Dragonlance D&D Game Blog

The following is an exchange from one of my players (currently playing the kender rogue, Theo) with someone on a WotC forum: Player: I love playing a Kender. I can do whatever I want and people just smile and nod. :) Other Person: I love playing a Kender. I can do whatever I want and people just randomly stab me in sensitive places of my body until I stop twitching. Then they burn the body, take off, and nuke the site form orbit, because it's the only way to be sure. The Other Person illustrates something I've been witnessing for years... Kender hate. For reasons that totally escape me, there are a lot of people who hate kender with a passion bordering on obsession. But I don't understand why? Is it from the novels? I hope not, every Dragonlance book Weis and Hickman ever wrote includes Tas as a key character in one way or another (and those books are among the top sellers in the Dragonlance book line). Is Tas so much more annoying than Regis, the halfling (from the Driz...

Kender were created for the Dragonlance setting as a replacement for halfings. Tracy Hickman didn't like the idea of a race of thieves (as halfings were thought of at the time) and wanted something different. Harold Johnson, another designer on the Dragonlance project, suggested the idea of them being driven by curiousity instead of greed. In the 2nd edition source book, Halflings and Gnomes, kender are referenced as an example of convergent evolution, as they arose to "fill the gap" of halfings on this one world. In addition to Kender, there are also Kendar in the subterranean realm of Chorane near the south pole, Marak Kender on the content of Taladas, and even half-kender. In the Demiplane of Dread known as Ravenloft, there are also kender vampires (which had abilities that were different from the "standard" vampire of 2nd edition).