Topics in Comparative Hobbitology: Hairy feet and fearfulness

So, in light of the recent events at Hobbitfest '14, I decided to obsess over the little dudes some more by digging into their RPG pedigree--as opposed to their literary pedigree which is limited to the works of and about Tolkien.  As such, I dug out all my old rule books and dusted off a big stack of PDFs to see how the various renditions of D&D have treated the little buggers over the years.

First off, I should point out that there are some glaring lapses in my collection; notably, in the D&D line there's a jump from 1981 (Moldvay) to 2001 (Hackmaster--the "Never Say Never Again" of Big D), and only one of the numbered editions are included: the recent Basic Rules associated with v. 5.  I'm not a complete Luddite (yes I am), I do have several knockoffs--Tunnels & Trolls, DragonQuest, SwordBearer--and retroclones--Castles & Crusades, OSRIC, Swords & Wizardry: White Box and Complete, DCC (perhaps more of a knockoff than a retroclone)--on hand.  Labia Lords was omitted from the study because, with such a silly name, I just can't take it seriously. Also missing: Mentzer; because... well, it's better left unsaid.

There are, of course, some basic similarities throughout the majority of the versions.  For instance, we all know that haffies are about 3' tall, they tend to be dexterous, stealthy, and crack shots with various missilery.  It's also generally agreed that they tend to be hardily resistant to magic and perhaps also poison--usually manifested in a saving throw bonus--and most of the rules include factors such as these in their descriptions of the pesky little critters.

"Hey little dude: What's up with your feet?"

It may come as a surprise, however, that hairy-footedness is generally not mentioned in the early versions of the game.  In fact, prior to 2001's Hackmaster no version of which I am familiar actually mentions their feet at all.  Indeed, there are no illustrations of hairy-footed haffies in the vast majority of D&D rulebooks from the 70s and early 80s. The Monster Manual being the lone exception. And yet, my first ever character back when I was playing Holmes Basic was a shoeless halfling who was forever terrified of inadvertently dipping his naked toes into a pool of green slime, even though there is not a single whiff of text in the book--or a supporting illustration--to suggest that either shoelessness or hairy-footedness are characteristics of the species.  It's conceivable that, without the baggage of Tolkien's hobbits, one might have played halflings for quite some time without ever knowing that there was anything untoward about their feet.  That everyone understood that the hairy-footed dude fighting the owlbear in Roslof's drawing from K. on the B'lands was a haffie does a great job of highlighting the pervasiveness of Mr. T's work on our collective image of the game and, indeed, the genre.  

Also, over time haffie hardiness seems to have migrated quite a bit.  At first they were resistant to magic, then poison jumped on the bandwagon, in the form of heightened saving throws.  Some of this disappeared in some editions and versions, but then, inexplicably it resurfaced in Castles & Crusades and Fiver Basic as fearlessness.  This is in shocking contrast to, say, Moldvays haffers who were described as somewhat cowardly.  While I am deeply and unabashedly ignorant of post-Gygaxian mainline D&D rules, I have read enough to understand--perhaps errantly--that at some point halflings lost there spot as a default player race to the Kender of Dragonlance; the race that single-handedly ruined everything they touched back in the mid-80s.**  Anyway, my point is that I have a sinking suspicion that the fearlessness thing is a kender trait rather than a hobbit trait, which makes me more than a little queasy. On a possibly related note, nothing in particular is said of halfling feet in Fiver.

* The only illustration of a hairy footed haffer in the core AD&D rulebooks that is clearly linked to halflings is the one in the one accompanying the Halfing description in the AD&D Monster Manual. Though there is also a short hairy footed dude in that party of characters in the marginal illustrations in the back of the AD&D DMG
** Delta Dan has statistically proven that the reason Walter Mondale failed so utterly in his 1984 presidential campaign--winning only 2 states, if I recall correctly--is that the Reagan camp leaked rumors that Mondale was "pro-Kender."  More recently, Mitt Romney saw his presidential hopes go up in flames when a photo of him relaxing on the beach beside a now-middle-aged and paunchy Tasslehoff Burrfoot hit the internet. Also: those faulty O-rings that caused the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster?  Manufactured by Kender. 

Halflings III: Boggies and Hobbits: closer than you think

Back on Day 1 of what is turning out to be Hobbitfest '14, Leicester provided a bit of text from the Lord of the Rings parody Bored of the Rings to help folks unfamiliar with boggies to understand what they were all about. Here is the quote from Leicester (who was quoting The Harvard Lampoon [who were satirizing JRRT]):

"While there was still a King at Ribroast, the boggies remained nominally his subjects, and to the last battle at Ribroast with the Slumlord of Borax, they sent some snipers, though who they sided with is unclear. There the North Kingdom ended, and the boggies returned to their well-ordered, simple lives, eating and drinking, singing and dancing, and passing bad checks."--Harvard Lampoon, Bored of the Rings

The quote provides a slender glimpse into the uncouth, gluttonous, and devious ways of the Boggie race, but what is beautiful about it is how easily Tolkien's original text lent itself to such an interpretation of his precious Hobbits.  Here's the original text from M. Tolkien:

"While there was still a king they were in name his subjects, but they were, in fact, ruled by their own chieftains and meddled not at all with events in the world outside. To the last battle at Fornost with the Witch-lord of Angmar they sent some bowmen to the aid of the king, or so they maintained, though no tales of Men record it.  But in that war the North Kingdom ended; and then the Hobbits took the land for their own." -- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring  [emphasis mine]

Doesn't Tolkien's text already make the little buggers sound a bit shady?  In the ultimate war to save the Kingdom, the tales of men don't acknowledge any assistance from the Hobblers, and yet they took the land for their own in the ensuing collapse. It's as if they made up the whole squad of archers bit to justify their land-grab even though they were really just a bunch of pint-sized opportunists plucking at low hanging fruit left by the defunct kingdom.  Or, worse yet, they made a deal with the Witch-lord to either stay out of the fray or side with his forces in exchange for the lands.  This might explain why, after wiping out the Men of Fornost, the Witch-lord didn't swoop down on the Hobbits and snarf them up as a post-battle snack.  In this light the deviant bastards of BotR don't seem to fall all that far from their literary progenitors.

Bilbo Tittlemouse: Beatrix Potter and the Unexpected Party

So my kid recently brought home a Beatrix Potter book called The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse from his school library.  This book is remarkable for a few reasons, one being that this particular copy has apparently occupied the shelves of his elementary school library since at least 1971--it's rare to find books there that have been on the shelves since the late 90s, much less the early 70s.  However, another aspect of this book is even more noteworthy to me and perhaps some readers of this here blog: the story is a near-exact blueprint of the first chapter of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit.


It's the tale of a woodmouse--the titular Mrs. T--who finds numerous uninvited guests mucking up her tidy home in a hole under a hedge.  The interlopers--mostly bugs of various sorts, though also a bloated, inconsiderate frog--make all manner of ruckus, demanding food and/or shelter and leaving footprints all over her well-kept home.  Eventually she expurgates them all and spends an entire fortnight cleaning and securing her domicile against future invasion.  Once she's accomplished this feat she throws a party for her other mouse friends, which the frog attempts to crash with only partial success.

The comparison with Thorin and company is obvious, but it's really the description of the house itself that is most evocative of Bilbo's home, describing the tidiness and vast number and purpose of rooms littered throughout the subterranean passages.  Significantly, her home is described as sandy, something which Bilbo's hole full of larders and parlours and pantries was described as most certainly not being.  Also, her description of the spider seems like it might have had an influence on the malevolent rendering arachnids received in Tolkien's work.

The book was published 27 years prior to the publication of The Hobbit.  Seeing as Tolkien fathered several children in the intervening years, and since this was probably the only children's book available in England back then--besides the other 400 books in Potter's catalog; apparently she was the Dr. Seuss of the pre-war era--it seems entirely unlikely that Tolkien was not intimately familiar with this story.  Maybe the academics have already chewed this connection to pieces, but if not, here's a freebie to any student of 20th Century British Literature looking for a thesis topic.  You can thank me in cash or money order.

The Hobbit: Nori the thief

From the Lord of the Rings Wiki, some background on Nori for the ongoing films of The Hobbit: 

"Perhaps the most elusive member of The Company of Thorin Oakenshield, Nori is often in trouble with the dwarvish authorities... Nobody ever quite knows what the quick-witted and wily Nori is up to, except that it's guaranteed to be dodgy and quite possibly illegal."

This is interesting to me because in my post on the use(ful/less)-ness of all the dwarves from a while back, I postulated that Nori was merely the alter ego of Ori, who was a con man trying to swindle the rest of the dwarves out of an extra share of treasure.  Apparently Peter Jackson and Co. smelled something fishy about Nori too.

Balrog Cthulhu: The Mountains of Madness in Middle Earth

Balrog

Yep, I'm still on a Tolkien jag.  This Lovecraftian bit is from The Two Towers when Gandalf is explaining to Aragorn, et. al., what he did over Christmas Vacation:

"Thither I came at last to the uttermost foundations of stone.  [the Balrog] was with me still.  His fire was quenched but now he was a thing of slime, stronger than a strangling snake.  We fought under the living earth, where time is not counted.  Ever he clutched me, and ever I hewed him till at last he fled into dark tunnels.  They were not hewed by Durin's folk, Gimli son of Gloin.  Far, far below the deepest delvings of the Dwarves, the world is gnawed by nameless things.  Even Sauron knows them not.  They are older than he.  Now I have walked there but I will bring no report to darken the light of day."

Cthulhu

Sure, JRR never mentions any tentacles, but c'mon!

Bilbo: Proto-thief

Having recently re-read The Hobbit in commemoration of the 30th anniversary of my first traipse through Middle Earth I can't help but note the wealth of game-related goodies that this book has to offer novice role-players--such as I was back in '81.  One obvious and much- discussed notion is Bilbo as the proto-type for the thief class.  Sure, Cudgel, Gray Mouser, et al.'s fingerprints are all over the class, but I didn't read about their endeavors until much later; Bilbo was my first literary source for the thief.  

Much of the arguing about Bilbo as thief has to do with what he actually did (flubbed the pocket picking, relied on a nifty ring, pissed off the dragon), but bear in mind that this was his first gig, he got by only because of ample shares of luck, cleverness, and hobbitly stealth.  But what is more important to take away from the book is what the expectations of a thief, burglar, or expert treasure hunter were, not how well Bilbo lived up to them.  Following are a few pertinent items from Chapter I "An Unexpected Party" and II "Roast Mutton" that helped my 11 year old brain figure out why a thief was someone you wanted to hang out with:

p. 33--Gandalf justifying why he has selected Bilbo for the party:

"[Entering through the front gate of the Lonely Mountain] would be no good... not without a mighty Warrior, even a Hero. I tried to find one; but warriors are busy fighting one another in distant lands, and in this neighborhood heroes are scarce or simply not to be found... That is why I settled on burglary--especially when I remembered the existence of a Side-door." 

Here Gandalf differentiates the basic focus of thievery--obstacles are circumvented by stealth--from warriors and heroes who confront obstacles with force of arms to accomplish their goals.

Note: The titles "Warrior" and "Hero" refer to distinct grades of adventurer, a precursor to level titles.  Also note that the statement presumes that the dwarves themselves are neither warriors nor heroes, leaving us wondering yet again what is their value to the venture.

p. 38--Thorin to Bilbo, still uncertain of the hobbit's qualifications as the party breaks up for the evening:

"Aren't you the burglar? And isn't sitting on the door-step your job, not to speak of getting inside the door?  ...I like six eggs with my ham when starting on a journey; fried not poached, and mind you don't break 'em." 

Here Thorin suggests that a burglar should be a capable heist planner, lock picker, and short order cook.

p. 46--Bilbo, having snuck up on the trolls eating their mutton, ponders what he should do:

"A really first class and legendary burglar would at this point have picked the trolls' pockets... pinched the very mutton off the spits, purloined the beer, and walked off without their noticing him.  Others more practical but with less professional pride would perhaps have stuck a dagger into each of them before they observed it."

From this we can gather that a professional burglar--in Middle Earth at any rate--was expected to provide expertise in sneaking about, pilfering things, and, when necessary, doling out the expeditious knife in the back.  Really not too different from our D&D chums. 

It is also noteworthy that despite Bilbo's nefarious title he, in fact, was a pretty hono(u)rable little guy.  He didn't steal from his friends* and certainly didn't practice his burglary in civilized environs; it was a skillset which was put to use only in the adventure setting.  It was for this reason that I never felt any qualms about ignoring EGG's claim in the PHB that thieves must be either evil or neutral.  Honorable thieves, as exemplified by Bilbo, could exist; they just knew when to keep it in their pants.
 
* Yes, he swiped the Arkenstone--or at least he hid the fact that he had found it--and then furtively delivered it to the men of Esgaroth, but Thorin was being dangerously unreasonable at the time and severely needed a boot to the head.

The Hobbit: Why all the dwarves?

We all know the set up; Thorin and Co. enlist Bilbo as the lucky 14th member of their party.  Plus, they wisely foresaw the value of a sneaky guy in procuring a treasure hoard.  But why exactly were there so many dwarves?

In order of appearance, here is the roster of Dwarves and their primary contribution to the adventure:  

Dwalin--The first dwarf to arrive at Bilbo's house, he is the first dwarf to arrive at Bilbo's house.
Balin--Dwalin's brother, he is the oldest and wisest of the dwarves.  He is also their go to look-out man.
Kili and Fili--Twins, they are the youthful ones. They are good for doing any dirty work that required strong arms and sharp eyes--except being the lookout, which was old man Balin's job. 
Dori--On his shoulders fell the responsibility of carrying Bilbo whenever the hobbit was unable to keep up with the pack or climb a tree or grab an eagle.
Nori--There is no evidence to support the existence of Nori.
Ori--Conspired to gain a double share of treasure by occasionally speaking in a funny voice whilst wearing a Nori mask.
Oin and Gloin--Cousins to Balin and Dwalin, they carried the tinderboxes. 
Bifur--Kept Bofur company
Bofur--See Bifur
Bombur--Fat and weak-willed; he sleeps a lot, needs to be hoisted on occasion, and is manipulated into assisting Bilbo's plot to betray Thorin.
Thorin--Ostensibly the leader of the venture, in reality he always defers to Gandalf or, in the wizard's absence, relies on Bilbo to solve any problems that arise.

So we see, here are the tasks performed by the 13 dwarves:

• Arriving at Bilbo's house
• Performing lookout duties
• General labo(u)r
• Hoisting slow hobbits
• Pilfering extra shares of gold
• Lighting fires
• Providing stimulating company
• Obstructing progress
• Ordering Bilbo around

Did we really need 13 dwarves to do all this? Seems like instead of adding one hobbit to avoid unlucky thirteen, they could have dropped 5 or 6 dwarves and avoided the whole triskadekaphobia matter entirely.