Xeria: Giant Desert Arachnid

The desert arachnids of Xeria stalk the few shelters to be found within the drifting sands. Their sand-coloured bodies keep adventurers from even noticing them until they leap forth, using the momentum of their leap to skewer their prey with sharp, chitinous legs.

Giant Desert Arachnid 

Init +1 

Atk +1 melee (1d4)

AC 14 (12 for 1 round after leaping) 

HD 1d8+2 

MV 60, Climb 60

Act 1d20 

SV Fort +4, Ref +2, Will -2 

SP 20% leapers, leap attack: +4 melee and knocked prone (DC 12 Ref save avoids) 

AL Chaotic

Xeria: Espadian Occupation Table

DCC RPG uses a character creation system that has the player roll on an occupation chart that determines what the character did before he became an adventurer. Each occupation also comes with an undetermined set of skills that can be called upon when making a check. I use the word undetermined because DCC RPG has no skill system, per se -- if the character is attempting something he would have learned in his occupation, the skill is trained. Roll a d20. Otherwise, it's untrained. Roll a d10.

Since we've done away with Elves, Dwarves and Halfings for our Xeria hexcrawl, we decided to make a unique occupation table for each of the four human races we've designed instead. Here's the table for the Espadians, a race of humans who are essentially eccentric musketeer nobles. They wear fancy clothing, hold frequent balls, duel with rapiers for honour, and create beautiful works of art from glass, including the three splendid glass spires in their city of Espada.

Espadian Occupation Table (1d20)*

1. Glassblower's apprentice (blowpipe as staff, glass bauble)
2.  Architect's apprentice (dagger, parchment and quill)
3.  Servant (kitchen knife as dagger, 'lucky' trinket)
4.  Noble (rapier, large finely crafted satchel [50lbs])
5.  Messenger (letter opener as dagger, supple leather shoes)
6.  Herald (dagger, brass horn)
7.  Excavator (shovel as staff, 1lb sand)
8.  Foreman (hammer as club, speaking trumpet)
9.  Tailor (scissors as dagger, needle and thread)
10.  Dressmaker (scissors as dagger, 2 yards fine cloth)
11.  Lookout (sling, brimmed hat)
12.  Duelist (rapier, fine gloves)
13.  Blacksmith (hammer as club, steel tongs)
14.  Ostler (staff, bridle)
15.  Chef (rolling pin as club, fine spices)
16.  Merchant (dagger, cask of fine rum)
17.  Deckhand (knife as dagger, 50' rope)
18.  Scholar (dagger, 10 candles)
19.  Conman (dagger, quality cloak)
20.  Actor (dagger, fine clothes)

*The items in brackets are the character's trained weapon and starting trade good, respectively.

Xeria: Hex Contents Table

The new campaign setting in the works is called Xeria. I'm actually co-creating it with my partner, Leah. The two of us decided we wanted to design a desert-themed hex crawl/sandbox. We printed out a hex template map and started allotting terrain using this awesome guide over at The Welsh Piper. After that, we turned to this awesome guide by Flynn over at his excellent blog, In Like Flynn. To suit our desert theme, we came up with a combined and modified version of the tables provided in both guides and rolled once per hex on the following custom tables.

Hex Filling Table (d6)
1-2. Colour
3. Terrain effect
4. Settlement
5. Lair
6. Adventure

After rolling on the Hex Filling Table, roll again on the indicated subtable.

Terrain (d6)
1. Weather
2. Arcane
3. Divine
4-5. Strange
6. Combine two

Settlement (d6)
1. Waystation/outpost/hut
2. Permanent camp/farm(s)
3. Village/small town
4. Large town/city
5. Monastery/shrine/temple
6. Wise person's abode

The different results indicated by the slashes correspond to the terrain type of the hex being rolled for, eg. waystation (desert), outpost (plains), hut (mountains).

Lair (d6)
1-3. Monster
4-5. Supernatural
6. Humanoids

Adventure (d6)
1-3. Site
4-6. Event

A site is a location, such as a ruin or dungeon. An event is a scene that is triggered when the players first enter the hex, such as coming upon a caravan master with a broken wheel who needs help reaching his destination.

Colour: This is just flavour or fluff and requires only a short description. For example: A tree with dangling nooses used to hang criminals.

We were quite pleased with the results and only occasionally fudged what the table gave us. But that's okay -- the point of the table is to give you ideas and get your imagination going. Also, we already had some cool ideas that we just plunked down into certain hexes instead of rolling for them. 

Note: This table and tables like it are NOT masters to be bowed down to. You don't need to be a slave to them. If another idea pops into your head, use it!   

The reason we decided to modify the tables in the original guides was due to the fact that those tables left roughly 50% of hexes completely empty. This seemed like a waste of space to us and we didn't want our players just trudging around only finding something interesting half of the time. That said, you don't want your hexes too cluttered, either, or exploration will start to lose some of its lustre. Overall it came to a nice balance of fillings for our purposes.