The Piazza

For various reasons I will be reposting various threads from the ZGG forum here to make sure they are not lost should anything happen to the forum there. Also, it can give an opportunity to bring back some old topics into discussion.

From: http://mmrpg.zeitgeistgames.com/index.p ... opic&t=163

MrFilthyIke (2005):
Hi all,

I'm thinking up a Hobbit, I mean HALFLING character for Blackmoor, and am wondering what is a good location to plant the "shire" my character will be from. Somewhere Tolkeinesque, but where a Halfling might have to raise sword and shield to defend their home.

Any ideas? Havard? Wink

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S.M. Murphy
mrfilthyike (at) gmail (dot) com

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DClingman
Booh is the place to be if you are halfling. There are alot of hills and the halflings very much enjoy the climate.

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MrFilthyIke
I thought that was Docrae territory??

This is a fat little Hobbit I'm thinking of.

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DClingman:
The Docrae did settle in Booh, but it was halfing territory long before that. So they are both present, but if you asked the average Blackmoorian, he would say "Halfings live in Booh!"

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Greg Svenson:
I heartily agree that the "halflings" are from the Tower of Booh. That's where Mello the mightist of the hobbits was from (we could call him a Hobbit back in those days, before the Tolkien family objected).

MrFilthyIke:
Cool, I'll look into the Booh section of my book.


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Spikey:
You could always join the stagnant ranks of the swamp gnomes ...

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MrFilthyIke:
Gnomes...bleh

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Havard:
Others beat me to this one Ike Wink

Anyways, this got me thinking. The fans seemed to welcome the fact that BM halflings represented a return to the old school hobbit types rather than the slender/warlike 3E variant.

However, I am wondering if the Blackmoor Halflings have anything that sets them apart from hobbits of other (non 3e) worlds? Or are people comfortable with the Tolkien stereotypes? Could they remain within this comfortable image and still posess some curious habits that set them apart from the rest, making them uniquely Blackmoorian?

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DClingman:
Well they are much more prone to travelling than Tolkien's hobbits. In fact, some of the largest distributors in Blackmoor are owned and operated by halflings. That doesn't jive with Tolkien. I would also suggest that they are more prone to a "larger view" of the world rather than just focusing on Booh and South Pim.

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Havard, would you be able to provide a short bit of info/description of this 'Tower of Booh'? Also, I haven't noticed (although it could merely be my poor memory) but were there any hobbi... I mean halflings in the DA series?

I'll try to write up something for you later.
The most famous hobbit of Blackmoor is probably Mello. You might be able to draw something about Booh from the NPC section's description of Mello in DA1.

Havard

It doesn't appear that there is a halfling 'homeland' if you will; no region predominately populated by halflings. I think it's fair to say that any halflings in Blackmoor (and the entire north for that matter) likely came up via trade ships traveling between the southern elven lands and Blackmoor.

The closest thing you will find on the Blackmoor regional map to a Halfling homeland are the hills surrounding Booh, but I guess you are right that they probably arrived in Blackmoor from the South. How they got to Skothar in the first place is another question. They could have arrived from Davania along with elves, or even via magical portals.

Note that dwarves and even the the Thonians who make up the bulk of the human population of Blackmoor came from the south. In the case of the dwarves, they probably migrated from Brun, across the Isle of Dawn landbridge to Skothar.

D20 Blackmoor also introduces the race of Docrae. IMC they are related to the Karimari and must have arrived from Brun. Their homelands are to the east of Blackmoor, but they were driven from their lands by the Afridhi and now live among their Halfling cousins in the lands of Booh.

Havard

Actually, there are at least three halflings mentioned in DA1: Philo Holbityn, Mello Feathertoes and Timothy Curlytop.

According to the D20 Sourcebook, Booh is a Large Town of 2700 inhabitants. The town is dwarfed by the huge and ancient watch tower which gives the town its name. The town is a typical halfling one, with beautiful gardens and in no short of foodstuffs and fermented beverages. A large system of caves is found beneath Booh, used by the Halflings to store food and for military purposes. The largest population of Docrae has also settled there. Ramshead is another Halfling Town (pop 1000), where Philo is Sherrif. Dustin also mentioned South Pim, but I don't see any mention of the population makeup in that town anywhere. IMC Kenville is also a Halfling town, just because the name sounds a bit Halfling-ish.

Havard

I posted a little summary of these ideas in my blog:
http://blackmoormystara.blogspot.com/20 ... kmoor.html

How do you see the Halflings in the GazH version, Hugin?

Havard

I'm not entirely sure yet. My work on the GazH project (and everything else for that matter) has slowed to a crawl the last few weeks as work at the office (and other life stuff) has gotten very busy. But that will be a normal phase that I go into and out of as the project goes on (this is a long-term project that has many facets to it).

Anyway, back to the halflings in the GazH, I'll only be using info from OD&D and those AD&D sources that are for Mystara. During the Blackmoor era, I don't imagine too many of them in the lands in and around the Empire. One of the thoughts that your blog created though was that perhaps halflings were quite "hobbit-like" back in this time.