How about a survey on the 3E halfling?

[Sundragon2012]

Old halflings are the best halflings

Hi,

I just didn't understand the reason, after so many years, to arbitrarily change them into what??? Kender??

I didn't exactyl see an outcry to make them into itty bitty elves or anything else.

I think it was an arbitrary decision that left me cold and screwed with my in-game continuity.

Halflings look like Frodo, Bilbo and Pippin.

Kender look like Tasselhoff.

Call me old school but as a 31yr old whose been DMing for 19yrs I need reasons for sweeping changes in a whole race. As it stands I awakened one day to find all halflings wearing shoes.

I don't think so...


Sundragon

 

[Wicht]

As it stands I awakened one day to find all halflings wearing shoes.

It is really the shoes that throw me as well. I have nothing against the new stats and always figured that the adventuring halflings were slimmer than their more stay at home counter-parts (Tolkien says as much about Frodo). But to just throw shoes on them...

That would be like taking away the pointy ears of the elves or shaving all the beards off of the dwarves. There was no reason for it.

 

[Desdichado]

Wicht, Tolkien most certainly did invent the word hobbit -- although "invent" may be too simple a phrase for taking some Old English stems, combining them into a new word, and then "triangulating" how the word would have looked in modern English if it had actually been a real word.

Halfling, on the other hand, is simply applying the -ling suffix. Although Tolkien probably did first coin that word, it's not an original word by any means, and any number of people could just as easily have coined the same word or one very like it.

EDIT: I can't vote either -- where's the option for "indifferent" because my campaign settings have always modified any races that don't quite work anyway?

 

[Dragongirl]

It doesn't look like age is a factor in this debate, perhaps a question about how one feels about Tolkein. Personally I think he is god.

By the way, I like the old version of halflings AND gnomes, and wont use the midget humans they try to pass off in 3e. Just talking physically, not the racial abilities.

 

[Sundragon2012]

That would be like taking away the pointy ears of the elves or shaving all the beards off of the dwarves. There was no reason for it.

You're right!

That's as dramatic as that would be.

I wonder how many people would blindly support elves with human ears and a penchant for masonry or beardless, forest dwelling dwraves?

Just because its new doesn't mean its better.

Plus, I wonder why no one has asked why these changes have been made and on what grounds? Why change a race so dramatically without any grounding in the background of each setting?

Were they always this way? Were players and PCs and DMs suffering from a collective delusion?

I don't get it.


Sundragon

 

[RobNJ]

Plus, I wonder why no one has asked why these changes have been made and on what grounds?

Probably because it's not that important? I mean . . . "blindly support," "why has no one questioned," aren't these kind of strong phrases to be throwing at a silly discussion? I thought this was one of those fun, conTRAVesy free debates.

 

[Numion]

I never actually liked the Tolkien halflings; always sitting on their fat asses and eating. Not very adventurish type. But I also hated the kender from Dragonlance. Someone should've killed tas outright.. but 3e halflings aren't as irritating as the kenders, so my vote goes to them.

 

[Marcolino]

...I thought this was one of those fun, conTRAVesy free debates.

Hee-hee, you must be new here. Pleased to meet you.

 

[Wicht]

Wicht, Tolkien most certainly did invent the word hobbit

Heh
He most certainly did not invent the word Hobbit (though I would give him full credit for creating the 'race'). Michael Aislabie Denham (died in 1859) included the word in one of his lists of spirits and fairies (republished as the Denham Tracts in 1892 and 95) and though I have not verified this, it may have also been used by Reginald Scot (1535?-1599)in his Discovery of Witchcraft. Its use in the lists show that it was a word in use in the local dialect (of some region anyway) to describe a variation of the brownie. The Hobs (from whence we get both hobbit and hobgoblin) were brownie like creatures, normally good-natured, but a little shy of being seen. The opening paragraphs of The Hobbit in which Tolkien describes the relationship between hobbits and humans shows that he had this tradition in mind and most likely borrowed the word from the lists, thus adopting a rather obscure variation of the brownie and transforming it into a vibrant race.

I will agree however that it is perhaps better to say he 'coined' the term halfing rather than he invented the word.

 

[Remathilis]

Having never read Tolken and having little connection with it till the movies, I also envisioned my halflings (in 2e) as slimmer, more agile, and shoed (who'd go walking through a dungeon full of spikes, oozes, poisons, and other "Waitforthebookofviledarkness" unmentionables barefoot, leather soles or no?)
When 3e halflings matched my vision, I was very happy.

That said, I still keep the bulk my halfling stationary, but halfling caravans are becoming more common. Both groups produces adventurers, but the bulk comes from the latter.