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]

As general tendencies, yes. It's one of the better ways IMO of quickly differentiating the species and how they generally tend to approach things as a society. If nothing else, these general tendencies would be reflected how their means and methods of governance evolves over time e.g. Elves trend a bit more anarchistic, Dwarves more bureaucratic, Hobbits more parliamentary, Goblins more might-makes-right.

Needless to say - but I suspect I'd better say it again anyway - a deep-seated societal trend does not mean everyone in that society follows said trend. There's always going to be rebels, free-thinkers, status-quo deniers, apple-cart upsetters, etc. within any society the members of which have enough intelligence to be able to think for themselves. And given enough time and influence, maybe these sorts end up changing the whole society a little...or a lot.

Well, one thing to be quick about, elves aren't really anarchistic in... any meaningful way. The most classive depictions of elves include elven nobiltiy and royalty. Frankly, I've never seen the "elves are free spirits who don't believe in laws" in any way shape or form in most fantasy literature.

But also, I notice you never used the words "good", "lawful" or "chaotic". You say dwarves are very bureaucratic. Okay, I could see that. And halflings are... parliamentarian? Frankly, I don't see the difference between the two. Because all governments have bureacracies to one degree or another, and this just seems to mean that dwarves have a massive system of laws and "proper ways" while halflings have an elected government of representatives... but dwarven bureacracy likely is headed by either a council of elected members (same as the halflings) or a king (same as literally every fantasy race ever). But you can't describe a governmental system by saying "well these people are Good, so therefore they will have X system of government" because there is no definitively "good" form of government. You have to base it off of other factors.

And, secondly, "not everyone is X alignment" is kind of pointless to the discussion. The point being brought is that one of the single most defining traits of halflings, the thing that sets them apart from every other race, is their goodness. That they are literally defined by being good. To then turn around and say that no all halfings are good 1) makes me wonder why we just claimed they are definitionally good 2) Doesn't make a difference.

Defining all Drow as "evil elves" doesn't suddenly become better just because you can say "but not all drow are evil, Driz'zt was a good guy". You are still trying to define drow by being evil elves. And that still doesn't work, because if they aren't all evil... then what defines them? Now, for Drow, various communities have done a lot of different work, but I want to swing this back around to halflings.

1) Defining them as "The Good Race" is a problem, both because it undercuts the other races (who are not the good race) and because defining a race by its alignment is problematic
2) Following this up by saying that racial alignments are not universal, and instead personal defeats the entire point of trying to define a race by alignment to begin with, because you can no longer even attempt to define them that way, or suddenly non-good or non-evil versions of those races no longer are those races, but must be something else.

All you have basically said here, is the same as "all hot dogs are definitionally served on buns, except the hot dogs you don't serve on buns" which is saying nothing.

 

[Maxperson]

If this had anything to do with my point, it would matter.

It doesn't, so it doesn't matter.

Then perhaps you should rephrase your post very differently, because as written my response was directly on point. Whatever point you think you were making is hidden very expertly.

"No, I do not think that halflings as a race should be the background glow of the universe, fighting off the darkness by their sheer wholesome and good existence. Again, this is bad racial design in my opinion. I know you are old-school Lanefan, I suspect you are fine with racial alignments. But I am not. I'm not fine with races that are born inherently evil, and I'm not fine with races born inherently good. I am not fine taking one of the most powerful and compelling tropes in fiction, one of the most hopeful things we can state about the universe and the world we live in, and devalue it by saying "and here is a group of people all born who do exactly that all the time.""

My response was directly applicable to the bold portions which were the core of that post. No PC race of any sort has EVER been the bold, and not even fiends/angels, the most inherently aligned races have been 100% their alignment.

 

[Irlo]

If you can't see Faolyn's post, the thing that led me to them being the source of small moments of good and triumph was this line: "And halflings are, by definition, small moments of good and triumph."

I can see the post. That post was made in the context of a conversation. I am paraphrasing and I'm likely to misrepresent someone's particular point, but here I'm speaking for myself and not trying to justify anyone else's arguments. Someone suggested that because halflings don't act in big ways with kingdoms and armies that they couldn't be considered good, because their good actions were so small that they were inconsequential (impotent, I think the word was). Another perspective, provided in part by @Faolyn, is that small acts of kindness and goodness are, in fact, consequential.

When halflings as a community contribute to the greater good, they tend to do so in those small ways that are easy to overlook but are nonetheless meaningful. When other communities, humans and dwarves as examples, contribute to the greater good, they tend to do so in big, sweeping ways, with righteous armies and crafting arcane portals to deny demon armies access to our world.

You inferred from this that if halflings were represented this way, then no one else could be shown to contribute in small ways.

Think about the statement and take it literally for a moment. "Halflings are the light of good in a dark world". Which means to illustrate that, you aren't going to show a dwarven character being good and kind, or an elf, or a human, because those races are not definitionally moments of good and triumph.

That's an unnecessary inference. By holding up dwarves as explemars of metalworkers and subterrainean architects, you do not imply that non-dwarves can't be blacksmiths and miners. If I say "Vulcans are the veritable definition of a logical alien species," it doesn't mean that humans in Star Trek can't use logic.

If the idea of halfling communities contributing small and meaningful moments of good to the world doesn't help you in your mission to find a way to integrate them into your world, that's fine and understandable.

But if the reason it doesn't help you is because of those unnecessary inferences, then perhaps you could abandon those inferences and interpret the ideas charitably in a way that doesn't lead immediately to absurdity. Then, maybe you'd find those ideas useful.

They don't have to be exclusive for it to be a problem. Unicorns aren't exclusively the only good-aligned, horned, horse-like Celestial. But they are by definition good-aligned, horned, horse-like celestials, and so they have all of those traits. If Halflings are, by definition, good then we have run face-first into the same exact problem you get when you make goblins, by defintion, evil.

Halfling individuals are not by definition good-aligned. I don't think anyone made that argument -- I could be wrong about that, but that's not what I've inferred from any posts here. I think people are using the description of halfling communities in the PHB to propose that they tend to contribute the small but meaningful good things to the world. That is an aspect of the community to set them apart from others in the game world.

If I'm wrong and that is what people are arguing -- well, I suggest simply ignoring that, since it's not useful to you, and looking at it with an interpretation that might be useful to you.

And, I think it is starkly telling that people will go forth and say things like "Halflings are by definition small moments of good and truimph" or "Halflings are the race that care about other people more than the other races" and it is only when someone points out what that means if taken at face value that they then back-pedal and say that you are taking their points too literally, and halflings aren't like, perfect. And that's their counter-argument.

It's not back-pedalling. It's clarifying that what you inferred from the ideas are not what the writers intended.

Not that their initial post was wrong, they believe that, but that you taking what they said and applying to the same degree you apply racial traits to other races, is wrong and extreme and only done because you hate halflings.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean here about applying racial traits. Regardless, I don't think you hate halflings. It's got to be frustrating for you to feel like your arguments are being dismissed like that.

(Tangent: Pfft, and isn't that hilarious for the Mary Sue angle. Everyone who doesn't like halflings are evil villains who just hate them because they are [insert reasoning here]. Seriously, I can't even make this up to this degree.

Did that happen? If it didn't, then yes, you did make that up.

Sigh Laughing over, let me be clear. No, I don't think that anyone has flat out called me an evil villain. I've just been repeatedly attacked via ad hominems and told that this is all a me problem, because halflings are fine, I'm the one who has the problem)

Well, it's true that's it's your problem, but it's abolutely not a you-problem. That is, there's nothing wrong with you, but you are having a problem integrating halflings into your game world in a way that satisfies you. Some other people don't have that problem. There have been some ideas floated around about how to make halflings distinct and interesting throughout this thread. Some people are trying to engage I'm sorry you've been attacked. I haven't read every post in this thread.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Then perhaps you should rephrase your post very differently, because as written my response was directly on point. Whatever point you think you were making is hidden very expertly.

"No, I do not think that halflings as a race should be the background glow of the universe, fighting off the darkness by their sheer wholesome and good existence. Again, this is bad racial design in my opinion. I know you are old-school Lanefan, I suspect you are fine with racial alignments. But I am not. I'm not fine with races that are born inherently evil, and I'm not fine with races born inherently good. I am not fine taking one of the most powerful and compelling tropes in fiction, one of the most hopeful things we can state about the universe and the world we live in, and devalue it by saying "and here is a group of people all born who do exactly that all the time.""

My response was directly applicable to the bold portions which were the core of that post. No PC race of any sort has EVER been the bold, and not even fiends/angels, the most inherently aligned races have been 100% their alignment.

Well, it is quite simple.

Firstly, three of those bolded parts are meant to apply to Lanefan and his games. That's why I said "I know you are old-school Lanefan". And he does seem to push for racial alignments.

Secondly, I never said they are absolute, so responding with "but they aren't absolute" doesn't apply to my response.

Thirdly, as I clarified in the discussion I was having with Lanefan, which you have butted into, the original point we were responding to is that halflings are definitionally moments of goodness and truimph. Now, I know you love your definitions Max. So, please feel free to tell me how something can be "definitionally" one way, but only occassionally and not absolutely.

Fourth and finally, whether or not it is absolute makes no difference. Designing a race that has a "strong tendency" to be better and more morally upstanding than everyone else is still just as gross, with the added benefit of being a cop-out from the original point and eventually saying nothing at all about the race. I reject racial alignments, whether they apply 100% of the time, 95% of the time, 75% percent of the time or 50% of the time. It is all gross, it is all repugnant, and I see no value in it.

 

[Maxperson]

Firstly, three of those bolded parts are meant to apply to Lanefan and his games. That's why I said "I know you are old-school Lanefan". And he does seem to push for racial alignments.

Sure, but I think that even he wouldn't have an issue with the odd CG or even LE halfling village, because alignments in races have never been absolute.

Secondly, I never said they are absolute, so responding with "but they aren't absolute" doesn't apply to my response.

I am not fine taking one of the most powerful and compelling tropes in fiction, one of the most hopeful things we can state about the universe and the world we live in, and devalue it by saying "and here is a group of people all born who do exactly that all the time.

The bolded is an absolute. Note the "all born" and "all the time." That leaves zero room for anything else.

Thirdly, as I clarified in the discussion I was having with Lanefan, which you have butted into, the original point we were responding to is that halflings are definitionally moments of goodness and truimph. Now, I know you love your definitions Max. So, please feel free to tell me how something can be "definitionally" one way, but only occassionally and not absolutely.

I've done it already. Twice and now a third time. The race is predominantly(51%+) moments of goodness and triumph(whatever that means), but significant portions of it don't have to be.

Fourth and finally, whether or not it is absolute makes no difference. Designing a race that has a "strong tendency" to be better and more morally upstanding than everyone else is still just as gross, with the added benefit of being a cop-out from the original point and eventually saying nothing at all about the race.

This is assuming a whole lot. Where is it said that LG is better and more morally upstanding to every other alignment?

I reject racial alignments, whether they apply 100% of the time, 95% of the time, 75% percent of the time or 50% of the time. It is all gross, it is all repugnant, and I see no value in it.

You're entitled to your opinions. Nobody is requiring you to use alignments, racial or otherwise. It helps for you to be accurate when you disparage it, though.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I can see the post. That post was made in the context of a conversation. I am paraphrasing and I'm likely to misrepresent someone's particular point, but here I'm speaking for myself and not trying to justify anyone else's arguments. Someone suggested that because halflings don't act in big ways with kingdoms and armies that they couldn't be considered good, because their good actions were so small that they were inconsequential (impotent, I think the word was). Another perspective, provided in part by @Faolyn, is that small acts of kindness and goodness are, in fact, consequential.

When halflings as a community contribute to the greater good, they tend to do so in those small ways that are easy to overlook but are nonetheless meaningful. When other communities, humans and dwarves as examples, contribute to the greater good, they tend to do so in big, sweeping ways, with righteous armies and crafting arcane portals to deny demon armies access to our world.

Well, this is part of the problem where multiple conversations happen at once. I tend to not fully agree with Mind of Tempest's claims. I see where they are coming from, if you want to have a race that is the "Good Race" in a game where paladins are the ultimate expression of Good, going out and smiting evil, then it is a problem that halflings don't do that.

However, I don't think that having a "Good race" is acceptable at all. I also find the ways that halflings fit into the world to be problematic, but I haven't even gotten through the conversation of what a halfling even is. The closest we've come here recently is that halflings are small people who are good. I don't feel the need to argue about armies and wars and fighting, because we have yet to get to a point where halflings are even defined enough to exist in the game beyond bland statements of moral superiority.

However, Faolyn's comment drew me up short, because it was in-line with exactly what Gammanoodler had been saying, but put in terms that I thought truly highlighted the problem.

You inferred from this that if halflings were represented this way, then no one else could be shown to contribute in small ways.

No, this is a misrepresentation of my point.

My point is that if halflings are "the small acts of kindness" race, as in that defines them as a race, then it cheapens and undercuts that behavior from everyone else. The exact same way I pointed out that halflings being "the brave race" cheapens and undercuts any other member of the party being brave.

For example, if you have a game where you go to a halfling town, and the halflings are more than happy to provide you free lodging, cook you dinner, and help you and then later in the game the party is defeated in wakes up in the home of a goliath woman who has taken them in, fed them and cared for them... well, she's not especially good, she's just like the entire village of halflings who would do the same thing. Unless we want to say that while halflings would do that as just part of being halflings, it is "unusual" for a goliath to be this kind to strangers. Which... leaves a bad taste in my mouth. This doesn't happen by letting anyone be this good, it happens when you say "these people in particular are this way" to make them unique from everyone else.

That's an unnecessary inference. By holding up dwarves as explemars of metalworkers and subterrainean architects, you do not imply that non-dwarves can't be blacksmiths and miners. If I say "Vulcans are the veritable definition of a logical alien species," it doesn't mean that humans in Star Trek can't use logic.

If the idea of halfling communities contributing small and meaningful moments of good to the world doesn't help you in your mission to find a way to integrate them into your world, that's fine and understandable.

But if the reason it doesn't help you is because of those unnecessary inferences, then perhaps you could abandon those inferences and interpret the ideas charitably in a way that doesn't lead immediately to absurdity. Then, maybe you'd find those ideas useful.

So, it is an unneccessary inference to take the thing said as meaning what it says?

See, we don't say "Dwarves are the smiths of the world", which would imply that no one else does smith-work. Instead we say "Dwarves are the best smiths" and then we go further by pointing out that this is do to dedicating an extremely long life to honing their craft. Which even further allows us to consider that if other people learned dwarven smithing techniques, they'd be just as good. Additionally, it is more than just smithings. Dwarves are master craftsmen. They are the best, in theory, at Jewelery work, stone work, it is a broad skill set that we build their culture around. They are good at metal and stone work, so they are good at mining to get the materials they use for metal and stonework, and since they are good at stonework, they live in mountains, because they can shape the mountains.

However, the equivalent for halflings seems to be having them care about other people. You don't start with a skill, you start with a personality trait. Then they start building on ideas of "well since halflings care about other people, they'd do X, and since they would do X they would be the best at that." But... this falls apart. There aren't any special halfling techniques to running an inn. It's just... caring about people. And if you say that caring about people is what makes them special, if you say that is something you can build an entire unique society around... well... how do you explain humans being social creatures that care about each other? Because we do. We are hard-wired to care about other humans and their opinions. So either you have to boost halfling's "caring" beyond the scope of the reasonable into pure celestial spirit levels of wholesomeness... or you have to downplay the fundamental truth that societies only work because people care about each other. And that is made only worse when you go as far as to say that "halflings are the light of the world" because now you are saying that they are so good, that they are the best things in the world.

Halfling individuals are not by definition good-aligned. I don't think anyone made that argument -- I could be wrong about that, but that's not what I've inferred from any posts here. I think people are using the description of halfling communities in the PHB to propose that they tend to contribute the small but meaningful good things to the world. That is an aspect of the community to set them apart from others in the game world.

If I'm wrong and that is what people are arguing -- well, I suggest simply ignoring that, since it's not useful to you, and looking at it with an interpretation that might be useful to you.

Well... neither interpretation is useful to me. Every good community contributes small but meaningful good things to the world. This is the thing that just does not compute. Not every single human is out there with a sword smiting evil, or slinging spells to fight abominations. The vast majority of humans are normal everyday people living their lives and doing the best they can. Why is a halfling community just flat out better and more caring than a human community? Because halflings care and humans don't? That doesn't work.

And this is the fundamental problem I keep running into in this discussion, no matter how many times it happens. Halflings are "the everyman" the "simple folk just living their lives" and that is supposed to make them special.... but everyone is the everyman simple folk just living their lives. There is no race that doesn't have those sorts of people, because those sorts of people are the people the PCs are supposed to go and protect.

It isn't that I hate the idea of having an normal people who just live their lives, it is that I do that for every single race. If that is the only thing halflings can be, then they have no value. And inevitably, this complaint has someone "challenge" me by asking "well, what is the point of dwarves, if other races can have smiths"? And that misses the point. Because dwarves aren't "just smiths". They aren't the best designed race of all time, but they have far more going on than that. They have a connection to stonework, building, mining, a clan structure, a unique living environment, biological differences. I've read a story where Dwarves weren't smiths, but they were still dwarves. You can take it away and dwarves are still dwarves. But if you take away halflings being "everyday people"... there isn't anything left that has solid value for the table. There are things left, but as I've pointed out, luck and bravery aren't good for the table, and short is something that we can get from a dozen other places.

Did that happen? If it didn't, then yes, you did make that up.

It was a reference to how one of the defining traits of a mary sue is that everyone who doesn't like them is bad and evil and wrong, because everyone who is good and right loves them. It just amused me that it seemed to almost incidentally apply here. Because I've been told repeatedly that my complaints are "just because you don't like them" and while I haven't been accused of it this thread, I was accused of the "all edge, no point" grim-dark world thing before when I mentioned that halflings being 'the good people" wasn't a good design.

Well, it's true that's it's your problem, but it's abolutely not a you-problem. That is, there's nothing wrong with you, but you are having a problem integrating halflings into your game world in a way that satisfies you. Some other people don't have that problem. There have been some ideas floated around about how to make halflings distinct and interesting throughout this thread. Some people are trying to engage I'm sorry you've been attacked. I haven't read every post in this thread.

Thanks

 

[Chaosmancer]

Sure, but I think that even he wouldn't have an issue with the odd CG or even LE halfling village, because alignments in races have never been absolute.

I am not fine taking one of the most powerful and compelling tropes in fiction, one of the most hopeful things we can state about the universe and the world we live in, and devalue it by saying "and here is a group of people all born who do exactly that all the time.

The bolded is an absolute. Note the "all born" and "all the time." That leaves zero room for anything else.

I've done it already. Twice and now a third time. The race is predominantly(51%+) moments of goodness and triumph(whatever that means), but significant portions of it don't have to be.

Not arguing with you over this, I shouldn't have even responded the last time. You are willfully misunderstanding and I'm not dealing with it.

This is assuming a whole lot. Where is it said that LG is better and more morally upstanding to every other alignment?

Where has anyone said LG? Everyone has said "good". Surely you wouldn't try and argue that being neutral or evil is better or more morally upstanding that being good, right?

You're entitled to your opinions. Nobody is requiring you to use alignments, racial or otherwise. It helps for you to be accurate when you disparage it, though.

Being accurate has never helped me in the past, why should I bother? Generally, people (at least four in this thread alone) just block me and ignore me. Being more precise in my language does nothing but get you arguing minutia that misses the forest because you want to argue leaf shape.

I'm not interested.

 

[Maxperson]

Where has anyone said LG? Everyone has said "good". Surely you wouldn't try and argue that being neutral or evil is better or more morally upstanding that being good, right?

We're talking about halflings. They were LG in AD&D. 3e made them neutral. No idea about 4e. 5e places them back at mostly LG. So when people are talking "good" for halflings, it's LG.

Being accurate has never helped me in the past, why should I bother? Generally, people (at least four in this thread alone) just block me and ignore me. Being more precise in my language does nothing but get you arguing minutia that misses the forest because you want to argue leaf shape.

I'm not interested.

So you just willingly choose to be inaccurate? How does that make things better?

 

[James Gasik]

But are Dwarves the best smiths? Nothing in their stat block proves this. It's an informed ability, much like most races lore.

I would say, personally, that Halflings are the best at building communities. Not cities- that's apparently Human's hat, somehow. But Halflings are a race that's very concerned with putting the community first.

Not all Halflings- there's some real jerks out there, mostly the Rogue adventurer types. If you've read Bob Salvatore's books, you know Regis is a selfish jerk ass who only cares about being comfortable- the other side of Bilbo's coin, I guess.

Olive Ruskettle from another D&D book line is an opportunist and a con artist, but she does care about her (few) close friends.

So every race is going to have it's ne'er do wells. Halflings know that what affects your neighbor, affects you, so they work with their community so that everyone prospers. But they are also keenly aware of the adage that "good fences make for good neighbors".

I see Halflings as being outwardly civil towards their neighbors, while holding their true derision inside (kind of like "Minnesota Nice" in action). But even if they hate their neighbor Bob, who is always borrowing stuff and never giving it back, if Bob's house is attacked by bandits, a Halfling's response will be "Ma, get me the crossbow, it's time to kill some varmints" and run to Bob's rescue in their nightshirt.

 

[Irlo]

Well, this is part of the problem where multiple conversations happen at once.

Yes, there's a lot going on here!

No, this is a misrepresentation of my point.

So, it is an unneccessary inference to take the thing said as meaning what it says?

I included a direct quote from you:

Think about the statement and take it literally for a moment. "Halflings are the light of good in a dark world". Which means to illustrate that, you aren't going to show a dwarven character being good and kind, or an elf, or a human, because those races are not definitionally moments of good and triumph.

You are telling me my inferences from that those exact words do not represent what you meant by them. What did I infer? I inferred that you meant what you said: That you aren't going to show a dwarven character being good and kind, or an elf, or a human. I have been corrected. You didn't mean exactly what you said. Words have shades of meaning and different usages. A statement can use a turn of phrase that's not literal. Most important, comments are in the context of the on-going conversation, and that context changes their meanings.

So yes, I maintain that you made an unneccesary inference. It's not a crazy idea.

Well... neither interpretation is useful to me.

Sincere question - have you found anything useful in this thread?