D&D Beyond: Halflings

[Charlaquin]

Ironically, the opposite is also true. Attributing flavor to the gods, makes the role of the gods feel more mechanical and feel less divine. There is no difference between Mordin making a metal dwarf statue come to life versus a mortal wizard who created a golem or an owlbear. They are simply powerful wizards, both. This is fine for a setting, but it makes less sense to call them ‘gods’ and much less sense to ‘worship’ them. They are powerful. So what.

Nowhere is the adage, “A God is just a monster you kneel to” more true than it is in D&D. Quite literally in editions where the gods have stat blocks.

 

[Sunseeker]

Just take what you want and ignore the rest.

In the homebrew setting that I'm working, I've changed whole swaths of D&D to fit my desire.

Well sure any old goat can do that. But my point was more that, the more these guys come out and "talk about D&D" the more they're setting expectations for people of what they might find at a table, which places more work on me to explain that no, wanderlust is a natural element of humanoids, you Mr Halfling just happen to have a stronger sense of it than others of your people. And then allow the player to say "well, I want it to be a divine thing" and I can go "okay" because that doesn't make a lick of difference to me. But it might to the player. Maybe the idea that the gods are in their people's collective heads pushing buttons really gets them excited. And I mean hey that's great, it just gets some of us really un-exicted.

I agree, @shidaku.

Somehow "godifying" concepts dumbs them down. It is moreorless identical to saying, "the devil made me do it", which shortcircuits the investigation of actual influences and causes. Too much reliance on gods makes the setting feel dumber.

And the main problem is, hard-baking the gods into descriptions makes it increasing difficulty to present the feel of a nonpolytheistic campaign.

Right, or even a godless campaign. It's just more work to take out something that didn't need to be included to begin with, and honestly their explanations are fairly heavy-handed and ham-fisted.

Also, why don't humans have a patron diety? Oh right we can't talk about that because it would upset someone something real-world relgiions...and lets just ignore the fact that the last time we did it the human patron diety was a horrible racist jerk who commanded humans to go out and kill the other races. Oops! Our bad!

While I didn’t care for this presentation of Halflings either, I didn’t get the impression that the wanderlust was directly divinely inspired. Seemed more like their luck and tendency to be overlooked was divine in origin, and their relative peace and security an indirect result of that divine good fortune, and that wanderlust was more a trait some Halflings experience and that the community as a whole benefits from (though I suppose that could also be attributed to luck... eh.)

Personally, I’m not a fan of the blatantly Tolkien-derivative depiction of Halflings as almost universally provincial with the occasional exception when a special Halfling feels the call to adventure. My favorite version of Halflings I’ve seen, and the one I adopt in my home games comes from Scarred Lands, where the simple Halfling farmer with no shoes is a stereotype left over from a time in recent history where Halflings were enslaved by the dominant empire. They don’t have any particular racial or cultural preference towards agriculture, they were forced into such labor, and the idea that they are not too bright as a race and easily satisfied with “simple provincial pleasures” a mere justification. And although they are free now, the image has stuck around in the cultural consciousness.

Right I mean, this whole description of them being "quaintly rural" for "no apparent reason" and "oh yeah the reason is divine protection" is just...annoying. I mean, they're short, sure, but that won't stop a driven and creative race from conquering the world, developing incredible technology or an incredible culture.

Now I'm tempted to include a halfling empire in my world. Conquering the world to make it safe for short races everywhere! They'd be allied with the Gnomes of course. The Halflings would be the brutal might and the Gnomes would be the mad scientists. Hmmm...I like this idea.

 

[Yaarel]

Nowhere is the adage, “A God is just a monster you kneel to” more true than it is in D&D. Quite literally in editions where the gods have stat blocks.

Yeah. I would rather refer to these monsters as ‘immortals’. But in being killable, they arent even immortal.

Maybe call them ... ‘archons’: ‘arch’ fey, ‘arch’ fiends, ‘arch’ celestials, ‘arch’ elementals, ... ‘arch’ wizards.

Powerful beings. ‘Archon’ literally means the ‘ruler’ (Greek arkhon, arkhein ‘to rule’).

 

[Azzy]

When "gods" are on too many pages in reference material, it becomes increasingly difficult to ignore.

Funny, I don't seem to have your problem.

 

[Parmandur]

[video=youtube_share;Jtfh6KAh8kg]https://youtu.be/Jtfh6KAh8kg[/video]

I think it's a safe bet it will be Gnomes in the next video, with Elves and maybe Half Elves in the second last video. Gith would probably be last unless there is a surprise race in the book.

They've already done Elves and Gith in these videos, and there's no particular reason to think we have a complete knowledge of what races will be in the book at this point.

 

[Azzy]

Well sure any old goat can do that. But my point was more that, the more these guys come out and "talk about D&D" the more they're setting expectations for people of what they might find at a table, which places more work on me to explain.

This has always been the case for homebrew settings. Especially since 2nd edition. The first step is to tell all potential players, thet being a homebrew setting, the lore will deviate from that featured in the D&D books. Most players will be just fine with this as it's not an innovative thing to happen.

 

[Sunseeker]

This has always been the case for homebrew settings. Especially since 2nd edition. The first step is to tell all potential players, thet being a homebrew setting, the lore will deviate from that featured in the D&D books. Most players will be just fine with this as it's not an innovative thing to happen.

Maybe, but there's a reasonable degree of vagueness to much of the material in the book. That vagueness is appreciated when deviating from the traditional, it keeps expectations open. The more "solid" and "clear" they make the lore, the more you have to clarify where the differences are. As I wrote in the Woldbuilding thread, it's one reason to enjoy D&D, there is a wider range of possible outcomes because D&D has always been more "system" than "setting", as opposed to other games where there is less variation in the games because their systems and settings are fairly interlinked.

Having cool halfling lore is great for Faerun, or Eberron or *insert setting here* within D&D. Don't mind any of that, just don't like it when it gets baked into the rules (which goes back to my hearty dislike for "prosey" rules and spells they brought back in 5e).

 

[Parmandur]

Maybe, but there's a reasonable degree of vagueness to much of the material in the book. That vagueness is appreciated when deviating from the traditional, it keeps expectations open. The more "solid" and "clear" they make the lore, the more you have to clarify where the differences are. As I wrote in the Woldbuilding thread, it's one reason to enjoy D&D, there is a wider range of possible outcomes because D&D has always been more "system" than "setting", as opposed to other games where there is less variation in the games because their systems and settings are fairly interlinked.

Having cool halfling lore is great for Faerun, or Eberron or *insert setting here* within D&D. Don't mind any of that, just don't like it when it gets baked into the rules (which goes back to my hearty dislike for "prosey" rules and spells they brought back in 5e).

That last aside might be the main point of disagreement here: the core audience for D&D books are people who *do* like that sort of thing, either taking it wholesale or in bits and pieces as needed. It is far easier to pick through and discard parts than make something from scratch. And the people who want to make everything from scratch aren't going to buy books full of the prosiac description the main audience wants.

 

[Sunseeker]

That last aside might be the main point of disagreement here: the core audience for D&D books are people who *do* like that sort of thing, either taking it wholesale or in bits and pieces as needed. It is far easier to pick through and discard parts than make something from scratch. And the people who want to make everything from scratch aren't going to buy books full of the prosiac description the main audience wants.

Really? I always thought the appeal of the core books was that they were more rules than setting...which is why we have separate setting/adventure books.

Because I'm totally cool with different lore in CoS or OotA or SKT or whatever.

But I understandably am always looking at D&D from a card-game background. You can produce as many sets in as many different locations with as many different races, histories and cultures as you want: but the underlying system rules remain the same. But then, I would admittedly love for D&D to take a more "system-neutral, setting-specific" approach to everything.

 

[Parmandur]

Really? I always thought the appeal of the core books was that they were more rules than setting...which is why we have separate setting/adventure books.

Because I'm totally cool with different lore in CoS or OotA or SKT or whatever.

But I understandably am always looking at D&D from a card-game background. You can produce as many sets in as many different locations with as many different races, histories and cultures as you want: but the underlying system rules remain the same. But then, I would admittedly love for D&D to take a more "system-neutral, setting-specific" approach to everything.

The core books have a lot of core metasetting material, from race description to the Planes.