Halfling
rating: 0+x

Halflings are opportunists. For them, this is a survival strategy - whenever an extended family moves to a city, they usually take jobs in industries that few people pay attention to, but which nevertheless are vital for the smooth functioning of a city. Examples include cleaning clothes, brewing beer, or running inns and pubs. They try their best to get along with everyone, and thus rarely suffer from the kind of pogroms that the isolationist dwarves in their ghettos have to face on a regular basis.

Despite this civil surface, the halflings are hardly obedient subjects of the ruler of a city. When problems arise in the halfling community, they prefer to do things “their own way”, and they usually keep an “underground economy” going between them that bypasses the normal trade regulations of a city.

In general, gender roles among halflings are similar to those among humans, with the males tending to the fields or otherwise providing an income for the family through a regular job, while the women tend to home, hearth, and family. However, unlike humans halflings see this an equal partnership where both man and woman are mutually dependant on the other, rather than the one-sided affair all too common among humans where the woman is expected to be subservient to the man in all things. If a young halfling wants to break out of these gender roles, then he or she will face the disapproval of the older halflings (who are famous gossipers), but few actual penalties, since it is generally expected that he or she will eventually settle down and raise a family like a good halfling is supposed to. The transgressor will only actually be rejected from halfling society if this aberrant behavior continues into middle age.

List of Articles about Halflings

Adventure Ideas

Designer's Notes & Resources

Halflings tend to be underestimated. This was already the case in the original The Lord of the Rings, and it has been a common theme throughout other fantasy worlds in which they appear - despite the fact that many people should know better.

I wanted to pay homage to their originally fairly sedentary roots of people "who mind their own business", although as luck would have it, I already had a few nomadic halfling cultures in Urbis before Dungeons & Dragons 4E made them all nomadic wanderers.

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