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?

 

[Faolyn]

true but there is an equal number of people who care that they can play a 20-str halfling either for serious or pure humour.
personally, I want weaknesses but ones that are fun to deal with like humans being bad at night or elves with a weakness to iron(would it just be iron would it include steel, others in its elemental group?)

This exactly! Give humans a penalty to Perception in the dark (which they technically already have), give some races (elves, orcs) no penalty in the dark, or a much smaller one, and give some races (goblinoids, dwarfs) a bonus in the dark--perhaps the ability to see color.

That's useful and interesting and makes the races stand out.

But in all seriousness, I'd say just iron. It's a magical weakness, not a scientific one. Steel is iron + a pinch of carbon and maybe other elements, and carbon is organic. But at the same time, if elves aren't always shiny and good, iron weapons should be more common. Even if steel is commonly available, people are going to want weapons that are particularly useful against them.

 

[Faolyn]

I didn't. Traditional (as in, old school) Goblins and Kobolds can't usually read anything, and their languages don't have a written form. Literacy just never made it to those cultures.

There's nothing in either of their 1e or 2e descriptions that say they can't read. Was that in a worldbook or a Dragon article or something?

In the real world, humans invented some sort of writing system as soon as it became necessary for them to keep track of things. I have a hard time believing that, in a world surrounded by tons of other races that have their own writing, that goblins and kobolds wouldn't either invent their own or adopt someone else's.

But in any case, that's your table's interpretation of goblins, not the canonical description.

 

[Mecheon]

For Goblins, I can see this as an outgrowth of having made them (grumble grumble) playable as PCs. Are Kobolds also PC-playable these days?

Kobolds have had PC stats ever since 1988, and have been playable in every edition since

They were infamously one of the most powerful races to be in 3E, due to Dragonwrought kobolds having some Interesting interactions with the rules for age categories

 

[Mind of tempest]

Or, for added complexity (!), put each stat for each species on its own bell curve translated from the standard 3-18 curve.

How this works: you roll your stats as normal. You then select your species. If it's not Human, you consult a chart which takes what you rolled and applies it to the bell curve for each stat for that species. So, for standard Elves the Intelligence range is 6-18, so if you rolled a 3 it would become a 6, of you rolled a 12 it would become a 13, and if you rolled an 18 it wouldn't change.

This is how we've done it for ages, though in fairness we only have a few PC-playable species compared to 5e. Yes it adds some time to char-gen (for non-Human characters) but we find the results are worth it.

look if goblins are that weak we would not be clearing them out they would have been pushed to extinction basic human behaviours are needed for the believability of setting and if we can't use it and it is a threat we tend to kill it fast.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Goblins are not Hobgoblins.

Um... yeah, I know.

Hobgoblins rule between the three goblinoid races. Bugbears are lazy and strong and the hobs mostly let them do whatever they want, because trying to force them is a fight and the hobs don't want to bother unless it is important.

Instead, the bugbears and hobgoblins force the goblins to be their slaves. And because you probably wouldn't catch a traditional hobgoblin dead doing manual labor, that means that unless you have a large slave population, when you see a Hobgoblin fort city like the one in the monster manual, it would have been built by goblins.

And yes; in the real world an elephant can help build a house by providing labour but that doesn't mean elephants can design, engineer, and build houses by themselves.

Same is true of standard Goblins and Kobolds. They can provide labour to help other, smarter creatures build what those others have designed but other than the rarest of exceptions they can't design, engineer, and build anything similar on their own.

Um... wrong? Completely?

See, the problem is that when those races are encountered alone, they don't WANT to do all that work, and they don't CARE about having a well designed building. It isn't important to them. But that doesn't mean they CAN'T engineer. Both races are well known for traps and building things. Kobolds are rivals to GNOMES after all. They are incredibly mechanically able.

The issue is that DnD rarely wants to give the monsters the appearance of actually being proficient in society. So despite Kobolds being able to engineer to the degree of making sprawling underground complexes with elaborate traps using counter-weights and pulleys and other engineering marvels, they sleep in a pile of dirty hay and eat with their hands and never build cities. They absolutely could though, because building a stone house is far less difficult than building some of the things Kobolds DO build

 

[Minigiant]

A notticeable issue with D&D is that many fans prefer race mechanics that don't match the other game mechanics.

Some fans want rolling for stats to be a thing low STR small races. But then player can roll of 18 for STR on halfling, gnome, or goblin.

Some fans what only the classic races to be defined by civilization. But then it makes "nontraditional player races" vulnerable to hit and run 5MWD tactics if they are all too stupid, lazy, or evil to be engineers, smiths, or mages.

This is where a lot of the hobbitish halflings lose their uniqueness as they morph into just into a culture f short humans at those tables.

 

[Hussar]

For Goblins, I can see this as an outgrowth of having made them (grumble grumble) playable as PCs. Are Kobolds also PC-playable these days?

Only for the past thirty years or so.

 

[AnotherGuy]

true but there is an equal number of people who care that they can play a 20-str halfling either for serious or pure humour.
personally, I want weaknesses but ones that are fun to deal with like humans being bad at night or elves with a weakness to iron(would it just be iron would it include steel, others in its elemental group?)

That is fair and I'm game for that.
I believe the options to play to play both should be available, thus allowing the table to decide.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Only for the past thirty years or so.

Deekin sing the Doom Song now?

 

[Chaosmancer]

I didn't. Traditional (as in, old school) Goblins and Kobolds can't usually read anything, and their languages don't have a written form. Literacy just never made it to those cultures.

Literacy has nothing to do with the ability to build impressive buildings. See: The existence of cities before the invention of writing in Mesopotamia