In LOTR lore, Hobbits fall under the same general classification as Men. Which is good for them, as while the Elves and Dwarves faded away, Men and Hobbits' presence remained strong.
this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2025
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Hobbits flew completely under the radar and ended up being the heroes of the story by being the only fantasy race that is physically capable of minding their own damn business. Everyone else was a military problem that needed to be solved by Sauron. The Hobbits weren't a threat - until they were.
He’s not wrong though. Their entire export presence is the pipe weed.
Isn't it also the case that basically none really knows where the fuck the shire really is? I feel like I remember something like that
Only because it's inconsequential, not because they're hidden or anything
When they started exciting other goods it broke the sustainable hobbit economy.
Indeepgeek just released a video on the coup of the shire by Lotho Sackville-Baggins:
It's cool, the hobbits ended up with the final boss One Ring.
For however unlikely it was to happen, it did happen quite a lot.
And they took it personally.
by it, you mean the ring?
The most civilized you might say. They don't fight, and just eat and party
If just watch the movies yes. In the books they have a Shire-thain as a military leader.
LOTR book lore
By the time of LOTR the role had been mostly ceremonial for a while, but Paladin Took II (Pippin's father) lead a resistance against Saruman's and Lotho Sackville-Baggins' regime.
Yeah, but both the historically military role of thain and the resistance were defensive in nature. Unlike the very civilised elves, gondorians, rohirim etc. hobbits never waged wars of conquest or subjugation. At least as far as the transmitted history goes. Hell, Aragorn spends most of his reign conquering.
Once when playing a D&D game, my character was a very 'civilized' guildsman who constantly went on about the superiority of urban mercantilist civilization (his counterpart, the other player in the group, was a half-orc barbarian who found this whole civilization thing very appealing; we made a good team). When one quest sent us to a halfling village in the middle of the woods, and they rebuffed all my character's offers to buy land for 'productive enterprises', he, of course, came to the wholly normal and completely correct conclusion that 'these people' did not even have the concept of private property, how sad! and resolved to educate them (by force if necessary) after the quest was finished of the benefits and necessity of a thriving bourgeois society.
Luckily for the halflings, our two-miscreant party was locked up by the local lord afterwards for a combination of kidnapping/theft/attempted sale of halflings who had been turned into stone by the cockatrice we had slain; and we were set loose on another problem (though not before committing unlawful commerce and gambling our unlicensed profits away at the local tavern playing dragon poker).
Thank you so much for writing this out. If there's a community for D&D stories like this, I want to subscribe now!
Ahh, I do miss playing D&D sometimes.