Giants are much more interesting in folklore than in most RPGs. In fact giants are often sadly overlooked in RPGs. Fortunately, there's a way you can change that.
In many TTRPGs, giants have become a simple escalating challenge: bigger and bigger versions to encounter in tactical fights as your characters progress. A scalable threat, with a side serving of elemental power. Whether shaped by frost, fire, clouds or the lumpy quality of a hill, they just get bigger, in a series of power show-downs. All too often, they have little other presence in the world. They are not usually mysterious, and they certainly are not evocative springboards into otherworldly adventure.
It is true that, in many European fairy tales, especially in England, giants are often depicted as being unintelligent, or slow-witted. But that is because their purpose in those stories is to give the hero an opportunity to be clever and quick, almost as if these qualities are what define a hero (rather than any moral compass...?). The hero doesn't win by fighting. In this way, the stories reflect cultural values and the giant is the larger foe, the seemingly unconquerable enemy who is defeated by cunning.
And there are plenty of other examples of giants in folklore and mythology that are far more nuanced, interesting and three-dimensional than they are sometimes depicted in TTRPGs.
There are many examples of individual giants in British folklore that are for more than just a 'scalable threat'. How about the one with the bean stalk? Classic example: he isn't just big. He lives in another world, possibly The Otherworld. Jack can only go there by magical means: magical means, by the way, which seem to be intrinsically tied up with leaving his mother and could possibly be seen as a rite of passage, but also involve a reference to agriculture. Planting crops leads to all the treasures he brings back, which turn out to include music, livestock and commerce (in the form of gold). Late Stone Age, anyone?
When Jack does get to the other world, not just the giant is super-sized by everything. Its a magical place, connected with the sky. And when Jack returns, he comes back with a magical harp (that sings songs and tells poems and is therefore symbolic of either wisdom and learning or the skill of the bard, or both) and a hen that lays golden eggs. Magical items.
We see this further dimension, too, in Irish mythology, with Finn McCool defeating the Scottish giant Benandonner by pretending to be his own baby. These giants, may not really be giants in the stories' original forms (see here for further explanation...), but instead 'heroes'. By which I mean heroes in the traditional sense: that of killing loads of your people's enemies. And some of them are also berserkers, who are clearly only giants when they adopt the riastadh, which is a kind of berserk frenzy (that you see Slaine go into in the old 2000AD comics), something like the hulk, but messier. Now that is something we don't see in RPGs very often. I'm NOT suggesting a were-giant though, before a certain well-known publisher of splat books decides there's a small fortune to be made in it. No, I'm NOT. I'm talking about trained, professional warriors who seem absolutely normal until certain conditions are met (such as being pissed off), when they metamorphose into a nine foot tall... man? Like a were-man? No, I don't mean that, I don't...
It would be cool though. A great foe for your fighter.
Another Irish giant is Dryantore, who is a sorcerer. He conjures mist and puts the heroes to sleep.
Then there's Jack of Irons, from Yorkshire. An undead giant with blackened skin and the decapitated heads of his enemies tied to his belt and, in some versions, I think, his own head strapped to his huge club (or did I imagine that...?). This guy's a ghost, essentially, though whether a ghost of a giant or just a big spook, is unclear. I think both are valid.
A quick note on 'frost giants' of Norse mythology. Or Jotuns as they are properly called. These are not even really 'giants' at all. They are, if anything 'anti-gods', not quite demons, but an alternative to the gods, perhaps chaotic, in opposition to the 'order' the gods bring, but that's a little over simplistic. The Norse gods don't seem that ordered or lawful to me, but then I'm not an early medieval Scandinavian. Jotuns are more similar to the Titans of Greek mythology and there's a good reason for it, but that's for another post...
And last, but certainly not least, we cannot forget the Nephilim.
The cut-to-the-chase version of the Nephilim story is this: angels/angelic beings saw how hot mortal women were and decided to come down to earth to get some. Women, that is. They seductively seduced the women and 'begat' children. Who were giants. Nephilim. there is some debate about the meaning of that word and I've seen is translated as meaning 'fallen', from the Greek. That doesn't make sense to me as it was their fathers who came down to earth, not them. Apparently it could also mean giant in Aramaic, so I'm guessing that's probably on the money. Anyway, what works for me here is the connection between giants and the mystical. They are not just a random, mortal breed of human-like thing, they are the offspring of a forbidden supernatural relationship.
But it gets better (at least, in terms of engaging story, not in terms of humanistic treatment of 'other'...). Because God was so annoyed by the whole situation, not to mention that the Nephilim had started eating people and stealing food and acting like all carry on, that he had a flood to get rid of them. And that is why there was a flood. Only they don't die. They drown, yes, and they die physically, but their spirits linger. Nowhere to go, you see. So they hang around on post-diluvial earth, causing trouble, and because they have no proper place and they don't know what to do with themselves, one of the things they do with themselves is put themselves inside other people...
In other words, they become demons.
When a person in the biblical world (according to this version of the story), gets possessed by a demon, that's the displaced spirit of a dead giant-offspring of a rebellious Angel. Which explains why demons might be in your world, without being summoned. It connects lore and current world issues and it makes demons, giants and angels ALL more interesting. In my opinion anyway.
Its probably been done in fiction somewhere. Some of these themes definitely appear in John Gwynne's Blood And Bone trilogy (which is awesome, by the way).
Look I'm not saying you have to accept this as gospel or anything... I'm saying this is what happens in one of the versions of this story. And I think its cool because it means things can be tied together by players or by you and when player characters meet a Giant, that's a little piece of world lore, stomping around. And when they meet someone Possessed, likewise.
Another way of making Giants more present in your world is to tie them to more magical ingredients. Giants need to be more mystical. And what better way to make stuff mystical than to make it about... skulls!
What if Giant skulls are magical and can empower magical spells? In whatever genre. Or can be used to animate the undead, because they bridge the gap between the natural and supernatural worlds? Or if giant-size femurs just make better magic staffs because they channel arcane power more readily? Maybe giant bone dust, not chalk, is what needs to be used to draw a pentagon. Or if the teeth, when sown, and the correct incantation uttered, become animate skeletons?
It's your game and its your world, but don't miss out on the possibilities for making Giants much cooler than they sometimes appear in well-used splat-books.
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