D&D (2024) No Dwarf, Halfling, and Orc suborgins, lineages, and legacies

[Micah Sweet]

Hobbit core though has been boring for decades.

What have hobbit-halfings contributed to Greyhawk? Forgotten Realms? Mystara? They exist in small rural pockets where they can be safely ignored. The only settings where halflings get any play are when they are not hobbits: Dragonlance (where kender fill their role), Eberron, and Dark Sun.

The problem is the hobbits. They are warm oatmeal: bland and boring. WotC needs to really work on a vision of halflings where they are part of the setting and not just warmed-over Tolkien leftovers. The problem is that would mean halflings would need nations, conflicts, important heroes and villains, a point where they make history. They would need to build things and do stuff. They would need to be as important as elves and dwarves are to the scope of the world.

And then you'd have to do that again for gnomes, dragonborn, tieflings, goliaths, etc.

So what? Level Up has hobbit culture as one among many. Why can't D&D do the same?

 

[CreamCloud0]

Yes. That's why I say get rid of the gnomes, give the fey animal friendship stuff to the halflings, and tinkering to the dwarves.

i think dwarves have a fairly well rounded portfolio already, i might give tinkering to goblins but that might just be passing the buck and ending up replicating alot of the 'mad scientist' energy that rubbed people the wrong way about the gnomes

 

[Crimson Longinus]

i think dwarves have a fairly well rounded portfolio already, i might give tinkering to goblins but that might just be passing the buck and ending up replicating alot of the 'mad scientist' energy that rubbed people the wrong way about the gnomes

I think dwarves are super one note. They're gruff Norse-Scottish miner-warriors, and perhaps artisans. I think expanding that artisan bit to allow gnome style tinkering would broaden their concept. This is basically how it is in Warhammer.

 

[CreamCloud0]

I think dwarves are super one note. They're gruff Norse-Scottish miner-warriors, and perhaps artisans. I think broadening that artisan bit to allow gnome style tinkering would broaden their concept. This is basically how it is in Warhammer.

okay yeah, well-rounded might of been a slightly inaccurate choice of wording to describe them, but even if they are one-note, 'gruff miner-crafter-warriors' it's a very strong, clear, note that a good amount of people have no issues doing something with.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

But what’s the point of having things in the phb that virtually no one uses?

Because at the scale that D&D is played at, that's still thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people who are playing them. And even the people who don't use all the options -- i.e. most of the stuff in every edition of the Monster Manual -- like to have that content there as a way to help establish the setting.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

A significant minority of players like small races - a majority just... don't, so they'll never be very popular. But like a good indie band they still sell out small venues.

 

[tetrasodium]

okay yeah, well-rounded might of been a slightly inaccurate choice of wording to describe them, but even if they are one-note, 'gruff miner-crafter-warriors' it's a very strong, clear, note that a good amount of people have no issues doing something with.

except that it's impossible to ignore how deeply wotc flogs that note exclusively in everything player facing just as they do with halflings. It's really strange that wotc would focus so much on elevating anm IP they don't own when wotc has more dynamic & involved versions that actually have a visceral impact on their setting & dynamic elements likely to be relevant to play. The end result of that misplaced spotlight pointing over the fence is that any GM who wants to actually use wotc's versions of those races in their setting will have a steep uphill climb with a regular need to correct expectations a player will feel reasonable flatly ignoring after the obligatory "uh-huh ok"that allows them to continue. Tolkein's dwarves are no more "well rounded" than tolkein's hobbits

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I've said this a bunch over the years -- please see my 2007 treatise, "The Unified Theory of Gnomes" -- but I've used gnomes and halflings both consistently in my campaigns.

The last 2E campaign I ran was an all-halfling campaign in the Five Shires (incorporating some of the D&D/Diablo material, but otherwise, leaning into the hobbitness of it all, including a murder mystery at a county fair).

When I started my ongoing play-by-post campaign in 2006, which has become the baseline from which other campaigns and live games have branched out of, I made the choice to have the starting barony only have humans, dwarves and gnomes living there. Everyone else existed out somewhere else (this is all set in the world where Ptolus exists, which explicitly has everything in the 3E PHB in it). Possibly to the point of how people will respond if gnomes get more of a spotlight, I had two players (out of nine) playing gnomes, one of them playing a cleric of Garl Glittergold, which led to a lot of development of his faith, which in turn meant that the church popped up in other ways in that and in related games.

I've also played a gnome illusionist since 2007 or 2008. That game is on hiatus, but we played it as recently as a year ago.

Just anec-data, but a counterweight to "I've never seen a gnome at my table."

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I imagine the gnomes in the past lived in the Feywild, but they haven't got very happy memories. Maybe they created their own kingdoms, until stonger invaders arrived. Some groups could dream about return to those fallen realms to recover their lost glory.

Halflings are too peaceful to think in conquest or war. They are wellcome because they are very productive peasants or farmers, they pay the taxes (if you don't ask too much) and they don't cause troubles comparing with the rest of communities. They are too good producing wine, cheese and other food or farm products.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I've said this a bunch over the years -- please see my 2007 treatise, "The Unified Theory of Gnomes" -- but I've used gnomes and halflings both consistently in my campaigns.

The last 2E campaign I ran was an all-halfling campaign in the Five Shires (incorporating some of the D&D/Diablo material, but otherwise, leaning into the hobbitness of it all, including a murder mystery at a county fair).

When I started my ongoing play-by-post campaign in 2006, which has become the baseline from which other campaigns and live games have branched out of, I made the choice to have the starting barony only have humans, dwarves and gnomes living there. Everyone else existed out somewhere else (this is all set in the world where Ptolus exists, which explicitly has everything in the 3E PHB in it). Possibly to the point of how people will respond if gnomes get more of a spotlight, I had two players (out of nine) playing gnomes, one of them playing a cleric of Garl Glittergold, which led to a lot of development of his faith, which in turn meant that the church popped up in other ways in that and in related games.

I've also played a gnome illusionist since 2007 or 2008. That game is on hiatus, but we played it as recently as a year ago.

Just anec-data, but a counterweight to "I've never seen a gnome at my table."

I mean, "all X race" campaigns don't really count, because they're premised on that, so completely artificial. We can exclude them from consideration.

Likewise if you force people to pick from human, dwarves and gnomes, you're not "giving gnomes more of a spotlight", you're explicitly forcing people in a trinary choice (I mean I'm assuming from how you've phrased it they couldn't - or were strongly discouraged from - picking other races). That's like saying, if you just delete elves as a choice, elves aren't very popular! It's not proving the point you think it proves at all. Basically the sort of players who want to play a "learned" or "erudite" race just going to shift from High Elf or w/e to Gnome.

Also, my brother in Garl, 2 out of 9 is still low! You gave people 3 races to pick from, and still only 2 of them picked Gnome. That's demonstrating real unpopularity.

The question is whether they actually get played when there's a genuine choice, rather than when people are explicitly delimited into situations where they're the only choice or one of few (where they still seem to be unpopular!). And I've seen precisely one (1) gnome since the 1990s (where I saw I think 2, over the entire decade, and that was with far more limited race choices), and that was 4E gnome, and it was picked specifically for the connection to the Feywild, a connection which has since been severed (rather bizarrely, frankly).

I've seen a slightly larger number of halflings, but not a significant number. I couldn't even begin to count the number of Tieflings or Dragonborn I've seen since 4E (and indeed Tieflings were common in 2E, and only not so in 3E because they had an LA of +1 but completely lacked the abilities to remotely justify that and had a CHA penalty, which was completely insane* - even 2E ones had a CHA bonus - might as well give Elves a DEX penalty!).

* = I don't think the writer was insane to be clear - I'm pretty sure they just absolutely hated Tieflings, because they significantly changed the lore behind them from 2E - making them much more "default evil", changed the stat bonuses in a bizarre way, and gave them pretty crap abilities for their +1 LA.