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1. OD&D - Hobbits. Pipe-smoking gourmands who rarely adventured
2. 1E - Fat and Good at thievery
3. Kender - Hyperactive kleptomaniacs
4. Dark Sun Cannibals - Humans are delicious!
5. 4E - Skinny, quick, and charismatic
6. Lemoncurry - Other
I took halflings back to their roots as pastoral farmers, but played up the traits of protection, community and co-operation. In 4e terms, they would make good leaders and defenders.
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I don't actually play 4E, but I prefer the 4E Halfling concept.
Now Gnomes however, are a completely different story. In my campaign world, Gnomes are like the Nelwyns of Willow. So, in my game, Gnomes fulfill the small pastoral farmer niche. Halflings are almost exactly the way they are portrayed in 4E (except they're related to Humans - kind of like the real world Hobbits: products of evolutionary miniaturization).
__________________ Mark "El Mahdi" Armstrong - Semper Operor Verus
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1. OD&D - Hobbits. Pipe-smoking gourmands who rarely adventured
Hmm. What is this thread missing?
I know! A humourless hobbit fan to split hairs over the perceived laziness of 0E halflings! This looks like a job for Hairfoot.
Tolkien's Shire hobbits were the product of several generations of easy, unthreatened living. They were no more or less likely to go adventuring than a normal, modern suburbanite. Hobbits which lived under harsher circumstances would be very different indeed, just as humans are (and to which they're related).
Also, in The Hobbit, Tolkien writes that Gandalf was resented in the Shire because he had a history of encouraging young hobbits to go off adventuring, and that the Tooks, especially, had a long and frequent history of taking off on adventures, never to be seen again.
Despite the ingrained assumption that old-style hobbits are lazy, reluctant adventurers, there's absolutely nothing in their Tolkien roots which implies that.
Dark Sun and Lemon Curry Halflings. Yum. Actually, Dark Sun and Ghostwise [3e FR]* Halflings.
The former because it was such a novel experience having even a low level character party being scared of halflings. Good times. The latter? Well, I just like them, and homebrewed them so's I like them even more. Poor bastards.
* Yes, even though it's a FR thing. That too was homebrewed mercilessly.
Location: Toledo, OH; formerly Louisville, KY; formerly Somerset, KY
Posts: 444
Other. I really like the Pathfinder take on halflings. My own isn't bad either (humans magically trapped in a dimiinutive body with big, hairy feet for soem crime or another). Beyond that give me a Tolkeinesque/1E/2E halfling
My first character ever in a RPG was a Halfling (Basic Set 1977) and was neither Hobbit nor Fat Thief? If I recall I thought of them as proportional, fit...er...hobbits. I would say I thought of them more like Merry and Pippin then Bilbo or Sam.
AD
Barking Alien
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I my campaigns, I generally have two subcultures of halflings...
There's the fat, barefoot, bumpkin country halflings. "Hobbit" is a vaguely derogatory term for these guys along the lines of calling someone a "Redneck"... Though the Hobbits will take perverse pride in the term, often enough.
Then there's the slimmer, suave, shoe-wearing 3E/4E city halflings.
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My preferred take of halflings is as river-dwelling gypsies who ply their "trades" (thievery, conmanship and jewelry-making) from their barges, which they also live on. I can't remember where but I think some published world has a similar take (probably getting the idea from me ). But I had the thought that they are descended from a small race of humans who took to the water millenia ago and are so small because of thousands of years on the river selected out larger folk because it was preferrable to be small on the barges.
Gnomes in my 4E setting are kind of like magical hobbits--they live in dwellings like hobbit holes (Bag End) but aren't mundane tea-drinking English folk but rather weavers of illusion and crafters of arcane trinkets. I suppose you could say that they are domesticate Fae.
In my campaign world, Gnomes are like the Nelwyns of Willow. So, in my game, Gnomes fulfill the small pastoral farmer niche. Halflings are almost exactly the way they are portrayed in 4E (except they're related to Humans - kind of like the real world 
I would say I thought of them more like Merry and Pippin then Bilbo or Sam.
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