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?

 

[Lanefan]

I agree that Bilbo wasn’t a Rogue. I disagree that he was a scout though, I’d say he was a commoner or a noble.

I was pointing out that many, many, many halfling PCs, both in published fiction and in actual games, tend to be Rogues, despite this being at antipodes with their characterization as Lawful Good.

Though I won't go in depth with it here, I think a compelling argument can be made that Bilbo in particular is very much LG - though with perhaps more emphasis on the 'G' than the 'L' - and though he might not start out as a Rogue he certainly becomes one along the way.

 

[James Gasik]

---shrug--- maybe?

I have Gnomes more toward CN, but they're a pretty minor thing in my current setting thus I give them little if any thought most of the time.

Seems legit, most people don't think much about Gnomes.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Though I won't go in depth with it here, I think a compelling argument can be made that Bilbo in particular is very much LG - though with perhaps more emphasis on the 'G' than the 'L' - and though he might not start out as a Rogue he certainly becomes one along the way.

To answer this we would need to answer “What is a Rogue?”. My feeling is that the answer depends of the edition you play. I don’t think Bilbo would meet the criteria of a 5e Rogue.

 

[Mind of tempest]

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.

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

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.

@Maxperson please explain to me in what way halflings are good and triumph in the slightest?

Not guilty, y'r honour.

While 1e might have had them as trending LG by RAW, I've always had them trend NG so as to fit between Dwarves (LG/LN) and Elves (CG).

how are they neutral good?
this is neutral good.

with the obvious companion line no power does not mean no resposability.

 

[Maxperson]

So, are you just putting words in people's mouths or can you quote someone in this thread who said halflings are lawful good? Because you are making an accusation to my point, but it is based on what other people "clearly said". So, quote @Faolyn or @Gammadoodler or @Lanefan saying "halflings are lawful good" or acknowledge that you are putting words in people's mouths so you can make false accusations at me.

I'll do neither one. Good for halflings = LG unless they are homebrewing them. Since nobody said they were homebrewing halfling alignment, in a discussion the assumption defaults to the default of good = LG.

Because I notice you haven't called out Faolyn for making the inaccurate statement I was responding to. Because it doesn't matter how precisely I word my response, because you will come in and tell me I'm wrong, because you know what they really meant, because obviously they couldn't really mean what they say. Or, I word it so precisely that no one can argue the point... so I'm being pedantic.

If that's what you want to think. I think if you are in a discussion and have the choice to be accurate or inaccurate, you don't deliberately go with inaccurate because you assume people are going to be jerks. You can't have a discussion that way.

 

[Lanefan]

I'll do neither one. Good for halflings = LG unless they are homebrewing them. Since nobody said they were homebrewing halfling alignment,

Er...I did. They trend NG in my game rather than LG.

 

[Maxperson]

@Maxperson please explain to me in what way halflings are good and triumph in the slightest?

They're good because they're predominantly LG. I suppose they can triumph via luck or skill.

 

[Maxperson]

Er...I did. They trend NG in my game rather than LG.

Fair enough. I must have missed the post where you stated that.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

To answer this we would need to answer “What is a Rogue?”. My feeling is that the answer depends of the edition you play. I don’t think Bilbo would meet the criteria of a 5e Rogue.

Bilbo was the inspiration for the 1st edition Thief, but is best described as LG or NG.

 

[James Gasik]

Bilbo was the inspiration for the 1st edition Thief, but is best described as LG or NG.

Ironic since Thieves couldn't be Lawful Good. Well other than Dr. van Richten.