D&D General My Problem(s) With Halflings, and How To Create Engaging/Interesting Fantasy Races

[Chaosmancer]

I find your argument wholly unconvincing. I can intellectually understand why this line of argument could make sense to a particular person with a particular set of aesthetic preferences and design priorities, and how Halflings could pose a problem to that person. However, I am not such a person, nor are most people who play D&D.

As long as you continue to insist insist your preferred paradigm is the only valid lens through which to evaluate the game, you won’t make any headway in this discussion.

EDIT: to put it another way, the things that are important to you and that you build your argument around simply don’t matter that much to most people. The dissonance that you say exists between the narrative conceit of an unassuming, pastoral group of people and the supposed lack of fictional justification for their status as such just isn’t a issue for most people. It simply doesn’t have the weight for most people that it does for you.

Also, I disagree that there isn’t sufficient fictional justification. There is plenty as has been pointed out to you, it’s just not good enough for YOU, which is fair enough, but it’s not the same as there being an actual problem.

EDIT2: Despite my earlier tongue-in-cheek posts to the contrary, I actually think the very existence of dragonborn is dumb and unnecessary for a whole host of reasons that make sense to me. I’m not going to bore you with them, because I expect you to be wholly unconvinced unless you happen to share my aesthetic preferences. I’m not going to write paragraphs articulating why you’re wrong for liking dragonborn as is, because that would be unproductive and patronizing.

How do you know it doesn't matter to most people? You want to frame this like I'm the outlier, but you could just as easily be the outlier in not caring how a group of people interact with the world.

And generally the justification for Halflings being overlooked is "they don't do anything" which is pretty hard to justify when people also went out of their way to confirm that halfling adventurers are common place and we all know that adventurers... do things to affect the world. So halflings never affect the world, except when they are adventurers and then I guess they don't count as halflings? That doesn't make any sense.

 

[Vaalingrade]

But those individual adventurers are part of that people right?

No. They're adventurers. They might come from them and they might return to them, but they're freaks who are larger than life and the actual one who change the world. They're be definition not lay people.

 

[Chaosmancer]

J

So are you, by the logic of the first paragraph, saying that things do happen in the areas nobody talks about but that those things are shadowed by bigger events that are either universal in scope or that happen in areas that get more attention? Kind of like a village of halflings might defeat a goblin bandit king but nobody hears about it because at the same time some crazy shenanigans were going down in Baldurs Gate and that's what everyone is talking about?

Half the races in the PHB are 100% regional in their description. Dwarves=mountains. Elves=forest. Lizardfolk=swamp. Halflings=farmland. How does this not map to modern day as a parallel?

Because in fifty years of the game there has not been an adventure about the halfling village defeating the Goblin Bandit King.

THAT is my point. You can claim that it has happened and that no adventure was ever written about it, no mention of it made in any lore published for the game.., but why not? Was the halfling village adventure considered too boring to actually make? WoTC can't make an adventure that takes place in the same time period as another adventure, they can only do one at a time?

If all the adventures are big enough news that we aren't hearing about the actual adventures of halflings... that's a problem. Because according to many people in this thread, halflings are beloved by many people and an adventure around them would be warranted.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Yeah, it’s almost as if those design decisions were made for aesthetic reasons—as a narrative conceit if you will—and the need for an in-fiction explanation for these pecularities was thought to be unnecessary/irrelevant! Implausible/unexplained demographic distributions in my fantasy game? The horror!

Yeah, it would almost be like using real linguistics studies to make fantasy languages that were more realitic. What kind of loser would want to make something like that

 

[Chaosmancer]

No. They're adventurers. They might come from them and they might return to them, but they're freaks who are larger than life and the actual one who change the world. They're be definition not lay people.

And this is the problem. Right here.

You want to separate "adventurer" out of "halfling". Halflings can't have all these powerful "freaks who are larger than life" who actually change the world, because then they can't be simple pastoral folk who don't get involved in the larger world... but halfling adventurers are supposed to be common, and even according to some posters, expected from halfling communities.

And what force of evil would ignore a group of people well known for producing "freaks who are larger than life and the actual one who change the world"?

 

[Bardic Dave]

Yeah, it would almost be like using real linguistics studies to make fantasy languages that were more realitic. What kind of loser would want to make something like that

It would be hard for me to conceive of a less effective rebuttal; you’re completely missing the point.

It’s possible—admirable even—to design a fantasy world in which things “making sense” (according to your particular definition of what makes sense) is a top design priority. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. It can get a bit unwieldy to do so, you’ll probably overlook a few things, and even if you nail it, somebody will inevitably complain that something doesn’t “make sense” regardless. Still, it’s a worthwhile exercise if you want to undertake it.

However, that’s clearly not a top priority for FR and D&D. It’s laughably easy to pick apart any number of design decisions on the basis that the in-fiction justification is insufficent, incoherent, or even wholly absent. It’s an exercise in futility, because it’s mostly completely beside the point. You could criticize ANY of the races for reasons very similar to what you’ve articulated.

We get it. You find halflings dissppointing. I hate gnomes, ironically because I don’t find them that interesting and I don’t think they’re distinct enough from halflings, elves or dwarves to have “earned” their place. What I won’t do, however, is put my own opinion up on a pedestal and try to argue that it’s the “correct” one. That would be absurd.

 

[Don Durito]

Yeah, it would almost be like using real linguistics studies to make fantasy languages that were more realitic. What kind of loser would want to make something like that

One who cares about Linguistics passionately and less so about socio-economic plausibility.

Where did the Noldor get their slaves from? All the societies that inspired Tolkien's histories were slave owning societies. Where do the elves of Lothlorien get their food from? It's really difficult to farm a forest without at least some kind of slash and burn agriculture, yet if they were hunter-gatherers they would not be anything like as settled as they seem to be. What about Dwarves, what do they eat deep under mountains?

I can see why you feel there are things that are implausbile about halflings. What I can't understand is why you feel this one specific thing is particularly worthy of note, when it's just an arbritrary example of thousands of things that are implausible in D&D. Perhaps it just intersects with an issue that is important to you. (Personally, if I was ditiching or revising races that make no plausible sense the Dwarves would be going much sooner. At least the Halflings do farm.)

After thousands and thousands of words, isn't it time to acknowledge here that your issue is a personal one?

 

[Bardic Dave]

And this is the problem. Right here.

Nope. It’s not. It’s an opinion based on a different set of aesthetic preferences. Just because it doesn’t appeal to you or “make sense” according to your preferred criteria doesn’t mean it’s incorrect or incoherent.

“Somebody likes something for reasons that don’t align with my preferences! It’s a big problem!”

 

[Bardic Dave]

Where did the Noldor get their slaves from? All the societies that inspired Tolkien's histories were slave owning societies. Where do the elves of Lothlorien get their food from? It's really difficult to farm a forest without at least some kind of slash and burn agricultures, yet if they were hunter-gatherers they would not be anything like as settled as they seem to be. What about Dwarves, what do they eat deep under mountains?

And all of these criticisms apply equally well to the various FR races.

 

[bedir than]

Yeah, it would almost be like using real linguistics studies to make fantasy languages that were more realistic (fixed spelling). What kind of loser would want to make something like that

A reminder: This is the same loser who created the halflings that you object to even existing.