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

[Neonchameleon]

they are super creepy in that fashion.
nothing beyond comfort, we are fairly certain they have the least artificers of any race.

You think that artificers don't create greater comfort? Build a better bed, make a nicer meal? If comfort is the driver I'd expect more not fewer artificers.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I don't "ignore" stuff written within the last 30 years - I didn't say that (re-read the bold part you highlighted; I wrote "I tend to..."). I just pick and choose, and look to the whole of the fantasy tradition - stretching back to the 19th century (and before, if we count fairy tales, folk lore, and myths). There's more fantasy history before 1990 than after (even if fantasy books become more sparse once you hit the '60s or so), and I'm not beholden to the "new and shiny," but like to dig for treasures in the past. But I do read recent stuff, too.

Fantasy is a vast tradition. It didn't start 20-30 years ago, nor did it start with Tolkien. But we're specifically talking about D&D, which goes back "only" 47 years, although with roots much older than that.

I'm not sure what you are trying to convince me of here. Yes, Fantasy is older than the last 30 years. But, DnD isn't going to be emulating the celtic myths of 700AD, they are going to be looking at the modern fantasy landscape.

And that was my point, if you are "picking and choosing" but mostly focusing on stuff older than 30 yrs, then doesn't it make sense that you aren't going to be seeing the same thing as people who are focusing on the last ten to twenty years of fantasy to decide what fantasy is to them?

And yes, tieflings and dragonborn are--in the history of D&D--"add-ons." This isn't a knock on them, nor am I saying that they shouldn't be part of D&D going forward. And I basically agree with you, that 5E going forward will--by necessity--tend to bias newer forms. But that doesn't mean the old need to be thrown out. I see it less as a linear progression, where old stuff is left behind and forgotten, and more as waves rippling outward, with new stuff emerging, but the old remaining part of the tradition.

Ultimately this whole pro vs anti halfling thing seems a bit unnecessary. Halflings don't need to go to make room for the new. The new can be added on (ahem). That's how traditions develop.

But there is also a point where things end.

Halflings are very specific. They are hobbits. A lot of Fantasy work that I have seen have basically consumed halflings under the idea of Gnomes. After all, halflings seem to be defined under two ideas. They live in the country. They are small.

If you just make them all one race, then they seem to have a stronger place. It isn't a perfect thing, but that is the trend I have noticed in fantasy literature to date. Making halflings just... gnomes that live in the countryside. Farmers and peasants of gnomish communities. It doesn't change the role of halflings pretty much at all, just makes them part of a bigger umbrella.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I think if anything the most inhuman and darkest trait of halfling is their ease of comfort. Halflings, once they find a safe situation, will sit and squat in their position. No ambition. No desire to better themselves. That's why halflings have no kingdoms and few armies. Just bodyguards and sheriffs. They'll sit in human ofdwarven lands happily paying taxes to sit comfortably. There are few halfling masters of any craft but cooking because they just like to eat. Halfling artisans and smiths get go by repetitions not drive.

Even halfling adventurers are not out there to make themselves stronger. Its either defence of their loved ones, gaining new experience, or simply travelling with their buddies. The halfling rogue stops dungeon delving because his companions have stopped.

I would wonder how Underdark halflings would work because they could never get to a comfortable state down there and would focus on leaving the second they were able.

Which... could work, except a lot of people seem to put that forth as what makes halflings the best and most good race. They lack ambition to do anything more than exist as they do.

 

[Sithlord]

can you define such lore?

where do you live that people join the military for that? the only ones I met seem to be there for a stable income, some sense of purpose, education or they just want to fight.

This has to be a work, rather than an authentic debate what do you even mean by that?

that seems familiar has someone done it before? do they have any other major none luck gods?

okay, so they are just tourist given that they hate to see living things suffer they would not want to kill the thousand and one things that want to kill or enslave them?

why would they even recognise a dark lord unless we are going for an 80's cartoon villain? had to stop what you can't recognise as wrong?

their premise is one note they are all Frodo or bilbo and honestly, that's kinda dumb where are the alternative? where are their paragons, their villains, where is their history? they just are and it tires me they are copy-pasted without bothering to remix them and survive more by luck and being twee than anything mundane or grounded.

the point on eliminating the halfling is they literally in all aspects can be replaced with a human peasant and nothing changes.

look I am not against a race that is small and wholesome but I want some world presence, some nuance and an image beyond a short human.


civil right movements also depend on great shared pain, determinism, leadership and a history of oppression which halflings lack they just sort of are.

I don’t know what nation you are from. But you seem to have alot of hate for the military or at least a condescending snotty snobbish attitude towards them. But in America. The vast majority of us enlisted out of love for our country, belief in liberty, and our constitution.

 

[Neonchameleon]

But, I do feel like it is fair of me to offer valid criticisms and ask "can we do better?" And personally, I've been wondering about the idea of focusing a bit more on Gnomes as Dungeons and Dragons continues. They are more than "I'm a small human" They are also curious, adventurous, community driven, and can both live in harmony with their natural surroundings and leaning into technology.

But this is emphatically not what you are doing. When people are pointing out how halflings are actually used you seem to think it is some sort of rebuttal to say you have never seen that.

If what you wanted was halflings that were doing better than you currently are with halflings your response wouldn't be a dismissive "I've never seen that. Never" but a thankful "I've never seen that. From now on I will incorporate it into some of my halflings to make them more interesting."

"I've never seen that" is not a valid criticism if your goal is to make something better by adding breadth and depth to what the archetype is in your eyes. Indeed things you haven't seen flowing out of what is already there should be exactly how you make them more interesting.

I don't see a need for a race to "turn it up to 11" on the face of "we are unlikely to be heroes".

And I don't see any actual need for there to be any non-humans. But they are there because they add something to the game.

That just seems... like saying we want the blandest most safe race possible, because then we can subvert that expectation.

Hi, elves!

Feel free to keep taking cheap shots at my imagination. It really doesn't endear me to want to continue this discussion in anyway.

And your refusal to take how anyone else sees halflings on board and engage with that in favour of thinking that because you haven't seen something it's not your personal halflings that are deficient and you should fix that doesn't endear me to want to continue this discussion.

They don't turn up the industriousness of humanity. The cleverness. The adaptability.

So what? Halflings turn some traits but not others up to 11 because they have a reasonable identity. Just like every other D&D race. Which is played by a human and takes human traits in different measures.

Again, I'm not saying that you can't like halflings. But, it seems like your argument against them being fairly redundant is that they do the thing that other races can do.

And that they make better playable gnomes than most gnomes. Gnome tricksters are a case of "everyone knows gnomes will be tricksters."

This entire discussion is about world building.

No, it's about playable races. Not everything in the world needs to be of great renown - in fact most people and things shouldn't be just as they aren't in the real world. There are more towns even in my own country that I've never heard of than ones I have. It

Long term world building isn't a term I'm familiar with, but calling it silly seems like an overstatement

It's poking fun at things like the ridiculous civilization ages you often see.

We don't really care about PC actions at the table nearly as much as we do worldbuilding. Because PCs are going to do whatever they want.

D&D world building should be there to support the playable characters.

 

[Mercurius]

I'm not sure what you are trying to convince me of here. Yes, Fantasy is older than the last 30 years. But, DnD isn't going to be emulating the celtic myths of 700AD, they are going to be looking at the modern fantasy landscape.

And that was my point, if you are "picking and choosing" but mostly focusing on stuff older than 30 yrs, then doesn't it make sense that you aren't going to be seeing the same thing as people who are focusing on the last ten to twenty years of fantasy to decide what fantasy is to them?

All of which I agreed to in my discussion with another poster up-thread. I realize that "kids these days" have different ideas than "kids back in the day." But so what?

I'm not really trying to convince you of anything, just responding to your response to me. But I am advocating for a more historical view of what fantasy is, one that doesn't overly privilege recency. Things change over time, fads come and go, and tradition emerges as "what continues."

But there is also a point where things end.

Halflings are very specific. They are hobbits. A lot of Fantasy work that I have seen have basically consumed halflings under the idea of Gnomes. After all, halflings seem to be defined under two ideas. They live in the country. They are small.

If you just make them all one race, then they seem to have a stronger place. It isn't a perfect thing, but that is the trend I have noticed in fantasy literature to date. Making halflings just... gnomes that live in the countryside. Farmers and peasants of gnomish communities. It doesn't change the role of halflings pretty much at all, just makes them part of a bigger umbrella.

Except those who like halflings as-is lose something, and those that don't like halflings as-is gain nothing. But feel free to do that in your own game!

What I find strange about this conversation is a variation on something that arises again and again. "I don't like X, therefore X shouldn't be part of the core rules." Why not have a version of D&D that allows for as wide a variety of play styles and preferences as possible?

Or to put it another way, why can't the tradition grow (ripple outward) rather than be seen as a narrow line, in which the past is forgotten or jettisoned and only the new and cool (right now) is what is focused on? Isn't that rather myopic? It doesn't mean everything must be kept, but it isn't like we're talking about were-inchworms as a race.

 

[Chaosmancer]

If you think that is the case, you aren’t actually reading either of our posts.

No social trait is unique to any D&D race.

I am reading your post. Here are the traits that I am being told I am against because I don't like how halflings are presented. From you and Steeldragon


Innocence
Friendliness
Being a Tranquil person in harmony with ones self and surroundings
Being Authentic
Loyalty
Curiosity
Adventurousness


These are all personality traits. Supposedly you play halflings because they are the only way to expeirence these traits. My response to Steeldragon was... no. Any race can have these traits, saying that being against halflings is being against these traits is wrong, because these traits extend beyond halflings.

You then laughed at me, rolled your eyes at me, and procceeded to tell me I am wrong, because I'm not reading the posts?

I mean, not to quote your exact words or anything but: "They are also curious, adventurous, and fiercely loyal without most of the tribalism that makes fierce loyalty so dangerous in humans. There is value in a people who only fight to defend, who enjoy comfort and home and community and are always ready to defend those things,"

Seems to very much be doubling down on this concept that being against halflings means being against characters who are curious and adventurous. Who fight only to defend themselves and enjoy comfort and home and community. I'm saying that is a false dichotomy. If you agree that that is a false dichotomy... then why does your post seem to state that being against halflings is being against those character traits?

You are the one setting up point, I'm just responding that is seems like an incredibly poor point

I did elaborate, unless you mean the strawman part, in which case…bro. Seriously, go reread the other posters words that you replied to. They didn’t say what you claim they said.

Okay, I went and reread it. They said exactly what I responded to the first time. So again, other than saying "they never said anything you think they said" can you give me something to respond to? Counter-examples, elaboration, anything other than just this vague "you are wrong and should go reread what they wrote because you are wrong?"

No, it isn’t obvious at all. In fact it isn’t apperently at all. You consistently make the same claim with no indication whatsoever of hyperbole until now.

Most absolutes are minor hyperboles. That is the nature of absolutism.

If I said all oxygen is flammable, and then some chemistry expert comes to me with an oxygen compound that isn't flammable, I wouldn't exactly take that as a huge refutation of my point in general. Yes, absolutes are usually not 100% correct, because nothing is really absolute. But I'm also not going to go out of my way to phrase things with a "in the vast majority of all cases I have experienced, which is limited both by my time and memory" on every point I make.

Two things are happening here. I’ll start with the one that pisses me off.

Stop changing what I said and replying to that instead. It’s a BS tactic and you know it.

“Being loyal to your friends” is explicitly not what I said. I talked about being loyal in a way that is fairly rare amongst humans and most D&D races, where halflings are quick to include people from outside thier community in thier loyalty, and making a new person family without reservation. Humanity has a whole sordid history of aggressively refusing to do that. When you reply to this idea with “everyone is loyal to thier friends” you completely misrepresent the point you’re replying to in order to reply to the weakest possible version of an argument.

The fact that you are getting pissed off might be making it hard for you to see that no malice was intended.

You are talking about something that I have never seen, and I'm not sure "loyalty" describes it. You are talking about taking a stranger, thinking of them as family, and being "loyal" to them, basically from when they meet them. But... what do you mean by loyalty?

If a stranger walks into a halfling village, being chased by the law, and the halflings hide them from the law officers... are they being loyal to the stranger? What about to the law man? They aren't being loyal to him by hiding the criminal from him. Are you talking about being friendly and generous? Willing to help someone, give them medical aid and food if they are starving? That doesn't feel like loyalty to me. That feels like kindness and generosity.

I'm not trying to twist your words and piss you off, I'm utterly baffled by what you mean by loyalty, because you don't seem to be describing loyalty.

The second thing happening here is that you have it in your head that anyone is claiming that the traits that define halflings are unique to them. This is a wild assumption with no basis in what is actually being said. Gruff insularity isn’t unique to dwarves. Every trait we imagine for other creatures is an exaggeration of a human trait or an extrapolation of an animal trait, and none of it is unique to one race.

But you have to put this in the context of the post I was responding to. Steeldragon made the claim that being against halflings meant that we hated the idea of humble heroes. That we thought being kind to strangers was stupid and only edgy characters or anime super-men were worth playing.

They were making the claim that halflings must have these traits, and that in rejecting halflings we were rejecting these traits. Because if that wasn't what they were saying, then their entire post was just nonsense.

And this is a consistent problem. Everyone (and this is hyperbole, because obviously it isn't everyone, the majority of humanity isn't even in this discussion, and the majority of people in this discussion haven't posted this) seems to think that if you want to play an underdog who is out-matched but still full of bright, cheerful adventurousness, that halflings are the race for you. I reject that. I can play those archetypes with anything. But the humble hero keeps being thrown up as the entire point of halflings. But... it fits everywhere else. It is an archetype, and halflings aren't unique in that archetype. So, if that is the only thing that makes people want to keep halflings as they are... why are we keeping them like this?

No.

One word responses don't help clarify anything. If you have a point that requires more of my post to elaborate on, maybe just quote the larger part, so you can do something more than just say "no" and leave it, like that is going to do anything to further the discussion.

See above. This is another example of both things. No one said elves can’t have a culture that fights only to defend, and I didn’t say only halflings enter the Tomb, I said halflings might do it out of curiosity. Might a human do the same? Sure! But they’d be an odd person, while the halfling would just be doing a thing that halflings do.

Above you just said no. That doesn't tell me anything.

And... isn't a halfling who goes seeking adventure odd? They are giving up the things that halflings love. Comfort, warm food, community. All these traits that people list are things you give up to walking into the Tomb of Horrors and potentially die a painful death.

And, while you didn't say that elves can't have that culture... then what is the point of saying that halflings do? It would be like when Neonchameleon went on their hyperbolic strand of saying that everyone breathes. That isn't a point for or against halflings, so why bring it up? The implied point is that halflings do this, this is what defines them, but my counter point is that this isn't a uniquely defining trait. Lots of races and communities have these traits.

And, I'll point this out too. You know who else might just enter the tomb out of curiosity and not be considered an oddball for it? A Gnome. Gnomes are incredibly curious, and if I said a gnome went into the tomb to investigate it, no one would really think that is a weird gnome. That's just a thing gnomes do. This is the overlap we are talking about. Between humans and gnomes, halflings don't feel like they have any ground left to them. And I feel like gnomes have the stronger identity to build off of for the future.

If it really feels that way, it’s because you’re adding things to my arguments that I didn’t say while ignoring what I did say.

That could be because you so vehemently responded to my critique of Steel Dragons point, and so I assume you are agreeing with them. If you are seeing something different in what they said, it would help if you told me what that was, because so far you just keep saying I should reread it. And after the fourth or fifth time reading it, I kind of think that maybe you should actually step up and explain what you think I missed, rather than just yelling at me to do it again and hope I'll somehow come away with a different reading on the sixth attempt.

That’s because you’re ignoring or dismissing anything that doesn’t fit your conclusion.

And how do you know that? You seem very secure in your knowledge that the problem is that I'm ignoring things, yet all you do is tell me to read it again. How many times should I reread the materials I have until you are satisfied that I'm actually reading them and not just dismissing them? Until I agree with you?

You…know there are like a hundred D&D races, right?

Yes. And how does that apply to what I was saying?

I’ve never read anything like that in the books.

It could have been from his blog. I was reading a lot of Eberron material all at once, trying to absorb the entire setting a few months ago.

Though, going back and rereading the section on Talenta from Rising from the Last War I do see a lot of mentions of the struggle between the Halflings and the Outsiders. Particularly with a big hook seeming to be Holy Uldra who wants to drive all outsiders from the plains. Any mention of Hospitality seems to be tied to House Ghallanda, which is more of a specific tribe of halflings.

They very much are giving off a vibe that there are the fierce dinosaur riding tribal people, and that they don't like outsiders very much and worry about their ancient ways and traditions being disrupted.

LOL come on, man. I begin to question whether you are arguing in good faith.
Jorasco and Ghallanda halflings come from Talenta.

Yes, they originated there, but are they the same people?

That's the disconnect. Genetically they are the same, but culturally they seem to be incredibly different. Read the descriptions of those subraces in the Rising from the Last War book, and you will find zero mention of tribes, dinosaurs, ancestral spirits, all of the things that define the Talenta tribal halflings are absent from those two house groups.

Heck, it even states in the halfling description in the book that the halflings that spread across Khorvaire ended up looking and acting like humans "but their cousins in the Talenta plains couldn't be more different".

I'm arguing in good faith, there is a massive disconnect between the two groups.

Oof.

This doesn't help explain anything or give me any more insight into why you think I'm wrong. So again, it doesn't really help move the conversation forwards

 

[Chaosmancer]

Ted Sandyman and the Sackville-Bagginses ring no bells?

No idea who sandyman is at all. The sackvilles were hobbits, and barely existed in the books to my knowledge, except that they wanted Bilbo's wealth and tried to take it all in an estate auction after he disappeared for months on end with no warning and they thought he was dead.

Nothing about them mentioned apathy or gluttony or sloth. In fact, as a farm family they were probably quite active, and it didn't mention anything about them eating an abnormal amount for hobbits.

Also... they were hobbits, not halflings.

 

[bedir than]

they were hobbits, not halflings.

A difference without any meaning whatsoever.

 

[Gammadoodler]

I know there have been discussions similar to this in the recent past on these forums, but I felt the need to explain things freshly from my point of view. Keep in mind, I'm not saying that halflings shouldn't be a part of D&D, or that people who play/like halflings are having badwrongfun, I'm merely explaining why I have always been turned off from halflings and tend to prefer other small races (gnomes, goblins, kobolds, even dwarves).

I should probably start out by giving some of my background in the hobby. As a few of you are probably aware, I am fairly new to the hobby, and younger than most of the active posters on this site (from my experience, anyway), being 19 years old (turning 20 in September). I have been playing D&D since just after my 15th birthday, so about 4.5 years now. D&D 5e was the first edition of D&D that I've ever played, and is still the only TTRPG that I have ever played/GMed for (although I know a bit about Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu, Warhammer 40k, and Star Wars: Edge of the Empire). I have also researched a bit of how previous editions of D&D were different mechanically and lore-wise from 5e in order to understand its background, and consider myself fairly well versed in the lore of the Forgotten Realms, Eberron, Exandria, and decently knowledgeable on the lore of Dark Sun, Theros, Ravnica, Ravenloft Dragonlance, Greyhawk, and a few other settings. I also own every official D&D 5e book except Candlekeep Mysteries, and have read all of the books that I do own. I am a huge fan of the hobby (even though I am relatively new to the game), believe that D&D 5e is a great game, and cannot foresee myself ever stop playing D&D in any part of the near or distant future. I am heavily invested in the game and its future, and want to see the hobby that I love improve as much as it possibly can.

As I've shown above, I know quite a bit about D&D. I have dozens of playable races available in my homebrew world, and learn as much as I can about the lore of different worlds in order to improve my world by inspiration brought by that lore. I have created a ton of lore for tons of playable races for my world, and I find most of the lore that I've created for these to be fairly engaging and drawing concepts (and I do not mean to brag by this. I am a strong believer in "I just write the thing" mentality that some writers have, and find myself incredibly lucky and thoroughly surprised whenever my limited human brain comes up with something I find cool). I've created an intricate society of Vecna-worshipping death-touched, called the Vezyi. Their whole society revolves around the idea that life is a fleeting gift and that they must do whatever they can to preserve the lives of their people, having their culture being based off of worshipping the god of undeath in order to get "free" resurrections from clerics of Vecna (the price of these resurrections is having your body becoming a nameless member of Vecna's undead army, and quite possibly having your soul being devoured by Vecna's Mega-Phylactery). I've also created the Felshen, which are a psionic race of people descended from a flesh-golem race created by artificers and fleshmancers that had the goal of creating a fully-reproducing and sentient race of people, just to see if they could. They've had a centuries-long conflict with the magic-worshipping Yikkan Goblinoids, as the Yikkan Goblinoids view them as unnatural aberrations that's mere existence is actively hurting the universe, and the Felshen have an understandably negative opinion of a society of people that have systematically oppressed them for as long as their race has existed. Again, not to toot my own horn, but I think that both of these examples that I have given are good, compelling, and interesting races. They have a clear niche and purpose (the Felshen for being a psionic race, the Vezyi for being death-touched), are given in-depth and sensical lore-based reasons to exist, and are strongly rooted in the identity of the world. I feel the same way about Kalashtar and Warforged for Eberron, Thri-Kreen for Dark Sun, the Kryn Dynasty's races for Exandria/Wildemount, and so on. There are tons of examples, but these are the ones that come to mind at the moment.

And this takes me to halflings. What's their niche? Short-person. Are they the only race in that niche? Only if you don't count gnomes, dwarves, kobolds, and goblins (and Fairies if you count UA, and I'm not even counting the Lineages/Races that can be small or medium, including Verdan). Are they strongly rooted in the identity of most worlds that they're included in? Not really. If you take Halflings out of the Forgotten Realms or Exandria, it doesn't really change anything important/major about the settings. If you remove them from Dark Sun you don't have cannibal halflings, which are a cool tidbit about the setting, but certainly not essential to its identity, IMO. Eberron probably changes the most noticeably of any of these listed settings, as it has Talenta Plains, Dragonmarked, and House Boromar Halflings, but even then, you could just as easily replace all halflings with Gnomes (or possibly even Goblins) and get practically the same outcome. What is their lore-based reason to exist in most D&D world's? There's rarely actually ever one of these, and even if there is, the explanation is lacking (cause this god I just came up with to create halflings created halflings), and/or could just be summed up by "Halflings are in this world because they exist in D&D". And why do Halflings exist in D&D as a whole? Because Tolkien's works (a huge part of the inspiration of D&D) included Hobbits.

And that's where the issue (for me) comes down to. Their existence is circular. They exist for no real narrative or plot-driving purposes, but because Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit had small-folk as a race for some of its most prominent characters. And that's not a "bad" reason to warrant their existence in a fantasy game where quite literally anything can exist, but it's just not a "good" one, either (and by "a good reason to warrant existing", I meant it as in a reason that empowers creative thought, drives/inspires plot points, and motivates players to think a bit more about the identity of their characters). Warforged exist for a good reason (to provoke discussion and tropes of "what measure is a non-human") and give a lot of inspiration for both character backstory and plot points. Felshen exist in my D&D world to create plot points about the Felyik Conflict (shorthand for Felshen-Yikkan Conflict/Wars), to give players ideas on how their character(s) feel about major parts of the world (the magical goblinoid and psionic humanoid societies), and to drive discussion on who the "good" and the "bad" in the conflict are (it's neither, all shades of gray, but some individuals and mindsets are more wrong or right than others). The Kryn Dynasty exists in Exandria to drive discussion on essentially the same issue as Paarthurnax's famous question of "What is better - to be born good, or to overcome your evil nature through great effort?" The Warforged, the Felshen, the Kryn Dynasty, (and endless further examples), all exist for what I define as "good" reasons. They exist for story-driving reasons, while Halflings just exist to be "short people that are humans . . . but short".

I guess this is one of the rare cases where I find "Humans in silly hats" to be a valid complaint about a player race. Warforged can't be replaced with humans, as their story is unique and specific to their physical nature and history. The Kryn Dynasty's story would be far less compelling if they weren't gnolls, orcs, and goblinoids and were just cursed humans. My world's stories for Felshen and Vezyi are highly dependent on how they came into existence and their inherent genetic and magical nature, even if they are roleplayed very similar to humans (because, you know, we humans are the ones that will be roleplaying these races). However, if Halfling villages were just replaced with bog-standard human peasant villages, the story wouldn't change at all. If the dinosaur riders of the Talenta Planes were just primitive gnomes, goblins, or even humans that ride just slightly larger dinos, would anyone really notice or care? If the Halfling cannibals of Dark Sun were just human or elven cannibals, would that really change anything important about the world? If the Kender were just Thanos-snapped out of existence, would the cries in response to this be more made in protest against removing the endlessly-annoying kleptomaniacs, or would they be in celebration of their ultimate demise?

tl;dr - Halflings don't fill any important narrative purposes in the game (and even the ones that they do fill heavily overlap with more story-driving races). They exist just to exist, mostly because people like Bilbo/Frodo Baggins, and just aren't an inspiring character race. They're just "short people", and even the settings that try to make them matter fail to do so in a way that couldn't be at least as easy to emulate with one of the other similar races in the game that actually have story connected to their existence (gnomes connected to fey, humans being humans, etc).

Thoughts? Who agrees with me? Who disagrees with me? If you agree with me, are your reasons for agreeing the same as mine, or are they different. If you disagree with me, why?

For my part, I think halflings function better as nomadic traders/circus folk.

Like the whole, pastoral, hidden village trope can exist and make sense, but it does seem to create a bit of a rift between mechanics and fluff. Like why would these brave, lucky creatures be so deeply uncurious?

I think a lot of that disconnect starts to go away once you put them on the road. Love of home and family, a passion for a good meal, and amaterialistic interests can still be touchstone motivations for them as a group, and they might also be insular in the same way that other nomadic cultures can be insular. But they can be out in the world trading stories for handicrafts, songs for sandwiches, news for gossip, serving a purpose for those they come in contact with while not posing a "threat".

You can also start doing fun stuff by really leaning into some of the mechanics to really start making them culturally distinctive. Perhaps an inn in a Halfling "village" is a large tent with a network of ropes laced between the tentpoles, with hammocks slung underneath. You pay with a bit of gossip from the last town you visited and a promise to critique a song the proprietor is working on. You climb up or tightrope walk to your hammock at night, and when you wake in the morning, you might find that you, the inn and the village have all traveled several miles down the road. Stuff like this, I think, allows you to make halflings much more of their own distinct thing rather than just gnome2.0.