A comment not directed at me? Both of those posts you quoted and were responding to me. And, before you asked those questions I had already, around three times, posted what I thought would be a perfectly fine rewrite for halflings. Making them a race of diplomats and lorekeepers, a race that people call on to act as a third-party and arbitrate between people. A race that is often found on the road or the river, traveling from one place to the next, and acting as the glue that holds the civilized races together.
I also would like them to have a better origin story than "we were found exactly like we are". The origin myth mentions Yondalla had a vision for them, what was it? It mentions she raised some of them to godhood for their deeds, what deeds? Expanding upon that lore would help immensely in making it feel like it mattered instead of like it was tacked on.
And I've said these things, multiple times. And sure, you may be thinking "That doesn't sound that different from the halflings that exist. In fact, it could be exactly like that". But, the key difference is stating it explicitly. Making it canon that this is what halflings do, rather than making vague statements about how they get along with everyone. And, you will also note, that all of those things people keep accusing me of. Of wanting a war-mongering race, a conquering race, a race full of edge and darkness... is nowhere to be seen.
And yes, I took your "questions" as a criticism, because the same things keep getting lobbed at me as criticisms. Again, and again, and again, even when I have stated that that is not what I am interested in. That that is not what I am advocating for. Heck, I was literally the only one to respond to
@Whizbang Dustyboots asking for people to give a version of halflings they'd be happy with. And somehow, people seem to be unaware of that.
I do not like canon halflings because they do not connect to the world at large. They end up either acting and playing the role of humans in human cities, except that they are shorter than normal, or they end up in places like the Shire completely divorced from the rest of the world. Much of their canon write up seems to ignore anything happening outside the borders of a halfling village, and many of the things described seem like they are meant solely for the entire race to be viewed as innocent children. While I have nothing wrong with innocent characters, the idea of the entire race being infantilized like that and needing protection from the other races rubs me the wrong way. It doesn’t feel like halflings are equals in the world, they feel like they are lesser whose survival is all because of luck and the protection of their bigger and stronger neighbors.
I find it very difficult to have things like “Lucky” or “Brave” show up in actual play. Lucky is a feature that only comes up on the player-side, by rerolling a 1. This means that in every instance a die does not roll a 1, halflings are not lucky. This is a problem, because luck is repeatedly touted as a defining feature of the race. I could also make random rolls be because the halfling was “lucky” but that runs the risk of alienating a player by making their character seem like they have no skill, only luck. I also can’t just have random acts of good luck happen to the halfling character, because that creates an imbalance and seems like favoritism in the party.
Brave, as I discussed, is the same way. Either I must actively look for ways to make the rest of the party not brave, or the halflings bravery is not special amongst the party members. Hawkeye is not particularly brave when fighting beside Black Widow, they are equals in that regard. So too is the halfling character not particularly brave when compared with their companions who are also usually brave heroes. It is the cowardly or cautious player that is more memorable, rather than the brave ones. This creates the same problem as with lucky, either I must take this common trait and have it be non-special, removing something from the halfling, or I must force the other players to be less brave, so that the halflings bravery can shine.
Finally, I find this list of traits, friendly, outgoing, curious, innocent, “salt of the earth”, honest, earnest, ect to be a very poor list to make them different. This describes many characters, and a lot of it describes gnomes or farmers in general, and that makes it hard to say that a halfling is a unique member of the party because they are friendly or curious. And since their place in the world is so vague and niche, their personality following is much harder to handle.
^^ That is 497 words. I summarized a bit, since you mentioned you had issues with me not having an easy time with their traits I had to include that, and I didn’t even get to mention their gods and religion, but you did give me an arbitrary limit to lay out everything. And If I missed anything, I’m sure I’d get docked for that when I brought it up later because I “didn’t mention it before”.
