Your experience roleplaying with a half-giant PC

[Gerhazo]

When me and a group of friends first started playing, we ended up running into Jotunhold and the giants by various circumstances, myself being led there after the end of a Guldorand outskirts trip led by a character I forget the name of, later a government position in the town.

And each of us had the universal reaction of it having been an extremely unique and cool experience, of witnessing such high effort put into a character and culture. And moreso, that this area existed, where this sort of culture thrived, being entirely player-run. Even though my characters didn't visit there regularly themselves, it made the world feel alive to know that it was being run and that there was activity there.
This is the sort of thing that really enriches a roleplay server's world and makes it feel alive and varied - that there are players running their own little places with their own culture.

It has been very disappointing to see this RP corner being killed off, when it was doing such a different and unique thing, at a time when much of the world seems to be devolving into a "surface vs underdark TDM" vibe.

Moreso still, with the players having been putting so much effort and work into their interactions, contrary to many other races that I'd see more problematic as being handled in a generic fashion.

When seeing a giant, I immediately expected to have a different sort of experience, which oft ended up unique, than I would with a plain "human archetype", as the players tended to put much effort into their roleplay.
"human archetype", as there are so many other award races that often seem to just be picked for their racial benefits or aesthetics and often, other than appearance or character description, often indistinguishable from each other by how their characters usually act:

Seeing a giant, I expected something different, just as I do if seeing a gnoll, an ogre, derro,
If I see a tiefling, or a gloaming, I don't have any idea of how my interaction might look like, my mind doesn't wander to their respective backgrounds, but only the thought that the player wanted to have a tail, or wings.
A genasi - oft feels as if picked for their mechanical benefits. An earth genasi half-orc's build choice can be reasonably deduced.
Fey - perhaps not helped by the recent remodel and their somewhat mocking nickname of "hin with wings", but I've seen the players' attitudes to playing their characters shift now that they were of a tangible size.
This is just taking into account award races, considering the half-giant's former status, but otherwise, races like half-orc, half-elf, among others, could be lumped here as well.
(this is not a jab at the respective races, as there are always people that -do- go the extra mile and that's how I felt about most half-giant players, who proportionally put much more effort into their characters than most other races would receive)

To summarise my point, it was/is far more interesting to run into a giant, than it was a human/horc/genasi/tiefling/<general usually directionless race>, as I could reasonably expect them to do an interesting thing and put much effort into it.
I think it's fascinating and should be positively indicative of an RP server, that the community was able to bring depth for a race that had so little background and it brings me much surprise that it has been met with scrutiny, when there are many other races with actual extensive lore to them that are played as human reskins/optimized build setups with no issue raised.

[stop bullying bards]

half-giants were/are an awesome part of the server. Sad that they're gone. Want them back.

[Aog]

Good.

[jubisloviu]

Good.

[Effortless Lace]

Good.

[Kythana]

It wasn't my cup of tea. Not for the reasons stated though. The lore was fine, and the characters were about as you can expect. Some good, some bad. Nothing ever stood out as being particularly egregious.

That being said, I find their removal extremely disrespectful to those who put in a lot of effort to make Jotunhold, fill it with all sorts of thematic setpieces, and the community who fostered something there.

Again, it wasn't something I personally enjoyed, but it was a cool niche for the players that enjoyed it. And promptly deleting the flow of new half-giants just killed the RP, and a generally wholesome sub-community.

[Craithe]

Some of my most immersive roleplay experiences have been had by playing, interacting, and adventuring with half-giant character. Its a huge sadness that they aren't available to play.

[BurntGnome]

I loved interacting with all of the half giants, and I find the assault on them for "lore reasons" to follow some of the most asinine logic Ive seen on here in a while. It was unwarranted, and still is, and should not have been a factor in keeping them or not. This is like removing half-elves because they chose to embrace the elf half, or half orcs for choosing the embrace the orc half. If you want to choke out rp because it doesnt fit your specific notion of how the "setting" is, I'll be frank: You are anti-fun and need to have some introspective review on what is actually important in a roleplay venture like this.

All this nonsense has done is more or less kill Jotunhold, leaving another Westcliff style ruin. Intentionally doing this is baffling to me, because it was a great RP scene with great characters. It comes off as spiteful and short sighted, something I do not want to see when it comes to development. And like with Westcliff, it's not too late to reverse course and allow life to breathe in these places.

[chris a gogo]

I put mixed.
I have no issue with the players role play it was generally good but I did think all of it could of been done by a Norse themed human.

I also find such monster races require a stepping out of the character and treating them with ooc consideration not ic, as generally you would kill such creatures when encountered.

[Memento Mori]

This is like removing half-elves because they chose to embrace the elf half, or half orcs for choosing the embrace the orc half. If you want to choke out rp because it doesnt fit your specific notion of how the "setting" is, I'll be frank: You are anti-fun and need to have some introspective review on what is actually important in a roleplay venture like this.

I'm not going to comment on the first half of the original paragraph because I don't know the reasons why half-giants were removed, nor did I celebrate it despite my interactions.

Though, I want to make it perfectly clear that this is a false equivalence. Half-elves and half-orcs have fully established lore for the editions that Arelith borrows to make their homebrew. Helfs and horcs are common enough that their presence in civilized society is fairly normalized, and they have the freedom to lean one way or another in terms of embracing heritage - though often feel strange and out of place no matter what.

Half-giants have one mention of existence, in the form of divinity/godhood. If they do exist beyond that one example, they likely don't have the luxury of 'leaning into their heritage' because they're presumably exceptionally rare in addition to being completely excluded from the ordning - AKA realistically pushed out entirely from any and all Giant adjacent activities, or begrudgingly allowed to observe but not participate.

This isn't to say that they shouldn't attempt to create their own hierarchy, or come up with their own traditions (which is what they did) - but this is not the first time in this thread that someone has said "it's the same as other half-races" when it absolutely is not. The team had to remind the playerbase not to roleplay as if they were giants (to mean, ignoring their other half-heritage or leaning so heavily into the Jotun that that's all people saw).

TL;DR "but lore" - except it's literally the bare minimum

They're not a default race with socially accepted alternative leanings. They're an award race that was initially being held to a higher standard ('do not be culturally indistinguishable from full giants') and it would be nice if we could stop hiding behind "let people enjoy things" when people other than myself have expressed that the direction half-giants went did not live up to expectations, was disruptive, or alienating in some way and therefore not enjoyable for them to play or interact with. Obviously there isn't really a perfect solution to make everyone happy, but it's weird how "let people enjoy things" really seems to mean "let me and my friends do things we want and everyone else just has to deal with it".

Regardless of how many posts there are in support or against this, there is a non-insignificant impact from this mindset which is better articulated by other players in the other active poll regarding reward cycling and race additions. (TL;DR unleashing things in the name of fun can skew the server setting drastically, and considerations should be made for which direction these things will take the server).

Anyway, I'm not sure where you're getting this notion of a desire to "choke out" RP from my commentary on a lack of lore. Nowhere in my posts did I say that I didn't think half-giants shouldn't come back - I even specified that if/when they did the team should add in lore on the wiki. It doesn't have to be detailed and stifling articles, and it doesn't even have to be accurate to FR 3e (because, again, there's nothing about them in it, and additionally most of the fey lore is also not FR canon) but there should be something for guidelines and expectation to avoid players utilizing half-giants as a replacement for actual giants or being misconstrued as one.

As an aside, Firbolgs exist (with lore, even!) and I'm surprised people aren't bringing up their existence as an alternative or trying to advocate that they be brought down to a Greater in absence of half-giants. Reward cycling is a normal thing, but I still think it was pretty rotten to bump this race to a Major while removing half-giants entirely. Not having a reliable circulation of new blood and demotivation (from the sudden removal, and the only other Jotun adjacent race being largely inaccessible) is likely a large part why Jotunhold couldn't maintain the existing population, which is a shame for the people that did enjoy it - however, I won't go so far as to equate it to Westcliff since there was different purposes in its original existence/what it turned into vs. Jotunhold then/now.

[Kalthariam]

I've not had a negative experience ever interacting with a Half Giant PC.

I know I have jokingly made comments about taking psychic damage from a certain someone's introduction. But it was meant as a jest, I was glad to see someone actually putting effort into their RP and character.

My limited experience with Jotunhold has been a positive one. It was always RP, and good RP, not people itching for an excuse to killbash others. RP always came first, and accords could be reached in most cases.

Generally I became interested in talking to half-giant PC's because of my interactions with many Half-giant PCs.

Their removal is still something I find to be very unfortunate.

Half-Giant RP wasn't everyone's cup of tea, and that's okay. You didn't -have- to interact with them if it wasn't your cup of tea. The Half-giant RP wasn't harming anyone, and completely cutting it off because some people didn't like it. (The same people that likely don't like anything outside of Humans, Elves and Dwarves usually) is not productive in my opinion.

[Paint]

I do want to note that polls of public opinion like this are usually poisoned by a couple of factors, and after ruminating on it for a bit, I feel like I need to address it;

For starters, anyone who wants the hope of playing a half-giant, it's in their interest to insist they've had positive experiences with half-giants, and they'll probably look on interactions they've had with half-giants more favorably. I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing, but it does mean that at least some of the positivity might be manufactured, and it's important to keep that in mind.

I've been guilty of this in the past, and I'll admit that every time I advocate for wizard buffs or wizard changes, I more or less do this sort of thing. I want to see the best in whatever I'm doing, and sometimes, that means ignoring all of the flaws, or taking the flaws with the good. The danger to this approach is that those flaws can be glaring to other people, and fatal to yourself in the longrun. I know there are people who have had frustrations with half-giant RP, and I have RPed with half-giants that I simply do not believe were attempting to roleplay at all, and there is an easy frustration to extract from that.

Conversely...

There was a very distinct culture surrounding the Jotunhold, and it was a kind of roleplay that I don't think everyone could jive with. Before you pounce on that as the Jotunhold's big flaw, and why half-giant culture is not great, I can say from personal experience there are plenty of sub-communities on arelith that are perfectly fine who produce character roleplay and stories that I don't have much interest in -- RP that I don't jive with.

I think that in general, a lot of the hate for the Jotunhold comes from this place. The Jotunhold was very popular for awhile, and a lot of roleplay happened there. A -lot- of roleplay happened there. If you're someone who doesn't really get it, or doesn't really like it, it's probably immensely frustrating to feel that FOMO while knowing that it's something you can't personally connect with. I have spoken to at least one player who had a half-giant character who felt like they were always on the outside of that culture because they had no real reason to invest in it -- it just wasn't their bag. But furthermore, they felt it colored their interactions with others. And while I do have some sympathies here, I'll admit that this was and still is a rather large problem for a non-award race -- elves. These bigotries and biases are just part of the experience, and I think it's more fun to lean into them than complain about them, as Arelith and its history is a body of years.

A lot of the comments about half-giants playing as giants, I think, comes from here, as in my experience, every half-giant I spoke to was acutely aware of the awkward position of their existence. Most came from estranged parents, or had stints in slavery. Some weren't even aware of their origins until it was made clear to them. The reverence of giant culture at the jotunhold can be seen in a couple of lights: One being a way to bridge the gap between half-giants and their estranged lineage, and other, a sad desire to capture the feeling of being those giants. But that's kind of the point, isn't it?

What some consider 'roleplaying as giants,' is, fittingly, half-giants trying to understand their blood -- the thing that makes them stand out freakishly-- but they are more often than not considered embarrassing runts to their own sires. Part of this process is embracing and reinterpreting that culture, and a lot of conversations about that culture happened in the half-giant subcommunity and often. Sometimes, those conversations got really heated, and sometimes, they produced shame in the participants. There is always the knowledge for a half-giant that they are not what their giant ancestors are , nor will they ever be, and for many, this shame is what motivates them to act bigger and prouder. Is this really the same as roleplaying as a giant? Absolutely not. This is just an incredibly easy and fun motive to get out there and do stuff. Anyone who's been around half-giants long enough will know this.

There were also half-giants who rejected this blood almost entirely, and uh, tend to get mocked as 'big humans,' who weren't really playing a half-giant at all. Damned if you do, damned if you don't, right? So what is it that makes a good half-giant character? If your opinion is that no character can be a good half-giant character, and you're simply tired of seeing them, then your opinion of half-giant PCs is, innately colored, isn't it? You're always going to see half-giant interactions more negatively. You're always going to stamp the button that gets them out of your face faster.

Half-elves and half-orcs do these same kind of things intentionally because of the social stigmas they face. This is definitely a basis in lore. I've seen plenty of half-orcs on arelith who worship grummsh, and none of which who are accused of attempting to roleplay as a full orc. I've also seen half-elves ignore this heritage of theirs, and half-orcs -try- to ignore their heritage, and be played a lot more normally. I've not seen them be called out on this very often, because why bother?

The big TL;DR of this is, while interpreting the words of the people posting on this poll, keep in mind that there are motives conscious and subconscious that involve frustrations being vented as arguments that seem logical, but have emotions underpinning them. People who dislike exotic reward races are always going to insist their interactions with them are by and large negative. People who really like exotic award races are probably going to defend them to the death.

But really, coupled with the conversation involving what people want to see with more interesting and weird races popping up in race reward rotations, I do hope however, that Arelith's popular clique doesn't become whatever the most popular reward race currently in rotation is. It's despairing to see communities built up and then summarily destroyed. Rather than throwing out shiny new things for people to cling to, in my opinion, Arelith should try to understand the communities growing within it already, before it chases off talented roleplayers with unique perspectives who add wonderful texture and stories to it.

[Security_Blanket]

Unless we want to repeat the horrors of the past, the Nephilim must all be destroyed.

[Kohuda]

Half-giants have been a good time.

[VerdeVerde]

I've personally had a great time roleplaying with not just the half-giants of the Jotunhold, but also many who decided to not stay there, and settle themselves in elsewhere on the island. Some great times on Skal with a few of them, evil and good, in Cordor with the ones that settled in there, even in Andunor with the couple that frequented down there quite often be they leaning more into the giant heritage, or their human one, I've seen quite a broad spectrum.

To me, like many, I am sure that it is hard to talk about a lot of this without having it tied back to the Jotunhold, but I feel that speaks more to their success in cultivating a group that really made an impact within the community due to their roleplay rather than anything else, but I feel like it was a genuinely positive and uplifting experience going to the hold for revelry, a good hunt, and then time spent after just laying around chatting about this or that, or telling a story from the character's past. All of those experiences certainly color my perception on the half-giant pc's as a whole and for the positive to me.

[Norsepal]

Unless we want to repeat the horrors of the past, the Nephilim must all be destroyed.

counterpoint: those people definitely deserved to be eaten??? and how else were you nerds supposed to receive the gifts of civilization from the watchers??????

[Ork]

Half-giants require nuance to play well. They're in a rough spot where there's 0 examples within the setting to rely on as a model. The vast majority of half-giants I met on Skal were either roleplaying as giants or just humans with a bigger hat.

I prefer they stay retired. Besides a few notable half-giants, the race detracted from the setting.

[A MAN DRUNK ON POWER]

Personally I've never seen half giants roleplayed as full giants, I don't really know what people are talking about. I suspect they are mistaking "roleplaying a bastard character as honoring their idea of what their legacy is," with "they're acting as if they're playing full giants." Which is disingenuous and almost worthy of the word bigoted, if that is indeed what is happening.

If people actually see characters saying they're full giants and trying to RP explicitly as if they are not half, but full, giants, with no confusion or anything at all, yeah that's really bad! But on the main isle (I've never once played on Skal, and don't think anyone should consider that representative of anything as far as rp goes based on the stories I hear), I've never actually seen that even once, on 3 different characters I've mained, one of which is in fact a half giant, over the past year.

My personal experience is "good." I did think the alignment restrictions were poorly thought out mechanically (they're explicitly not half giants, but have alignment restrictions based on their ancestry, even when those ancestors in some cases didn't have the same restrictions half giants were given?), and I thought it was unfortunate that fire/frost half giants became super popular because they were Greater only and so almost everyone who wanted to play a surfacer with a Greater at their disposal seemed to be rolling them up; it did detract from the "special" aspect of the race. But I think removal entirely is a great detriment to the flavor and diversity of RP on the server.

If individual people are RPing badly, you should message or even just report those people, folks. Drow shouldn't be removed just because sometimes you find a problem child who rolled one up to try and play Drizz't (or worse)

[MarkRed]

Almost every single "flaw" or "negative" I've seen people list here I've seen ten times worse and more often in just about every settlement or group on the Server.

People constantly forgetting and ignoring their race/class/religion's lore, and memeing and throwing spells, speaking barely understandable accents and doing all sorts stupid things... it's nothing special to Jotunhold or Half-Giants. Drow-Loving Sharran Hins. Elven Green Dragon RDDs being friendly to Elves. Banites JOINING THE RADIANT HEART???

Cordor, Brog, Bendir, Guldorand, UD, Mage Tower... they /all/ have alot of these "issues". The only reason you guys point it out and claim it a negative now is because Jotunhold is basically the only place to reliably find the rare Half-Giants.

[Ork]

I'd prefer not to make assumptions on the motivations of others, but I want to be clear that my reason for not enjoying half-giants is not rooted in how the race was played but the race as a whole.

There are no half-giants in any source material. Beyond the prohibition of not playing as a giant, there is nothing guiding the race as a whole towards a unique identity. That is the greatest issue. Where drow, halflings and elves all have exemplars we can gesture towards as some way to differentiate them from humans, there is none of that for half-giants.

If giants are to return at all, I'd prefer them to be full giants.

[Fallout]

Even as i see many Mark "good" i think its mostly due to good intentions and People being polite....i met good and bad...but due to immersive nature of Arelith i would remove them or put under the 5% with some adjusments. How did they further Arelith story over all this time?

On Skal was fun to see them....beyond that, on Arelith, not for me. But this is subjective.

Make them 5% with app if You want to leave them.

[FurnishMyFlatForCheap]

IMO most of the negativity stems from the fact it was a greater/major award.

People feel entitled to said awards based on I’ve been here years all I ever get is a normal forgetting it’s just a nice bonus and could just be taken away, and then proceed to whinge about it forever.

Everyone’s favourite Half-Giant is a great role player which added to the problem by having those that want to be cool like him not being able to.

Every race exotic or otherwise has people who’d rather be the exception not the rule. I am a Shadovar of Tyr. I am a harbinger except I am not evil!

(Still allowed but iirc there was a note about neutral harbinger maybe being put to award likely due to the overwhelming majority being not evil)

The supposed problems with half giants are only more noticeable because they are huge billboards masquerading as a PC

[Power Word, Haste]

I'm going to be frank and speak plainly, once I spent about 3 hours roleplaying in the Jotunhold with the group that occupies that area. I found my experience to be less than stellar because of ooc memery that happened during my time present

A LOT of ooc memery. Which is a big issue on Arelith at large, but the half-giant sphere and associated characters did it at an astonishing rate in my experience. Many of them who would post their own OOC meme-bleed into public discord channels because they thought it was funny.

[xingshi]

The archaic words and spelling was amazing. The jarl of Jotunhold was one of the best characters I've come across and I really do miss RPing with him. As for "roleplaying as full giants" I'm not really sure what that means, but I've never seen them refer to themselves as actual giants. My experience isn't everyone's perspective though. I think, as mentioned above, people have in the past performed a variety of roles incorrectly.

As far as disrespecting the lore or the setting, Arelith is already a custom setting. If you look into the lore of the Astrolabe, for example, you'll find it's already a very unique and non-canon setting. That doesn't have to be a bad thing. We've got Far Realms warlocks running around, that's already kind of crazy. These aren't completely new concepts, half-giants have been a thing in many D&D settings and it's not inconceivable for them to be on Toril as well.

Overall, I think we should bring them back, but we should also hold players responsible more often, and try to educate them if they're playing a role with a big responsibility to play it right incorrectly.

[Second Breakfast]

Personally, I think the better thing would be to add in all the giantkin, since we've still got firbolgs and they're well-defined. I'm talking verbeeg, fomorians, and voadkyn, since there's plenty of resources for them even if there isn't for half-giants.