Secret Santicore 2012

Secret Santicore 2012 is the work of Bill A., Bennet Akkerman, Peter B., Stuart B., hudson bell, Barry Blatt, S. Brewer, William Broom, Courtney Campbell, Chris Carpenter, Reece Carter, Chapman, Kiel Chenier, Justin D., Stacy Dellorfano, Jeremy Deram, Patrick Henry Downs, Jeremy Duncan, Anthony F., Jen F., Mike Fernandez, Forke, Simon Foster, Frank, Boric G., Paolo Greco, Sam Greene, Gus, Ash Haji, Christopher Helton, Florian Hubner, Tom Hudson, Lain J., James, Claytonian JP, Matt Jackson, Erik Jensen, Ian Johnson, Humza Kazmi, Jason Kielbasa, Tim Knight, Jeremy Kostiew, Gus L., Jackie L., Josie L., Janis Lilly, Jeremy M., Jonas M., Joshua M., Reynaldo Madrian, Tim Maki, Annah Madriñan, Mikah McCabe, Legion McRae, Thomas Molyes, Kreg Mosier, Isaac Murphy, Mark P., Stuart P., Tony Pace, Kirin Robinson, Jason Roe, Rolang, Tina Rowand, Adrian M Ryan, Jeff S., Rob S., Paul Schafer, Secret DM, Andrew Shields, Stefan Shirley, Shoe the Pixie, Jason Sholtis, Shortymonster, Steve Sigety, Roger S.G. Sorolla, Adam T., Joe T., Trey, Connor Uber, Jason Utz, Emily Vitori, Martijn Vos, Adam W., Dave W., Jim White, Edward Wilson, Andy Wise, Duncan Young, Zzarchov, and “several secretive folk who have asked to remain nameless.” The publisher is Secret Santicore.

So, what is Secret Santicore?

According to the Secret Santicore website: "Every year around this time, precious little gamemasters of all ages from around the world write Santicore asking for a piece of gameable content. But because Santicore is a busy abomination, he orders his minions to mix up all those wishes and send them all back.

Little DM Bobby and Judge Susie must write or draw their very best response to the wish in their stocking or Santicore will come eat them up.  You would think this discourages anyone from writing Santicore, but every year the mailbag is bigger! All the entries are then published in a free, non-commercial PDF for all to use!"

The 2012 edition of Secret Santicore is a 279 page pdf, with lots of content. As is usual for mixed-system offerings, I am going to focus on what there is for Dungeon Crawl Classics. Because of the sheer volume of the work, I am only going to list material directly pertaining to Dungeon Crawl Classics.

Therefore, without further ado:

The Elven Tomb!: "Dear Secret Santicore, Please grant me an elven tomb for adventurers to loot: map, room details, monsters, and some treasure."

Author Adam T. describes the burial customs and tombs of the Wood Elves of the Western Forests. Included is a sample elven tomb, the barrow of Silenor the dreamer. Statistics are given in Dungeon Crawl Classics terms for banshees, grizzly ears, and dryads of a kind. No specific level is given, but the canny judge might consider this as a follow-up to The Portal Under the Stars.

"Not infrequently, bands of adventurers decide that Elvish tombs will be easy pickings. They could not be more wrong. For starters, the terrain in which the burial grounds are found is often terrifically inaccessible on foot: creek-riddled mountainsides; the low, flat parts are miserable bogs of devil’s club and slide alder, the steep parts are both slippery and sheer, and ravines and cliffs often make finding a route between two close-as-the-crow-flies places very difficult. Needless to say, there are not widely available maps to elven burial grounds, and any map purporting to be such is very likely false.

The difficulty of the terrain, though, pales in comparison to the threats posed by the various inhabitants of the grounds. In addition to the spirits of the trees themselves, the burial grounds are home to animals natural (grizzly bear, dire wolf, mountain lion) and supernatural (shambling mound, dryad [see below])."

Mole Men A PC Race for DCC and OSR Games: "Dear Secret Santicore, Please grant me a PC race of Mole-Men. Ideally compatible with either Microlite20 or Dungeon Crawl Classics, but I will be more than happy with any OSR-friendly system."

This is a full Dungeon Crawl Classics "race as class" character class by Jeremy Deram.

"The mole-men are a degenerate race of humanoids that have spent untold generations underground. They have very small eyes and ears – sometimes so small that they appear to be altogether absent. They have very long, clawed digits including a pair of “thumbs” on each hand which make them excellent diggers. Adventuring mole-men generally walk upright in order to fit in with their non-mole companions, but they are more comfortable moving on their bellies and propelling themselves with their forelimbs due to their somewhat atrophied legs."

Much (if not all) of the remaining content may easily be modified for use with Dungeon Crawl Classics, but is not specifically designed for the game.

Ho ho ho! Roll for initiative, fool!

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