Got Hobbits?

[Hairfoot]

I'm interested to know if hobbits have survived the 3.0 kenderkrieg.

Anyone out there still got old-school halflings in their campaign?

 

[adwyn]

I split the halflings in my homebrew into three kingdoms, each with its own culture; one more isolationist with the hobbits of old, one with the halflings of new, and one remote land with the cannibals of Athas.

 

[el-remmen]

I got me harfoots, tallfellows and stoors, but they all be the same gentlefolk ya've heard of in Tolkien's telling.

I've heard more than one person complain that before 3E halflings weren't interesting enough to play, and why would they be adventuring. . .?

To which I would reply: Why, indeed? And boring is the point of it. There should be very few around adventuring, except for a few amazing exceptions. Not every race presented in a game needs to be equally attractive a race to play.

 

[BroccoliRage]

dude, i still run 1e and my halflings arent called halflings, they're hobbits, and they dont wear shoes, and they dont often become adventurers. i stay true to the oldschool. not that im oppposed to newer ideas, i just dont fix what aint broke (love that grammar.)

 

[BroccoliRage]

I got me harfoots, tallfellows and stoors, but they all be the same gentlefolk ya've heard of in Tolkien's telling.

I've heard more than one person complain that before 3E halflings weren't interesting enough to play, and why would they be adventuring. . .?

To which I would reply: Why, indeed? And boring is the point of it. There should be very few around adventuring, except for a few amazing exceptions. Not every race presented in a game needs to be equally attractive a race to play.

personal opinion: 3e = anime and video game tainted sacrilege with some excellent ideas that get bogged down in a ridiculous rules-lawyer system that defiles a game that never truly needed to be revised. the flaws were easily dodged around.

i agree with you entirely on the other matter, about races dont need to be interesting. too many people want their characters to be amazing creatures from entirely crazy backgrounds. call me old school but i like playing your good old human fighter who took up his pitchfork and set out from the farm when he came of age to seek his fortune in nothing but leather armor and a wagon wheel shield. to me thats a hell of a lot more exciting. makes you think about where that grizzled ole veteran you meet in the tavern came from.
my group used to only play elves but i did away with racial adjustments after the next TPK and told them (amidst whining and complaining) that i want them to play a character because they want to. to this day they congratulate me and their character are not nearly as bland. too many people want to play strategically and not enough want to truly role play, which is the heart of the game.

 

[BroccoliRage]

final thought- my group tried to convert to 3e. the combat system sucks and is monty haul as all hell...long live OD&D/1e/2e/hackmaster hybrids!

 

[Ranes]

I run a game of 3.5 utterly contaminated with hobbits. I cannot stand the 3.x visualisations of them or the DL kender.

The only bad thing that's ever come from me sticking with my JRR-derived vision of these wonderful creatures was the one and only time I logged in to the chat rooms here, a few years ago. As I logged in, one person asked, "How long has everyone been playing?" At the same time, someone else asked, "Does anyone here call their halflings hobbits?"

In an atempt to answer two questions at once, I said that I had been playing for twenty-four years and that my campaigns' halflings had always been hairy footed hobbits. I was promptly attacked as being someone with a superiority complex. Suffice to say that I logged off without replying and have never logged back in since.

I have a problem with 3.x halflings. Ever since JRR's estate demanded that references to hobbits disappear from D&D, designers have been trying to preserve the character of the race while side-stepping copyright infringement issues with skin deep cosmetics. For anyone not brought up on Tolkien or a fan of Tolkien, that's fine. But I think that demand was one of the meanest (and most shortsighted) the Tolkien estate could have made. The whole point of The Lord of the Rings was to create a mythology. What is the point of going to all the effort the author went to, only to deny people the opportunity to reference it elsewhere?

Long live the hobbits in their holes in the ground. Whenever I DM, they will prosper.

 

[el-remmen]

final thought- my group tried to convert to 3e. the combat system sucks and is monty haul as all hell...long live OD&D/1e/2e/hackmaster hybrids!

I don't know about all that, I just like my halflings as homebodies.

 

[el-remmen]

call me old school but i like playing your good old human fighter who took up his pitchfork and set out from the farm when he came of age to seek his fortune in nothing but leather armor and a wagon wheel shield. to me thats a hell of a lot more exciting.

Dude, that is totally my style of playing and I have been using 3.X for five years now running just such a game (you can check the sig for a link to the story hour).

5 years, 10 levels, about 2 more sessions to go before the campaign ends.

 

[gizmo33]

I use hobbits IMC with the Tolkien culture and such. I don't use the halfing sub-types from 1E. If someone wants to make a kender-type halfling, it doesn't bother me (there are always odd-balls in any group of adventurers). But my NPC halflings are not kender.