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

[Bardic Dave]

To be fair. I am kind of playing a game here for demonstration purposes rather than as an expression of internal belief.

The point was that we can choose how we want to see things, and reasonable people may disagree with those points of view.

(There are reasons I dislike Elves as a matter of taste, but I don't actually see any real issue with them being in the game)

I know, I just have an opinion on this topic and couldn’t help myself from expressing it! mea culpa.

Also, I agree with your point.

 

[Gammadoodler]

Well, you are wrong. You really should consider other people's points of view

Not actually sure if this is meant to be sincere or an attempt to "use my own words against me".

If it's sincere, it'd be some combination of appropriate and ironic that I don't have the energy to fully address.

If it's the other, more accurate versions would have been:

"I disagree, and that's fine"... or
"I assume you have proof"... or
"Opinions aren't facts"

We can workshop it some more if you're interested.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I really don’t think you’re fairly characterizing your opponents’ positions. I don’t think anyone begrudges you your opinion, or objects to you brainstorming solutions to your problem (I certainly don’t). The issue (for me at least) is your apparent insistence that it’s not just your problem, that it’s not just a matter of taste.

It isn't just my problem. In this thread with about 9 to 10 posters there are easily 4 to 5 that also have problems with halflings as presented. So, should we all just pretend like the other people who agree with us don't exist and we all are just isolated in having personal problems? That by some strange quirk we also all share the exact same taste, since we all see the exact same issues?

And while I have never gone after a poster for liking halflings, there are certainly plenty who have gone after me personally for not liking them or struggling to present them in the game. In fact, I had my DMing repeatedly trashed by Faolyn because I admitted to having issues with the halfling abilities.

Maybe I'm not being 100% fair and balanced. But since so few of my opponents seem to have that sort of consideration for me, I'm fine being a little unfair. Maybe 5% or 10% unfair.

 

[Chaosmancer]

How is "I want information removed from the PH (and perhaps put elsewhere)" not forcing your vision upon others? It is literally changing the existing text to conform to your opinion of how it should be.

It might be because "I want information added to the PHB" isn't the same as removing it?

You seem to think I'm @Hussar who has been advocating for putting halflings in the MM. I've stated dozens of times that that is not my position.

And, just out of curiosity, how is "I want nothing to change because I like how it is" not also you enforcing your vision upon others who want change? It is literally preventing change to conform to your opinion of how it should be.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I agree that there is lore for all the races ... where do you even come up with this ****? What I've said is that the lore is a starting point and it's up to each campaign setting to fill in details if people care. I think the halfling lore is decent, I made minor tweaks to fit them in to my campaigns.

From your repeated assertions that all lore should be moved to setting books and removed from the PHB. That is your opinion on the matter, correct? To make everything a blank slate that can be filled in by campaign settings and homebrewing DMs?

And yet, despite your opinion (which I didn't think I needed to remind you of your own opinion) the fact is that there is lore in the PHB. And it is probably going to stay that way, because new players will always need a basis to get hooked before the first setting book comes out. And therefore, curating that lore in the PHB, is a valid concern, and shouldn't just be brushed off because "lore is for campaign settings"

There is no "evidence" that other races have better or worse lore because that's based on opinion. In my experience most people are perfectly fine with the lore as presented for all of the races (with minor wording issues for half-orcs perhaps).

Maybe we're telling you that you should be less arrogant because what you post on this subject comes across as arrogant? It's fine to not like halflings. I don't care much for tieflings and I think the lore for genasi is pretty lame personally. But we've had more than a hundred pages largely because you keep complaining about a supposed lack of lore and so on.

But mostly I still don't know why you bother posting other than to play victim because people disagree. Oh, and to tell me that I put Tolkien on a pedestal and dismiss every other fantasy author because I think Tolkien was more influential for fantasy in general than Martin.

I already apologized for misunderstanding your position on Tolkien.

And I'm responding because I think it is rude to ignore people. And I do not like being rude to people.

Finally, I've laid out my position on halfling lore repeatedly. I haven't just put forth an opinion, I have supported that opinion on multiple levels. Your insistence that I have done nothing of the sort, that I am complaining about a "supposed" lack of lore when other posters have agreed with me on a lack of lore being an issue, is frankly baffling.

If I am arrogant for supporting my position and holding a position that others agree with, then what is even the point of a discussion board?

 

[Chaosmancer]

Could be. It does all run together. MToF has certainly come up in this thread as well. Perhaps not from you. Willing to take your word for it.

That said.. If you want evidence for halfling culture, you already had it, and you had it before you made the argument to which I replied. Perhaps you just forgot?

But let's be clear then, in your opinion is MToF to be ignored as documentation of halfling differences? Because you didn't actually address that. You just kinda complained about it being brought up.

And, if we're complaining now, I've said exactly nothing about the way you run your games, or the quality of your games. I've even agreed that halfling lore, as it exists could be better. The full extent of my criticism toward you, personally, is that you have expressed opinions as if they are objective truths in a way that I find arrogant.

You've had multiple opportunities to back off of these positions, to frame them as the opinions they are, and, rather than doing that, you've doubled down on them as "facts". This is like 95% of friction we have from my point of view. The other 5% is time served.

Most of my complaints about halflings lacking culture is tied more towards city halflings, and I've made this distinction multiple times. Even then, MToF really doesn't describe much for the Shire halflings that supposedly are different. They are innocent, friendly. Living in the moment. They have a strong storytelling tradition and they think of their gods as family. That's really it. There is the bit about not really respecting kings, but they also supposedly live in hidden villages no one can find, and if I take that to be true, then their reliance on elders is more just because they don't have a higher authority.

And, if I look around at the rest of the game... while halflings tell stories about more things and more simple things, everyone have a strong storytelling tradition it seems. Maybe halflings are a little bit more, but it isn't particularly unusual. And that is about their only feature that comes close to some idea of culture.

I know you are going to berate me, act like I think no one else can have an opinion or viewpoint on this, but I'm just not seeing anything that I would find unusual or different in any other race or location. I can't just make the text say something it doesn't say.

 

[Chaosmancer]

You know, since I'm supposedly so off base about halfling lore, I'm curious if people can answer a lore question.

What happened between halflings and dwarves? Stout halflings have a sentence, and no more, that states "some say they have dwarven blood". If we assume this is true, or even that the rumor has some basis then there had to be some sort of incredibly close relationship between dwarves and halflings to create an entire subrace of halflings. But, they had to have also had a massive falling out.

Why do I say that?

Because Dwarves and Halflings don't seem to like each other terribly much, according the PHB green box text. Dwarves don't take halflings seriously and halflings think dwarves are too dour. Halflings also live in the plains and farmland, while dwarves traditionally have mountain strongholds. Halflings actually live mostly with humans, and very rarely in dwarven lands that I've ever seen. I've also never seen a dwarf-halfling couple ever depicted, nor and half-dwarf, half-halfling children. Dwarve are in fact notable in the fact that they rarely seem to enter into any relationships with a non-dwarf. Humans famously sleep with just about anything (elves, dragons, vampires, lycanthropes, fey, celestials, fiends, elementals, giants, ogres, orcs, think I've seen some goblinoids once, it is a long list) but they don't really have relations with dwarves. Yes, I am familiar with Muls from Darksun, but that is a setting specific race, they don't appear anywhere else, while most of the things I listed do appear in multiple settings. And Stoutfolk are canonically in a lot of different settings.

So, what is the connection between dwarves and halflings, how did it lead to the Stoutfolk halflings, and how did they have a falling out?

 

[Gammadoodler]

Most of my complaints about halflings lacking culture is tied more towards city halflings, and I've made this distinction multiple times. Even then, MToF really doesn't describe much for the Shire halflings that supposedly are different. They are innocent, friendly. Living in the moment. They have a strong storytelling tradition and they think of their gods as family. That's really it. There is the bit about not really respecting kings, but they also supposedly live in hidden villages no one can find, and if I take that to be true, then their reliance on elders is more just because they don't have a higher authority.

And, if I look around at the rest of the game... while halflings tell stories about more things and more simple things, everyone have a strong storytelling tradition it seems. Maybe halflings are a little bit more, but it isn't particularly unusual. And that is about their only feature that comes close to some idea of culture.

I know you are going to berate me, act like I think no one else can have an opinion or viewpoint on this, but I'm just not seeing anything that I would find unusual or different in any other race or location. I can't just make the text say something it doesn't say.

Nah, everyone has opinions. It's fine that you have one, I don't begrudge you that.

I'm not particularly high halfling lore in MToF myself, but I feel it offers enough texture for the version of halflings it describes to feel meaningfully different from other races.

To my mind, the stuff around story is the best part of it. Story serves as almost a form of currency, and as the lever for influence within the community and to a certain extent as the primary driver for how they spend they time. To me, that is pretty significantly different than other races, and the part I think that should be preserved, if ever there is a rewrite of the lore.

That said, I think it mainly comes doen to a choice to buy-in to what's there, because, to me, it's all more or less equally unbelievable. Pretty much all of the races can be boiled down to "basically human" if you're willing to apply the heat. Consider the nonexhaustive list of commonalities below that apply to pretty much every race(I understand there are some very specific exceptions to a few of these).

• They are mortal
• They are corporeal
• Same basic arrangement of limbs,
• Communicate via spoken or written language
• Require food, water, and sleep
• Can be wounded in essentially all the same ways and are healed in the same ways,
• Experience cognition as individuals, and
• Capable of free will

Like, if your PC was blind and was chatting with a dwarf, an elf, and a dragonborn, how would they tell the difference?

So I just don't see the profit, in the face of all that commonality, of needing to be convinced that some relatively tiny collections of features are "sufficiently distinct" to clear some arbitrary bar of acceptability. I'd rather lean in, explore the differences that are there, and see where that could lead. But that is just me.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It might be because "I want information added to the PHB" isn't the same as removing it?

You seem to think I'm @Hussar who has been advocating for putting halflings in the MM. I've stated dozens of times that that is not my position.

And, just out of curiosity, how is "I want nothing to change because I like how it is" not also you enforcing your vision upon others who want change? It is literally preventing change to conform to your opinion of how it should be.

You're right, I was thinking of @Hussar. Sorry about that.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

You know, since I'm supposedly so off base about halfling lore, I'm curious if people can answer a lore question.

What happened between halflings and dwarves? Stout halflings have a sentence, and no more, that states "some say they have dwarven blood". If we assume this is true, or even that the rumor has some basis then there had to be some sort of incredibly close relationship between dwarves and halflings to create an entire subrace of halflings. But, they had to have also had a massive falling out.

Why do I say that?

Because Dwarves and Halflings don't seem to like each other terribly much, according the PHB green box text. Dwarves don't take halflings seriously and halflings think dwarves are too dour. Halflings also live in the plains and farmland, while dwarves traditionally have mountain strongholds. Halflings actually live mostly with humans, and very rarely in dwarven lands that I've ever seen. I've also never seen a dwarf-halfling couple ever depicted, nor and half-dwarf, half-halfling children. Dwarve are in fact notable in the fact that they rarely seem to enter into any relationships with a non-dwarf. Humans famously sleep with just about anything (elves, dragons, vampires, lycanthropes, fey, celestials, fiends, elementals, giants, ogres, orcs, think I've seen some goblinoids once, it is a long list) but they don't really have relations with dwarves. Yes, I am familiar with Muls from Darksun, but that is a setting specific race, they don't appear anywhere else, while most of the things I listed do appear in multiple settings. And Stoutfolk are canonically in a lot of different settings.

So, what is the connection between dwarves and halflings, how did it lead to the Stoutfolk halflings, and how did they have a falling out?

What you did here is an example you can hold up to the people who are telling you to "add to them what you like" because all that is one perfectly fine interpretation of that throw-away statement.

My personal interpretation is that it's meant as an in universe bit of gossip....like a modern day "some say our world leaders are really lizard like aliens".

In my campaign dwarves and halflings get along fine. Halflings live in dwarcen cities. Dwarves live in halfling villages.

My take on each of the common humanoids uses the basic notes of description from the PHB (and older experience) as a primer over which I paint my canvas with my own design.