Goodman Games

Love the DCC classes, but don't like races as classes. I like to have lots of races, so went through my cobbled-together campaign setting (with almost all pieces borrowed from lots of other settings), gathered a bunch of local races together, and eventually came up with a DCC-style table for selecting PC race at 0-level. Thought I'd share. Figured it might be useful for someone else as a proof-of-concept, if nothing else. Enjoy.

Roll D100 to choose race. Odd is male, even is female, unless indicated otherwise.

1-12 Human. Roll d30 for ethnicity
13-16 Dwarf
17-18 Duergar
19-20 Elf, Wood
21-22 Elf, Jungle
23-24 Elf, Snow
25-26 Elf, Seaside
27-30 Elf, Moon "normal"
31-32 Drow
33 Nevae. Roll again for gender.
34-37 Halfling
38-39 Cogling
40-43 Gnome
44-45 Steam Gnome
46-47 Svirfneblin
48-49 Aasimar. Roll d8 for subtype: 1-2 Trad. 3 Agathion, 4 Angel, 5 Archon, 6 Azata, Garuda 7 , Peri 8
50-53 Half-Elf
54 Crinti. Roll again for gender.
55 Half-Giant. Roll again for gender.
56-57 Half-Orc
58-59 Mul
60-61 Tiefling. Roll d12 for subtype: 1-2 Trad. 3 Asura, 4 Daemon, 5 Demodand, 6 Demon, 7 Devil,
62 Dwarrow. Roll again for gender. 8 Div, 9 Kyton, 10 Oni, 11 Qlippoth, 12 Rakshasa
63 Dworg. Roll again for gender.
64 Elfling. Roll again for gender.
65-66 Ifrit
67-68 Oread
69-70 Sylph
71-72 Undine
73-74 Aquatic Elf
75-76 Merfolk
77 Slathem
78-79 Catfolk
80-81 Centaur
82-83 Loresong Faen
84-85 Quickling Faen
86-87 Goblin
88 Grippli. Roll again for gender.
89-90 Hobgoblin
91 Marak Kender. Roll again for gender.
92 Kendar Kender. Roll again for gender.
93-94 Kobold
95-96 Orc
97-98 Shifter. Roll d6 for type: 1 Beasthide, 2 Longtooth, 3 Cliffwalk, 4 Razorclaw, 5 Longstride, 6 Wildhunt
99 Sixam. Roll again for gender.
100 Tik'tok. No gender.

A nice list. Well thought-out.

The whole race=class thing was debated quite a bit back in the early playtest days. There's certainly no reason why you can't seperate the two, but you will have to come up with a list of racial bonuses or whatever for each.

Nice chart! I'm just curious how you would handle someone rolling up any given race. Maybe someone can chime in with their quick monster-to-PC conversion guidelines? Myself, I'd avoid stat modifiers (as these are not found in DCC's treatment of races anyway) and maybe use the monster stats as a base with these considerations:

HD = Starting level (i.e. a monster with 4d10+2 would start at 4th level, and would gain +1d10 hit points each new level)
Ability Scores = 3d6 straight down (although this is average and relative to that given species, so a Giant character might have only 9 Giant Strength, but would roll a d30 versus human-sized strength challenges)
Bonus abilities, attack bonuses, initiative bonuses etc according to monster entry. Monsters gain +1 to hit with each new level, a crit die advancing according to the monster critical chart, and a +1 to one of their saving throws.

I would lower the chance of getting elves. They should be extremely rare in my opinion.

The thing that stands out most to me is that only 12% of characters would be human, which is fine if that's reflective of your campaign, but would be an incredibly small percentage in the majority of campaigns. If I had such an extensive listing of non-humans in my campaign, but still wanted humans to be the dominant majority, I'd have a smaller table first, such as:

Table 1
01-75%: Human (roll culture)
76-00%: Non-Human (roll on table 2).

Then Table 2 would set out only the Non-Human races along with the proportional chances of each occurring.

Colin

Colin wrote:The thing that stands out most to me is that only 12% of characters would be human, which is fine if that's reflective of your campaign, but would be an incredibly small percentage in the majority of campaigns. If I had such an extensive listing of non-humans in my campaign, but still wanted humans to be the dominant majority, I'd have a smaller table first, such as:

Table 1
01-75%: Human (roll culture)
76-00%: Non-Human (roll on table 2).

Then Table 2 would set out only the Non-Human races along with the proportional chances of each occurring.

Colin

I am with Colin on this, for the most part.

I would, however, just remove Human from your list and redistribute those percentages among the other races that remain.
Then, I would make the table that Colin suggests a simple d10 roll - 8+ and you are non-human, for simplicity.

...I also would not force my players to determine their character's gender randomly - I find it results in players playing their character the same way they would regardless of gender (meaning differentiating gender has 0 effect), and worse playing overblown stereotypes that are hard to keep taking light-heartedly (meaning gender differentiation has a negative effect on the game).

Galadrin wrote:Nice chart! I'm just curious how you would handle someone rolling up any given race. Maybe someone can chime in with their quick monster-to-PC conversion guidelines? Myself, I'd avoid stat modifiers

I'm going to go with stat modifiers, but capped at 3 and 18. Keep the straight 3d6 for stats, but if you roll a 17, with a +2, you still only get 18. 17+2=18. 3-2=3.

I'll be using Pathfinders Advanced Race Guide rules for each race. 23 pc race choices on the list will already be statted out. (sources vary, but using Pathfinder as standard). I'll still need to convert 22, mostly from 3.x sources, so shouldn't be all that difficult.

I started out with humans at 1-4 . I kept looking at the chart over several days, and figured, if I had a group of 15-20 PCs, how many humans would I want in the mix? 2 or 3 per 20 sounds about right. I've never been a fan of human-dominated settings, preferring a more cosmopolitan population. Human ethnicities will also be straight from Pathfinder - I like how you can play someone from just about any real-world background - so between 20 and 27 choices.
(PF is kind of my default, I guess - but I fell in love with DCC classes, dangerous magic, and rules streamlining. I'm working on mixing the two.)

Gender: Thinking less of forcing, and more of allowing gender to be determined randomly, along with other important traits, if desired. Any Judge/GM/DM that is in the habit of forcing things on the players is not going to last very long

The reason why I don't post very often is that much of what I might say might be seen as me being a dick.

Guang: have you read much appendix N?

You seem more of a WOW, 4E guy (prob not gal). Maybe you are a high fantasy 3e guy, I don't know. I guess you answered that... pathfinder. You are obviously drawing your races from many more sources, which is fine, but what makes different races ( and monsters) interesting in the DCC RPG is their rarity.

The more common the appearance of a monster and/ or race the less impact it has on a game. Put a dragon in the first adventure? Maybe you can......but, put it at the end and make it tough as hell, as in The Hobbit. Imagine if there were one hobbit and and a bunch of dragon men on a quest to get their ancestral home back from a......ah ...well, a Dragon. We will have destroyed mystery. It's not only about charts.

I like what NDrake said about Random gender (although I have been doing it in one shots, myself). It might t also apply to races in a round about way.

Doug Kovacs wrote:The reason why I don't post very often is that much of what I might say might be seen as me being a dick.

Guang: have you read much appendix N?

You seem more of a WOW, 4E guy (prob not gal). Maybe you are a high fantasy 3e guy, I don't know. I guess you answered that... pathfinder. You are obviously drawing your races from many more sources, which is fine, but what makes different races ( and monsters) interesting in the DCC RPG is their rarity.

The more common the appearance of a monster/ and or race the less impact it has on a game. Put a dragon in the first adventure? Maybe you can......but, put it at the end and make it tough as hell, as in The Hobbit. Imagine if there where one hobbit and and a bunch of dragon men on a quest to get their ancestral home back from a......ah ...well, a Dragon. We will have destroyed mystery. It's not only about charts.

I like what NDrake said about Random gender (although I have been doing it in one shots, myself). It might t also apply to races in a round about way.

I read constantly, much of it sci fi and fantasy, and have for the last 30 years or so. I've definitely read some of appendix N, but haven't gone through it like a checklist yet - although I'm sure that's coming.

To use your example, in LOTR, out of 9 chosen for the quest (big party, no wonder the judge split them up/killed some off), 2 are human, 1 elf, 1 dwarf, 4 hobbits, and 1 Maia. 22% human. In The Hobbit, of course, humans are even rarer....
I've always gravitated toward this type of sci-fi and fantasy more than the "look mom, I found an ELF living down the street" variety.

As far as them being interesting because of their rarity - I disagree with that. A token elf or token dwarf in a party made up of humans is not interesting to me, any more than tokenism is tv shows is interesting. A diverse, well-rounded cast is much more interesting. Which is probably why I am not a full DCC convert, but only using its 4 classes and combat mechanics in my own homebrew.

The nice thing about DCC RPG is that it can be played in different styles.

(1) The designed style is that of Appendix N, which is quite human-centric and emphasizes core class types over unusual classes.

(2) A "high fantasy" style more like WOW or other "modern" fantasy fiction, which has a wealth of non-human races and emphasizes player options.

The cool stuff in the rulebook (Heroic Deeds, the whole spell system, etc) is designed to emulate #1 above, but #2 is possible. It just takes a lot more work on the part of the GM to fill in the additional details. Also, you may find that the modules for sale for DCC may not fit a campaign of style #2, as they are designed to approximate Appendix N literature.

There's nothing in the rulebook to preclude play in style #2, but it is a lot harder to pull off. I found the same thing in reverse when I tried to run an Appendix N style campaign using 4E D&D rules. I eventually bailed on the game because it didn't fit what I was trying to do and turned out to be way too much work to fit the rules style and game style together.

Doug Kovacs wrote:The reason why I don't post very often is that much of what I might say might be seen as me being a dick.

Guang: have you read much appendix N?

Doug's perspective is biased slighly by the fact that he's a principal artist for the rulebook as imagined in #1 above, so his artwork is inteneded to evoke visions of human-centered gritty slog-through-the-trenches gaming.

finarvyn wrote:The nice thing about DCC RPG is that it can be played in different styles.

(1) The designed style is that of Appendix N, which is quite human-centric and emphasizes core class types over unusual classes.

(2) A "high fantasy" style more like WOW or other "modern" fantasy fiction, which has a wealth of non-human races and emphasizes player options.

The cool stuff in the rulebook (Heroic Deeds, the whole spell system, etc) is designed to emulate #1 above, but #2 is possible. It just takes a lot more work on the part of the GM to fill in the additional details. Also, you may find that the modules for sale for DCC may not fit a campaign of style #2, as they are designed to approximate Appendix N literature.

There's nothing in the rulebook to preclude play in style #2, but it is a lot harder to pull off. I found the same thing in reverse when I tried to run an Appendix N style campaign using 4E D&D rules. I eventually bailed on the game because it didn't fit what I was trying to do and turned out to be way too much work to fit the rules style and game style together.

Doug Kovacs wrote:The reason why I don't post very often is that much of what I might say might be seen as me being a dick.

Guang: have you read much appendix N?

Doug's perspective is biased slighly by the fact that he's a principal artist for the rulebook as imagined in #1 above, so his artwork is inteneded to evoke visions of human-centered gritty slog-through-the-trenches gaming.

DCC few and gritty core class types=love it. Never really liked classes in other systems I've played. They were more a necessary chore rather than adding enjoyment.

Human-centric - Never really went for it. Pathfinder does that too much for me as well - I've had to tweak it quite a bit. My life has been fairly interesting, and sometimes I can see weirder stuff by walking outside my apartment than I find in human-centric games. When I do fantasy, I want it to be fantastic from the get-go.

So trying to take what I like (classes and character creation) in #1 style, and mix with other stuff I like. I agree that DCC modules probably won't fit my tastes (except for 0-level modules - looking forward to some of those with the new rules!)

Looks like I've read 7 of the authors on Appendix N. Probably have read all of the works by those authors, as that's how I generally approach my reading. A lot fewer than I had expected. I'll have to fix that.

Doug's alleged bias: No problem. I expected to get mixed responses to the chart. I realized I would be the odd-one-out on this forum, and I have no axe to grind. I do like the artwork, I just don't want to play my game human-centric. I just found it a bit strange to be lumped in with the WoW-4e fanboi crowd, when I read more than I play, have never played WoW, and got really sick of how they handled 4e, realizing also that after planning out one of 4e's classes a few years back, I had no desire to actually play it.

Guang wrote:I just don't want to play my game human-centric. I just found it a bit strange to be lumped in with the WoW-4e fanboi crowd, when I read more than I play, have never played WoW, and got really sick of how they handled 4e, realizing also that after planning out one of 4e's classes a few years back, I had no desire to actually play it.

And as always, that's the danger of a stereotype.

I don't think any of us were trying to blast you for liking a style which allows for more non-human characters. Most gamers I've encountered with some of your specific likes also seem to like 4E and other games like this because of the options they allow for players. Older versions of D&D tend to be more rigid and allow fewer options while newer editions tend to allow for more customization and player control.

And your chart is pretty well done!

Don't worry Guang, you're not alone. I'm going the Arduin and Wilderlands way when it comes to races - although I do like my campaign human centric.

I have to say, I really love Guang's chart and I would NOT make humans more probable. Very Outlands style of crazy. Nothing says old-school like robots and young Balrogs for characters, in my mind. Check out Aplus' work for a similar style:

http://peoplethemwithmonsters.blogspot. ... tland.html

Thanks for all the feedback, everybody.

I rolled up a few groups of 20, and found a few things I didn't like, so still tweaking the chart. I got rid of Grippli and Half-Giants because neither of them were really resonating with me. Not enough humans (the old school gods were right)were being rolled up, and too many elves, so I made these changes:
1-25 Human. +2 Random. Roll d6. Roll again for gender. Roll d30 for ethnicity
32-35 Elf. Roll d20 for subtype: 1-10 Moon Elf "normal",11 Wood, 12 Jungle, 13 Snow, 14 Seaside, 15-19 Drow 20 Nevae