Monday 30 January 2023

Should We Convert: Deities & Demigods

Okay, bear with me. The conversion of the Fiend Folio was well received. The Deities & Demigods cyclopedia contains some interesting creatures which might be useful to Dungeon Crawl Classics judges. If I just did the monsters, ignoring gods, heroes, and beings of that nature, there are still quite a few creatures that could be converted. 

In some cases, especially with the Cthulhu Mythos and Nehwon Mythos, all that would be required is letting the judge know where to find official conversions (or, in some cases, unofficial ones). In other cases, though, significant research might apply, and the result might differ wildly from the presentation in the original work.

The real question is: Would this be worth doing?

The Divinities & Cults series, by OSRDAN Games, will at least get you started if you are interested in using most of the pantheons described in Deities & Demigods. A fuller conversion would include canticles and unique spells, which is a lot more work than I currently feel like doing, Some of these gods would also definitely be patrons, and deserve full patron write-ups for campaign play. If I undertook this project, it would be just the monsters!

By my reckoning that would mean:

Indigenous American Mythos

  • Thunder Bird

Babylonian Mythos

  • Dahak

Celtic Mythos

  • The Wild Hunt
    • The Master of the Hunt
    • The Pack of the Wild Hunt

Chinese Mythos


  • Ma Yuan
  • Spirits of the Air

Cthulhu Mythos

  • Byakhee
  • Cthuga's Flame Creature
  • Deep Ones
  • Great Race
  • Mi-Go
  • Primordial One
  • Shoggoth

Egyptian Mythos

  • Apep
  • Flame Snake
  • Phoenix
  • Minions of Set

Finnish Mythos

  • Air Maiden

Greek Mythos

  • The White Eagle of Zeus
  • Antaeus
  • Atlas
  • Cerberus
  • Coeus
  • Crius
  • Cyclops, Greater
  • Cyclops, Lesser
  • Enceladus
  • Epimetheus
  • Furies
  • Hecatoncheire
  • Kronos
  • Oceanus
  • Prometheus

Indian Mythos

  • Indra's Elephant
  • Peacock of Karttikeya
  • Marut
  • Garuda
  • Yama's Water Buffalo

Melnibonéan Mythos

  • Assassinator of the Gods
  • Clakar
  • Dharzi Hunting Dog
  • Dragons of Melnibone
  • Elenoin
  • Grahluk
  • Kelmain
  • Mist Giant
  • Mordagz
  • Myyrrhn
  • Nihrain Horse
  • Oonai
  • Quaolnargn
  • Vampire Trees
  • Vulture Lion

Nehwon Mythos

  • Astral Wolf
  • Behemoth
  • Bird of Tyaa
  • Cold Woman
  • Devourer
  • Ghoul, Nehwon
  • Leviathan
  • Snow Serpent
  • Spider, Salt
  • Water Cobra

Norse Mythos

  • Hugin and Munin
  • Sleipner
  • Freke and Gere
  • Fenris Wolf
  • Fossergrim
  • Blodug-Hofi
  • Gullin-Bursti
  • Garm
  • Jormungandr
  • Norns
  • Tanngrisner and Tanngjost
  • Valkyries

All in all, this could probably be completed in around 20 posts, although each of those posts would require considerably more work than the Fiend Folio ones.

When you look at that list, above, is there anything on it that you would actually use in your campaign? Or, I should say, anything that hasn't already been converted? Most, if not all, of the Cthulhu creatures can be found in the Goodman Games yearbook for 2017, and multiple alternate write-ups exist, most notably in Weird Frontiers. The creatures given statistics in DCC Lankhmar are extremely comprehensive. I am sure that there would be some demand for the Melnibonéan creatures at least, but (as with the Nehwon creatures I converted for Goodman Games and the Cthulhu creatures I converted for Stiff Whiskers), I would want to go back to the original source material to ensure that I did a good conversion.

Alternatively, I can lay off conversions for a while. 

What do you think?



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