Bingo. The halfling has been approaching the kender ever since 3e changd them to thin, short, and quick rather than short, fat homebodies. 4e took this a step further by making them resistant to fear. Oh, but we hate kender though.... what a load of BS.
Ha ha! Yeah, the halfling in 3e and 4e has had great influence from kender. Though not exactly a clone, it's pretty close. What the kender did for halflings was to throw them right into the adventure. WotC recognized this, so they took the best of the kender, minus the so-called "baggage," and adapted that to halflings.
It's unfortunate that a few bad players and stereotypes seem to ruin the race for the non-DL gaming audience. They're really quite fun to play.
Because the draconians have been established by DL as very specific, color-coded evil creatures.
Ah, but the draconians are evolving into their own nation - Teyr. Plus, don't forget we have the noble draconians too. Draconians are no longer the evil monsters of old.
A spin-off from a popular novel series (which is what the DL setting really is)
DL originated with the games. The novels followed. That being said, the novels are what popularized the setting, so there's this misconception that the novels came first.
Dark Sun's guaranteed fanbase is mostly limited to old-school gamers who remember the brief glory days of the setting from two editions back. Anything else, it'll have to build up from scratch.
That's a good point, and something I had not thought about. I keep forgetting that there's a fair number of gamers out there who never played anything pre-3e (and now 4e). In a way, though, that might mean that Dark Sun is ripe for a re-imagining. Enough time has passed that they could do it.
But dragging a race/monster from a setting and making it generic - we have seen lots of that. Thri-kreen, anyone?
There's a misconception that they're Dark Sun-specific. Not so. So while they were made popular in Dark Sun, they actually originated in the Forgotten Realms.
It's kind of like death knights. They were around prior to Dragonlance. It's just that Dragonlance made them popular with Lord Soth.