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Halflings - David Griffith

Halflings from Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition. Art by David Griffith.

Halfling is a humanoid race in some fantasy settings that resembles humans but are approximately half the size. They are a common race for player characters in traditional fantasy role-playing games, owing to their appearance in every edition of Dungeons & Dragons since original D&D in 1974. They were based on the hobbits of J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth novels (most notably The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings), which were occasionally called halflings in the text. Chainmail and the first printings of the 1974 D&D White Box even called them hobbits, before legal issues with the Tolkien estate led to them being renamed to the uncopyrighted halfling in 1977.

Other uses of the term[]

Although the term halfling is well established in tabletop role-playing because of its appearance in Dungeons & Dragons, it has occasionally had a different definition in fantasy works outside of role-playing. For example, the Shanarra stories of Terry Brooks uses halfling as its term for a half-elf. Jack Vance's Lyonesse series (which spawned its own rpg in 2020) uses the term as a catch-all for creatures like fairies, who in his series are half magical and half earthly.

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