Author: everloss

I'm a dude that writes about stuff on the internet.

How to create a Giant Snail for Dungeon Crawl Classics part 1

For the setting I’m creating, giant snails are an important part of the ecology for one particular area. So, I opened up my DCC rulebook to the bestiary and… no giant snail. Okay, well I’ll just convert one from some other edition of DnD! Right?

  • ADnD Monster Manual? nope. 
  • ADnD MM Two? nope. 
  • ADnD Fiend Folio??? There is the Flail Snail but that’s not really a giant snail. It’s a magical goofy snail. 
  • Critters, Creatures & Denizens by J.A. Rhodes-Gloor? no giant snails. 
  • Palladium’s Monsters and Animals 2nd edition? No giant snails. 
  • Basic Dungeons and Dragon’s Creature Catalogue? nothing
  • Castles and Crusades’ Monsters and Treasure? Nada
  • 5th edition DnD Monster Manual??? Zero, zilch, zip.
  • TMNT After the Bomb: Mutants in Avalon? The only RPG I’ve found that uses giant snails, and is the actual inspiration for me wanting to use them in Strathos.  
Apparently, Giant Snails are non-existent in a wide swath of tabletop RPGs over the last 50 years. What the hell???
So I’ve been researching snail ecology and behavior in order to create Giant Snails for my campaign.
I have some criteria I must meet that is more or less setting-specific
  • They must fit a niche within their natural habitat.
  • They must have abilities that make them desirable as beasts of burden over other choices of animal (like horses or oxen).

The campaign area these Giant Snails will call home is heavily forested with giant trees like Redwood’s. It would be considered a temperate rain forest. Essentially the Pacific Northwest of North America.

Giant snails have the ability to haul cargo strapped to their shells, and can move easily over the broken terrain of the forest floor. They can also climb vertically up the trunks of the trees – potentially to safety from dangers on the forest floor.

Giant Snails are docile and never attack, even in self-defense. Making them safe to have around children.

Snails come in a rather large variety. Some eat fungus, some eat decaying plant matter, some eat fresh vegetation, and some eat other snails! So, my giant snails should also share these aspects, as well as more fantastic attributes since this is a fantasy game;

  • Generic Wild snail – feeds on fungus, including intelligent fungoids
  • Cargo snail – for hauling cargo
  • Speed snail – faster than a cargo snail but can’t carry very much
  • War snail – might as well use the Flail Snail for this.
  • Singing snail – smallest of the giants, kept as a pet. Sings like a song bird. Wide variety of colorations. 
Now that I’ve determined what I want with the Giant Snail, and how it fits into the game world, the next step is to figure out stats for it. That will be in part 2.

The Hundred States Generator

So while working on the Strathos setting one day, I thought, “Man, this would go quicker if I used a random table to generate kingdoms for the Hundred States area.” So I looked and looked and couldn’t find a generator on the internet for building kingdoms! Lots of dungeon generators, lots of name generators, but no kingdom generators.

So I made one.

Actually, I made two!

The first is divided into seven parts.

  1. Type (Kingdom, Regency, Union, Collective, Principality, Duchy, etc)
  2. Name; Names are kept simple. How it is named is up to you, the user of the document. For example, rolling a 7 and reading straight across can give you the Enlightened Republic of Ibesh, or the Enlightened Ibesh Republic, or the Republic of Enlightened Ibesh.
  3. Title of Ruler; Roleplaying games always have a hard-on for naming rulers, as if the player-characters would be on a first name basis with the ruler of a kingdom. However, the title of a ruler adds flavor and inspires ideas as to the nature of the kingdom. 
  4. Type of Government; is it a feudal kingdom? an anarcho-socialist collective? A matriarchal plutocracy? 
  5. Economy; what is the economy based on? wines? sheep’s wool? beans? silver mining? beer brewing? 
  6. At War With; what other state is this one at war with?
  7. Allied With; what other state is this one allied with? 

You can either roll once and use everything in a row to make a kingdom, or roll separately for each column. In this way, you can make thousands of different states.

The second kingdom generator is a bit different. It too has seven columns.

  1. Kingdom Type; basically the same as the first document.
  2. Name A; along with the next column, these two columns combine to make more possible names for your nation-state.
  3. Name B
  4. Title of Ruler
  5. Type of Government
  6. Language; this was the big change. I decided I wanted to Hundred States to be the vestiges of the Old Elbonian Empire, which united many smaller nations and tribes under one banner. When that fell apart, the people balkanized and formed their own communities based on shared cultural and language heritage. 
  7. Economy

Since creating these documents, I have made some changes to the setting, but I thought I would share them with anyone interested in using a handy Random Kingdom Generator.

Moss Dwarf Class for Dungeon Crawl Classics

Moss Dwarf!
Inspired by the Moss Dwarf class found in Wormskin vol 1, by Norman and Gorgonmilk
*used with permission
Booyah!  The Moss Dwarf of Strathos are short, squat humanoids with brown wrinkly skin, long stringy green hair and beards, and often covered with all manner of moss, mold,  and fungus.  They typically forgo wearing clothes apart from a loin cloth, and never cut or crop their hair or beards, which are also tangled with creeping plants, and maybe a bird’s nest or two. Moss Dwarfs live for centuries; when they die, their bodies quickly rot away like fallen tree trunks, forming a rich compost. Moss Dwarf prefer to live in the darkest parts of the forest or underground in shallow, natural caves.
Zero level characters are rolled up as any other character. Moss Dwarf backgrounds replace those of the Elf on the background table. Starting coin, however is only 5d6 copper pieces. On the plus side, Moss Dwarf weapons and armor (as found in Wormskin vol.1) are half the price of their regular equivalents.
Moss Dwarf backgrounds replace numbers 29-38 on the DCC background table.
Roll
Occupation
Trained Weapon
Trade Goods
29
Forester
Staff
Herbs, 1 lbs
30, 31
Artisan
Trowel
Clay, 3 lbs
32, 33
Farmer, Mushroom
Shovel
Mushrooms, 8 oz
34, 35
Rancher, Worms
Hoe
Compost, 10 lbs sack
36, 37
Birdwatcher
Net
Loyal songbird
38, 39
Assistant Brewer
Large Paddle
Gallon of beer


Here is what you can do…
  • You can see in the dark!  Up to 60 feet.
  • You can speak the Moss Dwarf language, which is squelchy and wet and dank sounding. 
  • You as a Moss Dwarf can attempt to identify animals, monsters, or other beings native to Strathos as a Trained Skill.
  • You are invulnerable to harmful fungal poisons/infections and spores.
  • You are, however, have a curious vulnerability to metal. You suffer a -1 penalty to hit your opponent when wielding a metal weapon, and a -1 penalty to Armor Class (AC) when wearing metal armor. Moss Dwarf do make their own armor out of plant and animal materials, and weapons of wood and stone.
  • Weapon Training: While fighting isn’t usually a Moss Dwarfs first choice of action, living in wilderness areas gives them cause to defend themselves. You are trained in the following weapons; blackjack, blowgun, club, stone axe, sling, spear, and staff.
  • Hit Points: A Moss Dwarf gains 1d6 Hit Points each level.

At first level, roll on the Talent Tree table to determine your Moss Dwarf Talent. Talents can be thought of as natural magical powers innate to each Moss Dwarf. Each Talent Tree has a total of four Ranks before it is mastered. The talent you roll at first level is permanent and cannot be changed. At each subsequent level, you have the choice of rolling again on the Talent Tree table to start an additional Talent Tree at Rank One, or you may increase a currently known Talent Tree by one Rank. Talents of any particular tree must be learned in order. 

Note: In the source material, Talents are called Knacks. I’ve changed the terminology in this particular case because in this version of the class, there is no upper limit as to how many talents a Moss Dwarf character can have, unlike the source material. 
Level
Attack Bonus
Crit Die/Table
Action Dice
Reflex
Fortitude
Willpower
1
+1
D6/III
d20
+1
+1
+1
2
+1
D6/III
d20
+1
+1
+1
3
+2
D8/III
d20
+1
+2
+1
4
+2
D8/III
d20
+2
+2
+2
5
+3
D10/III
d20
+2
+3
+2
6
+3
D10/III
d20+d14
+2
+4
+2
7
+4
D12/III
d20+d16
+3
+4
+3
8
+5
D12/III
d20+d20
+3
+5
+3
9
+6
D14/III
d20+d20
+3
+5
+3
10
+7
D14/III
d20+d20
+4
+6
+4
Particular Talents are unchanged from Wormskin vol. 1 (where they are referred to as Knacks), so to see those, you should definitely purchase at least volume 1 of the series. Once you have that, though, you’ll probably buy the rest of them (like I did).
Unlike other classes, Moss Dwarf titles are based on Talents mastered, instead of level attained. Those titles include the following; Critter Friend, Lock Siren, True Sniffer, Pouch Filcher, Root Summoner, String Charmer, Timber Listener , Master Fermentor.

Changes to the blog

In an on-going effort to improve the blog, I’ve made a few changes.

First, and most obvious, is the change of color. The black background is gone!

Second, I’ve removed a lot of the stuff on the sides. I felt that it was distracting having links and lists and other stuff crowding out the actual blog posts. So now there is just some navigational tools. Which leads to…

To ease navigation and make it easier for you, the reader, on the left you will see a list of links to the main categories of stuff on the blog. Click one of those links and you will be taken to a page that has all the posts on the blog that are relevant to that topic.

Ramon Perez jr

Elbonian Empire culture

The old Elbonian Empire unified numerous smaller cultures under the umbrella of a single government. After the Empire fell and chaos reigned, these individual cultures separated once again. In some instances, old regions reverted to their old ways, army units who identified mostly with a particular culture imposed that culture on the area around which they were stationed, or a past kingdom went on a conquering spree before itself falling apart.  In this way, neighboring kingdoms can be very different from each other, while sharing similarities to kingdoms they do not border.

Some cultural quirks instituted by the old Empire are still common among all the kingdoms, and serve to keep at least some amount of cultural unity among the people of the continent.

Among these quirks are social class and identifiers of one’s social class.

Borrowing from TMNT: Mutants in Avalon, social class is divided into five levels, based on a rating system. The rating system is based on individual occupation, and is identified by an animal type. In ancient times, the people were divided into various clans who held animal totems. When the Empire rolled over the continent and united the people, these animal totems gradually indicated the social status of descendants of those clans. The leaders and allies of the Empire formed the highest classes, while the lower classes were composed of those clans that fought against the Empire. Eventually, the lower classes were integrated and formed the mass of laborers, farmers, and unskilled workers of the Empire.

This continues to this day. In most kingdoms, individuals are required to wear some identifying mark to show their social class. This mark is in the shape of the animal that represents their class. This can be conspicuous jewelry, a patch, an armband, a flag, a tattoo, embroidered clothing, etc.

Social Rating

Each rating has dozens or hundreds of sub-ratings within it. Player-characters may roll on the appropriate table (by occupation) to determine their social class animal.

E: slaves, criminals, tramps, hobos, most foreigners (from outside the kingdoms), pretons.

  1. Rat
  2. Weasel
  3. Magpie
  4. Adder
  5. Frog
  6. Lizard
  7. Newt
  8. Toad
  9. Tortoise
  10. Wolf
  11. Skunk
  12. Raccoon
  13. Possum
  14. Porcupine
  15. Aardvark
  16. Bat
  17. Vulture
  18. Flounder
  19. Eel
  20. Lamprey

D: serfs, laborers, artisans, travelling merchants, mercenaries.
  1. Mouse
  2. Goat
  3. Hamster
  4. Hedgehog
  5. Rabbit
  6. Sheep
  7. Shrew
  8. Squirrel
  9. Chicken
  10. Crow
  11. Duck
  12. Goose
  13. Gull
  14. Bluejay
  15. Pidgeon
  16. Sparrow
  17. Turkey
  18. Beaver
  19. Boar
  20. Monkey

C: skilled laborers, soldiers, wizards, squires, wealthy merchants.
  1. Woodpecker
  2. Robin
  3. Puffin
  4. Heron
  5. Horse
  6. Seal
  7. Lion
  8. Pig
  9. Mole
  10. Donkey
  11. Cow
  12. Cat
  13. Trout
  14. Bass
  15. Catfish

B: military officers, clerics and priests, courtiers, land-owners, knights, extremely wealthy merchants.
  1. Dog
  2. Fox
  3. Otter
  4. Dove
  5. Falcon
  6. Owl
  7. Pheasant

A: nobles, royals, high priests/clerics, generals/admirals. 
  1. Elk
  2. Eagle
  3. Peacock
  4. Swan
  5. Mink

Species and Race in Elbonia

The old Elbonian Empire was founded by dwarves, taken over by humans, and infiltrated by halflings. 
  • Dwarven history starts with the founding of the Empire and its spread from the Sunward mountains and across the fertile plains. 
  • Human history starts with their pledge of unity with the dwarves, and the rapid expansion of the Empire throughout the continent.
  • Halfling history is long, going back before the dwarves appeared. However, halflings love keeping secrets and never discuss their origin. One of their favorite secrets is how they tricked the dwarves and humans into thinking the Empire began with them.

The Manse of Silence, a library of repute.

The Lightless Manse of Silence is well-known as one of the greatest libraries in the world. It is said that any subject can be researched in detail at the Manse, and its Librarian keeps the place organized in such a way that research takes less time than at other libraries. There are some drawbacks to this library, though. It gets its name because there are no candles or torches allowed within the library, so for most people it is only useful during daylight, and even then only in the areas near enough to windows that allow light to illuminate the shelves. No book, scroll, or text is allowed to leave the library. Speaking aloud is forbidden, even at a whisper. Breaking the rules brings down the wrath of the librarian, an elderly woman with glasses and hair in a bun and a severe frown at all times.

Fall of the Elbonian Empire

The ancient Elbonian Empire was the largest of the human kingdoms at its height. It’s fall began with the conquest of the land known as Pretonia. The native Pretonians were a savage and barbaric race said to cavort with foul gods and bestial demons. When the Elbonians came in their triremes and built colonies on the coast in preparation for an invasion, the Pretonians united their various tribes to drive off the invaders. This war lasted for generations, sucking up vast amounts of wealth and manpower from the Elbonian Empire. Eventually, when the Elbonians thought they finally won, the last of the Pretonian shamans appealed to their gods and brought forth a great disaster in a suicidal attempt to finally defeat their enemy. Bankrupt, in political turmoil, war-weary, and beset by enemies in other parts of the empire, the once-great Elbonian Empire crumbled and fell. Today, in its place, are dozens, perhaps hundreds of petty kingdoms and city-states fighting not just amongst themselves, but with the remnants of the ancient pretons who still rule the deepest forests.

Free Cities Bar Association

In the Free Cities, law and order is maintained by an elite corp of attorneys. The Free Cities Bar Association is the guild that controls the pricing of the services of attorneys. While the people of the Free Cities call them attorneys, the rest of the world considers them to be duelists or assassins. Free City Attorneys do not argue cases in a court of law, rather they are paid to duel on a patron’s behalf. They are also rumored to take payment in exchange for quietly eliminating anyone a wealthy patron wishes. As such, the wealthiest attorneys are also the most deadly, feared, and expensive to keep on retainer or hire.

Some of the eldest attorneys have created partnerships, where successful attorneys pay younger attorneys with little to no reputation to take on cases for them.

The Ship in the Trollands


On the Dark Side, in the Trollands, is a ship. This ship fell from the sky years ago and lodged itself into a hillside. No one has ever been able to gain entry to the ship. It’s smooth metal surfaces are seemingly impervious to any axe, pick, or battering ram. Strangely, since the ship crashed here, the native life to the area has… changed. The trolls and giants native to the region have mutated in strange ways. Multiple heads, hunchbacks, bestial limbs, and extra eyes are all common with even stranger mutations rumored.  

The Silt Sea

The Silt Sea is a shallow sea, named for its bed of silt formed from the runoff of hundreds of rivers and streams that empty into it. The body of water is also called the Gold Sea, as small gold nuggets are frequently found by sifting through the silt. Prospectors have formed boom towns all around the sea, and theft and murder is a common occurrence among the prospecting towns. Fortunes can be made at the Sea, but getting that fortune out to real civilization, past the other prospectors, pirates, and highwaymen, not to mention monsters, is easier said than done. Vast caravans travel by land to and from the various towns selling wares and trading for gold.