This is a second article looking at the lineages in the Tales of the Valiant game, not as fantasy stereotypes but as if they’re alien species similar to what you’d find in science fiction.
The point of this is straightforward: your character’s lineage should be a cornerstone of deep roleplaying, not just a mechanism for gaining some bonuses you’d like to have. Elves, dwarves, smallfolk, and the crew aren’t just humans with pointy ears or lush beards. Like everyone, you and me included, they are products of their culture, their upbringing, and their genes, which are very different from one lineage to another: one might even say alien. They don’t think, act, or view the world the way humans do—and that’s a fascinating roleplaying challenge.
The Assumptions
This article looks at smallfolk with the typical, recommended heritage of cottage or, to a lesser degree, salvager. Some of what’s stated here won’t apply to smallfolk with different heritages—and it might apply fully to other lineages with the cottage or salvager heritage. In general, wherever we state “smallfolk,” we mean “typical cottage smallfolk.”
The traits ascribed to smallfolk in this article aren’t exhaustive or universal. You’re free and encouraged to devise your own cultural details for your character, using these as a guide. But make it different, thought-provoking, and most of all, a solid hook for a unique roleplaying experience. If you want to play your character like a human, play a human.
Smallfolk Cottagers
The two standard heritages for smallfolk are cottage and salvager. These are almost diametrically opposed origins! One is an agrarian, village-based society. The other a wandering, nomadic society. The cottage heritage represents traditional smallfolk from fiction. A salvager-type background is largely a product of roleplaying games themselves. A couple of these types of societies do exist in the world, but they’re not substantially historical.
Because they’re so different, we can’t efficiently look at both in a single article. Cottage is the more traditional approach, so we’ll focus on it.
What sets cottage smallfolk apart? What cultural and genetic forces shape them into the creatures they are? Note that these features are cross-culture observations from throughout sociological history and not just fictionalizing or storytelling.
- Agrarian communities are socially stratified, usually into a small ruling class, a medium-sized business class, and a large laboring class. Stratification is often strict and rigid, especially if the ruling class owns most of the land. Social mobility is limited or nonexistent.
- Life moves to the rhythm of the seasons. Planting, growth, and harvesting; hard work and festive celebration; warm sunshine and icy wind. Everything is bound to nature’s cycle.
- Cottage communities are tight-knit. Families help each other, work together, grieve together, and celebrate together.
- Farming and herding are full-time jobs that leave little time for training with weapons. Armed enemies are a terrifying threat to a cottage community. The threat is even worse for smallfolk, because most of their enemies are bigger and stronger than they are.
The “Good” Life
The cottage heritage description in the ToV Player’s Guide implies a sort of rural Eden. But people don’t walk away from happy, comfortable lives to march through gloomy swamps, eat spoiled rations, sleep in the rain and mud, and seek glory or death as adventurers. If it makes you or others around your table uncomfortable, you’re free to pretend real-world problems such as gross wealth inequality, social immobility, and the ever-present threat of a failed crop leading to famine don’t exist in your campaign. Social frictions like these are, however, an excellent foundation on which to build characters and stories. We’d all feel very differently about Luke Skywalker if Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru were wealthy entrepreneurs instead of moisture farmers barely scraping by.
In these stratified communities, most people are fully occupied by farming and herding. Only a privileged few train to fight and provide defense. Everyone may receive a bit of militia training and know the rudiments of standing in ranks with a spear and shield, but by and large, farmers and herders are incapable of putting up more than token resistance against determined bandits, raiders, and invaders. They rely on a nearby lord, knight, or sheriff with a castle or fortified manor and a small body of professional warriors for their defense.
The Size of the Fight in the Dog
Smallfolk fight as well as anyone when they’re equipped and trained for it. Otherwise, squaring off against a charging horseman—or troll or hobgoblin—is daunting even for a 6-foot-tall “largefolk.” Imagine what it looks like when your enemy is twice your height, four times your mass, and has a weapon two feet longer than yours.
Cottage smallfolk know that nightmare all too well. A desire to escape that feeling of fear and helplessness and really fight back may be what drove your character to the adventuring life in the first place. Training as a warrior, mage, or other combat specialist would not be available to farmers or crafters in their caste-bound society. The only way to get it is to strike out from home and go on the road to adventure.
Family Matters
The close-knit nature of cottage life is inescapable. Everyone in the community probably is your cousin, uncle, aunt, niece, nephew, or in-law to one degree or another. Mutual help and support is the only way anyone survives.
Some people find that closeness suffocating, and that alone might be enough to push them out. But most smallfolk who leave a cottage community miss that family closeness and replace it with the new family of their adventuring partners. They grew up working hard, helping each other, sharing what they have, and counting on others for what they can’t provide themselves. In other words, they’re almost ideal companions in an adventuring party.
