D&D General My Problem(s) With Halflings, and How To Create Engaging/Interesting Fantasy Races

[pemerton]

This???
This???
Is your proof??

Literary criticism??

Applied to D&D settings??

In your book, for simple folks to be appropriate avenues for make believe in a make-believe setting, it must be in contrast to some make-believe overarching corrupting evil?

This is extremely silly. Just...extremely silly. And it's also weirdly elitist and arrogant..
And again..really really silly.

I don't see any reason why it's elitist or arragont, weirdly or otherwise. And given that D&D settings are intended to serve as shared fictions, literary criticism seems as good a lens to view them through as any other. It's certainly more profitable than wondering about where Elves get their metal from, or how Halfling possibly generate enough wealth to purchase all that metal found in their cosy holes!

And personally not only to I think it's a reason that is in the right domain, I think it's a good reason: but as I already posted, I think that ship has sailed. D&D is therefore stuck with having to fit a people whose principal literary purpose is to frame the contrast between (a stereotype of) English rural normalcy and fantastic adventures, into a game of fantastic adventure. For this very reason I've largely ignored Halflings in every Greyhawk and D&D game I've GMed in the past 30 years.

EDIT:

What part is arrogant? Saying the Lord of the Rings was written with different themes than Dungeons and Dragons? I'd call that more self-evident than anything else.

Lord of the Rings has its tropes and themes. They are decent tropes and themes, but the hobbits and their portrayal was meant only for those themes. They weren't meant or designed to be taken into DnD.

Here we disagree. Even for a RPG that does deal with the tropes and themes of LotR, I think Hobbits are superfluous as a player race. In a RPG, there are different ways whereby the everyday participants enter into the fantastic world.

I think it's a strength of Burning Wheel, for instance, that it has its amazingly Tolkien-esque Elves and Dwarves and Orcs, but no Halfling/Hobbits. (That said, I know a Hobbit has been played as an ad hoc PC in a playtest that was written up years ago by Luke Crane - "Biggie Smials".)

 

[pemerton]

Bad lore isn't going to possibly break the game, like bad mechanics can.

I think that's a controversial claim! The game is one of shared fiction. Bad fiction can make the game unplayable; unpopular fiction can make the game unplayed.

 

[Don Durito]

I don't see any reason why it's elitist or arragont, weirdly or otherwise. And given that D&D settings are intended to serve as shared fictions, literary criticism seems as good a lens to view them through as any other. It's certainly more profitable than wondering about where Elves get their metal from, or how Halfling possibly generate enough wealth to purchase all that metal found in their cosy holes!

And personally not only to I think it's a reason that is in the right domain, I think it's a good reason: but as I already posted, I think that ship has sailed. D&D is therefore stuck with having to fit a people whose principal literary purpose is to frame the contrast between (a stereotype of) English rural normalcy and fantastic adventures, into a game of fantastic adventure. For this very reason I've largely ignored Halflings in every Greyhawk and D&D game I've GMed in the past 30 years.

I agree with you in regard to their literary purpose. But this seems in many ways an issue that has been brought to the fore again by 5e's efforts to return Halflings to something along the line of their hobbit roots.

It's weird because I expressly remember the widespread praise when 3e drifted them away from that.

 

[pemerton]

I agree with you in regard to their literary purpose. But this seems in many ways an issue that has been brought to the fore again by 5e's efforts to return Halflings to something along the line of their hobbit roots.

It's weird because I expressly remember the widespread praise when 3e drifted them away from that.

Right. I think that 4e's Halflings were among the least thematically compelling of the races in that system, but at least some attempt was made to give them a place in the setting that wasn't connected to the unneeded literary purpose. (I don't know as much about 3E's Halflings, but weren't they more Kender-like in some respects?)

And the only time I remember using a Halfling in the past 30 years was in 4e, where Peter the Halfling Slinger was an antagonist in the first encounter of our campaign.

It's no real surprise that 5e has taken the approach that it has, though - as well as the praise for 3E I have vague memories of controversy, and I have clear memories of controversy in the 4e case - and hence this issue recurs!

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Hawkeye is not particularly brave when fighting beside Black Widow, they are equals in that regard.

Um...Black Widow has never lost most of her hearing because of her bravery. Clint is brave to the point of foolishness. It's part of why in the comics he has many ex-wives, but no stable relationships. He does what's right, even if it's terrifying, and even if it will probably suck. He is definitely noticeably more brave than most of the heroes he fights beside, even thought they are indeed quite brave.

So too is the halfling character not particularly brave when compared with their companions who are also usually brave heroes

This is a silly argument. The halfling is dramatically less likely to fail a save against being frightened. That is noticeably less susceptible to fear. If that doesn't stand out, something rather odd is happening.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

D&D is therefore stuck with having to fit a people whose principal literary purpose is to frame the contrast between (a stereotype of) English rural normalcy and fantastic adventures, into a game of fantastic adventure.

I cannot fathom how you could possibly not see the value of a people (not of people, but of a people) who embody that contrast...exactly because it's a game of fantastic adventure.

 

[pemerton]

So, I'm wrong because it might be possible to play DnD in Middle Earth... even though to my knowledge there is not a single officially supported setting for Middle Earth in DnD?

Wouldn't Adventure in Middle Earth count?

how many of the most LoTR products for gaming have focused on hobbits as main characters?

They are a player race in MERP, and in The One Ring. I've already posted why I think that's a weakness in those systems for LotR-oriented RPGing, bit there's no denying that it's a part of those systems.

 

[Don Durito]

Right. I think that 4e's Halflings were among the least thematically compelling of the races in that system, but at least some attempt was made to give them a place in the setting that wasn't connected to the unneeded literary purpose. (I don't know as much about 3E's Halflings, but weren't they more Kender-like in some respects?)

Yeah. I think so. I don't remember it that well now, and I expect the differences wouldn't look as big now looking back. But elements of Kender worked their way in. I think Lidda, the iconic character also did a lot of heavy lifting. The bumbling chubby homebody was replaced with a tough capable rogue.

I definitely remember a lot of people who would never have played a Halfling before that suddenly expressing interest in them and we had some very memorable halfling characters.

 

[pemerton]

I cannot fathom how you could possibly not see the value of a people (not of people, but of a people) who embody that contrast...exactly because it's a game of fantastic adventure.

Because the purpose of the contrast is to bridge between reader and story. In a RPG that bridge is created by the fact that I am sitting at the table with my friends while imagining myself to be part of a fantastic world.

It's a bit like playing at playing a person who is playing an adventurer. The meta seems unnecessary at best, and unstable.

In the fiction itself, the contrast between ordinary people and adventure can be established just by having ordinary people.

(That's also before we get onto the issues with reproducing, somewhat uncritically, JRRT's idealised conception of rural England. But I'll allow that that's a separate concern from the literary-type one that you replied to.)

 

[pemerton]

Which, at the end, fails utterly as the Shire is pretty much destroyed by the end. Perhaps if they spent a bit more time engaging with the world and a bit less time sitting around doing nothing, they wouldn't have been harrowed.

I'm not sure I took the same message from the LotR that you did.

Have you read all the way to the end? The Shire recovers. A mallorn grows where the Party Tree had been. And there is a Hobbit baby-boom!

While I love LotR, I can feel where Moorcock's "Epic Pooh" criticism is coming from. But I don't see how you can take away from LotR that the problem for Hobbits was not being sufficiently committed to external affairs!