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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 8691058" data-attributes="member: 6801228">I know this comes up every single time, but I really think this misses the mark. Sure, everything written is just a human in a funny mask with funny powers. The Martian Manhunter, the psychic shape and density shifting alien from mars is just a human with a funny face. But, let's take a moment and focus in on DnD and what people are actually saying the problem is. Let us take Gnomes and other small races for a second. Because one big difference between halflings and humans is size, but as I pointed out there are 16 other small races, so this can't be defining for the halflings anymore. Forest gnomes are inquistive and shy, don't like outsiders. Okay, that could be any human community sure, but they also have an innate skill in illusion magic that the entire race shares and they can communicate with beasts. Now, sure, you could make a human community that has illusion magic and talks to animals, but that isn't what human communities typically look like in DnD, is it? So, this gives us a vector to explore different community organizations. Things like having the birds of the forest act as spies and a warning system for the people, having digging work done by friendly badgers, or treating the animals as neighbors. This would look nothing like your typical human settlement. What about Rock Gnomes? They are inquisitive and inventive, and they build things using clockwork and technology. This is kind of just straight human right? In fact, historically, there were a lot of humans who did this and it is easy to have a tech-heavy human settlement... but do we? DnD does not typically have tech-heavy places. You rarely see humans involved with a lot of industrial processes or making clockwork figures or items. IT happens, but it isn't common. Notably in Eberron the Rock Gnomes tend to fade out of sight, because the entire setting is very tech heavy, while the Forest Gnome is used as their baseline. But outside of Eberron, the Rock Gnome rises to be the more prominent, because their approach to living with technology and using technology to improve and shape their lives is so different from what everyone else in the setting is doing. Then you have Kobolds and Goblins, and the first thing to note here is that the lore for these races varies wildly, because in a lot of settings, they are the evil bad guys. They are the enemies of the good races, and associated with many of the threats out in the dark woods. This also makes them incredibly malleable, because they are different in every setting and every edition. Add on to that, they look nothing like humans, and they have a biology that would offer hooks to expand into non-human concepts. It is almost hard to talk about these races, because they are so vastly different. The Dhaakani of Eberron are practically a eusocial hive mind. Other settings have goblins as the vicious slaves of a dark god. Other settings have them as the larval form of hobgoblins, giving a distinctly non-human life cycle. It takes no effort at all to make them different from a typical human settlement in DnD. But what about halflings? They, like gnomes, look like humans. They live simple pastoral lives. Which... describes the typical human settlement in DnD. Being brave is something that can be applied to any race, especially any small race. Sure, they have mechanics to back it up, but just as a storytelling hook "and the community was brave" doesn't give you anything to make them different. Same with lucky, they can't really do anything with that to really differentiate themselves while just living simple pastoral lives of ease. Especially since, living those lives is explained by being lucky. So... what makes them different from any other peaceful human settlement? They are depicted in the exact same manner you would depict a peaceful human farming community, with really no differences... except that they are small. The point of the "rubber mask" as we like to to call it is giving the writer something interesting to work with. "What if humans, but they photosynthesize and don't need to eat or prepare food?" "What if humans, but they reincarnate and have memories of their past lives, and live for hundreds of years?"  "What if humans, but they can alter their physical body in any way they want, and look like anyone?" These hooks provide something, they provide a way to restructure the expected and explore new and interesting things. "What if humans but short?" really doesn't provide the same level of hook, especially if you can do "what if humans but short AND...." like the other small races provide.</blockquote>

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