Have Giants always been this interesting?

[Nettlekid]

Reading through both the Monster Manual and Volo's Guide I keep finding myself drawn to the different castes of Giants, and how developed their various societies are. Different subraces fill all the social roles that you might design for a campaign world, from the obnoxiously aristocratic Cloud Giants to the militant Fire Giants to the brutish Frost and Hill Giants to the contemplatively artistic Stone Giants to the reclusive mystic hermits that are Storm Giants. I could easily imagine a campaign world where these Giants fill the roles of Dwarves and Elves and Orcs, just bigger. And I don't at all remember them being this interesting in 3.5 - I always imagined them to be just big meatheads with different colors. Looking back at it I see the 3.5 Monster Manual having a line or two of flavor text, but someone that didn't stick with me the way the 5e descriptions have. Has anyone had experience using Giants like this, in their respective societies, as opposed to random encounters or a single one in some authority role? What was your experience?

[Sir cryosin]

Ya it called storm kings thunder. If you like the giant society. look up what the ordining is. And how that plays into giants Society.

[mephnick]

I thought the same for years, but the 5e MM really gave them some good focus. I'm running SKT now and despite some narrative problems I have with it, it does a great job introducing the giant societies as cool things you want to use and learn about. I'll definitely be using giants more often in my home campaign.

[Tanarii]

AD&D had the Against the Giants modules. This also led to the introduction of the Drow, in the follow-up D series modules.

[MeeposFire]

5e to an extent has tried to somewhat go back to the older style (AD&D and older D&D) of monster descriptions that gives out more fluff. Those older books tended to do that more than the 3e and 4e era books tended to do which more often shifted the focus to more stats.

If you like it then you tend to find it a better read and teh fluff brings interesting ideas. If you do not like it you probably feel like the fluffy bits could have been replaced with more monsters and the fluff is padding.

At different times I have had different feelings on this but lately I tend to like the more fluffy books. I read my oldest books a lot more than the 3e and 4e ones (though that is not to say I do not enjoy playing them, especially 4e, but in terms of reading outside of setting books and a few others they are not really good reading books).

[mephnick]

I wish they would have chosen a middle ground on the MM and Volo's. I love the lore and I think it really helps me as a DM understand the creatures, but they really needed to beef up the stat blocks a bit. There's so few immunities, weaknesses and special abilities compared to other editions. Half the monsters in the MM are HP, AC and a melee attack. I get they were going for simplicity, but they went above and beyond with fluff and really bland with crunch.