Yaarel
He Mage
Is a halfling a half-gnome?
I am one of the D&D-ers who have difficulties with the halfling as a race. The halfling is too human. It seems like one of the human ethnicities that the Players Handbook lists. The idea of a small human no longer counting as a human, feels off to me.
Moreover, when Tolkien and Gygax use the term "race", they kinda did mean the term in a racist sense. Certainly D&D doesnt today: there is clearly only one human "race" in D&D. For us, "race" means species. But Gygax uses the term "race" to mean both the halfling "race", and for example the Suloise human ethnic group "race". Both Tolkien and Gygax interpreted various figures of folkbeliefs as if "exotic" human ethnicities of flesh and blood.
In any case, the halfling is too human.
In order for the halfling to merit the status of a D&D race − in the sense of a separate species − there must be something about the halfling, that is clearly, obviously, nonhuman.
To me, gnomes are nonhuman enough, but really, only if the gnomes are fey. If they are natives of an other dimension, an other level of existence, that is enough to at least nominally qualify as nonhuman.
If the halfling is the progeny of both a human and a gnome, the half-gnome origins might be enough to distinguish the halfling from other humans. The halfling can still strongly resemble the human because of partly human heritage. The human traits include material plane and typically martial power source cultures. Gnomes are magical, human-friendly, and experimental − pairing with a human is no obstacle. In several D&D settings, including Forgotten Realms, halfling communities are ancient, and continue to form families with other halflings. The ancestors include both gnome and human parentage.
Making halflings half-gnomes is one way to resolve the issue of halflings being too human.
I am one of the D&D-ers who have difficulties with the halfling as a race. The halfling is too human. It seems like one of the human ethnicities that the Players Handbook lists. The idea of a small human no longer counting as a human, feels off to me.
Moreover, when Tolkien and Gygax use the term "race", they kinda did mean the term in a racist sense. Certainly D&D doesnt today: there is clearly only one human "race" in D&D. For us, "race" means species. But Gygax uses the term "race" to mean both the halfling "race", and for example the Suloise human ethnic group "race". Both Tolkien and Gygax interpreted various figures of folkbeliefs as if "exotic" human ethnicities of flesh and blood.
In any case, the halfling is too human.
In order for the halfling to merit the status of a D&D race − in the sense of a separate species − there must be something about the halfling, that is clearly, obviously, nonhuman.
To me, gnomes are nonhuman enough, but really, only if the gnomes are fey. If they are natives of an other dimension, an other level of existence, that is enough to at least nominally qualify as nonhuman.
If the halfling is the progeny of both a human and a gnome, the half-gnome origins might be enough to distinguish the halfling from other humans. The halfling can still strongly resemble the human because of partly human heritage. The human traits include material plane and typically martial power source cultures. Gnomes are magical, human-friendly, and experimental − pairing with a human is no obstacle. In several D&D settings, including Forgotten Realms, halfling communities are ancient, and continue to form families with other halflings. The ancestors include both gnome and human parentage.
Making halflings half-gnomes is one way to resolve the issue of halflings being too human.
