The Feeding of Giants

[Jürgen Hubert]

I'm trying to work out some details for Urbis. And right now, I am wondering just how much the various types of giants need to eat - and where they get all that food from.

What kind of population density do they have - both those who live in hunter-gatherer tribes and those who live from agricultural products? How do giants do agriculture, anyway?

For integrating giants into my setting, their food supply needs to work - I am not willing to simply handwave this issue away. Mind you, their solution do not need to be limited to what is possible in real life - magic can change a lot, after all - but simply saying: "It's, uh, magic!" and leaving it at that is deeply unsatisfying to me.


What are your thoughts on this issue?

 

[Tonguez]

Giants have very slow yet very effecient metabolisms and this leds to a few 'facts'

1. Giants only need to eat once per week. A large meal (eg a whole cow, a bowl of beans and a mug of ale) which they will spend the rest of the week digesting
2. Giants extract high % of energy from the food they eat with minimal waste. Unlike most omnivores they can digest celloluse. Giants are also able to extract minerals from rock and soil which they will eat on occasion.
3. During their digestion period giants will sleep upto 20 hours per day (average 12 - 16) - giants sleep a lot
4. A Giant who does not eat at least one meal each 'cycle' becomes ravenous (and will raid to fill their hunger)
5.Giants are slow moving so as to conserve energy
6. Giant population densities tend to be low (as giants like to have large personal territories) and will generally only tolerate close relatives within their territory

On average these factors mean that Giants do not eat much more than the human population of an area would.

As to Agriculture Giants take an ecological approach to agriculture, and will tend wild crops, clearing weed species and encouraging the growth of beneficial food species. What looks to the uninformed like a verdant forest thicket may infact been a giants garden filled with fruits, tubers, leafy greens and herbs

 

[ajanders]

1. Giants need concentrated food -- like meat. Dire or giant animals -- at least the herbivores -- are their food animals. You get "Giant lands" where the animals are big, as are the things that hunt them.

2. Giants don't get enough to eat most of the time. That's why they raid human lands so intensively: it's a matter of survival. Think of them as "Viking" giants, raiding for food.

While neither of these work for the fairy-tale "giant in a cloud castle", once you climbed up a magic beanstalk into a magic castle looking for a magic harp, a little more handwaving won't hurt.

 

[S'mon]

D&D giants all seem to be hunter types. I'd suggest they eat the same proportionally as humans, near enough; so a 12' tall 1600 lb human-shaped giant will need 8 times the food of a 6' 200 lb human. In actuality, a 12' tall fire giant probably weighs more like 3200lb, 16 times the 6' human, so 16 times as much food.

 

[gizmo33]

While neither of these work for the fairy-tale "giant in a cloud castle", once you climbed up a magic beanstalk into a magic castle looking for a magic harp, a little more handwaving won't hurt.

Cloud giants can get Hill Giants to bring them offerings of food in exchange for whatever - protection, shiny trinkets, etc. Cloud giants can also eat Roc eggs I guess. Storm Giants can eat seaweed.

 

[gizmo33]

Oh, and giants can probably brew beer too. A farmer could trade a cartload of grain and bushel of hops to a cloud giant in exchange for help in getting his cat out of a tree (or whatever). The giant can collect plenty of rain water from storm clouds, and barrels that he sees washing about the ocean after a shipwreck. The beer (plus some griffon feathers) could be traded to hill giants for meat and skins.

 

[Stormborn]

Tonguez has some very good suggestions about a "realistic" giant's metabolsim. If you are going to have various types of giants you could easily say they each have a unique method of obstain nutriants unavailable to most other species.

Cloud Giants - in addition to hunting great flying creatures of the upper atmosphere that most earth bound races never even see these giants have special pores in their skin that allow them to take in moisture reducing their need to drink.

Fire Giants - the bodies of the creatures are infected with a symbiotic bacteria that converts the heat and chemicals of volcanic enviroments into energy. The biproduct of this process fuel fire giants, who regularly ingest volcanic materials to help the process along. Cold hinders these creatures, which explains the fire giants reaction to cold spells.

Frost Giants - these beings possess far less biological matter than their size would suggest. Instead large portions of their bodies are laced with a secondary skeleton of ice crystals. This expalins their vulnerabitly to fire.

Hill and Rock Giants- both of these races have magical infused digestive systems that enable them to digest raw earth and stone as food when biological material is not available. Some develop a "taste" for certain minerals, which can be a significant problem for miners.

Etc. Sea base gaints could absorb sea water for food and so on. Just because they look vaguely human doesnt mean their biology is anything like a humans.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

Pretty much...

IIRC, they're less likely to be able to harvest crops. The smaller giants like ogres and hill giants might be able to, but larger giants probably will have a harder time raising cereals and other food crops (just thinking of hand size here). Giantish access to cereals is likely to improve if they are near humanoids and can barter or take their harvests in packaged forms. They'll have an easier time with fruit trees.

In the wild, they'll probably be herders or hunters. Hunting allows for a pretty long leisure time, much of which they can spend sleeping, but also allows for food shortages that get them riled up to go raiding. Herding is more sufficient, and encourages nomadism. Note that meat animals don't have to be the same size as the consumer; after all, chicken is a staple of the Western larder, and isn't anywhere near as big as a person. A giant can get by on deer, cattle, buffalo/bison, and other things; hunting medium-to-large herbivores is probably even easier with boulder-throwing. A deer hit by a boulder is likely to die too fast to know it should run, leaving the meat in better (tastier) condition.

Also note that giants, in general, don't see much difference between creatures of the same size category in terms of eating. The only difference to them between a human wizard and a deer is that the wizard probably put up more of a fight (which is still a reason to go for the deer first).

Brad

 

[Satori]

I can see Rock/Stone Giants eating raw earth or even precious metals, as their appearance is decidedly "Earthy".

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/giant.htm#stoneGiant

For Hill Giants, though, I prefer the old fashioned cannibal method.

Like the Morlocks from "The Time Machine", they raid human settlements to capture slaves for food. In addition, larger villages keep humans caged like livestock.

Because they're relatively limited in intelligence, they typically eat humans raw or in simple recipes, like stews/kebobs/etc...

Just a thought.

 

[Peni Griffin]

Examine real life ecologies here. The largest animals are all, without exception, herbivores. Even the giant predators of the Pleistocene, such as the short-faced bear (bigger than a modern grizzly and built for speed), were smaller than much of the available prey, which included the ridiculously huge Western Camel, ground sloth, mammoth, and mastodon. Modern predators such as the wolf overwhelmingly gain their sustenance, however, from much smaller species. An Arctic wolf's summer diet consists almost entirely of mice and voles.

There are reasons for all of this which are too complex to go into in a newsgroup post but can be easily researched by the willing party. There's nothing like researching real-world facts to spark imaginary adventures, either! Go for it.