Design & Development: Halflings [merged]

[Piratecat]

Folks, my patience has run out when it comes to snide condescension. Discuss the topic and stop with the insults, please. It's great if you feel strongly about the topic, but that in no way allows you to act like a jerk to other people when discussing it.

Feel free to email me if this is in any way unclear.

Thanks.

 

[I'm A Banana]

"Home" is a metaphysical and spiritual strength for them,

This is a super-stellar idea, and one I may yoink for my upcoming campaign, though probably not for halflings specifically.

.....yes, I like where this thought is leading me....

 

[Lizard]

Which is creepy, and classist, and reminds me of everything disturbing about Tolkien's worldview.

And thus, alien, inhuman, and interesting.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Ah, yes, I forgot...what matters is what cool powers you have. That is the beginning and end of personality.

Hobbits could have +100 to every stat and they'd still suck. It has nothing to do with abilities, and everything to do with their lame personalities. Moreover, you confirm my suspicion as to your play style. Frilly shirted "RP'er than thou" type. I'm amazed you didnt trot out "roll playing" while you were at it.

Can you show me how any of the races presented thus far encourage cliche-breaking? Or how playing Tasslehoff is more original than playing Frodo? ("Annoying" is not the same as "original")

They're both pretty unexciting. I'm not exactly a fan of kender either. However, given the choice of putting a race... of which you're kind of expected to be an adventurer, I'll choose the race with the more flexible background for inclusion in the players handbook.

Great, you've played Frodo. Whats the next guy to play a hobbit going to play? Another variation of the exact same. Why? Because you need a hook why this member of a homebody race is going to get out and do something. Sure, maybe he knocked up a milkmaid, or maybe he fell asleep after too much ham and got put on a shipping vessel. Its the same damn contrived explanation why this non-adventurer is now an adventurer. Que the bellyaching for returning to the shire. Mybe its his love of pies that saves the day as opposed to innocence. Snoo-zers.

The point is, theres basically ONE character you play as a hobbit. And that same character is virtually indistinguishable from a human farmer who also wants to get back to the dales. While kender dont fill me with excitement, at least they go out and do stuff, so your character doesnt have to start with a cliche of why the hobbit is dragged from his hole.

 

[Piratecat]

And there we go. Everyone wave "bye" to Ehren; he'll be back in a week or two.

 

[Desdichado]

The point is, theres basically ONE character you play as a hobbit. And that same character is virtually indistinguishable from a human farmer who also wants to get back to the dales.

Yeah, the notion that hobbits are "alien" and weird is one I'm having a hard time grokking.

Then again, I'm not trying to push "old skool" hobbits in place of "kenderized Gypsie halflings." I tend to ignore halfings entirely, and if a PC plays one, he's just seen by the world as a really short person with growth hormone deficiency or something.

Either that or I clump all the "bastardized Tolkien races" into a sorta clump, give them a more wild and feylike atmosphere and run them that way. The campaign I'm about to start has halflings, gnomes, elves and dwarves all "off stage" as a wild, Bacchanal force of nature. Their villages aren't "homey and peaceful" because there's a good chance that when you stumble upon them, they're drinking the blood of human sacrifices being made to their stag-headed god of nature.

Although a few on the borderlands have sorta integrated into civilized culture, and any PC's come from that group, not the more untamed ones. Baseline civilized races are humans and goblinoids. With orcs and half-orcs living like Huns or Berbers in the wilderness.

I don't pretend that that's necessarily all that interesting or unique. I very purposefully borrow from what I've read of certain human cultures for my non-humans. All the demihumans are just caricatures of a single aspect of human personality, after all. There's no need for them other than tradition, and potentially interesting mechanical twists to the character that can't be done with just using humaniti p) and giving them a tiny fraction of the cultural diversity that we've actually managed to demonstrate over time.

 

[Lizard]

Yeah, the notion that hobbits are "alien" and weird is one I'm having a hard time grokking.

You don't find a near-total lack of ambition to be weird? 'Cause I sure do. On an individual basis, sure, but as a racial trait, where those with drive, those who are not placidly content with their lot, are seen as weirdos, freaks, and oddballs, if they exist at all?

From a 20th/21st century Western viewpoint, that's a damn strange way to live. In a game world where kill monsters/take stuff/level up is a valid lifestyle choice, even more so. And *how do they survive*? That's the other thing which interests me. The seemingly harmless folks, in a world filled with ravenous monsters, manage to live peacefully with very few heroes, no great empires, and so on. Without going into the whole cliche of Secret Super Halfling Power, that's a mystery, and mysteries breed stories -- and interesting characters to tell them about.

 

[I'm A Banana]

its his love of pies that saves the day as opposed to innocence.

Love of pies always saves my day. No matter how bad it is, my love of pies is always there to say "Chin up, KM, you live in a world of PIES!"

That pretty much saves my day, ALL THE TIME.

I can't imagine a believable game setting where a love of pies didn't save the day. It'd have to be like one of those weird alternate universes where pies are actually filled with meat and gravy and evil and not fruit and sugar and awesome. What a horrible universe to contemplate!

 

[PowerWordDumb]

You don't find a near-total lack of ambition to be weird? 'Cause I sure do. On an individual basis, sure, but as a racial trait, where those with drive, those who are not placidly content with their lot, are seen as weirdos, freaks, and oddballs, if they exist at all?.

Have you ever even met a highschool student?

 

[Desdichado]

You don't find a near-total lack of ambition to be weird? 'Cause I sure do. On an individual basis, sure, but as a racial trait, where those with drive, those who are not placidly content with their lot, are seen as weirdos, freaks, and oddballs, if they exist at all?

From a 20th/21st century Western viewpoint, that's a damn strange way to live.

No. In the 20th/21st century Western viewpoint, that's a very common way to live, IME.