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

[Maxperson]

That's not how roads work... especially ones used for things like trade &it doesn't even get into the idea that patrols wouldn't visit the village itself too

You do understand that Halflings have both an area luck AND gods to help hide them, right? Nobody is saying "That's how roads work."

 

[Maxperson]

Good thing they are the only ones in the world with the support of the gods... oh wait.

See, no other race is protected by their gods to this degree.

Orcs are. They got super violence charged by their gods. Pretty sure gnolls have or had something related to their gods in their background. Gnomes were given their magical abilities by their gods and taught by them how to hide their villages.

Other races get help from their gods. Just in different ways.

Why are you trying to force me into the choice between "Either I'm right and they run despite the lore or you suicide them because you are terrible" That isn't the debate, that is ancillary, and the very fact that you can present it as a legitimate choice again helps prove that this lore is poorly written, if we must make decisions like this.

Lore doesn't have to cover every common thing about a race. Do you really want a book of lore the size of War and Peace? A small, stealthy race would hide from an overwhelming force. This is just common sense and doesn't need to be in the lore. It's absence is not "poor lore writing."

 

[Maxperson]

Because the border farm is gone?

There are always more or there is no border and everyone is dead.

Because they figured they'd get more gold and slaves hitting a place further in?

So a suicide run for a bit more gold is a good thing? And the vast majority of monster types don't take slaves. They just kill and/or eat people. They wouldn't go past the border for that.

Because their gods told them to?

Do the specific reasons really matter to you that much?

Yes. I demand that things make sense in my game. It appears you don't, though.

Also, here is a funny idea. Those border farms are obviously not halfling shires, right? So they'd be human, dwarf and elven locations. Locations with walls, proper soldiers ect. A... ring of them if you will, protecting the shires who are in the center of the civilized lands, a.... wall perhaps? Made of other settlements?

You'd find individual Halflings living in the border towns.

 

[TwoSix]

"The Lore is written badly" is the summary of my position.

Yes, and the counter is that "The lore is written well enough for its goals." Sure, there's holes. For some people, plot holes ruin movies, and some people don't care. Same thing here.

 

[Oofta]

Yes, and the counter is that "The lore is written well enough for its goals." Sure, there's holes. For some people, plot holes ruin movies, and some people don't care. Same thing here.

Beyond that even, there is no way they could encapsulate each and every possible campaign variant. D&D doesn't make any assumptions about how dangerous the world is, it just provides monsters and the DM adds them in as they see fit. It doesn't assume a super dangerous world and I don't think any civilization would survive if it was as deadly as @Chaosmancer says.

But if you want super danger land and halflings in your world, you need to adjust things a bit. There are a ton of options. Three off the top of my head.

• Halflings don't have separate settlements and are always embedded with others.
• They have unconventional defenses. Tunnels that lead to safety, traps and so on. Given that they don't horde wealth, they just need to make their villages slightly more costly.
• They are not bent on conquest but they can be deadly when the need arises (as stated in the book). The fact that they don't have default weapon or armor proficiency is meaningless, 90% of the races don't.

But again, the default assumption is that there are relatively safe areas and dangerous areas. Halfling villages are probably in safer areas as the default.

This is one of the issues I have with complaints about "mono-cultural races". The culture and nature of the races is just the default behavior, not some strict unbreakable dictate from on high. I can go from table to table, game to game and have a decent idea of what most races are probably like. That works best for the game overall and gives it some consistency. At the same time every campaign is different which gives it incredible flexibility. I think that's a good thing.

 

[Vaalingrade]

This is one of the issues I have with complaints about "mono-cultural races".

That complaint is most often that lazy designers just give each race a single kingdom with one culture, throws in a bunch of human cultures, often cribbed from real-world cultures and calls it a day.

The only monocultural race I accept is the ISO Standard Dwarf. Everyone knows that every dwarf rolls of the assembly line with the requisite beard, horned hat and crippling alcoholism alongside mangled Scotch accent and your choice of a hammer or axe (somehow never a pick).

 

[Maxperson]

That complaint is most often that lazy designers just give each race a single kingdom with one culture, throws in a bunch of human cultures, often cribbed from real-world cultures and calls it a day.

The only monocultural race I accept is the ISO Standard Dwarf. Everyone knows that every dwarf rolls of the assembly line with the requisite beard, horned hat and crippling alcoholism alongside mangled Scotch accent and your choice of a hammer or axe (somehow never a pick).

"Picks are for minin', not fightin'!" ::anonymous offended Dwarf:::

 

[Paul Farquhar]

So they'd be human, dwarf and elven locations. Locations with walls, proper soldiers ect.

News for you. Human villages do not have walls. And fields definitely don't. And dwarves and elves do not have fields, dwarves eat rocks and elves eat leaves.

 

[Maxperson]

News for you. Human villages do not have walls. And fields definitely don't. And dwarves and elves do not have fields, dwarves eat rocks and elves eat leaves.

I thought Elves ate sunshine and rainbows.

 

[Vaalingrade]

You are both wrong. Elves are sustained by a smug sense of superiority.