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?

 

[jasper]

Too short to get on the regular rides at Six Flags.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Is every smith a dwarf? Is every archer an elf? Is every illusionist a gnome?

I literally do not understand how it is that hard to grasp..

In the same way other races can be the best at and/or most well known for something without being the only ones who do it..

so..can..halflings.

It's not a "grimness" thing. It's a "read what the phb says and take it for face value" thing.

So the halflings are best and most well known for being good, kind, caring folk? Do you not see how that could be a problem? The same way a race that is best known for being evil tortures is a problem, a race that is best known for being kind caring folk who care about their neighbors is a problem. Because it makes morality a racial trait.

And that is the line I see your posts dancing on, that halflings are just morally better than everyone else. And that is not something I'm interested in.

 

[James Gasik]

I do apologize if my attempt to compare Halflings to other races comes off as "whataboutism", that wasn't the intent so much as to point out that Halflings, in my opinion, do not have any significant flaws that aren't present in most races. Further, that some races are a lot worse in this regard than Halflings.

You say you can't find ways to use Halflings; several of us have pointed out how we use or have used Halflings in this thread.

My very first post in this thread was how I changed the lore of Halflings in my current game, for example. Now if you want to not make any changes, and use something as-is in a game, and you're having problems with that, by all means, dispense with it.

But the fact that others have found ways to make Halflings work in our games, I think, shows that this is far from a universal problem.

 

[Faolyn]

so they are basically just an endless group of mindlessly nice people? that is terrible for stories.

Except that you're not really telling stories with RPGs. You're not writing a novel. You're playing a game where the plot and goal can be changed on the players' whims.

And they're not an endless group of mindlessly nice people. That is a racial tendency. There are plenty of not-nice or even outright evil halflings.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

And halflings fail to make the game world more vibrant and exciting.

For you. They fail to do so for you.

So they are failing their reason to exist. So we might want to fix that.

Then do that! This is completely a "you problem." Consider the insane amount of text you've written in this thread. Had you spent one tenth of that effort to write fleshed out halflings that work for you, you'd be done by now!

 

[bedir than]

I'm doing the opposite.

Neither the lore nor mechanics suggest a halfling crime family would set up their base to maximize their own stealth and bravery.

It's the opposite. Because halfling are fearless, lucky, carefree, and gregarious with other races, their base would look like a standard one... made for medium sized creatures so their friends would feel comfortable. And it would be barely hidden. Everyone would know where the hideout is ecause it would be an inn, restaurant, or tavern.

Except the mechanics absolutely do

 

[Faolyn]

I'm doing the opposite.

Neither the lore nor mechanics suggest a halfling crime family would set up their base to maximize their own stealth and bravery.

It's the opposite. Because halfling are fearless, lucky, carefree, and gregarious with other races, their base would look like a standard one... made for medium sized creatures so their friends would feel comfortable. And it would be barely hidden. Everyone would know where the hideout is ecause it would be an inn, restaurant, or tavern.

Halflings are not stupid. A halfling crime family would keep hidden because they don't want to go to jail or get killed. However, they would pull of heists and schemes that most everyone else would consider too audacious to try--and they'd be more likely to succeed, or at least not fail catastrophically.

Their base would likely be comfortable, yes, but it would be well-hidden, because halflings are good at stealth.

 

[Minigiant]

Except the mechanics absolutely do

Halflings are not stupid. A halfling crime family would keep hidden because they don't want to go to jail or get killed. However, they would pull of heists and schemes that most everyone else would consider too audacious to try--and they'd be more likely to succeed, or at least not fail catastrophically.

Their base would likely be comfortable, yes, but it would be well-hidden, because halflings are good at stealth.

Halflings would totally pay off the cops. They'd get free drinks and product. The guard and nobles would be their buddies. Halfling love their friends. The illegal deals would be hard to find but the hangout would be well known.

The clean cops who threaten to ruin things would learn about how halflings blend in the crowd and have "accidents".

 

[Azzy]

Some of you never played in Eberron and it shows. Tsk.

 

[Irlo]

Integrating Halflings into the Game World

Many halfings have established communitites many predominently human, dwarven, and elven citites and towns all across the realms. Additionally, several nomadic communities make long circuits of major regions, stopping at each permanent halfling settlement along the way. Often, as many as 10-20% of the wanderers chose to sojourn in those settlements, while a like number of settled halflings join the travellers. In this way, family ties are maintained and expanded, halflings young and old can see the world, and new discoveries are shared -- delicious foods, jaunty fashions, excellent stories. Occassionally, non-halfling join the caravans for short or long periods. It's slow travelling, but as halfings carry their homey comforts on the road, it's a pleasant road indeed.

Because of the good relations halflings maintain with the dominant peoples in their communities, the nomadic communities are free to cross borders even between nations with strained or hostile relations. Some might try to take advantage of that, but the halfings steadfastly decline to engage in espionage and smuggling which would undermine trust and potentially cut of their contacts with their kin in other lands.

Halflings in History and on the World Stage

Halfling are notably absent from the written histories of the realms. One might think for that reason that their contributions have been insignificant. In fact, one prominent historian has speculated that the entire Halflling race could be erased from the world with no discernable repurcussions.

A single example among many:

The histories tell of the strained relations between Dwarf City and Human Nation and the eventual bridging of that schism to form a consequential alliance of Dwarf and Human to fend off a coordinated hobgoblin and dark elf incursion -- a major event in world history. It was a longstanding feud, centuries old, caused by a broken treaty during a time of political turmoil in Human Nation B and maintained by the long memory of Dwarves and their lack of understanding of political turmoil that could disrupt good-faith agreements among nations, but the alliance that followed was even longer lasting.

The histories say that when the Human lands were pressed hard by initial waves of hobgoblin mauraders, their Dwarven neighbors overcame their grudge to send to a force against the invaders, briefly turning the tide and giving a populous Human town time to evacuate, saving many Human lives at the expense of Dwarven ones. What the histories don't say is that the Dwarves weren't there to defend the Humans at all but rather to defend the Halfling community that was nestled among them, at the behest of the Halfllings dwelling in Dwarf City. Nevertheless, the Humans returned the favor in a later skirmish, and the seeds of the alliance were formed.

For those who deem the entire Halfling race inconsequential on the world stage, I can only point to a famous bardic production, performed seasonally across the realms, about the disappearance of one inconsequential man and the ripple effect of that disappearance on family, friends, and community. Imagine now the removal from history of the entire Halfling people. The world that remained, if there was one, would be unrecognizable.