d10 Takes on Halflings

1. Naturalistic natives. Vassals of the Elfs, yet more reliable than goblin servants. Feral. Guerilla warfare constrasts with communion and a great respect with the Wilderness.

2. They are just shaven dwarfs.

3. Halflings and Goblins are two sides of the same coin. Anger a halfling enough, and you just get a goblin. That's why halflings are pestering you with their jovial attitude, and everyone behaves so politely around them.

4. A failed reduction spell by the wizard Ralagazzam spawned the first couple, centuries ago. Copious inter-breading and incest in the generations since then.

5. Halflings are just unattended children. The orphans of wars past. Rascals with an impulse to run away from home in search of equal doses of nourishment and excitement. Of course they've got no shoes and their feet are covered in muck and worse!

6. Halflings are just utopic delusionals. Too much of the right sentiment makes them appear. Maybe they come from a different dimension? Regardless, if you leave your (fairly) peaceful community to go adventuring die in a hole, you are a contrarian moron.

7. Halflings are just beings stranded from the stars. There, they are a species of giants. At their arrival they were utterly terrified and confused. Time and its fading memory meant acceptance.

8. Halflings are born as humans. When in adulthood, solitude is bliss and curse. But Community, that's when things get interesting. As a human gets more and more involved in their Community (church attendance, clubs, social gatherings, etc), their physique morphs and shrinks. Being a Halfling is both a sign of tossed individualism and adopted Community.

9. As medieval pechts (see this post).

10. Dark Sun also has a decent take.

Halfling Ranting

Halflings. Part of the original trifecta (dwarves, elves), but with a lot less historical roots, and a weaker reason to BE. I sometimes feel we are all sequestered by Tolkien's fixation with his view of the British burgueoise, and everyone is too busy riffing off similar concepts to talk up and show the middle finger to this bland concept. Name change? No problem. Interesting update? Nah.

But we already have at least three recognizable lawful character options. Dwarfs? And toss in the gnomes. Do we really need three small-folk races/ancestries/species that blend together, and get confused all the time?

Halflings are something that in my experience a lot of players like to bring to the table. And I like them myself! The jovial attitude and small folk are charming. But I see no real justification to have them as a separate option on the menu. They are just too damn close to humans. Or at least an aspect of them that I would expect in a LOT of adventurers.

My point here is not to encourage you make your halflings shoot eye-lasers and have ballsacks filled with singing gems. Just take them in a slightly different direction. Or drop them and play youngsters and children humans instead. The Urchin. The Lazarillo! It's right there, literally the dawn of the picaresque!

I'm just sad we are at a point where these little suckers are so expected in the DnD vanilla mileau, they are ingrained in our fantasies. And we didn't do anything to let them go. Or invigorate them into something more pallatable and rich. I suppose they are just too damn likeable as they are.