Halflings or Hobbits?

[Glade Riven]

Whatever won't get me sued by the Tolkien Eestate if I use the name in something. Heck, if Tolkien himself hadn't admitted he got the name orc from somewhere else (not that non-tolkien orcs are often anything like tolkien orcs), nobody would be able to use it without potential legal issues from copyright and trademark laws...but that's another discussion.

The modern thing seems to be making halflings sorta-kinda-loosley-distantly related to elfy McElf. So I'm running with it. I'm thinking of having the halflings call themselves Vanifari in my setting...

 

[domino]

I like halfling because hobbit seems more specific to the homey, bucolic short-folk of the Lord of the Rings. Whereas halfling is more generic, which means I can bend and twist them into any sort of cultural shape I want, as long as I just keep them pretty short.

 

[Nahat Anoj]

I like the names "hobbit" and "kender," and I can conceive of an alternate reality where they weren't so weighed down by their baggage. But those words are laden with so much connotations that they'll never really sound right if attempts were made to take them seriously.

So as much as I dislike it, "halfling" will have to stay. Althought lately I have been thinking about calling them "vistani" and going whole hog with the gypsy angle (which is not too much of a stretch with 4e's take on halflings). I feel like "vistani" is less burdened by any Ravenloft baggage, although the 4e vistani article helped with that.

 

[Argyle King]

To me, the two terms don't mean the same thing anymore, so it depends who I am talking about.

That being said, I prefer halfling because I have less chance of being sued.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

It doesn't matter so long as they aren't Kender.

Ah, rats.

I was going to post - 'Kender! *Dies under the clubs of a maddened crowd.*'

The Auld Grump

 

[SteelDraco]

In the setting I use, they call themselves the hin, but most other people call them halflings. Hobbit isn't used by anyone.

They're also essentially psionic gypsies, so they don't really fit with the normal idea of hobbits. A meteor infused with psionic energy crashed into their homeland and scattered them, then orcs took over the area. They haven't found a homeland since. They have a bad reputation for thievery and mindcraft (psionics take the place of witchcraft in my campaign in terms of things that will get the common folk angry with you).

 

[I'm A Banana]

As a term, I like "Halfling."

As an archetype, I like "Hobbit."

Listen, the post-2000 editions of D&D can take a nosedive with their leatherclad svelte stealthmonkey "born adventurers" who travel in caravans and up and down rivers and wear dreadlocks (?!).

Give me Bilbo and Samwise (with a twist).

Give me +Cha, +Wis or +Con, pudgy little comfort-seekers. Make them more action-packed than they were in Tolkien, but doughy, resilient, friendly, optimistic, a little goofy, kind of suspicious, but ready for new things. They should make good Paladins and Clerics and "Team Mom" archetypes. They should be tough little buggers, in body and/or mind.

They shouldn't be so much ready-made rogues, IMO.

 

[BraveSirKevin]

I think the idea of a hlafling rogue came about specifically because the dwarves in the hobbit hired Bilbo as their "burglar". When it came to the original Dungeons and Dragons, they kinda shoe horned the entire halfling race into being Bilbo the Burglar. When races stopped being classes in the later versions, they kept the halflings optimised for a rogue class and people tend to make halflings as rogues because, optimisation aside, it is hard to imagine an adventuring halfling as anything else, much like it is difficult to picture a dwarf wizard.

As a side note, I call halflings halflings, not hobbits, but I call treants Ents as a rule.

As a second side note, I think that halfling is probably a name given to them by others as a derogatory racial epithet, as has been mentioned elsewhere in this thread. Most halflings would probably take offence to being called that.

 

[Lanefan]

Hobbits, now and forever.

I've never liked the name "halfling", for some reason.

Lanefan

 

[Fifth Element]

Neither, if I can help it. I just don't like them. I'd certainly allow it if someone wanted to play one in a campaign (regardless of what he/she wanted to call it), but I just don't find them interesting.