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

[Faolyn]

To be fair, most published modules are agnostic on the composition of the party. Lots of them focus, in a narrative way, on one race or another, often an evil race, but whatever. No one really wants to play a module called Vault of the Halflings, or Descent into the Depths of the Shire. Not that any equivalents of those exist for humans either. Sometimes people mistake the fact that humans are the most populous race for a bunch of other things.

Exactly my point!

in nearly every adventure I’ve read, the bad guys are a monster of some sort, a human warlord or arch-spellcaster, or something that used to be a PC race (usually human) but is now undead or a werecreature or something like that. They almost never “focus” on a particular nonhuman race, unless maybe they’re the victims of one of the above-mentioned bad guys.

That being said, I can definitely see Vault of the Halflings as a short adventure of the type found in Dungeon magazine. Some halfling adventurer came home with loot, stuck it in a chest, and ignored it for a few decades. During that time, an evil, sentient artifact that was included in the loot works it’s evil magic on the shire, slowly transforming it into a place of evil…

 

[Mind of tempest]

Exactly my point!

in nearly every adventure I’ve read, the bad guys are a monster of some sort, a human warlord or arch-spellcaster, or something that used to be a PC race (usually human) but is now undead or a werecreature or something like that. They almost never “focus” on a particular nonhuman race, unless maybe they’re the victims of one of the above-mentioned bad guys.

That being said, I can definitely see Vault of the Halflings as a short adventure of the type found in Dungeon magazine. Some halfling adventurer came home with loot, stuck it in a chest, and ignored it for a few decades. During that time, an evil, sentient artifact that was included in the loot works it’s evil magic on the shire, slowly transforming it into a place of evil…

I would play it, also got a super crazy idea for a halfling focused campaign.

 

[Hussar]

And? You snipped the bit where I asked how many adventures revolve around other main PC races.

How does their supposed lack of use as NPCs in older adventures—also, please provide evidence that’s true—mean they’re not useful as PCs?

Weren't you the one who went through Ghosts of Saltmarsh? Isn't that the setting where all the main characters are human? Even the adventure modules that come later are predominantly human. But, then there's the first adventure that isn't centered on Saltmarsh - Salvage Operation, where the PC's are taken aboard a dwarven ship to search for and recover the Emperor of the Waves. Crew of 30 dwarves. Now, to be fair, the dwarven crew and ship don't really feature in the adventure - they're just transporting the party to and from the adventure site. Totally true. But, at the very least, they're present.

Granted, I think we could better point to Dungeon of the Mad Mage for a better representation of dwarves. Granted, they don't appear as NPC's all that often, but, that's not really the issue. You seem focused solely on NPC's. I'm talking about how the race is presented across the material. An empty dwarven mine for an adventuring site is still adding to dwarf information in the game. It's presenting where dwarves used to live, even if they don't live there now, and presumably adding to the history of dwarves in the setting.

It's not just that they lack use as NPC's, halflings lack use AT ALL. Like I said, show me an example of a halfling village in the adventures. Apparently there's one in Rime. 10 years and 14 modules in, we get to see our very first halfling village. Yeah, I'm just swimming in information. How do people keep track of this flood of knowledge?

Again, you guys seem to pick single issues and never look at the whole. It's not that there's no NPC's. There are halfling NPC's, of course. It's not that there's no information about halflings. There is. Obviously there is. It's right there in the PHB after all. But, what there isn't is a whole lot of it. There are no halfling magic items. No halfling stories. No halfling lore in the settings. Or, ok, yes, there is some, obviously, but, not very bloody much of it and certainly a heck of a lot less than there is for every other of the 4 main races.

 

[pemerton]

“In-fiction justifications for narrative conceits are of tertiary importance, and are a moving target that not everyone can agree on anyway, so we might as well not worry too much about how the Dwarves of the Iron Mountains irrigate their mushroom crop, because doing so would be a waste of time, page-count, and money at the expense of things that are actually fun and important.”

I think this point is often overlooked in RPGing: people assume that a type of knowledge/detail is possible which almost certainly is not.

No one fully understands the present human economy, despite the unimaginably vast efforts - intellectual, institutional, financial - devoted to achieving such understanding. The notion that a FRPG world will be understandable or explicable is ridiculous.

What we should be looking for is satisfying tropes. These are likely to vary among participants.

 

[pemerton]

It doesn't feel like that's any of the races playing a big part in the actual story. What was the hermit and what were the priests in B2?

They are humans. When I run B2, the priests tend to be priests of Chemosh. But I think any chaotic god will do.

 

[pemerton]

in nearly every adventure I’ve read, the bad guys are a monster of some sort, a human warlord or arch-spellcaster, or something that used to be a PC race (usually human) but is now undead or a werecreature or something like that. They almost never “focus” on a particular nonhuman race, unless maybe they’re the victims of one of the above-mentioned bad guys.

That being said, I can definitely see Vault of the Halflings as a short adventure of the type found in Dungeon magazine. Some halfling adventurer came home with loot, stuck it in a chest, and ignored it for a few decades. During that time, an evil, sentient artifact that was included in the loot works it’s evil magic on the shire, slowly transforming it into a place of evil…

I don't think it rebuts claims about the frequency of Halflings and their lore in actual adventures to say that you can imagine an adventure that would rebut that claim . . .

To be fair, most published modules are agnostic on the composition of the party. Lots of them focus, in a narrative way, on one race or another, often an evil race, but whatever. No one really wants to play a module called Vault of the Halflings, or Descent into the Depths of the Shire. Not that any equivalents of those exist for humans either. Sometimes people mistake the fact that humans are the most populous race for a bunch of other things.

Aren't most urban adventures variants on "Descent into the Depths of the Humans"?

 

[Hussar]

Hey @Faolyn - I'm curious actually. Why did your halflings in your description live in sod houses? And why do the newer houses feature fretworks? The reason for having sod houses, at least in Canada, was because on the plains you didn't have trees to build your house. Do your halflings live in areas without forests?

I mean, if you value comfort, a framed house of wood is a lot more comfortable than a sod house. There's a reason you don't get sod houses in Europe after all. Lots of trees. So, why are your halflings building those kinds of houses?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

As I pointed out earlier, Battlemaster Fighters can grant fear with Menacing Attack which is clearly not intended to be magical in any fictional sense.

And it interacts with effects that are specifically magical like the Paladin of Conquest's Aura. The game is simply not interested in a hard line of demarcation here.

And I actually think this is a good thing. It may not be an intentional thematic decision, but it works as such for me. Clear demarcation between magical and non-magical seems like something a modern human living in decidedly non-magical world would come up: the world is like the real world except there's magic sprinkled on top. But that's not how ancient people who actually believed in magic saw thing. Magic is a natural part of world, it is everywhere, there is no clear distinction between magical and non-magical things.

 

[Minigiant]

It's clear that WotC simply does not care about worldbuilding. It's not a priority of 5th edition at all.

What they obviously do care about is whether something is cool or fun in a game.

Pretty much.

People want hobbits. They give you hobbits under a legal name. They don't care about fitting halflings into the setting.

If people wanted Vulcans, Asari, Viera, X-Men, Oorochi, Slimes, Spriggans, Toads, Ducks, or whatever, they will give it to you and mostly ask you to figure it out.

 

[Yaarel]

People want hobbits. They give you hobbits under a legal name. They don't care about fitting halflings into the setting.

I agree, the D&D Halfling is piggypacking off of the popularity of the Tolkien Hobbit.

The Halfling can still benefit from Tolkienism, even if it isnt one of the core-four lineages. If it is supposed to be Tolkien, then the lineage cannot be too well detailed for reallife legal reasons. But if the Halfling is nondescript and less developed, then that itself makes it more suitable for one of the background lineages.