Dungeon Crawl Classics Character Class Illustrations

For the new Fantastic Adventures and the Disgruntled Gong Farmer cover art, I created an illustration showing a party of adventurers drinking and enjoying each others company at the ‘Happy Halfling Tavern’.  For my next illustration, I wanted to show a group of DCC adventurers in a dungeon environment.  Thus, the inspiration for creating the illustrations found in this post was born.

Thief.  The thief was the one character class missing from the cover art of ‘Fantastic Adventures and the Disgruntled Gong Farmer’; this became my inspiration for creating an illustration of the thief.

 

Cleric.  Showing diversity and inclusion are important in my artwork.  Thus, I drew the cleric as a person of colour.

 

Dwarf.  A mighty Dungeon Crawl Classics dwarf wielding a battle axe.

Updated front cover of Fantastic Adventures and the Disgruntled Gong Farmer.  I have made some minor changes to the front cover of the adventure module; the most notable being changes to the alignment and placement of the text.  ‘Fantastic Adventures and the Disgruntled Gong Farmer’ is a third-party compatible Dungeon Crawl Classics adventure module available as a free PDF on DriveThruRPG.

Companion Website.  The illustrations of the three Dungeon Crawl Classics characters shown here are found in the ‘Fantastic Adventures and the Disgruntled Gong Farmer’ Companion Website.

Fantastic Adventures and the Disgruntled Gong Farmer Website

With the launch of the redesigned cover for Fantastic Adventures and the Disgruntled Gong Farmer (please see the previous post for more details), the companion website has been redesigned to reflect the look of the new cover.  The illustrations, logo, fonts and colouring of the new cover have been incorporated into the website.

The cover art for Fantastic Adventures and the Disgruntled Gong Farmer.  The party of newly forged first-level characters, who have survived the rigors of ‘The King’s Challenge’ character funnel, are enjoying drinks and good company at the ‘Happy Halfling Tavern’; a central meeting place in the village of Greenleaf.  The adventuring party is made up of a cleric, a halfling, a dwarf, a warrior, a wizard and an elf; representing six of the seven Dungeon Crawl Classics core character classes.  Resting in the arms of the warrior is the mechanic spider, who befriended the characters in ‘The King’s Challenge’ character funnel.

The four human classes in Dungeon Crawl Classics are the warrior, the cleric, the wizard and the thief.  Missing from the above illustration is the thief.

The rigors of character funnels forged lasting bonds of friendship among the surviving characters; sometimes these bonds go beyond friendship, as illustrated by the couple above.  As I touched on in my previous posts, showing diversity and representation in my illustrations are important to me; thus, I drew the warrior and wizard as people of colour.  The warrior represents a person from an African heritage and the wizard representing a person from a Latin American heritage.

Dungeon Crawl Classics follows the principles of ‘race as class’ for demi-humans.  Thus, dwarves, elves and halflings are their own classes.  The above illustration represents the three demi-human classes found in the core DCC rulebook.

Ruen, the sensitive barmaid, is serving the dwarf his drink.  Ruen is the spitting image of her father Roth, who stands nearly 7’ tall and weighs over 300 lbs.  While monstrous humanoids are typically portrayed as brutish and violent in most RPG adventures, Ruen and Roth are the opposite to this.  Despite their intimating appearances, Ruen and Roth are kind and gentle; possessing hearts made out of pure gold.

Fantastic Adventures and the Disgruntled Gong Farmer: Second Printing

One of my motivations for making the transition from traditional pencil and paper illustrations to digital illustrations was to create new covers for my published works.  In the previous post, I showcased a new cover I designed for White Box: Eastern Adventures; an OSR rules-light role-playing game.  After completing the new cover for ‘White Box: Eastern Adventures’, I started work on a new cover for Fantastic Adventures and the Disgruntled Gong Farmer; a third-party Dungeon Crawl Classics compatible adventure module.

Front Cover

Back Cover

The above illustration depicted the party of newly forged first-level adventures enjoying drinks at the ‘Happy Halfling Tavern’.  Ruen, the sensitive and kind-hearted barmaid, is serving the party their drinks.  The dwarf has a worried look as he is eyeing his coin pouch; after all, it is his turn to pick up the tab.  In the background, peering through an open window, is Oscar, the mysterious creature that lives in the tavern’s outhouse. 

The Fantastic Adventures and the Disgruntled Gong Farmer logo.  I wanted to create a unique logo for this adventure module.  In my recent redesign of the Dungeon Crawl Classics Fan Page, I created a logo for the website inspired by British medieval heraldry shield designs.  Drawing inspiration again from medieval heraldry, the Fantastic Adventures and the Disgruntled Gong Farmer logo was born.  In the centre of the shield and on the hilts of the swords are maple leaves, representing my Canadian heritage.

Full Book Cover

‘Fantastic Adventures and the Disgruntled Gong Farmer’ is available as a Free PDF on DriveThruRPG.  There is a print-on-demand softcover version available for $6 USD, for those wanting a physical copy of the book.

Tasaka Games is my humble one-person tabletop role-playing game company.