thank you @coasterspaul, you have summed my thoughts up in a more majestic wording.
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What does J.R.R. Tolkein Middle Earth lore have to do with TR Stonhearth lore? Just wondering?!? or is this just a hypothetical discussion?
Donât get me wrong Tolkein wrote some outstanding bookâs and is a legend!! But it doesnât mean Stonehearth has to be based upon it.
Would be cool to be able to play the Rabbit pplâŚ
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I was not saying that this is based on Tolkein. Rather than Tolkein created the tropes of the entire genre of fiction known as fantasy. I personally see a lot of the Halfling of fantasy when I look at the Hearthlings. The Halfling and the Harfoot and the Tallfellow all seem well represented in this people so far.
I am new to the game, about 80 hours playtime, and most are mostly trying to orient myself to the game. I have heard rumours of lore, but on my instinct I see them essentially as halflings - which are the ancestors of modern humans in Middle Earth Lore. Rabbits are a sign of fertility and are heavily drawn to Hobbits, who also evolved from their ancestors living in burrows, up trees, and in mountains. They domesticated rabbits and used them for everything from food to beast of burden. Foxes converge around shires and are a source of wild adventure manageable by their able huntsmen. The raccons are not in tolkein, but they have a place in how Tolkein used bears, and native Americans and European settlers believed them to be of similar species. The Hobbits who fear or disdain heights of any kind use imagery of ladders as metaphor for the unknown⌠Their own existence is spiritual with a focus on abundance as sign of blessing - not a formal religion. It seems consistent with my own experience in game so far. The biggest stretch being raccoons but I love the little guys.
I am not saying it is the same. I am saying there is cause for a person who sees correlation to have a valid conversation about the topic. There is no insult implied. It is something to consider interesting, not definitive. I was always fond of Halfling races in fantasy. Their charm is warm and their existence is bright in a usually dark world. They work as units and achieve recognition for their reluctant bravery. When I saw this first on steam, it was what drew me to it. I loved how diverse and self-appointed they were to tasks. Maybe post-alpha or further down the road, I will see them differently. But so far, it seems consistent.
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Never took it as a insult, just was kinda confused as to how J.R.R got brought into this (thereâs no alter motive, itâs all good :)). I really donât think ppl are jumping on you, just adding to the discussion and filling in with their knowledge on what they know concerning the game lore.
You are making a correlation from J.R.R. and applying it to Stonehearth and thatâs Okay by me. Sometimes though, If you look too deep into some thingâs, it loses itâs magic (so to speak). Itâs kinda like in âZombieâ bookâs how you never find out exactly why it happened!
Just saying sometimes not knowing all the answers makes it more rich of a experience (well for me anyways).
Anyhow, carry on! This should be interesting on were this goes 
you had my interest peaked with the J.R.R. referenceâŚ
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finally, some one who is like me! there are some things that shouldnt be âquestionedâ and such, other wise, as you said, it loses its âmagicâ 
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Tolkein popularised the tropes of a very specific genre of fantasy often called High Fantasy. Itâs a mistake to think of him as the sole originator of everything fantasy.
He himself was influenced by older fantasy works like Beowulf. H.P.Lovecraftâs Cthulu novels, R.E. Howardâs Conan stories and Edgar Rice Burroughs John Carter stories all predate him (there are many others too as there was a whole generation of pulp fiction magazines in the 10s, 20s and 30s). There are also plenty of later fantasy novelists who wrote of very different kinds of worlds (Moorcock, Leiber and others). Some even more fantastic.
So please, call him hugely influential, but not the first and only.
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I know High Fantasy to be fantasy based of Other Worlds which may parallel but are not âThe Real World.â Low Fantasy is âHistorical Earthâ with fantastical elements and embellishments.
Tolkeinâs single largest contribution to Fantasy was prinarily the genre of fantasy world-building, and secondarily uniform character progression through profession, advancement of ordeal, and crafted or discovered objects. The Shire is the Welsh countryside of his youth made to his own design. He had precious amounts of information which gave a anthropological depth to his work previously unseen except in accounts of ancient history or books on mythology.