RPG Evolution: The Trouble with Halflings

Over the decades I've developed my campaign world to match the archetypes my players wanted to play. In all those years, nobody's ever played a halfling.

Picture courtesy of Pixabay.​

So What's the Problem?​

Halflings, derived from hobbits, have been a curious nod to Tolkien's influence on fantasy. While dwarves and elves have deep mythological roots, hobbits are more modern inventions. And their inclusion was very much a response to the adventurous life that the agrarian homebodies considered an aberration. In short, most hobbits didn't want to be adventurers, and Bilbo, Frodo, and the others were forever changed by their experiences, such that it was difficult for them to reintegrate when they returned home. You don't hear much about elves and dwarves having difficulty returning home after being adventurers, and for good reason. Tolkien was making a point about the human condition and the nature of war by using hobbits as proxies.

As a literary construct, hobbits serve a specific purpose. In The Hobbit, they are proxies for children. In The Lord of the Rings, they are proxies for farmers and other folk who were thrust into the industrialized nightmare of mass warfare. In both cases, hobbits were a positioned in contrast to the violent lifestyle of adventurers who live and die by the sword.

Which is at least in part why they're challenging to integrate into a campaign world. And yet, we have strong hobbit archetypes in Dungeons & Dragons, thanks to Dragonlance.

Kender. Kender Are the Problem​

I did know one player who loved to play kender. We never played together in a campaign, at least in part because kender are an integral part of the Dragonlance setting and we weren't playing in Dragonlance. But he would play a kender in every game he played, including in massive multiplayers like Ultima Online. And he was eye-rollingly aggravating, as he loved "borrowing" things from everyone (a trait established by Tasselhoff Burrfoot).

Part of the issue with kender is that they aren't thieves, per se, but have a child-like curiosity that causes them to "borrow" things without understanding that borrowing said things without permission is tantamount to stealing in most cultures. In essence, it results in a character who steals but doesn't admit to stealing, which can be problematic for inter-party harmony. Worse, kender have a very broad idea of what to "borrow" (which is not limited to just valuables) and have always been positioned as being offended by accusations of thievery. It sets up a scenario where either the party is very tolerant of the kender or conflict ensues. This aspect of kender has been significantly minimized in the latest draft for Unearthed Arcana.

Big Heads, Little Bodies​

The latest incarnation of halflings brings them back to the fun-loving roots. Their appearance is decidedly not "little children" or "overweight short people." Rather, they appear more like political cartoons of eras past, where exaggerated features were used as caricatures, adding further to their comical qualities. But this doesn't solve the outstanding problem that, for a game that is often about conflict, the original prototypes for halflings avoided it. They were heroes precisely because they were thrust into difficult situations and had to rise to the challenge. That requires significant work in a campaign to encourage a player to play a halfling character who would rather just stay home.

There's also the simple matter of integrating halflings into societies where they aren't necessarily living apart. Presumably, most human campaigns have farmers; dwarves and elves occupy less civilized niches, where halflings are a working class who lives right alongside the rest of humanity in plain sight. Figuring out how to accommodate them matters a lot. Do humans just treat them like children? Would halflings want to be anywhere near a larger humanoids' dwellings as a result? Or are halflings given mythical status like fey? Or are they more like inveterate pranksters and tricksters, treating them more like gnomes? And if halflings are more like gnomes, then why have gnomes?

There are opportunities to integrate halflings into a world, but they aren't quite so easy to plop down into a setting as dwarves and elves. I still haven't quite figured out how to make them work in my campaign that doesn't feel like a one-off rather than a separate species. But I did finally find a space for gnomes, which I'll discuss in another article.

Your Turn: How have you integrated halflings into your campaign world?

 

[Chaosmancer]

Because long ago we had some stupid monsters. Some, like the one based on medieval drawings drew inspiration from a real world source that just looks odd. Others, like the duckbunny were joke monsters and even described as such in the descriptive text. Because we had some bad designs, halflings are perforce bad design. Guilt by association I guess.

I am not responding to this to respond to Oofta. I am responding to this because this was a misrepresentation of my argument, and since I seem to have trouble with people understanding what my actual argument is, I need to clarify, before I am further sucked down into the abyss of people not understanding my arguments and accusing me of things I never said.


Because we had some bad designs, it is possible for DnD to have things that are badly designed. Because it is possible for DnD to have things that are badly designed, then it is possible that we have things which need to be redesigned or ejected from the game of DnD. Because it is possible that we have things in DnD which need to be redesigned or ejected from the game of DnD, then it is possible that one of those things is Halflings.

I am not using these monsters as an argument to prove halflings are bad. I am using these monsters because it was argued that NOTHING from DnD's past except the anti-inclusive content should EVER be removed or changed from the game. This section of my discussions is far far more basic than anything about halflings, it is to show that there are things in DnD that can be improved upon and that improving or removing ANYTHING AT ALL is potentially an action that can be discussed.

 

[Chaosmancer]

(Emphasis mine.)

With that in mind, there’s no guarantee those “knees” work like simple hinges. They might be more like ball and socket joints, with a much broader range of motion than a typical knee.

The problem is that if it did have a ball and socket joint with that range of motion, it wouldn't have such obvious and prominent achille's tendons as depicted in the art.

Look, I know that "it is a fantasy creature" is a big deal, but if you want to convince someone that something is an orange, you don't draw an apple. Those legs are not designed to rotate as ball and socket joints, the design is wrong for that conclusion. They could have done that. They didn't.

 

[Oofta]

I am not responding to this to respond to Oofta. I am responding to this because this was a misrepresentation of my argument, and since I seem to have trouble with people understanding what my actual argument is, I need to clarify, before I am further sucked down into the abyss of people not understanding my arguments and accusing me of things I never said.


Because we had some bad designs, it is possible for DnD to have things that are badly designed. Because it is possible for DnD to have things that are badly designed, then it is possible that we have things which need to be redesigned or ejected from the game of DnD. Because it is possible that we have things in DnD which need to be redesigned or ejected from the game of DnD, then it is possible that one of those things is Halflings.

I am not using these monsters as an argument to prove halflings are bad. I am using these monsters because it was argued that NOTHING from DnD's past except the anti-inclusive content should EVER be removed or changed from the game. This section of my discussions is far far more basic than anything about halflings, it is to show that there are things in DnD that can be improved upon and that improving or removing ANYTHING AT ALL is potentially an action that can be discussed.

There is no such thing as perfection. There have been some odd design decisions in the past, things I don't agree with. that doesn't mean that just because you believe something is poorly designed that everyone will agree with you. I don't think that the halfling is poorly designed. Feel free to disagree.

The reason I mentioned the duckbunny was because I thought you had mentioned it as poor design but I could be hallucinating. While it definitely shows up on a lot of lists of badly designed monsters, those lists miss the intent of the entry. It's deliberately designed to be a joke.

 

[Chaosmancer]

My once-housecat (RIP), as evidenced by some scars I still bear, would beg to differ.

Cats of nearly all types rake things with their claws as an attack method. A Demon-cat would of course raise this to a dialled-to-eleven art form.

sigh

Yes, cat's can rake. That is a possibility. That is not what the claw's main purpose is. Why do you think so many felines pounce with both front paws extended and their claws fully extended when they go in for a kill? The purpose is to latch on and get the far more dangerous teeth into play. The fact that they can also swipe does not change this fact.

Swiping with claws is a deterrent, to inflict pain and get a larger creature to back off. Swatting without the paws is for little creatures. Pouncing with the goal of hooking and going for the bite to kill is how felines hunt larger prey for the kill.

If it was intended as a more mundane Prime Material creature of the woods or plains I'd agree with you completely. But it's a Demon. Forget the normal physics - none of that applies to Demons!

Then don't draw demons with prominent ligaments we are supposed to ignore. That is like drawing a creature with a crab claw and expecting us to reason that the crab claw seperates into fingers, because it is a demon. If you want it to have fingers, you need to draw that, not say "its a demon! No rules!" and make a bad design.

EDIT to add: it just occurred to me that the obvious use for the heads/mouths would be some sort of two-directional breath weapon...

I hadn't seen a Gibbering Mouther in play for ages until our PCs met and killed a few in last weekend's session.

Sure, it could be used for a breath weapon. There is zero art of this thing using a breath weapon. So I did not just assume it had a breath weapon.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The problem is that if it did have a ball and socket joint with that range of motion, it wouldn't have such obvious and prominent achille's tendons as depicted in the art.

Look, I know that "it is a fantasy creature" is a big deal, but if you want to convince someone that something is an orange, you don't draw an apple. Those legs are not designed to rotate as ball and socket joints, the design is wrong for that conclusion. They could have done that. They didn't.

I know that.

But again, the creature’s anatomy may be variable. Standard knee joint when cartwheeling, rapidly (or instantaneously) changing to a B&S joint as needed. We’re just seeing it in a single moment.

I think of all those creatures from Asian sci-fi/horror/fantasy with impossible anatomy, like Zeiram, or Lovecraftian horrors.

 

[Faolyn]

So... you literally have read nothing and cared nothing for the paragraphs I have written, have utterly dismissed my analysis as a "snap decision" and just wanted to berate me for "wasting my own time"

Well, I certainly wasted time in thinking you had a serious interest in the answer to your own question and would give my answer a considered chance instead of declaring I am wrong because of things that had nothing to do with my answer.

I read your post. Do you think I was supposed to suddenly say "Wow, Chaosmancer was right all along!"?

I asked what was wrong with it. Your answer was that it looks dumb, therefore it was objectively bad, because you didn't seem to get that it was a fantastic beast that doesn't have to fit real-world biology and you apparently didn't try to think about it.

 

[Lanefan]

The thing isn't what did and didn't exist in a specific century. I don't care about having a historically accurate game. What annoys me are people who declare that their style of game cannot accept certain influeces, because they only allow a specific flavor of thing, and then ignore the fact that their games ALSO have a bunch of things in them from various influences outside that specific flavor they claim to "only" allow, and are excluding things that could reasonably exist.

For my part, I'm quite up-front about having it that in my setting some things (e.g. sailing ships, armour, mapmaking) have been developed to a much "later" era than have other things (gunpowder, firearms, steam power); and that faux-cultures from widely different historical periods can and do exist at the same time, occasionally borrowing/stealing each others' tech.

Then don't draw demons with prominent ligaments we are supposed to ignore. That is like drawing a creature with a crab claw and expecting us to reason that the crab claw seperates into fingers, because it is a demon. If you want it to have fingers, you need to draw that, not say "its a demon! No rules!" and make a bad design.

In Pirates III: At World's End there's a creature that, when first seen, looks and behaves like a smooth rounded stone maybe six or eight inches across.

It is in fact a small intelligent crab-like creature, as soon becomes evident in the film.

If I draw that creature as a stone, does that mean it's then not allowed to be designed as a crab?

 

[Gammadoodler]

Then don't draw demons with prominent ligaments we are supposed to ignore. That is like drawing a creature with a crab claw and expecting us to reason that the crab claw seperates into fingers, because it is a demon. If you want it to have fingers, you need to draw that, not say "its a demon! No rules!" and make a bad design.

Or..you can quite reasonably argue that artists' depictions are not the same as photographs and that the reason there aren't any photographs is that the creatures are bound by our imaginations rather than any kind of physical reality. Imagination trumps art.

 

[Zubatcarteira]

I'm thinking it spins sideways like a Beyblade, that'd destroy anything in its path.

 

[James Gasik]

I'm thinking it spins sideways like a Beyblade, that'd destroy anything in its path.

The game Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, has Buers as enemies. The standard versions do move in a wheel-like fashion. There's an advanced Buer Chariot which is four Buers acting as wheels to a cart.