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?

 

[bedir than]

so what do they other a setting that humans do not? why make a shopkeeper a halfling if humans will fill just as well or anything else would be more interesting?

The assertion is that they are hard to fit into settings. By saying that they're basically humans you are admitting that they are not hard to fit in.

 

[Mind of tempest]

The assertion is that they are hard to fit into settings. By saying that they're basically humans you are admitting that they are not hard to fit in.

the hard to fit in, there is nothing gained or subtracted by their presence or none presence they are nothing.

teiflings add a connection to hellish things but are terrible if you want something disconnected from that.

halflings are basically irrelevant not having is no loss for a setting or a gain.

they are hard to fit as they are entirely unnoticeable which is not a setting trait on its own.

 

[bedir than]

the hard to fit in, there is nothing gained or subtracted by their presence or none presence they are nothing.

teiflings add a connection to hellish things but are terrible if you want something disconnected from that.

halflings are basically irrelevant not having is no loss for a setting or a gain.

they are hard to fit as they are entirely unnoticeable which is not a setting trait on its own.

The overlooked peoples is always a valid trope

 

[Mind of tempest]

The overlooked peoples is always a valid trope

true but it needs things to connect to it for it to work, the halflings lack the other half, they are overlooked why?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

It is wild that people complain that halflings are just small humans, yet seem to be fine with dwarves who are just a bit shorter than average bearded humans.

 

[Mind of tempest]

It is wild that people complain that halflings are just small humans, yet seem to be fine with dwarves who are just a bit shorter than average bearded humans.

they are also known for building great underground strongholds, Mastercraft works and digging till they hit demons so they have more uses in setting than a bloke who is short and fundamentally unremarkable, true it is not much but 5% is more than you think and more importantly if you wish to discuss that I would recommend making a thread about dwarves.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I've seen this assertion a few times. It doesn't make a lick of sense.

Assuming you're affiliated with the "humans but smaller" crowd, then they are exactly as hard to fit as humans are.

Assuming you aren't, then what is it that makes them more incompatible than say dwarves, kobolds, goblins, or gnomes, elves, etc. ?

The crap-all lore they have is "farmers and traders who like to eat and have a good time". We're not talking about families making whoopee with angels and devils. There are no mer-people or sky people. It's just like common people.

How the heck are we getting to "common people are hard to integrate into settings or stories"?

Well, I'd say you need to tackle it in two separate questions.

1) Why are halflings hard to fit into the story of adventure?

And to this, we can acknowledge the trope that halflings cling to the hardest, which is the reluctant adventurer. They don't WANT to go on adventures. Now, this isn't to say that we don't deal with this all the time, because it is also one of the most common tropes in literature. But, it makes them harder to push out the door, so to speak, because you can't just assume they wanted to leave home.

This is where the follow-up halfling trope of "fancy feet" comes in, which is a direct contradiction to the earlier halfling lore, and I think a clear sign that this was a problem for DMs. Essentially, Fancy Feet says that Halflings DO want to leave home, and you have a completely legitimate reason to send them on adventures, ignore that earlier part about them not wanting to go on adventures. Which... leads to a contradiction that could be interesting, except "wants to stay home" is the default state of most people. So if halflings were more homebodies than "dwarves who seal themselves in their mountain homes" or "elves that never leave the forest" then they were extreme in a way that can cause that problem again.


2) Why are halflings hard to fit into the world?

And this is where I think I can say @bedir than absolutely points out the problem. Halflings are "the forgotten folk" in a lot of their descriptions.

Halfling homes, which are incredibly important to them as we pointed out in #1, are both everywhere and nowhere. They are all over human kingdoms, but the lore says that no one knows where a given halfling village is. What do halflings do in your setting? Nothing. Per the lore halflings never go out and do anything important.

Now, this may sound like it is a really easy thing to work into the world, after all they are just there. But that's like saying it is very easy to include the white of the canvas in your painting. The thing you have to do is nothing, and as you do nothing, it becomes easy to write in such a way as to squeeze the halfling out of existence.

I worked in Kobolds in my world by considering how they related to dragons and the things I'm doing with dragons.

I worked Goblins into my world by considering how goblins work as a species, leading to very cool stories and a very interesting life cycle.

But to put in halflings, per the lore, I have to do nothing. They just exist. They never do anything, they aren't involved in any meta plots in the setting, they don't have any deep history to explore, they don't have any connections to any interesting threats. They just... are there.

And that is really hard to actually make feel like they are part of the setting instead of just... tacked on to the end.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Well, I'd say you need to tackle it in two separate questions.

1) Why are halflings hard to fit into the story of adventure?

And to this, we can acknowledge the trope that halflings cling to the hardest, which is the reluctant adventurer. They don't WANT to go on adventures. Now, this isn't to say that we don't deal with this all the time, because it is also one of the most common tropes in literature. But, it makes them harder to push out the door, so to speak, because you can't just assume they wanted to leave home.

This is where the follow-up halfling trope of "fancy feet" comes in, which is a direct contradiction to the earlier halfling lore, and I think a clear sign that this was a problem for DMs. Essentially, Fancy Feet says that Halflings DO want to leave home, and you have a completely legitimate reason to send them on adventures, ignore that earlier part about them not wanting to go on adventures. Which... leads to a contradiction that could be interesting, except "wants to stay home" is the default state of most people. So if halflings were more homebodies than "dwarves who seal themselves in their mountain homes" or "elves that never leave the forest" then they were extreme in a way that can cause that problem again.


2) Why are halflings hard to fit into the world?

And this is where I think I can say @bedir than absolutely points out the problem. Halflings are "the forgotten folk" in a lot of their descriptions.

Halfling homes, which are incredibly important to them as we pointed out in #1, are both everywhere and nowhere. They are all over human kingdoms, but the lore says that no one knows where a given halfling village is. What do halflings do in your setting? Nothing. Per the lore halflings never go out and do anything important.

Now, this may sound like it is a really easy thing to work into the world, after all they are just there. But that's like saying it is very easy to include the white of the canvas in your painting. The thing you have to do is nothing, and as you do nothing, it becomes easy to write in such a way as to squeeze the halfling out of existence.

I worked in Kobolds in my world by considering how they related to dragons and the things I'm doing with dragons.

I worked Goblins into my world by considering how goblins work as a species, leading to very cool stories and a very interesting life cycle.

But to put in halflings, per the lore, I have to do nothing. They just exist. They never do anything, they aren't involved in any meta plots in the setting, they don't have any deep history to explore, they don't have any connections to any interesting threats. They just... are there.

And that is really hard to actually make feel like they are part of the setting instead of just... tacked on to the end.

so halfling could be just Thanos dusted in most settings and it might be years before anyone in the setting noticed?
do they even trade?
they feel like the absence of a people, which could be cool but would require both a radical redesign and massive talent to pull off?

 

[Cadence]

so halfling could be just Thanos dusted in most settings and it might be years before anyone in the setting noticed?
do they even trade?
they feel like the absence of a people, which could be cool but would require both a radical redesign and massive talent to pull off?

I have a hard time believing that most people in most campaign settings show up until particularly needed... (this is the game where villages and towns pop into existence only when the party decides to go see what's in some group of hexes, right?)

 

[Mind of tempest]

I have a hard time believing that most people in most campaign settings show up until particularly needed... (this is the game where villages and towns pop into existence only when the party decides to go see what's in some group of hexes, right?)

okay, so what do the halflings do that is remotely different from anyone else that makes them matter in your setting?