If you’re confused about why I’m throwing Dungeon Crawl Classics content on a Wednesday into my blog, you must have missed last week’s post where I introduced this little (and by “little,” I mean “gargantuan”) side project to translate my Oakton gods and demons into DCC-usable content. Ostensibly I’m doing this work so that I can GM a home game sometime in the future, but mostly I’m doing it because it’s fun.

Last week, I asserted that any of my Law-promoting city-gods of Oakton and any of my Chaos-promoting demon-gods of the wilds could be either deities (i.e. provide clerics power) or patrons (i.e. provide wizards power), depending on the goals and aims of the human in relationship with them. To demonstrate how this relationship differs, I’ll look at the Rootmother as a patron. She’s so protective and human-loving… she wouldn’t corrupt a poor wizard, would she? By golly, she would!

It’s fun to think about a cleric of Quenvara and wizard of Quenvara both leveling up and evolving over the course of a long campaign. The cleric would be continually steered towards the Rootmother’s edicts, sent on quests to promote her ideals and working to maintain her favor. In doing so, the cleric would have tons of healing and protection magic at their disposal. The wizard, meanwhile, would be slowly twisting and mutating over time, becoming something like an Ent from Tolkien or treant from Dungeons & Dragons, a living embodiment of Quenvara’s wishes without the strict need to uphold her ideals. Both paths are brimming with story potential, which is one of the reasons I love DCC so much.

The Patron Quenvara the Rootmother

In my write-up for the Rootmother as a patron, I’ve relied heavily on Daniel J. Bishop’s Yddgrrl, the World Root expansion of the Invoke Patron spell in the DCC rulebook. I admit, I’m totally enamored with the Patron Taint and Corruption results for Quenvara, but I suspect that’s going to be true for every patron I write.

The hardest bits, at least for me, were the patron-specific spells, since DCC spells can get absolutely bonkers at higher spell check results. The “Control Plants” spell was the trickiest, and I stared at Control Fire and Control Cold for a long time to try and puzzle out its effects. You’ll also note that I expanded the “Failure, lost, and worse!” ranges for the spells, as one of my homebrew tweaks to DCC rules is saying that any spell check result in that spell’s level (i.e. 1-3 for a third-level spell) can result in patron taint and/or corruption. Otherwise, in my experience, both patron taint and corruption are too rare, and I don’t know a single wizard player who doesn’t revel in these tables.

Anyway… Enjoy!

You can also view the full PDF of Quenvara here.

Next week, by request from one Stephen Grodzicki—awesome author of the Tales of Argosa rpg I’m playing in my solo-play… check out all his work at Pickpocket Press!—I’m turning my attention to the primary antagonist of my Tales of Argosa story so far: Orthuun, the Blind Sovereign. I hope you enjoyed the safety and peace of the Rootmother these past two weeks, because things are about to get… dark.

Please let me know what you think below or via email at jaycms@yahoo.com!