DCC Day: Aquilae: Bestiary of the Realm (Volumes 1 & 2)

If you are not happy with just 400 monsters, Infinium sells a two-volume set with over 1,600 monsters. Where the abridged set features only the classics, these two books encompass everything and are ideal for the true completist. They are nice volumes, and I have been giving these books a little more thought over the last day or so.

The fact that these monsters are a shade weaker than their DCC counterparts does change the game, almost as if you placed a mod on DCC and are playing it a new way. Across the board, hit dice, hit points, damage, AC, and attack values are lower than those of the monsters in the DCC book. To summarize:

• Lower hit points and hit dice.
• Lower AC values.
• Lower attack ratings and damage values.

But here is the rub. These monsters have three things going for them:

• Many have a "number appearing in an encounter" stat.
• Many have multiple action dice.
• Many have multiple special abilities, defenses, and attacks.

The first bullet point is critical. DCC typically assumes "each monster in the world is unique," and you only get one troll or ogre in a campaign. So the DCC values in the core rulebook will be higher for each monster, since each one is the representative "boss monster" for its type.

In this bestiary, we are back to the B/X assumptions. You roll for a "number appearing" in an encounter. So our ogre listing in these bestiaries is: single, double, a gang of 3-4, and a family or tribe of 5-16. All of a sudden, you will be wishing each ogre were easier to fight as the party encounters four instead of just one. You will love the fact that each ogre has a lower AC and fewer hit points, and your fights against groups of them will feel more heroic.

Also, remember that this "number appearing factor" will more than make up for the lower hits and damages. One monster with multiple action dice will be making numerous attacks on the party! Multiply that by the number appearing, and you will have a ton of damage coming your way.

On top of that, the special attack conditions each monster could inflict will take up an attack, but potentially be lethal to the party, as paralysis, poison, stuns, entangles, ongoing damage, special attacks, ability damage, and all the new options built into these foes start taking effect on the party. Multiply each special effect by the action dice and the number of monsters in the encounter, and this could get very lethal, very quickly.

Mix the monsters in an encounter where their abilities synergize (entangle, ongoing damage, and ranged attacks), and an encounter of what you think are "weak foes" turns deadly very fast. This is not 5E! We approach encounters differently here and consider attack synergies instead of CR as a balancing factor.

These books are not intended to augment or add to the core monsters in the DCC book, not unless you use those as the boss monsters. These bestiaries are better seen as a "B/X mod" to DCC, where you just use the monsters from these guides instead of the DCC monsters. You will be defeating more of them in each fight, but you will also get swarmed by them if you are not careful.

If I sounded negative, and I apologize if I did, it was because I realized how differently these books were balanced, and they are not supposed to be "official DCC versions" of the monsters in the core game. These books are more of a "more monsters mod" to DCC, and the fact that they are easier to defeat, but also much more deadly in number of appearances, action dice, and special attacks, sort of puts a new rebalance to the monster game, more in line with traditional B/X assumptions.

This is a strange case of DCC's "one monster per world" assumption clashing with the B/X design theories of "many monsters in the world." With DCC, each monster is a boss monster. With Aquilae's bestiaries, we are back to the traditional "many monsters of a type" world.

The best way to look at these books is like those old-school Diablo 2 mods that multiply the monsters, make them easier to defeat, give them many special status attacks, and throw hordes at you so you can feel like a hero as you cut your way through swaths of them. If you are not careful, you will get swarmed, piled on, debilitating conditions piled on you, and killed in the blink of an eye.

If you are more in line with the DCC thinking, these may not be the best option for you.

If the monster-swarm style is more your type of game, I highly recommend these books.

Aquilae

I got the hardcover atlas for this yesterday, and it is a fantastic resource. If you want a world all mapped out - and you can fill in the rest - this is the setting to get. A few products dive deeper into the nations, locations, and specifics. But they sell a 'player version' with no landmarks - just cities, and if you want to add all the places of interest yourself - you can do it.

This world can be any rules system, from GURPS Dungeon Fantasy to your favorite OSR to Advanced 5E to Dungeon Crawl Classics. It is a blank slate, all mapped out, and you can do the rest.

I initially used this world for a Pathfinder 1e game, but I am playing Dungeon Crawl Classics now, and the world seamlessly supports that - and all the craziness of a game like that. For any of these points of interest, I could create a crazy DCC adventure out of just the name alone. They would be more realistic places in a more realistic game like GURPS. If i find a set of rules down the road I like, this can be used without too much problem.

I like this world better than legacy settings, such as Forgotten Realms and others, just because of this setting's versatility and DIY nature.

Aquilae Revisited

I keep coming back to the Aquilae setting. This is a unique setting in that it really is a giant map with thousands of locations, dozens of kingdoms, and no rules. They sell a gazetteer that fills in the blanks, but I am happy with the map and doing whatever I want with the place.

This isn't for any rules system, and it goes as well with GURPS as it does DCC. Use 5E, A5E, ToV, LFG, or PF 1 or 2 if you want. Rolemaster or Palladium Fantasy? OSE or Index Card RPG? It works with anything.

It is just a map.

It could be more if you want, but it is just a map.

Every kingdom, city, dungeon, and fantastic location you make up for yourself.

Do a hex crawl or make it up yourself.

But this saves me a lot of work and gives me a canvas for my imagination.

Some others feel hopelessly stuck in the Pathfinder 1e era, though I have a precious few that held up pretty well, considering. Primeval Thule is one, but I feel this is weaker these days since Conan-like has been done to death. One drawback is this sameness to the kingdoms; referencing is knowing what is where is difficult. Compared to Aquilae, I would rather just make everything up myself than endlessly search through a book for something that may or may not be there. The newer versions of this setting feel a bit slick, as many do, and they lose something going into the 5E world from the more realistic PF 1e setting guides. I had fun with this using Savage Worlds Fantasy, though, so it is still on my shelves.

Another classic is the old Scarred Lands setting for D&D 3.0. This is a fun, primarily human-based setting with many cultural backgrounds and illustrations. This book puts a lot of modern setting guides to shame with its art and ease of use alone, and it is always a favorite.

But I have a lot of trouble using these with a few games. Thule is more pulp, so playing it with 5E feels wrong. Scarred Lands has this layer of realism and human-centric lands, so it feels better suited to a GURPS than a DCC. The flavor of these settings feels stuck in the era they were written in, which is better for some games and not for others.

Aquilae? This could be anything from a gritty, realistic GURPS setting to a gonzo 1970s DCC world. I can put my flavor on the map and do whatever I want. This could be Savage Worlds Fantasy. I look at this and see an A5E game. Old School Essentials works. Swords & Wizardry. I played Pathfinder 1e in a part of this world, and it worked well.

Whatever rules system I have, the map works well with it.

I can't say that about most settings.

Dungeon Crawl Classics reflects an extremely crazy world. GURPS is the ultimate in realism. The map does both equally well. Thule doesn't do that, Scarred Lands doesn't, and the classic D&D settings sure don't. That is a vast range of world support, and having places and towns to fill out myself saves me a lot of work. Even for DCC, the unique location names are thematic and could support many interesting gonzo DCC adventures. With GURPS, the maps turn into survival and exploration challenges.

I could even play this with Mutant Crawl Classics, though it would need more ruined areas. The deserts and badlands could serve as those, or this could be a world so far in the future many of the old cities and structures have rejoined nature, so these forests could be littered with the ancient superstructures of vine-covered skyscrapers and hidden ruins of places forgotten to time. Some cities could be hidden under the seas or in giant underground caverns.

Use your imagination!

What is in the above cities of Angrave, Trezona, and Prose on these 12-mile hexes? What is that fort? Is one an elven city? Who knows? Make it up yourself. Put dungeons in every hex. Make a cave map. Place some orc camps in the woods. Place Keep on the Borderlands around here somewhere. Use the GM layer of prepopulated adventure locations, or don't, and stick to the player maps and do your own thing. If you are playing DCC, place the adventures in hexes!

I could use random tables to create the towns, who lives there, and what their governments are like. I could make it up myself. I could make them friends or enemies.

The maps are the ultimate fantasy sandbox where you fill in whatever you want. It feels like the old 4E Nerrath setting, only expanded to an entire world. You can buy just the maps or get the setting book that fills in the details.

Aquilae Bestiary of the Realm (Abridged, DCC)

Ever want to play B/X adventures with Dungeon Crawl Classics, but did not want to make up monster stats? Well, Infinium Game Studios has you covered. They did a heck of a lot of work and converted 410 monsters (in the abridged 1 book set) of all the most popular B/X creatures to the DCC system.

If you want more, you can find (these 410) and more in the 2-volume set, 1,660 monsters for DCC. The abridged version is refined for most games and gives you a quick reference for hundreds of monsters and stat blocks (with 4 challenge levels each). The two-volume set is two 800+ page books and an incredible collector's item and reference work.

This book (or a 2-book set if you buy all the way in) bridges the gap in DCC between the standard B/X experience and the gonzo DCC set of rules. I know the DCC mantra is to not recycle the past, do new things, and create monsters and beasts that no one has ever seen. I agree, and we shouldn't keep endlessly recycling the past. We need new ideas.

But the seeds for new ideas can come from the old. Having so many monster stat blocks, special abilities, special attacks and defenses, and the abundance of choice and variety gets my mind working overtime. Even if I flavor these as something else and change them up, they are helpful as bases for my creations, monsters for Mutant Crawl Classics or Weird Frontiers, or any other DCC-aligned game like Star Crawl and many others. Every one of these can be the canvas for something new and extraordinary.

Also, there are new players out there who haven't seen the classics. If they want to experience these monsters for the first time in a DCC environment - let them! If you run a funnel of level-zero villagers fighting an advanced fire beetle as the boss monster, that is cool, and it gives me a whole new perspective on how terrifying that monster can be in a game like DCC.

If all a 5E player experienced fighting a fire beetle was laughter and dismissal at how easy a 4-hit point AC 13 creature could be killed in a single stab from a dagger, seeing an elite fire beetle with 18 hit points, AC 11, and two +2 to-hit and 1d10+1 damage attacks per turn slicing villagers in half in one hit will sober them up. Is that cool? Heck yes!

Here's the point: what is more authentic and accurate to you? Is the 5E cockroach the fire beetle you see in your head? Or is it the insect that can crawl, fly, and kill like Jason Vorhees, the fire beetle you want to see in your game? Yes, Goodman Games, don't endlessly recreate the past - but come on, the 5E version of the past sucks.

To paraphrase MythBusters, I reject the 5E version of the past and replace it with my own.

Suddenly, I am not recreating the past but seeing it differently.

And seeing things in new ways is as cool as imagining new stuff.

And I could always say, "These fire beetles are intelligent, and communicate in sound above our normal hearing range. They have a culture around fungus harvesting." Oops, the past is broken. They may share the two-noun name as the 5E monster, but suddenly, they are lightyears away from the original step wrong and you crush it, unimaginative annoyance.

This is the problem with nostalgia. It makes you stupid.

Yes, if you wanted to replay Keep on the Borderlands with DCC, you could with these books, and your monsters would be DCC enough to make the game feel right. The module would play much more like B/X on crack, but that is DCC, and go to town.

DCC play in traditional modules would likely turn into a slog of epic proportions, as traditional B/X modules are often of incredible length and depth. I would cut them down to the essential few areas, cut down the number of monsters, and focus the run through the area like a story with set parts and action scenes. A valid criticism of many adventures written for DCC is that they can't be used for one-shot games. If players want to get together and solve a situation in one 4-hour game, that is a good design goal for a module.

Classic B/X modules were all over the terms regarding the time it takes to play, with tournament modules being the more refined experiences with fewer encounters and a set flow to the action. I like the old tournament modules with scoring, a party of pre-gens racing to meet a time limit, limited gear, limited spells, no resting, and trying to survive as many rooms as possible before the clock runs out. Those generally make better frameworks for DCC adventures since they were designed to play in one session.

These books are the "missing monster manuals" that DCC never wanted but always needed. Having them opens up B/X style play and adventures and is a great resource for any zochi-dice based game.

Aquilae: Dungeon Fantasy

This is a tough decision and one I have been flip-flopping on. I had originally intended to play this with Pathfinder 1e, but my sudden flash of inspiration at reviving Starfinder with mixed in Pathfinder 1e content means by 1e books are seeing a lot of use, and I am free to play this with another system.

Why not keep playing it with Pathfinder 1e?

Well, there are times I feel I want more out of combat and skill use in a fantasy game, so Dungeon Fantasy becomes a strong contender. Plus, I never really felt this world was really defined by the Pathfinder "stuff" - the monsters, the magic items, the classes - it was designed so they would fit in, but is all that stuff what defines this world? In my first two playthroughs, I used some pirates, a wolf, and a giant crab and I was happy with that monster selection. The towns were more fantasy-medieval normal places. The world felt more gritty and realistic. Nothing was over the top or silly, like Paizo's goblins.

So I wonder if this would be a better fit for Dungeon Fantasy.

What Did You Like?

I played two scenarios, the first one a really gripping tale of survival in the frozen north, and a "new person in town and pirate attack" second scenario, and it did not really feel like it clicked for me - and that probably needs to be rethought and replayed. The winter survival story was very fun, gripping, interesting, visceral combat, and it had a really cool story and battle against the odds.

The monsters here were nothing special, a wounded wolf and a giant crab. Everything else was avoiding exposure, navigation, moving over tough terrain, and survival. Lots of times I was telling myself, skills matter. Nothing in that playthrough really used anything identifiably "Pathfinder" - this could have been done in any skill-based fantasy system with survival rules.

My hero was a level one cleric, and while she had some staying power I had to GM fiat a town nearby and end the scenario. I would have loved to do some hex-crawling and exploration, perhaps put a dungeon out there or ancient ruin that she could explore and find a few resources in - even before she knows about towns or civilization.

There is nothing like not knowing where you are, not knowing how long you will hold out, and being forced to go into a dungeon to find supplies that may not even be in there. And you could get seriously wounded, lose gear, or alert local enemies - and lose more than you risked by going in there.

What I liked about that experience was more the story and situation, and I did not need 30+ books full of stuff to support that experience. In fact, I feel a game with less and a more character-focused build system with deep character customization is going to give me an even better experience. I am not looking to min-max a combat build, or get more spells to solve all my problems, what I want to do is get XP and buy skills and abilities to make my character even better for those types of situations.

With Pathfinder 1e, she needs a high INT to have a lot of skill points to play with. Skills are such important parts of my builds I rarely give any character anything below a 12. With Dungeon Fantasy, intelligence does not matter to skills, everything is on the same point-buy scale. The skill level of IQ-based skills (and the cost to buy up) is based on the score, but IQ does not give you more points in your build.

What Will You Miss?

If I lost Pathfinder 1e for this world? I would miss the huge selection of monsters, but then again, I wasn't using them so I possibly would not miss them. A lot of the random charts for magic items and treasure would be missed. The selections of classic spells and the iconic classes. A lot of that "ease of use" would be gone and I would be home-brewing a lot of things. Enemies would likely be a lot more human or humanoid NPCs, so the gritty factor gets turned up.

I will need to lean on the Dungeon Fantasy and GURPS resources pretty heavily to make up for the lost content, though Dungeon Fantasy does have a cool random magic item chart I may be using.

I have a few monster PDFs for Dungeon Fantasy, but nothing with the selection and organization of even a B/X version of that document. Also, Gaming Ballistic is creating an awesome line of Norse-themed Dungeon Fantasy adventures and a setting book - with a hefty Nordic bestiary.

And I am looking forward to it.

And this may change things again. I may move my character and Norse adventures here instead. I have the PDFs and I am giving them a look now, and I like what I see.

More soon.