D&D 4E 4E Halflings unrecognizable from Tolkien hobbits

[Fifth Element]

Let's face it, half-dragon or reptilian heroes have been around since Snake Eyes in G. I. Joe.

Wait, what?

 

[Mad Mac]

Let's face it, half-dragon or reptilian heroes have been around since Snake Eyes in G. I. Joe.

Eh...snakeyes was a blond hair, blue eyes American Ninja who couldn't speak because of a throat injury. Carry on.

 

[Hussar]

I meant the time frame, not the particular character.

((That's my story and I'm sticking too it. ))

The Serpent People are the primary villains of the Kull stories (which are the prehistory of Conan's world). I don't personally have any problem with reptilian heroes. I just wish WOTC would have made them more iconic relative to culture outside of the game world.

Now, which is it? Should we stick with pop culture fiction that the general public will know, or should we go with obscure S&S fiction that's been out of print for twenty years?

Put it another way. R. A. Salvatore has hit the NY Times best seller list with his Drizzt books more than once. That's something Professor Tolkien never managed in his lifetime. Weis and Hickman have also had numerous best sellers, including Dragonlance.

Lots of people outside of gamers read Dragonlance. And, I would hazard a guess that Dragonlance is much more widely read than Kull.

I think that people vastly overestimate the popularity of classic fantasy authors and drastically underestimate the popularity of current ones.

 

[Clavis]

Should we stick with pop culture fiction that the general public will know, or should we go with obscure S&S fiction that's been out of print for twenty years?

I think thats' a false dichotomy. D&D can include both. I'd like it to include both.

Put it another way. R. A. Salvatore has hit the NY Times best seller list with his Drizzt books more than once. That's something Professor Tolkien never managed in his lifetime. Weis and Hickman have also had numerous best sellers, including Dragonlance.

I never suggested that WOTC remove Gary Gygax's creation the Drow from the game. At this point, black-skinned elves are iconic fantasy.

Lots of people outside of gamers read Dragonlance. And, I would hazard a guess that Dragonlance is much more widely read than Kull.

But of the two, Kull's the one that's got people who actually believe it's mythology is true.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reptiloids. Scroll down to the "Modern Claims" section to see what I mean.

I think that people vastly overestimate the popularity of classic fantasy authors and drastically underestimate the popularity of current ones.

I won't dispute that. My point was that WOTC is creating things and expecting us to accept their creations as if they were already popular and iconic. I actually wish they'd rip off more ideas that were already iconic. I've got no problem with swords of light as magic items, or magic bracers with claws that shoot out of them. By all means, WOTC, introduce stuff from Neverwhere, the X-men, or even Harry Potter. But don't call something a halfling when you mean "short Creoles". I wouldn't mind so much if they were called Kender. But halflings have no history of being short Creoles.

And just to make myself clear, my Campaigns have always included dark-skinned, Africanesque cultures presented in a positive light. Call the new Halflings River Pygmies, and I would no longer have a problem.

 

[IanB]

"Olven" is the word that elves in the World of Greyhawk setting use to refer to their own race. Similarly, "hin" is the word halfings use to refer to themselves.

Hin isn't a WoG-ism like 'olven' (and I don't think 'olven' is meant to represent elf language, it is whichever language generated all those WoG race names - dwur, jebli, euroz, etc. Flan maybe? I forget which it is supposed to be honestly), it originates with Ed Greenwood's Five Shires Gazeteer for the D&D Known World setting, and the term later was co-opted into the Forgotten Realms.

Seems possible that he was using it in his own FR game all the time, but the first time it saw print was GAZ8 I believe.

 

[Fifth Element]

My point was that WOTC is creating things and expecting us to accept their creations as if they were already popular and iconic. I actually wish they'd rip off more ideas that were already iconic.

Are you saying they should only include things they rip from other sources? They can't invent things themselves? Every idea has to start somewhere - why can't they start their own, instead of stealing them from other places?

Or is it just a matter of balance? The designers may be at 50/50 new/ripped, while you would prefer 20/80? If it's just a matter of balance, there's not much to discuss, since it's personal preference.

 

[Fifth Element]

I wouldn't mind so much if they were called Kender. But halflings have no history of being short Creoles.

20-some years ago, Kender had no history or being anything. All new ideas have to start somewhere. We already have the old ideas, which can be adapted to 4E is desired. They're not going to disappear suddenly. Why reject new ideas simply because they're new?

 

[JohnSnow]

Fair enough, but I think it's hard to definitely attribute a basically sound-based quality like an accent to a soundless medium like the novel.

"Nay. I dinnae ken what ye mean by that laddie. Are ye by any chance trying to say that ye cannae hear a Scots accent when ye see one? An' ye do nae recognize it when ye do?"

Was it really THAT hard to hear the accent there? Yes, it's horrible and cliché, but it's certainly present. Maybe I'm just more used to it from reading dialogue in comic books. And in those "och," "dinnae ken," "nae" an' the like are traditional for "Scottish" characters, like Moira MacTaggert and Rahne Sinclair from the X-Men series.

It's like when the old Alpha Flight comics had Puck end many of his sentences with "eh." Yeah, it's very Bob and Doug Mackenzie, but it's pretty obviously supposed to sound "Canadian." Or there's the example of a Frenchmen saying something like "So, it is obvious zat you 'ave a problem with me, non?"

I could go on, but I think you can pretty clearly hear an accent in print, if the author tries to put it there. And many of those accents I quoted are about that obvious. Tolkien is usually much subtler, but the different classes of hobbits even have different speech patterns (For example, Sam's speech is more "country" than the rest.) And on that basis, whether or not dwarves are patterned on Jews or not, their speech pattern has a few of those typically scottish things I mentioned - dwarves say "Aye" and "Nay" a lot - which none of the other characters do.

 

[GreatLemur]

But of the two, Kull's the one that's got people who actually believe it's mythology is true.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reptiloids. Scroll down to the "Modern Claims" section to see what I mean.

I always thought those people were more inspired by V, but either way, that's a totally hilarious phenomenon to bring up. I love those nutters. Gotta admit, though, I always have thought it'd make great roleplaying game fodder.

I won't dispute that. My point was that WOTC is creating things and expecting us to accept their creations as if they were already popular and iconic. I actually wish they'd rip off more ideas that were already iconic. I've got no problem with swords of light as magic items, or magic bracers with claws that shoot out of them. By all means, WOTC, introduce stuff from Neverwhere, the X-men, or even Harry Potter.

This strikes me as a very strange argument to make. What in their blog posts or marketing copy would you say is demonstrating this attitude that their original and recent concepts are already iconic? Or are you taking the simple fact that they're choosing to supplant the familiar halfling paradigms--which, in certain instances, are iconic--with these new concepts as proof of such an attitude?

Aside from the question of what their attitude might be, I think it's kind of bizarre to object to the creation of new concepts in place of borrowing ones, however iconic. Obviously, D&D has a rich history of assimilating pop fantasy tropes, but I would hate to see such a practice regarded as preferable to orginality. That way lies the stagnation of culture. And Hollywood.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

More people than ever know Tolkien's Hobbits, yet WOTC prefers their own silly creations.

Because it fits better into what Dungeons & Dragons is now. I also firmly believe that hobbits never worked in D&D right from the start, which is why we've spent thirty-four years getting the Hell away from them - and that includes twenty-five years under TSR, before you start blaming Wizards of the Coast's nine-year ownership of D&D for the changes.

Hobbits simply don't work in D&D the same way dwarves do. That's why every setting beyond the traditionalist Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms has eventually changed the way halflings work, from the kender of Dragonlance through the cannibals of Dark Sun and the shadow-tainted halflings of Birthright to the dinosaur-riders and crime lords of Eberron. Hell, they weren't even really included in Spelljammer or Planescape, and their presence in Ravenloft is minimal. Even Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms have never really treated halflings as hobbits, even if they were kind of hobbit-like.

Meanwhile, except in wacky settings like Dark Sun, dwarves are pretty much the same all over. Even in Eberron, which treats every other race quite differently from "core assumptions", they're the most similar to their counterparts in other settings. That's because dwarves work in D&D in a way which hobbits simply don't.