So basically, you provide nothing that makes halflings interesting, and therefore, nobody is interested in them.
Or, you could take me at my word and say that nobody is interested in them so, I don't bother using them. And, even in the groups where I've been a player, no one has ever done anything with them. Heck, we did a tour of Dragonlance replaying the War of the Lance and kender, AFAIK, did not appear once in the game. So, it's not like this is solely me. It's has always been thus. /edit - No wait, I tell a lie. One of the players played a kender cleric at the very outset of the game (yeah it wasn't really a canon game
) but she quit the group shortly in because of real life stuff. So, yeah, I've seen exactly one halfling played when I was a player, in ten years of 5e. 4e we saw no halflings. 3e, as a player? I did play a lot in 3e because I was online at the time. But, nothing jumps out. There must have been one, I'm sure there was. But, again, as a player in a group or as a DM for entirely different groups, I virtually never saw halflings being played.
Gosh, I wonder what your problem is.
Currently? The habit of a couple of posters who insist on ascribing motives without any actual evidence. How's your day going?
So, serious question #1: do you only build your worlds as the PCs explore them, or do you at map them out, at the very least with vague notions of where things are, ahead of time? If you use established worlds, like the Realms, do you not make any changes or add or remove things?
For most of my DMing career, barring back in high school when I had gobs of hours to spend on world building, I typically build bottom up. Outside of some of the stuff you need - like a pantheon for the clerics and whatnot - my world building tends to follow the PC's. So, bottom up. But, sure, there's a vague notion of where things are. And, yes, I do change established worlds all the time. I believe I've mentioned my current Candlekeep campaign where I've completely rewritten the Avowed Adjutants section to better reflect my group. Additionally, I've recently added a secret war between binders and the various churches that occurred before the spell plague. The reason warlocks are the way they are now is that the clerics won and most knowledge of Vestiges and binding has been lost.
Where do you want to put them? You're the DM.
Why do I want to put them anywhere? No one is playing a halfling.
Who do want them to be? You're the DM.
Why do I want them to be anyone? No one is playing a halfling.
Serious question #2: do you only run adventures other people have written, as the are written in the book? Do you never write your own adventures or rewrite aspects of adventures you buy?
Nowadays I tend to start with pre-written adventures. Just don't have the time like I used to to bang out my own adventures. But, yes, I do modify them considerably. My Primeval Thule campaign a few years back included the notion of a draconic race of reptilians that ruled Thule before the other races - an idea cribbed heavily from Stephen Erikson's Malazan series.
Again, you don't bother to actually include them, because you don't bother to think about what to do with them.
It would be really nice if you would stop ascribing motives. I'm asking politely one last time. I don't include them because no one comes to me and says, "Hey, you know that campaign we're talking about starting, here's my halfling concept". If I ever got someone who was interested in halflings, I'd pay attention to them.
This is literally the entirety of the description I wrote for halflings in my current homebrew setting:
View attachment 140213
And two people chose to play halflings. And then, when a player decided he didn't like his orc druid, he had the druid head off into the wilderness and built a new character, who was also a halfling.
Ok. Now, do you never have players come to you asking to play races that you haven't done write-ups for? What race restrictions do you have in your campaign? See, I have none. Pretty much anything goes so long as the player is excited about it. So, because I don't have race restrictions and I let the players choose what they want with pretty much zero input from me, they never choose halflings. Funnily enough, when I did Ghosts of Saltmarsh, I tried being more restrictive in order to make it a more Greyhawk game. All I got was HUGE pushback and no one wanted to play anything I suggested. In fact, thinking back, any time I have tried to promote a race or concept, that's been the fastest way to see an idea go down in flames.
At this point, I seriously doubt that you've even written that much for halflings.
You'd probably be right. I haven't written that much for many, many things in D&D
that no one ever asks to play.
And yet you refuse to create for them, use them in any meaningful way, and you've spend dozens of pages ranting at long length about how much you do not dislike them.
Last time. Please stop ascribing motives. Ranting? Seriously? I've been pretty calm, been pretty polite and respectful of people's ideas. The only reason I mention that I don't dislike them is because every single page has a post or two telling me how much I hate them. I'm a little tired of people ascribing motives to me when I've specifically said that they aren't true.
Look, if halflings were popular, I wouldn't be in this conversation at all. They would be in their proper place - part of the basic game. If we want to talk about races I actually don't like, let's talk about elves. I LOATHE elves. Banned them in my games for years. It's only since 4e that I even allowed elven characters back into the game. And even then it was grudgingly and, frankly, every player that I've ever played with that favors playing elves has been a total power gaming munchkin. Which is basically why I loathe elves. But, now, being older, I realize that elves are a really popular race and lots of people play them. Would I ever advocate their removal from the PHB? Nope, not for a second. They are popular. They have a mountain of lore in the game. Removing elves from the PHB would leave a massive hole in the game.
None of which is true for halflings.
So you don't try to include new things or spice up old things in new ways. Maybe the players don't care because it's obvious that you don't care.
LOL. You did read where my current campaign is an owl folk, a living aboleth dream, a war forged, a tiefling and a dragonborn right? How much newer can I get?
See, to me, it's the players don't care because, in 40 years of play, both as a DM and a player, the players have NEVER CARED. The fact that halflings are one of the least popular races in the PHB, despite having every possible advantage including being included in the FREE RULES, points to the fact that players really, really don't care about halflings.
Come to my table with a halfling concept, I'll bend over backwards to make a halfling shaped hole in the campaign to tie your character in fifteen different ways to the campaign. I'm a HUGE believer that the race of a character is at least as important as character's class. You're not a fighter. You're a HALFLING fighter. Race choices should matter. And, if you play an elf, or a dwarf, or a tiefling or a dragonborn, it will matter. Play a halfling? You might, if you're lucky, meet maybe other halfling in the entire campaign unless the DM starts rewriting things. You will never find a halfling city (they don't exist in published material AFAIK - no wait, isn't their a kender city in Dragonlance?), you will never meet a halfling archmage or high priest unless the DM decides to start rewriting.
But, I can guarantee that you will meet dwarves and find dwarven stuff and meet folks that are related in some way to dwarves, if you play most of the WotC adventures. Granted Dragonborn and Tieflings could definitely use more loving, but, then again, apparently they don't need it in order to be popular.
