent leaves little room for goals or much of a background.

Half-giants still have goals, they may be more simple and spontaneous though. Like, "I want some food". Or, "I want a set of spiky armor". And as for backgrounds, I completely disagree. Half-giants are still living a story. All half-giants are same in some ways, but different in more ways. Half-giants' initial backgrounds can be as creative or as dull as anyone else's. And future backgrounds (biography entries) can be just as creative and plentiful. You may have a half-giant who started out in the rinth, lives like a rinthi, joins the Byn, becomes an ale-drinking, dirty-talking mercenary, leaves and joins Kadius as a fashionable hunter then finally become a noble's perfect-talking, politic-acknowledged hill-sized parrot.

[Angela Christine]

Hamsters raise their own babies successfully because they have instinct.  A spider is virtually brainless compared to humans yet they instinctively know how to weave their own webs without instruction.  You cannot compare half-giants to hamsters just as you cannot compare apples to oranges.

This is just my own opinion, but I equate half-giant "stupidity" as remotely comparable to clinically retarded people.  While some may be able to successfully raise children, without doing a great deal of research on the disease, I'd venture a guess that most actually cannot (even if a hamster can).  They may be able to do things hamsters cannot, like speak languages and use tools, but their mental faculties might not be sufficient for more complicated tasks, such as rearing their own children.  I don't think the only reason half-giants lack communities of their own is simply because they don't want to, I don't think they're CAPABLE of it.  Opinions, here, obviously will vary.  In an earlier post LoD said it might be unrealistic for a half-giant to choose merchanting or in-depth crafting roles for a half-giant.  According to this logic, which I agree with, if a half-giant cannot become an adept craftsman, how is (s)he going to be able to successfully raise children on his own without any intervention of the other humanoids races?  The question is, what mental faculties are beyond the range of a half-giant's?  Unforuntately, the more in-depth you answer this, the more contradictions and restrictions you may be imposing upon the race.

Interesting.  I guess that brings up the question of whether half-giants are smarter or stupider than True Giants.  Presumably True Giants do live independently and raise their own children.


The other humanoid abominations of breeding that we commonly see are:
Mul = human + dwarf
Half-elf = human + elf

In both of those cases the normal characteristics for the half-race falls between the norms for the two parent races.  But it is conceivable that the magickally assisted procreation of the ancients resulted in a creature stupider than either of its parent racers.  I suppose it could go either way.

[spawnloser]

/me blinks.

Are you serious, AC?  Muls are stronger than both humans and dwarves from all I've been able to tell.  For the other stats, I'd believe it...but for strength...?

HG > Mul > every other PC race

[Sokotra]

Are you serious, AC?  Muls are stronger than both humans and dwarves from all I've been able to tell.  For the other stats, I'd believe it...but for strength...?

I've always assumed this was the case as well, but I'm also unsure if this -should- be the case.  I don't think this part of the game has evolved quite right, unless we are just simply wrong.

Dwarves, from what I gathered of how the game was originally supposed to be, should be very strong... not as strong as HG's but stronger than Mul's.  I also have questions about the dwarven immunity to poisons that doesn't really seem to ever work.  (I've had it work once years ago, but never since then as far as I know)  I know the docs say they may be "virtually OR literally immune to poisons" depending on the individual, but come on... if they are "virtually" immune, then they should resist and recover a heck of a lot better than your average human.  This does not seem to be the case.  

As with the strength issue, I have questions about if Dwarves are codedly working right or not.  

From the Documentation:

Physically, muls bear most of the bulk of their dwarven parent, being extremely strong and rugged. Most of the height and cunning of their human ancestry is preserved as well--

In my opinion, from what it seems... dwarves should be and need to be fixed so they are stronger than muls and their poison resistance needs to be beefed up or fixed.   This is just my opinion, I don' t know everything... so I could be wrong.  Feel free to enlighten me.

[spawnloser]

Well, Sokotra, this game is based on Dark Sun from AD&D 2e (based on only, mind you).  In AD&D, dwarves are hardier than muls, but muls are stronger than dwarves.  I would guess that this carried over from that...having the bulk of the dwarven parent on a larger frame means more strength maybe?  The stretching of this bulk over the larger frame means not quite as much endurance due to the increased weight to height ratio?  I don't know.  That's just how it was.

[Clearsighted]

In Dark Sun, the average Mul is also around seven feet tall. And their strength is explained by having the Dwarvish build.

[Marauder Moe]

The reason that muls are stronger than dwarves is that while they only have at best equal potential for muscle growth, they are just plain bigger.  More total muscle mass, longer arms and legs, longer torso, and such.

Another thing to remember is that genetics isn't neccesarily based on linear scales.  A combination of two sets of genes doesn't always produce phenotypes that are quantitative averages of the parents.  Features can be the result of genes being either on or off with nothing in between.  Intelligence in particular may not be a linear thing.  There are animals with bigger brains than humans.  Heck, I believe Neandtherthals had bigger brains than humans.  It's all about having the right, balanced combination of proteins or whatnot.  Half-giants might just be missing a few, rather than getting their stupidity from giant genes.