Weekend Art 8/5/18

Some weekend art for TROPICRAWL! First is a warrior wearing the traditional salakot on his head--I think it looks quite fetching and/or intimidating on him! He's also wielding a heavily-stylized panabas or axe-sword, though I made the blade like crazy long, much longer than you'd ever see on a real one.

Next a sketch of the fearsome berbalang ghouls, one of the more popular Filipino creatures. Knowing they already exist as a monster in earlier editions of D&D, I'm motivated to make them my own design. Once I get to the full body art, I'll do my best to make them unique.

 Last I have a sketch of a possible design for the batibat, the Filipino hag known for crushing her foes, usually suffocating them in her sleep. While it's hard to thing of this hag in terms of D&D hags, I think I've come up with something. Contrasted with sea hags and swamp hags and forest hags, these batibat have traded a lot of their spellcasting for full-on martial damage. So, "battle hag" might work, with a couple war mage cantrips at her disposal.

I'll try to post more art at least every weekend. Luckily there's so many creature and player character concepts to draw from, at this rate I won't run out of material any time soon!

What is TROPICRAWL?

"TROPICRAWL" is the working title for a tabletop RPG setting inspired by the myths and legends of the Philippines. I wanted to find a sexy, marketable name for the world rooted in Filipino language and fantasy, but sort of hit a wall. Thus, "TROPICRAWL" is what we have for now.

There are a lot of fun toys to play with when creating a Filipino-inspired setting. The Philippine Islands have such a wide variety of gods, heroes, and monsters that have only been lightly touched on in Western media, especially RPGs. Some might be familiar with the horse-headed tikbalang or the vampiric aswang, but there is so much more beyond that. I'm excited to bring some of the lesser known gods and creatures into action. I started researching this region's folklore several years ago in a haphazard piecemeal fashion, but in 2017 I began to do real purposeful study with a creative end-product in mind.

There are difficulties in adapting such material. With the Philippines consisting of over 7,000 islands and hundreds of separate cultures based in ancient tribes, and for many monsters it's hard to point out one definitive version. In addition to that, there are many layers to ancient Filipino culture, with influences from China, India, Malaysia, Japan, and Spain that flavor the mythology in different ways. There are some overarching themes at play with these creatures--the tiny people beneath the mounds, the self-segmenting ghoul--and this presents a challenge to take the key elements of all these beings and present a unified representation. It's mythology distilled respectfully through a game-ified lens. I will cover this issue more in-depth in future entries, but it remains an exciting challenge to create my own interpretation of these varied stories.

My mother was born and raised in the Philippines, one of 9 children, and she has always had stories of various local ghosts, angels, and fairies. My family also spent some time in the country when I was a child, going back to meet Mom's side of the family. Though I don't speak the languages, I will be using the stories and my experiences in the land into account as I pursue this project.

I will be dropping in various musings on races and classes, random generator tables, adventure design, and lots lots LOTS of monsters. Thanks for reading!