D&D General why do we have halflings and gnomes?

[Oofta]

Game assumes Medieval Feudalism
Medieval Feudalism ishow most of the game's lore and rules work
Game plucks halflings out of Medieval Feudalism
Game waits 3+ years explain how halflings work outside of Medieval Feudalism with a different reason every other time.
Rinse and repeat

I want D&D to stop doing that.

I disagree with the blanket assumption of medieval feudalism. But even if that is the assumption, I don't see why there's any conflict. They live in some duchy? They pay taxes like everyone else in exchange for protection and services.

This seems to be once again the weird "halflings never pay taxes" theory. I don't know where it comes from.

 

[Maxperson]

A distinction without purpose. Trade is trade.

Tell that to D&D. Your distinction doesn't exist within the game. Halfling generally do not sell, but do like to trade. End of story.

Once in a while, how do you justify that?

Under 100 people don't need to constantly send out for stuff. They aren't generally making disposable things.

At least you finally admit there will be a trail.

Said that several pages ago. It just won't be large and will be troublesome for even rangers to find.

Because yes, even if you travel a road once every month, after a few years, it gets to be obviously worn. Which brings us back to people following the road

You need to show proof of that, because I grew up in the countryside and when I went into the forest, through the field once a month or even slightly more often, trails never appeared.

 

[Minigiant]

I disagree with the blanket assumption of medieval feudalism. But even if that is the assumption, I don't see why there's any conflict. They live in some duchy? They pay taxes like everyone else in exchange for protection and services.

This seems to be once again the weird "halflings never pay taxes" theory. I don't know where it comes from.

I dunno. All my life I thought D&D defaulted to medieval era feudalism and just could be changed from there.

My problem is that the puzzle piece was plugged out and no piece was given in return. So fans have to create their own and the solutions vary wildly.

I don't think a race who is deem iconic should be treated this way. Say halfling tend to live under the domain of another race's noblity and let me change it if I don't like it. No one of these vagueness to give my halfling PC even less to build on as a player or my halfling nation to stand on as a DM. Dropping namechanged hobbits in the game and walking away for a couple years is not good design.

 

[tetrasodium]

I'm not claiming D&D assumes a death world.
I'm saying D&D assumes a Medieval feudalism base then plucks halflings out of it and replaces that trope with nothing.
And someone mentions that the hole the game dug is empty, the response is "you fix it".



They work in the base assumption because the players fill the holeorwait X years for a race book to fill it.
My problem is why D&D dug this extra hole it the first place and didn't fill it when they first adapted the race to a new assumption.

It's like putting TMNT in D&D sewers then specifically stating the lack of delivery pizza and of rodent ninjutsu masters.

on top of the "well you fix it" problem... I would & did by running my games in a setting more like eberron or darksun but keep having to fight the PHB every time a player cites the setting exclusive stuff. Now I can point at yet another book such as rising EE & others, but now I'm faced with pushback amounts to "it works for some other table why is it a problem for yours" by someone pointing at their cherished 1937 notjustahobbit

I disagree with the blanket assumption of medieval feudalism. But even if that is the assumption, I don't see why there's any conflict. They live in some duchy? They pay taxes like everyone else in exchange for protection and services.

This seems to be once again the weird "halflings never pay taxes" theory. I don't know where it comes from.

That's fine there are settings with other systems. Darksun is pretty much a post-apocalyptic brutally authoritarian mageocracy. Eberron has a variety of governments ranging from remote rural tribes to a pseudo-constitutional monarchy a failed/failing state and even one nation where the king has explicitly setup something akin to Edward I's 1272 establishment of parliment to go into motion upon his death among other systems. Whatever system you put in place for your world imposes certain baselines for the world & some of those baselines establish routes that the free willed individuals within that world would show interest in taking to better themselves individually as well as collectively. The PHB halflings carve out a space where everyone suddenly loses free will & plays a game of the floor is lava with just as much logic as the child's game by that name. If you don't like it what would you rather use?

as to "they live in some dutchy" or whatever sure, but it explicitly says they don't have kings/nobles/etc & it's not a big secret that people are saying that's because they live so far out of the way. Living far out of the way is fine & all, goblins & kobolds in FR check that box, but using that box introduces a different set of problems that goblins & kobolds do address.

@Don Durito if you have specific areas of confusion you aren't getting you can try asking about them & someone could try to answer but it seems like you've expressed that you don't get the problem without any questions a few times through the thread, we don't bite

 

[Maxperson]

I dunno. All my life I thought D&D defaulted to medieval era feudalism and just could be changed from there.

Nah. Quasi feudal at best. You don't find serfs, Lords with right of first cough, etc. You don't even find knights in all countries. D&D basically has castles and uses the titles/rankings, but that's the majority of it.

 

[Minigiant]

Nah. Quasi feudal at best. You don't find serfs, Lords with right of first cough, etc. You don't even find knights in all countries. D&D basically has castles and uses the titles/rankings, but that's the majority of it.

But it still runs on the concept that commoner pay goods, services, and taxes to nobility for military protection. This is by obtaining knights, levying armies, funding mayoral militias, contracting mercenaries, and hiring adventurers (by themselves or by proxy). Then those nobles give a ruler of some kind military or money in exchange for land or some other exclusive rights.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Except they do work for most people with just the base assumptions. If they don't work for you, that's a personal problem. No game can be everything for everyone. There's plenty of lore from previous editions and campaigns that you can import.

Clearly they don’t work for a bunch of people. As Mecheon posted, they aren’t particularly popular on DND Beyond, and quite a few early posters in this thread didn’t like their write-up.

As a matter of fact, in a thread about “why play a certain race?”, I would expect people who love a race to be more vocal than those who dislike a race, think they are poorly written, or are simply indifferent to them.

Hell, I bet if you started a thread of “why play kender?”, you would probably get a couple of posters who would defend them assiduously.

 

[Maxperson]

But it still runs on the concept that commoner pay goods, services, and taxes to nobility for military protection.

This is by obtaining knights, levying armies, funding mayoral militias, contracting mercenaries, and hiring adventurers (by themselves or by proxy). Then those nobles give a ruler of some kind military or money in exchange for land or some other exclusive rights.

I honestly don't think the game thinks that hard about it. That's something that each group has to determine for itself.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

D&D is not, not has it ever been a realistic Earth simulator. Literally the ONLY reason halflings couldn't grow the spices they would need on their own farms is if the GM decided that they couldn't. There is no "lore" laying out irrigation requirements , crop availability, or any of that garbage you are trotting out.

Know how I know that halflings grow everything they need on a self sufficient farm to be excellent creators of foodstuffs? Because BOOM I just willed it to be so as the GM. Absolutely zero problem.

Perhaps you can tell me about how dwarves can't have a mining subculture because the sludge and runoff from the ore processing would poison their groundwater and they would all die of radon poisoning.

Maybe about how tritons all suffer from severe scurvy because they lack some vitamin C in the form of citrus fruits in their diet?

Or perhaps in your world elves suffer mass amounts of depression and mental illness because they live lifespans of 800 years and all their friends of other races are doomed to die around them and their mindnumbingly boring existence of spending 200 years learning to weave baskets.

How stuff happened on Earth isn't how stuff happens in a fantasy world.

 

[Minigiant]

I honestly don't think the game thinks that hard about it. That's something that each group has to determine for itself.

Well it should.

Me and my 3-5 friends are sneaking into an orc infested hideout. You as the game should not be removing thedefault assumption of government because we need to know who is paying us and how much they might pay us in the future.