11/18/24, 11:38 AM Howling Tower: A Study of the Smallfolk - Kobold Press

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Howling Tower: A Study of the Smallfolk

Howling Tower: A Study of the Smallfolk
By Steve Winter / November 15, 2024 / Articles, Howling Tower

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.

See more Howling Tower!

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-
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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.

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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.

For the same reasons, they’re likely to resent anyone who doesn’t pull their weight (”if you don’t work, you
don’t eat”), and they despise privileged authority figures who abuse their power or who don’t uphold their
responsibility.

Roleplaying Your Smallfolk

With that in mind, play your Cottage smallfolk according to these tenets.

Your companions are your family, and family is everything.

Life is a gift. Work hard, play joyfully, laugh loudly, grieve openly, and love forever.

The cycles of life are as inexorable as the seasons. What goes around, comes around.

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With great privilege comes great responsibility. Someone who enjoys the privileges but shirks the
responsibility is the lowest of the low.

Smallfolk who live by these rules should be welcome members in any adventuring group while also presenting
a bit of a threat to the powers that be—as any common folk who rise above the station of their birth tend to
be.

Tags: lineage

about Steve Winter

Steve Winter has a modest Wikipedia entry, but it’s a good start if you’ve never heard of him. He has written
extensively for Kobold Press, including the Scarlet Citadel megadungeon. He also wrote D&D’s Tyranny of
Dragons with Wolfgang Baur, and the really solid, underrated 3rd edition of TSR’s Boot Hill, among other
things.

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