Tell me about halflings in your world.

[der_kluge]

Wow. What an ecclectic combination of descriptions. And this thread wins the "use of the word cotton as a verb" award. Never seen that happen.

I can't help but think that whoever wrote Dark Sun, must have hated halflings, since in that CS, they turned them into cannabilistic nomads. Interesting.

I think I like the idea of integrating them well into human society, but at the same time giving them a distinct presence of their own, and making them masters of the land in respect to farming, and crafts associated to leather and wood

Samothdm - your game is polar opposite from mine, because I went a step further - I completely removed goblins and orcs from my world. Too cliche'.

 

[RodneyThompson]

Personally, I always favored the nomadic aspect of halfling culture. With the new, slender look of halflings in Third Edition, I've almost universally made them into nomadic tribes similar in many respects to the Native Americans in their culture. They survive, and when they make camp they party hearty. I never forget the hedonism aspect, but in my games it's more like they don't believe in worry or anxiety, but rather have a somewhat fatalistic attitude that whatever happens is beyond their control. They have a saying common to all their tribes: "Not by our hands does the world move."

The exception to this is in cities....for example, I'm running the Shackled City Adventure Path from Dungeon Magazine, and the halflings within the city of Cauldron are more cosmopolitan and multicultural.

 

[Impeesa]

My halflings are pretty generic, but I thought I'd comment on something else: can't justify the overlap between gnomes and dwarves? Here's a thought: make gnomes be dwarf/halfling crosses. They share their dwarven parent's logical aptitude, and their halfling parent's inquisitive spirit. Of course, there would also be small communities of them that breed true.

--Impeesa--

 

[arwink]

Currently I'm running the known world, so my halflings are standard hobbitish folks with a tendency of fighting the evil forces of Baron Ludwig and Bargle the Infamous.

In the homebrew I ran previously, halflings came in two types.

The first were gypsy-like wanderers who spend their time wandering the rivers in barges pulled by aquatic dinosuars. They were naturally inclined to psionics and spiritual awareness, and their favored class was changed to Psi-Warrior.

The second group were a stationary agrarian culture that formed into socialist enclaves within the empire. No real set leadership, a real sense of communal wealth, and a tendency to use guerilla tactics to decimate invaders in their territory. They were primarily rogues, had a possessive streak a mild wide, and they had a nasty tendency to weild scythes and sickles.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

In my world, halflings are the Swiss.

No really. They look all peaceful and rural, and have a "We don't bother the World and the World doesn't botherus" attitude. But they are also armed to the teeth, know the mountains like the back of their hands, and have lots of unpleasant surprises for any would-be invader.

I think this picture says it all:

 

[Gez]

IMC:
Dwarves are their usual dwarves, living in hills and mountains. NOT entirely underground (especially hill dwarves), but they have fortified underground cities and protected underground roads, leaving all the surface free for their agricultural needs.

Elves live, depending on the subrace, in cities, forests, or on the high sea (my grey elves are mariners).

Gnomes live in hard to find places, be they the heart of a forest or a hidden plateau surrounded by rocky hills. They are the wise, magic race (a niche that is often given to the elves, but elves are IMHO too chaotic and whimsical to be wise loremasters), watching the world from afar.

Halflings do not have lands of their own anymore, although the reason of their diaspora is forgotten. They are gypsie-like nomads, or live as second-class citizens in cities.

 

[green slime]

Halflings? Don't have them. They never existed on this plane. Gnomes gneither.

Dwarves are all dead. Wiped out in a war against mankind 300 years ago. Some undead Dwarves do exist. Restless ghosts of that fierce race.

Elves do not exist. They disappeared eons ago. They are only creatures of myth and legend.

Giants exist. Centaurs. Humans. Demons. Devils. and Undead. Lots of Undead.

There are no stars in the sky at night, either.

 

[johnsemlak]

I'm drawing up a Russian-based campaign set in a fantasy mythic-Europe setting based in Medieval Russia. I will have the Halflings represent a culture based on Armenian culture in the real world, and they will be typically immigrants living in the slavic world, working as shop owners, innkeepers, etc. I will make a list of Armenian names for players to choose from. For this campaign, then, I'll ditch the standard cultural background accociated with halflings.

 

[Riverwalker]

I like my Halflings to be mostly traditional. The best gaming book I've seen on Halflings is 'The Shire' by Wes Frank. It is a MERP/Rolemaster book, but easily useable for D&D (the good stuff is story and background, not the stats).

Most of the book is set in the time just after the Hobbits have been given The Shire by the King of Athedain (is it King Argeleb?). It presents the Hobbits as rather rugged frontier folk who have to deal with resentful humans along with the more usual elements of a fantasy frontier (orcs, spirits, etc).

I don't know if Wes Frank still writes gaming material, but he always had some great ideas when it came to using Middle-earth as a gaming world rather than a precious and fragile artifact not to be touched.

 

[kolvar]

Well, my Halflings (or Osispun (children of Ispun)) are more like earth's jews: They had once empires, that were able to fend of larger, human empires (about 2000 years ago). But now, these empires are gone and the only bond between the halflings is their religion which sets them apart (monotheistic while most every other people follows some polotheistic religion). They are learned and educated, having lost most of their stealth abilities in favor of intellectual bonuses. Sometimes pogroms end the lifes of whole halfling communities and only few halflings go on adventure being scholars, merchants and sometimes thieves. I realy much like my halflings, though no one ever played one.