Fraggles

Fraggles as portrayed in the Jim Hensen series are small, whimsical creatures with a very gregarious nature. They are imaginative, tricky, curious and inventive. Fraggle culture has produced adventurers, explorers, painters, storytellers and artists.

Interpreting these diminutive creatures for D&D type games is a bit tricky. They are obviously not the evil and menacing humanoids that populate most dungeons, though I suppose they could be bent to work as such. Evil fraggles, aside, the obvious way to use them is as a demi-human race or perhaps NPC encounter throughout your campaign.

I see fraggles as a sort of faerie folk. Certainly Fraggle Rock shares many characteristics with faerie realms - small size, inter-dimensional connection with the human world. Throughout the series, fraggles are shown to have a bent for things mystical, including a natural talent for lucid dreaming as well as the ability to share their dreams with other fraggles.

Fraggles might certainly prove useful in campaigns as contacts and adventure hooks for an adventuring party. They are small and the exploratory ways gets them in all sorts of trouble stumbling on many things. Fraggles have even made dedicated efforts to explore the world outside of their rock so in the greater scope of a fantasy RPG world it is not absurd to entertain the possibility of small fraggle communities outside of Fraggle Rock.

Of course, a more wicked GM might choose to tweak fraggles and make them into a sort of dark version of Jim Hensen's creatures or perhaps just mimic the concept using an existing fantasy monster like kobolds or goblins. Certainly a dark Fraggle Rock with semi-mystical goblins would create something akin to another Jim Hensen project, "Labyrinth".

Fraggle

No. Enc.: 1d6 (4d10x10)
Alignment: Lawful (Good tendencies)
Movement: 120' (40')

Armor Class: 6
Hit Dice: 1d4 hp
Attacks: One weapon - usually thrown stones, walking sticks, frying pans or other mundane items.
Damage: By weapon - usually 1d4-1
Special Attacks: None
Save: F3
Morale: 6
Hoard Class: None, though fraggles do often accumulate an interesting item here and there in their adventures.

Down at Fraggle Rock

Recently the HUB network, one of the newer "retro" programming networks hit the air and brought back one of my all time favorite childhood programs, Fraggle Rock.

I remember when this show first came out and being lucky enough to have HBO at the time (a pretty big deal in 1983). I have always been a Muppet maniac and this was right up there with the Muppet Show and the various Jim Hensen Christmas specials like Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas (now available on DVD!). I quickly found myself caught up in the series and the adventures of little Fraggles in their ever more complexly fantastic world.

Once I started gaming, the series was still on and the appeal of the show to my budding gamer mind was not lost. Here we had a twisting, winding bunch of catacombs populated by a variety of creatures and perils. The Fraggles had secret orders, great halls, holy men, social pr4oblems and even a symbiotic relationship with other creatures. There were giants and oracles, kings and realms and a strange interdimensionality between the outside world on one side of the rock and the other. As much as these ideas might have bounced around, I never really did anything with it.

Until now...

As I am re-watching these episodes, I shall be taking notes on elements that are worthy of interpretation as gaming fodder. Rather than straight, silly homage pieces, I'll try to interpret these write-ups into something that can be used in people's games in a versatile and serious manner. Of course, I'll still include plenty of fun images from the original series when I can, though episode stills are hard to find in programs predating the explosion of Internet fandom. I'll likely be writing them up in either a Labyrinth Lord format as it is what I am using for fantasy RPG fun these days, but this should still make them useful to other OSR players as well as players of newer systems.

Stay tuned as I venture forth into the world of Fraggle Rock.

Thanks for reading,

-Eli