Dungeon Crawl Classics Character Generators Part 1

Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC) is a modern role-playing game designed to capture the feel of the early years of the ‘World Most Famous Role-Playing Game’.  There are seven character classes in Dungeon Crawl Classics, which are redesigns of the classes found in the Basic/Expert edition of the ‘World Most Famous Role-Playing Game’.  The classes are: the Cleric, the Warrior, the Wizard, the Thief, the Elf, the Dwarf and the Halfling.

 The Thief

Between 2016 to 2017, I designed random character generators for the seven DCC character classes.  With the recent creation of the Fantastic Adventures and the Disgruntled Gong Farmer Companion Site, I was inspired to re-visit the DCC character generators by creating new updated versions of the generators for the companion website.  While my original DCC Fan Site uses painted miniatures for the site’s artwork, the companion website uses pencil sketches.  Thus, I decided to use pencil sketches for the artwork for the new character generators.

The Wizard 

The Cleric

In designing the character generators, I decided to first start out by drawing the character classes.  So far, I have drawn sketches for the ‘human’ DCC classes: the Cleric, the Warrior, the Wizard and the Thief.  It is important for me to have inclusion and diversity in my artwork; therefore, two of the four sketches feature woman (the Cleric and the Thief), and two of the four sketched feature visible minorities (the Cleric and the Wizard).  In fact, diversity and inclusion was the topic of episode 63 (Welcoming All Players) of the DCC Spellburn podcast, which discussed the importance of representation in the artwork and stories of role-playing games.

The Warrior

White Box Eastern Adventures: Hireling Generator

In the early editions of the ‘World’s Most Famous Role-Playing Game’, henchmen, hirelings and followers played an important role in the Adventure Party.  When I was designing White Box: Eastern Adventures, I wanted to incorporate the idea of low-level Non-Player Characters (NPCs) serving the characters in their adventures.  I liked the roles of henchmen, hirelings and followers, but wanted to simplify these roles for my ‘rules light’ version of the game.  Thus, I used the term hirelings as the mechanic defining the low-level NPCs serving the characters.

 Warrior Hireling (left) & Non-Combatant Hireling (right)

In ‘White Box: Eastern Adventures’, there are two main categories of hirelings: warriors and non-combatants.  Warriors are professional soldiers, who are hired for their martial skills.  Warriors are divided into two types: soldiers and specialists.  A soldier is a professional warrior, while a specialist is a professional warrior with a particular skill set (i.e. a seafaring captain).  Non-combatant hirelings are ordinary folk hired for their services.  There are three types of non-combatant hirelings: unskilled (i.e. labourers), artisans (i.e. skilled tradespeople) and academics (i.e. scholars and sages).

Since hirelings play an important role in ‘Eastern Adventures’, I felt it was important to design a random Hireling Generator, which is available on the White Box: Eastern Adventures site.  The Hireling Generator randomly generates a list of 10 hirelings, based on the choices (selected via drop down menus) made by the User.  The choices are type (i.e. artisan hirelings), name (i.e. randomly generated names), HP (i.e. max hit points), sex (i.e. random sex) and personality/traits (i.e. randomly generated).

The addition of personality/traits is inspired by The Keep on the Borderlands, which has a Random Table of one-word personality traits used to describe the personalities of the NPCs.  In the Hirelings Generator, if the personality/traits option is selected, 2 to 5 randomly generated one-word personality traits will be generated for each hireling.

The Hireling Generator uses five different hirelings sheets; one for each type of hireling.  Blank PDF versions of the hireling sheets are available on the Eastern Adventures Character Sheet page.

‘White Box: Eastern Adventures’ is available as a Free PDF on DriveThru RPG.  There is a print-on-demand softcover version available for $5 USD, for those wanting a physical copy of the book.

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

Fantastic Adventures and the Disgruntled Gong Farmer (DCC compatible adventure module)

I recently published a third-party Dungeon Crawl Classics compatible adventure module, titled Fantastic Adventures and the Disgruntled Gong Farmer, which is available as a Free PDF on DriveThru RPG.  As well, there is a print-on-demand softcover version available for $6 USD, for those wanting a physical copy of the module.

A Fantastic Adventures and the Disgruntled Gong Farmer companion website has been created for as a means of providing Judges and Players with resources and tool for playing this module.  The companion site includes a zero-level character generator, which allows Judges to quickly generate batches of zero-level characters for the King’s Challenge character funnel; the first adventure in the module.

Fantastic Adventures and the Disgruntled Gong Farmer is comprised of the following three linked adventures I originally published on my hobby website between 2016 to 2017:

• King’s Challenge (Zero-Level Character Funnel)
• Kobold’s Stole My Cat! (Level 1 Adventure)
• The Gong Farmer’s Revenge (Level 1 Adventure)

Each of these adventures have undergone revisions in the creation of Fantastic Adventures and the Disgruntled Gong Farmer; thus, the adventures have changed to a certain extent since their first publication.

The Villages of the Muir Forest is the setting for Fantastic Adventures and the Disgruntled Gong Farmer.  

 

The Bunkhouse: the ‘resting’ place for the characters between the second and third adventure.

Muir Forest Kobolds.  Kobolds feature heavily in the second adventure, ‘Kobolds Stole My Cat!’.  When designing the kobolds, I wanted to give the kobolds a distinct look, while paying homage to the original ‘dog-faced’ kobolds of Old.

The Gong Farmer is the principle protagonist in this series.

Tasaka Games is my one-person tabletop RPG company that I am publishing my games under.