Halfling Rant

[doc]

In the upcoming 4th Edition, halflings will be around four feet tall, slender and strong, and be depicted as outdoorsmen who maintain a secret culture beneath the notice of humankind across the length of the continent.

Are you kidding me??? I'm not sure what sort of creature that is; likely some form of small elf, but it isn't a halfling.

Hobbits were around in D&D from the earliest days, and they were, well, HOBBITS. When the Tolkein estate forbade the use of certain words in the D&D lexicon (including not only hobbit, but ent and balrog as well), the little fellows still stuck around under the title of "halfling," a term that the humans of middle earth sometimes used to describe their sawed-off neighbors.

Over time, though, the halfling began to morph into something quite unhobbitish. They developed a reputation as itinerant kleptomaniacs who would steal from their own adventuring mates as easily as downing a second lunch. They went from small and fat to taller and trimmer. When Dragonlance hit it big, the halflingesque Kender gave us another way of looking at halflings; as annoying troublemakers unable to mind their own business. By the time of third edition, halflings were svelte and dangerous dungeon delvers who loved to wander.

Now let me ask you this: WHAT WAS WRONG WITH JUST HAVING HOBBITS? When I play a halfling, I don't want to play a miniature elf or a nincompoop who is always getting the group into trouble. No, I want to play a hobbit. A short, plump, shoeless, hairy-toed, pipeweed-toking, gluttonous, home-loving HOBBIT!! I ask you, where have all of the hobbits gone? If D&D wanted to distance themselves from The Lord of the Rings, then why couldn't they have just written the halflings out of the newer editions rather than transforming a beloved literary character type into something that it was never meant to be?

(huff, huff)

Okay, I just wanted to get that off my chest. Are there any others out there who are perturbed about the path that our little friends with the fuzzy wooly toes have taken?

FRODO LIVES!

Doc

[Finarvyn]

I think the basic problem is one of "revisionist history."

How many times over the decades have those at TSR/WotC denied that JRRT had any real infulence over the creation and evolution of the game? As you said, hobbits, balrogs, nazgul, ents, and so on were common in early editions. Dwarves before Tolkien were either Disney-style "heigh ho" types or Beowolf-style Nordic critters. Elves were interchangible with fairies before Tolkien. And so on.

WotC clearly wants to have halflings totally different from hobbits. The old days of "say those halflings are a lot like... (wink, wink)" are clearly gone and they want to make the game totally their own.

It's kind of like when they took demons and devils and renamed them ... um ... something else. As if we didn't know!

That's unfortunate, as the generic fantasy stereotypes were part of what made D&D so neat. You knew what those creatues were SUPPOSED to be.

Nice rant, by the way!

[tgamemaster1975]

I only accept hobbits that meet the original description as you spelled out above, kender and other such, will never darken my campaign. These pseudo hobbits IMO have no place in D&D as a PC race. YMMV

[thorswulf]

Funny thing about hobbits, I never bothered playing them. Good rant, and revisionist history comments guys. I tend to like my wee folk like the good professor's or like Dennis McKiernan's Warrows.

[coffee]

I've played a few hobbits (not halflings) in my day, and I prefer them to be the way the Professor wrote them.

I'll not sully the threads of this lovely forum with what I really think about Wizards of the Coast and what they've done to a great game system (although I will note that, in the interest of common decency, they really should take the name "Dungeons & Dragons" off of their fourth edition, which will be nothing like it).

[James Maliszewski]

doc said:

Now let me ask you this: WHAT WAS WRONG WITH JUST HAVING HOBBITS?

What's "wrong" with hobbits is twofold.

1. When TSR created its Lord of the Rings manqué, Dragonlance, they obviously wanted to avoid any more comparisons to Professor Tolkien's work than they'd already get, so gone were orcs (replaced by hobgoblins) and halflings (which, even after the threat of a lawsuit by the Tolkien estate remained very hobbit-like in 1E). The kender created to fill the gap proved wildly popular and, like the tinker gnomes, soon became the default way that race was portrayed in D&D. The entire history of the game post-Dragonlance is a long and incremental "kender-ization" of the halfling race. 4E is just the culmination of this rather than the source of it.

2. Most gamers today don't really know Tolkien outside of the recent movies, so, to them, hobbits aren't an immediately recognizable archetype. At best, they know hobbits/halflings as "little guys with hairy feet who are kind of like the kender." They know the bastardization of the original concept rather than the originals. I hate this too, but, like pulp fantasy itself (of which LotR isn't part IMO), hobbits are just not well understood anymore and so D&D has both acquiesced to this reality and propelled it further in the interests of "brand building."

[bert]

There was that lack of courage to go it totally alone with their ideas without the Tolkein influence, and the copyright issues. I think WotC should be given some credit for having the gonads to finally drop any pretence at Tolkeinicity in their depiction of Halflings - how far are they changing the other races though?

Personally I like the Dark Sun version of halflings; crazy cannibal druids, and the RQ solution - Ducks!

And are WotC finally going to do what they should have done waaay back when they started D&D and hammer out a deal with the Tolkein estate to publish a Middle earth campaign book?

[calithena]

I believe Games Workshop currently has the LotR game license.

[Deleted]

I whole-heartedly agree with your rant, doc. Although I've never been a huge uber-fan of Tolkien, I've always stuck with "Halflings" as being Hobbits. The boss does a mighty fine job playing "Drelba Prettytoes" IMC, & we all enjoy her home-loving, pipe-weed smoking, burglarizing portrayal (in fact, she is the defacto party leader ). I think doc was right when he said that the Dragonlance saga (of which I am a HUGE fan of, BTW) definently kicked inro high gear the "de-tolkienization" of hobbits (halflings). That being said, I do enjoy Kender, but only as far as them being a unique race to the world of Krynn, & to Krynn alone. That always did bother me about 3.X; when I bought the 3.5 players hadbook a few years ago, I was slightly appaled by their strange portrayal-Hobbits (Halflings) are chunky & friendly, man...not deft, willowy, & secretive--& certainly not rugged. I will always keep hobbits (halflings) loyal to the professors' concept IMC; I just like them for what they truly are. Fat & friendly.

[Rhuvein]

Heh, I think hobbits are making a comeback due to the recent LoTRs movies. But for me they never left. Always used the term hobbits, with the occasional "halfling" thrown around (that word was used in Tolkien too, I believe).

Frankly, I don't concerned myself with 4E, wotc, 3E and their use of races/characters or how they use 'em. Nothing against them or those games, but I just go with the basic hobbit/halfling as written in O or A D&D.

I do like the kendar from Dragonlance, they're OK, but in the end give me a hobbit burglar any day! ;D

[badger2305]

Hobbits and halflings. Halflings and hobbits.

I'm torn. On one hand, I think hobbits are pretty cool - I mean, I grew up reading The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and my copy of Foster's A Guide to Middle-Earth got dog-eared as I read it and re-read it. And I played my fair share of hobbits in different games. Never did understand kender, but didn't read much DL either. But I think there's room for other kinds of wee folk.

It seems to me that despite the different portrayal of hobbits in Fineous Fingers and elsewhere, hobbits are pretty firmly rooted in The Shire. This isn't a bad thing, but it does mean as a referee that I might want to have a completely different take on "the little people" - whatever that might mean. It would be more work, but it would also be a fresh canvas.

In the end, I'm still thinking about them. Just as I think about the elves and other races. Hmm, hmm, hmmm....

[James Maliszewski]

I think hobbits/halflings should always be in D&D, but I'm far from certain they should be in every campaign.

[crimhthanthegreat]

I vastly prefer Tolkein style hobbits, but I have never played one myself and my players rarely play one. IMC they are almost exclusively NPCs.

[coffee]

jamesm said:

I think hobbits/halflings should always be in D&D, but I'm far from certain they should be in every campaign.

I was in one campaign where Hobbits were unknown. But this one player absolutely had to have one, and since we were creating new characters, the DM relented.

He wasn't from that world, mind you; he appeared through some kind of trans-dimensional portal.

Since we'd never seen one, we were all puzzled at what he was. I was the first to pipe up: "Oh, that's what you get when you wash a Dwarf in hot water!"

[crimhthanthegreat]

coffee said:

Since we'd never seen one, we were all puzzled at what he was. I was the first to pipe up: "Oh, that's what you get when you wash a Dwarf in hot water!"

I laughed until I cried on that on!

[jjarvis]

doc said:

In the upcoming 4th Edition, halflings will be around four feet tall, slender and strong, and be depicted as outdoorsmen who maintain a secret culture beneath the notice of humankind across the length of the continent.

Hmmm, aren't each generation of hobbits in LOTR noted as being a touch larger then the one before them?

[murquhart72]

doc said:

In the upcoming 4th Edition, halflings will be around four feet tall, slender and strong, and be depicted as outdoorsmen who maintain a secret culture beneath the notice of humankind across the length of the continent.

Are you kidding me??? I'm not sure what sort of creature that is; likely some form of small elf, but it isn't a halfling.

Hobbits were around in D&D from the earliest days, and they were, well, HOBBITS. When the Tolkein estate forbade the use of certain words in the D&D lexicon (including not only hobbit, but ent and balrog as well), the little fellows still stuck around under the title of "halfling," a term that the humans of middle earth sometimes used to describe their sawed-off neighbors.


Over time, though, the halfling began to morph into something quite unhobbitish. They developed a reputation as itinerant kleptomaniacs who would steal from their own adventuring mates as easily as downing a second lunch. They went from small and fat to taller and trimmer. When Dragonlance hit it big, the halflingesque Kender gave us another way of looking at halflings; as annoying troublemakers unable to mind their own business. By the time of third edition, halflings were svelte and dangerous dungeon delvers who loved to wander.

Now let me ask you this: WHAT WAS WRONG WITH JUST HAVING HOBBITS? When I play a halfling, I don't want to play a miniature elf or a nincompoop who is always getting the group into trouble. No, I want to play a hobbit. A short, plump, shoeless, hairy-toed, pipeweed-toking, gluttonous, home-loving HOBBIT!! I ask you, where have all of the hobbits gone? If D&D wanted to distance themselves from The Lord of the Rings, then why couldn't they have just written the halflings out of the newer editions rather than transforming a beloved literary character type into something that it was never meant to be?

(huff, huff)

Okay, I just wanted to get that off my chest. Are there any others out there who are perturbed about the path that our little friends with the fuzzy wooly toes have taken?

FRODO LIVES!

Doc

Hm, a word comes to mind. What is it... Hmmm.. Oh yeah: DITTO!!!

[philotomy]

I like hobbits in The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. I'm not fond of them in D&D, though -- never have been. The kenderish halfling spin is even worse, as far as I'm concerned. I guess I'm a sourpuss.

(I do love Gary's comment in Men & Magic, though: "Should any player wish to be , he will be limited to [4th level Fighting Man]..." That "should any player wish to be one," makes me snicker.)

[Ghul]

My first D&D character was a Hobbit Thief by name of Balbo Baggins (I was in the 5th grade, cut me some slack). Balbo was Bilbo's cousin.

I agree with much of what has been stated in this thread, with one exception: In The Hobbit, Bilbo was hired to function as burglar by Gandalf, and that's just what he was! (Or at least bumbled about as.)

Anyhow, I feel that halflings are more appropriately associated with thieves rather than fighting men. Just not the DL Kender kleptomaniacs as noted by a previous poster. But thieves? Sure thing!

[lordtwang]

If you look carefully, 4th Edition is altering most of the D&D intellectual property. Now, I'm sure part of it is that they're trying to make it cool for a new generation of players who have different tastes. But I think they're also trying to define their IP with clarity. They want to own D&Dness whereas they can't right now because more than half of it is just copycat fantasy.

I've never allowed halflings in my games. I can't see why they would be out adventuring, except under dire circumstances (Frodo). That, and I just didn't find them very interesting until the LotR movies. But then I'm not fond of the LotR books, though The Hobbit was ok.

(Aside: I think it's important to read those books when you're young. For someone who read sword & sorcery as a youth and came to them later, well, I found them lacking.)

I like what they're doing with them. Just don't think of hobbits and halflings as the same thing, or try to view it as halflings in a different world where they developed differently. I don't see why every fantasy world should have the same style of elves or halflings. This is the weird thing about D&D, how it defines a race in a certain way and then it's expected they'll be like that in every campaign world.

Come to think of it, I rarely explicitly tell players they can't have halflings. I do make it explicit that dwarves aren't welcome. I'm going to allow them from now on. I've gotten over that distaste.

[korgoth]

ghul said:

Anyhow, I feel that halflings are more appropriately associated with thieves rather than fighting men. Just not the DL Kender kleptomaniacs as noted by a previous poster. But thieves? Sure thing!

What are these "thieves" of which you speak?

[castiglione]

I think by "thieves" he's referring to fighting men with kleptomaniac tendencies.

The best way to keep your sanity is to consider each version of D & D as something completely unrelated to the other versions. So, it's not as if halflings got morphed from version to version. It's like one or two version has halflings and others have races that are kinda sorta superficially resemble halflings.

[driver]

lordtwang said:

But I think they're also trying to define their IP with clarity. They want to own D&Dness whereas they can't right now because more than half of it is just copycat fantasy.

I think lordtwang hit it on the head here. I'm a long-time Magic player, and WotC/Hasbro has considered it imperative for years that Magic develop as a unique IP. They're notoriously attentive to focus groups, godbooks, and branding.

I am sure, approaching 100% certainty, that WotC focus groups have been shown a picture of Bilbo Baggins, and a picture of an Xtreme Gypsy Halfling with an oversized sword, a Mountain Dew, and a soul patch, and asked "which would you rather be?" and that the answer to this question has driven design.

[korgoth]

driver said:

I am sure, approaching 100% certainty, that WotC focus groups have been shown a picture of Bilbo Baggins, and a picture of an Xtreme Gypsy Halfling with an oversized sword, a Mountain Dew, and a soul patch, and asked "which would you rather be?" and that the answer to this question has driven design.

Hahaha! That is so true!

[doc]

Strangely enough, I'd pick Bilbo every time. Or, even better, Sam. The 2-Xtreme halfling dungeongrinder just seems silly to me.


Doc

[howandwhy99]

Hobbits are part of D&D. But they belong to the Tolkien estate. I don't bemoan them the need to change things for the sake of staying out of IP territory where they could be sued.

[driver]

I actually just removed Halflings from the rulebook for my campaign, with player approval. No one's ever going to play one, and they don't fit my setting very well, so they've disappeared, mourned by none.

[lordtwang]

I remember reading a Monte Cook blog post where he talked about WotC suits originally asking the D&D designers to remove or at least restrict the presence of dragons because Magic the Gathering had dragons in it. No kidding. Restrict the use of dragons in Dungeons & Dragons. Such brilliant minds that came up with that one. Obviously the suits didn't win that one, and in their defense, D&D was new to them. But it's a pretty lame defense.

driver said:

lordtwang said:

But I think they're also trying to define their IP with clarity. They want to own D&Dness whereas they can't right now because more than half of it is just copycat fantasy.

I think lordtwang hit it on the head here. I'm a long-time Magic player, and WotC/Hasbro has considered it imperative for years that Magic develop as a unique IP. They're notoriously attentive to focus groups, godbooks, and branding.

I am sure, approaching 100% certainty, that WotC focus groups have been shown a picture of Bilbo Baggins, and a picture of an Xtreme Gypsy Halfling with an oversized sword, a Mountain Dew, and a soul patch, and asked "which would you rather be?" and that the answer to this question has driven design.

[Deleted]

I was always struck how true to the Tolkien idea of Hobbits the Classic D&D/AD&D (1ed or 2ed) Halfing stuck. Gygax and company knew how popular Tolkien was at the time the LBBs came out, which is why they grudingly included them into the game. In the LBBs, very few people would choose a Hobbit/Halfling due to the low level maximum. The only thing TSR added was this propensity to become thieves. If dwarves and half-orcs tended to fighters, elves and half-elves to rangers or magic users, gnomes to illusionists, the poor halfing got thieves, which tend to be most overlooked character class. It went downhill fast from there.

[Deleted]

Dec 16, 2007 18:23:54 GMT -6 doc said:

In the upcoming 4th Edition, halflings will be around four feet tall, slender and strong, and be depicted as outdoorsmen who maintain a secret culture beneath the notice of humankind across the length of the continent.

Are you kidding me??? I'm not sure what sort of creature that is; likely some form of small elf, but it isn't a halfling.

Yes it is. It's a 4E Halfling. You know this is true because the book says so. It's self-defining.

What's "wrong" with Halfings-as-Hobbits is that most people don't like playing them. It's not wrong to like them, but it does place one in the minority. Since WotC is in the business of selling games with game elements people would like to play, Hobbit-Halfings have to go. It's really no more sinister than that.