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?

 

[Minigiant]

This is basically your foundation to the idea that halflings don't belong in the game. But it rests on the idea of somehow calling the original inspirations for the halfling a retcon. Halflings from the very start went out on adventures -- they went there and back again.

The official 5elore of the race says

Halflings usually set out on the adventurer’s path to defend their communities, support their friends, or explore a wide and wonder-filled world. For them, adventuring is less a career than an opportunity or sometimes a necessity.

2 of the 3 reasons a halfling adventures requires and outside push. Meaning a halfling wouldn't naturally go adventure and come back unless they had the third reason: It literally says a normal halfling doesn't see adventuring as a career.

Without wonderlust, a halfling will quit adventuring one the first attacking bad guy is dead or their buddies retire.

Once Evil Dan is dead and Sam the Human retire on his adventuring gold, John the Halfling will likely retire too if he is very halflingy.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Tell that to Boomer my Lightfoot halfling sorcerer or Doya my ghostwise halfling monk.

I think they work fine for other classes.

Halfling Fighters and Paladins are a staple, IME.

And yet, STILL they were barely being played. No competition from masses of other playable races, best choice for one of the most common classes in the game, and they were still not very popular. I think you're not really helping the case here.

Prove it.

50,000 races that aren't all played in multiple tables and aren't all seriously balance or appropriate at multiple tables?

With the PHB and DMG, the books everyone is supposed to use, Halflings are 7th despite being in the PHB, featured heavily in official and 3rd party art and materials, AND rarely banned.

It's tied with Half Orcs, a race that moderately gets banned, has a shaky history, and main reason for use mechanically was an exclusivity to STR the race doesn't even have anymore.

You…know that the data people are using is from before Tasha’s, yes? We have no idea what impact it has had on the popularity of different races.

Any race with that hard a push should be top 4. It's tied for 7th.

It suggest that if halflings were not promoted that hard, they'd be less popular than Gnomes or VGTE/MOTM's "Exotic" Races.

It suggests no such thing.

 

[Gammadoodler]

Right, but here's the thing.

A dwarf can go on an adventure for dwarf reasons. An Elf can go on an adventure for elf reasons. An Orc can go on adventure for Orc reasons.

A halfling has to go on adventure for non-halfling reasons. They were originally written as home-bodies who never want to leave their homes, and then had to be retconned into occassionally leaving their homes. You can say that adventurers break the mold, and you are 100% correct. But having a race that neccessitates you not being like the stereotype of your race to even play the game is something people trip over a lot. And there is no reason for it from a game design perspective. It is just lore getting in the way of the game the lore was designed to support.



I make friends and lunch. The elves make friends and lunch. The dwarves make friends and lunch. How do I know? Because all races eat and all races have the concept of friendship.

When I make a community in a game, if I don't explicitly make it a bad or damaged community, then the people in that community care for and contribute to their community. I don't often make communities where that isn't true, because then they aren't really communities.

And your last question makes no sense. What CAN they bring to their homes if they NEVER LEAVE their homes. I recently went to a family reunion. I met people from my extended family. But none of the people I met are the people who never leave their homes. They are the people who traveled. You can't bring anything home unless you leave, and even if you do leave and bring back, say, a ceramic plate from a foreign country.... so what? It is cool, but when I'm designing a world, I don't design individual families and their stories. I don't care what is in a specific farm families basement, I care about what is the history of why that farm is there and whose in charge of that land, because that's what actually shapes the world so I know what is going on on a macro level.

I get the little things matter in stories about families, in stories about little things, and in real life stories of our own lives. But no one cares what the Western Settlers had in their breastpocket. They care that the Western Settlers went west and established control of the United States over land that formally belonged to the native people, and led to massive social and geopolitical change. Who the specific farmer who set up a mile from the Mississippi was doesn't matter to telling the larger story.

And that's the thing that gets so frustrating. The art of world-building is telling the larger story, but people keep insisting that it somehow matters to have people that are never talked about in the context of that story, because those people love their families. I'm glad they love their families, I'm sure they have touching stories about their lives that would be very compelling, but when compiling a history of the world, they don't actually matter.

Point 1, you go adventuring for character reasons. Halflings aren't somehow immune from, "goblins killed my grandma" or "I got bored" or a host of other perfectly valid, perfectly halfling(or not) reasons.

Point 2, do you really not see how these were intended to point out the some of the more heightened aspects of the 'common' D&D races? And do you really not read the ways in which halflings value friendship more than the other races (in the same way that dwarves value craftsmanship more than other races, or elves value artistry)? Or is this one of those things where it's inconvenient to your argument, so you chose obtuseness instead?

As far as the things you can bring your home without leaving it..hmm let's think. Taverns, orphanages, meeting halls, bowling alleys, gardens, playgrounds, festivals, fairs, picnics, galleries, hospitals, choirs, carolers, schools, theatres, bakeries, I could go on... You know, like, a lot of the stuff that can make communities nice places to live.

While the humans are trying to make a buck, the dwarves are sharpening their axes, and the elves are gazing absently into the middle distance, halflings are there to make sure kids get taken care of, the beers are cold, and someone's playing music in the town square.

Nothing in your final two paragraphs was relevant or responsive to my post, so I'm ignoring them.

 

[Lanefan]

so halfling could be just Thanos dusted in most settings and it might be years before anyone in the setting noticed?

Given that several of the major long-standing PCs in my current setting are Hobbits, I suspect were I to Thanos-snap them all out of existence I'd be punted from the DM chair posthaste.

 

[Lanefan]

And, since halfling communities are supposed to be extremely difficult to find, how are other traders finding them in order make these halfling communities into trading concerns?

In LotR The Shire is very difficult to find but Southfarthing Leaf still got out into the world somehow.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Since the typical gamer is a human, they know what a human shopkeeper will do.

Since a halfling isn't a human, you can actually have them do something inhuman, if you want them to, and it makes sense in-context.

but they lack almost any no humanness they are literally just a short person.

You follow the directions given to you, finding yourself in an odd, seemingly forgotten corner of the trade district. The buildings are solidly built, but seem a little dusty, and there is little foot traffic. A man sits, perched on an old crate, his hat brim covering his eyes as he takes an early afternoon nap, and he only barely seems to notice your passing.

There it is, a simple, nondescript shop. It has no name, and the wooden sign hanging above the door simply has a carving showing a mortar and pestle. You enter, and a small bell attached to the door rings, announcing your arrival.

The scent of strange herbs tickles your nose as you look around the apothecary's shop. You hear a young sounding voice from the back, stating that they will be right with you.

What you first mistook for a small girl comes out from the back of the shop. She carefully moves a crate behind the counter, then stands on it, when you realize she's no child at all, but a Halfling. Though her features are still youthful, you can see a touch of grey in her hair. She puts on a pair of spectacles a little too large for her face and smiles. "Well, as I live and breathe, custom! How can I be of service to you?"

You explain that you heard that your sources told you that this shop deals in...exotic goods as well as medicines. The shopkeeper smiles at you. "It's true, though you can understand why I don't advertise."

You remark that you weren't expecting her to be a Halfling, and she just smiles. "Oh because other races have a monopoly on Wizardry, I suppose?"

You quickly backpedal, hoping you hadn't offended her, but she laughs. "No one expects a Halfling to be anything other than a farmer or perhaps a knight of the cross-trade, my boy. And that's just fine by me."

I do not expect halflings at all.

So what you're saying is that half-elves better fit the tropes that people now want to play than elves do.

no, they are just one of those people who love star-crossed lovers and detailed family histories yet have not figured out that any race can do it.

From this school of thought comes the idea that we should kick almost 100% of elves whose story is not about being really old out. Because that's about the only thing they do better than humans.

I do not see your point, really good in one area means you can explore it but does not necessitate it, also you could play a young elf of very old parents thus they have to deal with people very out of sync with everything besides can is not should.
my point is halfling offer nothing at all different from humans in any way that can make things interesting so why have them?

And when you make an NPC a halfling you are in general providing one piece of information that you are not providing when you make them human. You are essentially telling the players that this is almost certainly not a retired adventurer who took an arrow to the knee. They may be interesting in other ways (and probably are). And because halfling conveys information that human doesn't it's in some ways actively superior to human as a choice so human doesn't fill the role just as well.

an uninteresting short shopkeeper whose life can at best be a list of happy moments does not add anything as those have no relevance to a story who can be safely robbed as they are fundamentally a nobody.

Is the notion of metaphor alien to you? Halflings are overlooked because they are small and because other than in exceptionally rare cases they do not try not to be overlooked. Partly because it is a defence mechanism. Halflings are so easily overlooked that mechanically lightfoot halflings can hide behind normal sized people despite them being only one size category larger.

It is a metaphor made manifest. And a metaphor that works. It does not need a deeper reason.

everyone is overlooked regardless of height it does not work as a defence mechanism against sapient foes, it only works on large predators if you are fast or too small to eat thus it is pointless for the small and overlooked get crushed under the boots of others to pretend otherwise is to believe in five side triangle or married bachelors the ontologically illegal the impossible to conceive off.

This last bit is a strange argument. Is the world, our world richer or poorer if a creature most people are unaware of goes extinct?

That said, per what little lore there is, halflings are embedded within their communities, communities for which, they care very deeply. Communities they work to make better and protect.

the richness of the world does not depend on our awareness only on if the life form is necessary to the wider world, given how halflings are described their absence would take years to even notice.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Ennhh, I don't have a particular need for a race to drive conflict. That's what characters are for.

I confess, I am unfamiliar with the lore in the D&D novels, so I'm happy to take you at you word with respect to how much has been done with them in the novels (although that does rather undercut your earlier contention about how hard halflings have been pushed without seeing an impact).

On the other hand, though, I think you cam point to something like Eberron for how halflings can be integrated.

story setting conflict is a great source of party tension and thus RP, happy little thief number 7 million is not reliant nor adds anything more than perhaps the first couple of times, I could give the roll of the halfling in Eberron and then delete halfling with no trouble what so ever.

This is basically your foundation to the idea that halflings don't belong in the game. But it rests on the idea of somehow calling the original inspirations for the halfling a retcon. Halflings from the very start went out on adventures -- they went there and back again.

by being coerced the point of them in the lord of the rings setting is to be nobodies which is fine in a book but in a setting of high adventure not so much.

Point 1, you go adventuring for character reasons. Halflings aren't somehow immune from, "goblins killed my grandma" or "I got bored" or a host of other perfectly valid, perfectly halfling(or not) reasons.

Point 2, do you really not see how these were intended to point out the some of the more heightened aspects of the 'common' D&D races? And do you really not read the ways in which halflings value friendship more than the other races (in the same way that dwarves value craftsmanship more than other races, or elves value artistry)? Or is this one of those things where it's inconvenient to your argument, so you chose obtuseness instead?

As far as the things you can bring your home without leaving it..hmm let's think. Taverns, orphanages, meeting halls, bowling alleys, gardens, playgrounds, festivals, fairs, picnics, galleries, hospitals, choirs, carolers, schools, theatres, bakeries, I could go on... You know, like, a lot of the stuff that can make communities nice places to live.

While the humans are trying to make a buck, the dwarves are sharpening their axes, and the elves are gazing absently into the middle distance, halflings are there to make sure kids get taken care of, the beers are cold, and someone's playing music in the town square.

Nothing in your final two paragraphs was relevant or responsive to my post, so I'm ignoring them.

the point is halflings have no things that make them what to adventure that no one else has, they lack a reason all their own.

the second point, those are all fine but not relevant to the game, those would be great in a city builder or farm games but not in a game of quests, killing and doing things that few people ever could.

thirdly if wanted to do those things I literally could, but I won't because community is the largest joke mythical thing I ever heard of, but those are things within my reach thus not the point of having a fantasy game about.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Okay, but this is also true for Goblins, Kobolds, Gnomes, Owlin, Fairies, and a bunch of others.

I agree that being a small race is an interesting outlook on the world. The other small races give you that PLUS MORE. So if that is all halflings give you, then they are 100% replaced by every other small race

I certainly agree that in D&D there are too many races with overlapping concepts and I would for example combine halflings and gnomes. But I also don't think that PLUS MORE is always desired and may undermine other parts of the concept. I don't think goliaths would be better it they had wings and could shoot magic lasers from their eyes, even though that would be PLUS MORE. And I think being a small owl person certainly would focus the attention to being and owl rather than on being small. Halflings being rather similar to humans focuses the attention to most obvious difference, the size.

 

[Mind of tempest]

I certainly agree that in D&D there are too many races with overlapping concepts and I would for example combine halflings and gnomes. But I also don't think that PLUS MORE is always desired and may undermine other parts of the concept. I don't think goliaths would be better it they had wings and could shoot magic lasers from their eyes, even though that would be PLUS MORE. And I think being a small owl person certainly would focus the attention to being and owl rather than on being small. Halflings being rather similar to humans focuses the attention to most obvious difference, the size.

size is the problem it needs something else as they are so bland it hurts, I agree to many things can over crowed a race conceptionally but having literally one point is insufficent to build more than a cult following.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

size is the problem it needs something else as they are so bland it hurts, I agree to many things can over crowed a race conceptionally but having literally one point is insufficent to build more than a cult following.

I heard some guy wrote a couple of somewhat popular books with such bland creatures as protagonists. I think they even made some films about them...

Seriously, this "halflings are boring" is just an opinion. People, stop repeating it like it was a fact; it isn't. That you don't get them doesn't mean that there is anything objectively wrong with them.