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

[Paul Farquhar]

It's no-ones job to make people care about anything. They can like and dislike whatever they like, and if they don't like it they can ignore it.

The statistics show dragonborn are popular, despite being mechanically weak and a total absence from Ghosts of Saltmarsh. You can't force people to like or dislike something. You just have to try and accommodate as many differing tastes as possible.

 

[Mind of tempest]

It's no-ones job to make people care about anything. They can like and dislike whatever they like, and if they don't like it they can ignore it.

from the standpoint of selling literally any product, you are wrong which at the end of the day determines whether we get more dnd books.
I am not talking at the table level I am talking about the concept being sold or bought into by players and dm which clearly wotc fails at.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Halflings are not the product, the PHB is the product. Cut out halflings and you are causing the 5%-ish of people who like them to not like the book.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Do you believe that there are people out there who look at D&D, see that there's one race not specifically geared to generate endless weirdo PCs, and going 'no thanks' even when the kind of people who will perpetuate 100 page threads shouting at people about how they don't like halflings didn't.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Halflings are not the product, the PHB is the product. Cut out halflings and you are causing the 5%-ish of people who like them to not like the book.

how are they not a product, you have to sell people on the race in the book otherwise you might as well strip them from the book and have nothing but humans.

an idea is as much a product as anything else people have found out how to sell, and humans will sell nearly everything.

 

[Oofta]

how are they not a product, you have to sell people on the race in the book otherwise you might as well strip them from the book and have nothing but humans.

an idea is as much a product as anything else people have found out how to sell, and humans will sell nearly everything.

I don't care for some very specific aspects of my car, yet I still purchased it and think it's a great vehicle for me and would happily by another one if it were wrecked somehow. How the **** is every aspect of the entire book supposed to appeal to 100% of the target audience? A lot of people think halflings work just fine, a few don't.

 

[Mind of tempest]

I don't care for some very specific aspects of my car, yet I still purchased it and think it's a great vehicle for me and would happily by another one if it were wrecked somehow. How the **** is every aspect of the entire book supposed to appeal to 100% of the target audience? A lot of people think halflings work just fine, a few don't.

I do not mean to everyone but most of the races should appeal to large numbers of people which over near 50 years they have somehow failed with the hobbits, I can't tell if none of them like them or if they are just bad at their job?

 

[Gammadoodler]

I do not mean to everyone but most of the races should appeal to large numbers of people which over near 50 years they have somehow failed with the hobbits, I can't tell if none of them like them or if they are just bad at their job?

I don't have a particular dog in this fight, but perhaps a definition of "large number of people" would clarify your expectations vs. actual performance.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I do not mean to everyone but most of the races should appeal to large numbers of people which over near 50 years they have somehow failed with the hobbits, I can't tell if none of them like them or if they are just bad at their job?

They failed with you and a handful of others. And if you consider the raw numbers failure, then they filed harder with gnomes until 4e took them away and even then the spite and contrarian impulse that drove their new popularity still didn't make them more popular than halflings. And yet, this thread is about halflings because it's the personal preference of the creator of the thread rather than anything empirical.

 

[Oofta]

I do not mean to everyone but most of the races should appeal to large numbers of people which over near 50 years they have somehow failed with the hobbits, I can't tell if none of them like them or if they are just bad at their job?

They may have failed for you. I've had at least one halfling in the majority of home campaigns so they haven't failed for my players.