Got Hobbits?

[BroccoliRage]

This sounds like the halflings of the Talenta Plains in the Eberron campaign setting.

I would argue that having different cultures for the same races makes sense, as culture can be shaped by many factors -- including the environment.

ive looked and looked for castles and crusades but i cant find it. id love to get a copy, ill check out that link.

someone else told me about the talenta plains eberron halfling thing, and i was pretty dumb struck. i dont want to say i came up with it first, because for all i know i didnt. i based the idea off of the Dinoriders cartoon i used to watch. next thing i know im palgarizing. either great minds think alike or that is really uncanny.

nonetheless its a really cool idea.

 

[National Acrobat]

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.)

Me too, and it drives my more die-hard FR loving-players nuts when I run FR and tell them that there are 'hobbits' and no stronghearts, etc. I just like the traditional descriptions of hobbits from the older versions, and have not felt it necessary to change it when I run.

 

[BroccoliRage]

Gotta set you right here, BR. The D&D Rules Cyclopedia, Chapter 8, Page 108 has a target cover table that lists 1/4, 1/2, 3/4, and full cover as valid levels of cover with appropriate modifiers. This is not a 3.x idea, this goes all the way back to BECM D&D and maybe before.

i feel that bogs the game down in technicality. ive DM'd way more than ive played to be honest, and if someone says "i duck for cover" i go on my previous description of the landscape, and decide if cover is available or not. more times than not, it is.

3e has some excellent ideas that i have adopted, like the taint, or the prestige classes (more times than not i treat them as classes or maybe just a title), but the combat system is a little illogical to me which is a problem that has always plagued D&D, from the hit or miss charts to THAC0 (the system i use) or the current D20 system.

to quote the 1e AD&D DMG:

"As a simulation of reality, AD&D can only be condemned as a dismal failure, and those seeking such a system would do best to look elsewhere."

too many rules can slow the game down. but once again to each his own.

oh one more thing. forgive my ignorance but what is BECM D&D?

 

[Samnell]

3e halflings all the way. By the time I got to the Scourging of the Shire, I wondered if Sauruman was really that bad of a guy. Halfings went from being a race of useless nobodies to my favorite race.

When I look back at hobbits I get the impression Tolkien was trying to describe a perfect isolationist group of villains, not an idealized English peasantry. This probably reflects the fact that Tolkien's values and my own are almost perfectly in opposition.

 

[painandgreed]

IMO, Dragonlance accomplished the impossible: it actually made Halflings and Gnomes interesting.

If by "interesting", you mean annoying to the point that the other PCs kill off any player characters of those races, then have their players ejected from the group, while the DM house rules that those races were killed off in a genocidal alliance of all other races and alignments, then yes, they were made interesting.

 

[HellHound]

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

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

Yep - I only have old-school 1981 halflings in my campaign - no hobbits or kender allowed.

To me, halflings are the little guy & gal in the 1981 D&D Expert rules set, illustrated by Jeff Dee, with the fighter kneeling down chatting with the halflings. Built like half-pint superheroes, adventurers and fighters. None of those pudgy little guys from Lord of the Rings, nor those hoopak-wielding thieving kender.

If anything, I love D&D3e because it brought back the halfling I love instead of the bloody kender and hobbits.

 

[Hairfoot]

I'm still not on board with the big pixie/little elf halflings. In fairness, they're cool as a race, but I don't like them as core halflings.

Hobbits have form. They've got history and plenty of representation in fantasy. In Eberron, the Talenta halflings at least have a campaign history which fits their race. In Greyhawk and FR, Hin are just a strange plague of scuttling demi-fey.

It all looks to me an Ewok-style cave-in to cuteness.

 

[Tewligan]

When/if I get my campaign up and running there won't be any halflings, hobbit-flavored or otherwise. Nor will there be gnomes. I've never liked either race, from Basic D&D to the present day.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

I don't think I've ever contemplated including halflings in a game I planned to run - excepting Eberron, which accomplishes the feat of making halflings interesting - but since my approach to D&D involves excising from it everything Tolkienesque (with extreme prejudice) and going in a completely different "modern" direction, I doubt they'd find a place in any future game either.

 

[Psimancer]

Welllll….

I took Halflings, Hobbits, Gnomes and Kender and wrapped them into a single raced and called them…

Gnomes…

The reasons being these…

• ‘Halfling’, as a name, I find derogatory - …half of what? …half of a man? … Not nice…

• ‘Hobbit’ and ‘Kender’ I find too …proprietary… as both a name, and racially; I play in neither Middle Earth nor Krynn…

• ‘Gnomes’ I despise as a race in 3.x (both fluff & crunch), but like as a name due to its presence in mythology and legend…

So, as Hairfoot already stated in his post, “…Gnomes are the new Hobbits…”

My Gnomes are short, stout folk living in a variety of locales; pasture land, forests and hill lands, to name a few… They like to drink and smoke… They reside in underground dens… And are very communal… some tinker, some ride dinosaurs, some are feral (darksun-esque), some have big noses, some have hairy feet and some have top-knots and wield staff-slings…

…a rose by any other name…?