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
Not quite. What you're being told is that these are some of the traits that help define halflings, and that these traits are enough to justify their place in the worlds of DnD.
These are all personality traits. Supposedly you play halflings because they are the only way to expeirence these traits.
No. For the, what...3rd time? No. You are inventing the idea that a race needs to be or even can be the only way to experience a trait in order for it to be a valid playable race trait that defines the race. How unique to halflings a given trait is does not matter. No other race is defined by the same combination of traits, aesthetic, and ethos, that defines halflings. More importantly, halflings are a people that many players really enjoy, some players so much so that they rarely play anything else. That is literally enough to justify their place in the game.
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, you keep adding things in your reply that weren't in the text you replied to, so...yes.
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,"
Okay.
Seems to very much be doubling down on this concept that being against halflings means being against characters who are curious and adventurous.
How do you read that in what you quoted? Discussing things with you sometimes feels like I'm trying to communicate in two languages and neither of us is fluent in either. I don't know how else to describe it. I genuinely do not experience this outside of enworld, and even here only with a handful of posters, so its just very frustrating.
The statements that you are
choosing to take that way are
actually saying that halflings don't need anything beyond those traits to justify their place, to be a worthwhile PC race.
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
Except you keep misrepresenting the point in order to argue against the weakest possible version of it.
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?"
Welp. if you really can't see any way in which you might possibly have misunderstood their point, even by reading what else they've said ITT and comparing, then we probably aren't going to get anywhere.
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.
No one expects any such thing. You keep making the same point, however, without ever indicating that it isn't exactly what you think. It's not like it isn't a point of view that is unironically posited on these forums with some regularity by a small number of posters.
The fact that you are getting pissed off might be making it hard for you to see that no malice was intended.
lol no. It's not my fault your behavior caused a reaction. You add things to people's arguments when you reply to them, rather than replying to what they said and only what they said. It's disrespectful.
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?
For example, you've added the bolded to what I said. It isn't present in any statement I've ever made, and yet you're replying to my statements as if this nonsense you've added is the crux of my position.
Halflings allow people into their inner circle more readily than both real life humans, and fake fantasy races. There are human communities like that, and families, and people, but in general humans need to be taught to do that, because our instinct is toward some amount of tribalism. Halflings instinct is to consider an "outsider" to just be a person they don't know yet, just as capable of being someone they'll love as a brother in a few years as someone they'll have to fight in a few minutes. Basically, they give strangers a fair shake more readily.
I'm fine with clarifying that, but the part Ibolded in your reply is just...a total non-sequitor from what I said.
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.
Because you're conflating different statements as if they're one statement. Hospitality and loyalty are two separate parts of what I said.
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.
No, they didn't.
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.
Nope. Their post made perfect sense, without saying that at all.
@steeldragons can correct me if I'm wrong, but what they were saying is that halfings have those traits, and even if that is all there is to halflings, that is plenty to make a compelling playable race, and none of the other stuff that defines other races is needed. The game doesn't need every race to be some combination of the traits they listed that you're somewhat hyperbolising (maybe consider that hyperbole is...bad for communication, actually?), eg edgelords or super-men, in order to be a good PC race. A race can just be quiet, friendly, curious, humble, folks. That is a good PC race concept.
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.
You can play, again, every archetype with any race. This is not a valid argument for or against any race, ever. It's completely irrelevant.
No one, and here I am
not using hyperbole*, is saying what you claim "everyone" is saying.
*it isn't hyperbole to use terms like everyone and no-one to refer to the people in a given discussion, it's just contextual speech.
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?
The gruff tough guy with a heart of gold is the point of dwarfs, depsite that being something you can do with literally any race, too.
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.
A response doesn't have to further the discussion to be appropriate. One word responses are the facial expressions and gestures of textual communication.
Above you just said no. That doesn't tell me anything.
Funny, such responses tell me plenty, and pretty much 99% of the time when I use them, whether it's twitter, reddit, social media platforms I don't use anymore like facebook, or other forums, people understand such responses, and emoji responses, as part of the online social lexicon.
And... isn't a halfling who goes seeking adventure odd?
Not at all. Explicitly. In the text you claim to have read and so are apparently just ignoring. It is explicitly normal for halflings to go adventuring in their youth and then settle down to start a family afterward.
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.
It is part of their lore by long tradition that while they love comfort and good food, they're quite capable of being happy without it. It's explicitly part of lore, part of their longtime tradition, and even part of their mechanics, that they aren't overmuch ruled by fear.
Halflings are perfectly illustrated in The Lord of The Rings. Some of them wanted to stay home but couldn't once they knew their friend had to leave home to go on a dangerous quest, while others were eager to leave and see more of the wider world, and Frodo was fairly well split between them. And one of them did stay, and doesn't appear in the film, of course, though he had his own adventure back home in the meantime.
The point is, halflings are the first 20 minutes of Fellowship, all parties and food and fine smoking herbs in their comfy homes,
and they are Mariadoc Brandybuck screaming
Death! right alongside the Rohirrim before charging into battle. They are Samwise waxing philosophical about potatoes
and Samwise routing a tower full of orcs with nothing but a sword and a bright light of hope to save his best friend.
If all you see when you read that is, "well humans could do all that too" then this entire discussion is completely pointless, because you're just not going to ever get it, no matter what any of us say.
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.
See my rebuttal to this same point the last few times I've replied to you. No one but you is talking about any given trait being unique or exclusive to any given race.
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.
Utterly irrelevant. There is no reason to not just continue to have both. Folk overlap sometimes. I'm not gonnna support ditching dwarves, either, just because I like gnomes more and they overlap in some ways.
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.
What vehemence? I didn't get vehement at all until you'd replied directly to me.
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?
There isn't a number of times, there is just an understanding, which you keep directly showing that you don't have. I've tried to explain in this post, and I hope it succeeds, because despite my aggravation with you right now, I enjoy your input in threads on other topics. There's just something about this topic and a small number of others where you seem to have a set of underlying assumptions that you assume everyone else shares, but that isn't the case, and communication goes nowhere because of it.
Yes. And how does that apply to what I was saying?
-flat stare- You described 3 races. Out of a hundred or so. And then acted like you had shown that the majority of races fit the mold you are describing. And then when I challenged that you acted like I was speaking against irrefutable evidence in the form of...your description of the flaws of 3 races.
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.
So, Uldra defines Talenta halflings completely, but Ghallanda doesn't count. Oookay.
Well, no, obviously not. The fact that there is a faction of halflings that want to
change Talenta's culture to be a closed culture with closed borders does not mean that Talentan Halflings are not welcoming and hospitable. Especially when that faction only has any traction because they just got out of a 100 year long war they had no actual stake in where people kept trying to force them out of their own land.
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.
Gallanda is a halfling family. They started as and still are part of Talenta culture, though much of the house no resides outside of it and includes people who've never been to the plains. The core of the house is still Talenta Halflings. Their whole thing developed out of Talenta culture and it's focus on hospitality. None of the dragonmarks are total non-sequitors with the people they deveopled on. The closest to such a thing are Finding, Detection, and Storm, but even they don't
contradict the culture or nature of the people they developed on. Ghallanda isn't some wild cultural aberration.
Yes, they originated there, but are they the same people?
Yes! Just like how the Medani are very much a khoravar house, who remain part of khoravar culture and work to better to situation of their folk,
every halfling faction in Khorvaire has lasting and important ties to Talenta, has family there, are still part of the tribes. There are individual halflings within those factions who don't care, and halflings who are totally detached from their people's past and just think of themselves entirely as Brelish or Aundairian or whatever, but these larger groups are, as groups, part of branching geneologies of related cultures, all tied back to Talenta, and Gatherhold.
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".
A failing of that book, as good as it is, is that it simplifies a lot about the people of Eberron, and sometimes what they chose to simplify ends up giving the wrong impression.
This is also a tangent, I hope you realise. Even if we look at Ghallanda halflings as wholly separate from Talenta halflings, and we shouldn't, we still end up several cultures of halflings who have common threads with eachother.
The fact that some halflings are bascially just short Brelanders or whatever isn't even unique. Every race is like that. Even the monstrous races have some small numbers who just think of themselves as Brelish or Thranish or whatever, and don't care about Drooam or Dhakaan outside of how they effect their own home country. That's a big part of Eberron.
But every culture that is a
halfling culture, has some version of lack of friendliness, quiet strength, and willingness to fight hard and without fear for their homes and fellows.
I'm arguing in good faith, there is a massive disconnect between the two groups.
Okay, you just have a very very different idea of the setting than I do. I feel confident in mine, because I've been following Eberron closely for over 15 years, and have read nearly everything that has ever been published, physically or digitally, and every blog post by Keith about it, and every episode of Manifest Zone, etc. Tht doesn't mean that I'm right and you're wrong, I just point it out to both explain why I'm so confident in what I'm saying, and to assure you that I'm not just speaking out of my butt.
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
Not every response is going to "move the conversation forward". Some are just there to express a reaction to what someone has said. This is pretty normal.
