I want to talk about the use of giant frogs and toads in fantasy roleplaying.
Frogs figure prominently in the first published D&D adventure, but also in numerous folkloric sources.
The Ripley scroll depicts a toad emerging from a dragon's mouth as part of its alchemical imagery.
We also see amphibians, like Pepe the frog, featured in contemporary memes.

Tell me about frogs and toads in your campaign! Or, share sources of inspiration.

I have a Tsathoggua chaos cult IMC, along with the Bullywug-infested Frogmarsh & Abbey of the Crimson Monks.

Temple of the Frog was indeed the first-ever module, I think.

They were common familiars for witches.

I always wondered about the Ice Toad in 1e D&D; they're as smart as a human and have their own 'weird language'. Nobody ever seemed to pick this one up and run with it. The grippli were frog people in various editions of D&D (I know at least 1 and 3).

Poison dart frogs live in the rainforest and are often brightly colored. They get their poisonous skin from insects that they eat. Tribes that live there sometimes use their poisonous secretions to poison blow darts for hunting. There's research into turning some of these poisons into useful drugs (not as nuts as it sounds...a common drug for high blood pressure was modified from a snake's venom that kills by...lowering blood pressure).

If you have a very silly game you can put meme jokes in about Pepe and the like.

The dreaded Froghemoth from Expedition to the Barrier Peaks.  A 16 hit die frog big enough to fill a room, four tentacle arms and a tongue that can grab and swallow.

I like a 10ft reach attack with a Dex save to keep from being swallowed.

Link is to my D&D Beyond write up.. I call them Faust frogs in my campaign. They are deadly but also hunted for the hallucinogenic mucus they excrete from their back.

https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/940266-faust-frog

I tried to attach a pic but apparently the file is too big.

don't forget to overuse the word batrachian.  It's so fun to say.

Quote from: Vic99 on February 01, 2021, 09:43:54 PM
don't forget to overuse the word batrachian.  It's so fun to say.

Fun to sing, too!

The Innsmouth Look from Darkest of the Hillside Thickets is the only song I think I've ever heard that uses "batrachian."

There is the Dungeon Crawl Classics patron, Bobugbubilz, the Demon Lord of Amphibians.

I always liked the chaotic toad-like Slaadi.

Always treading the middle ground between being cruelly random or randomly cruel.

P.S.: One name. Xanxost.

I ran an AD&D one-off a couple years back where the king sent the adventurers out to capture monsters for him.  They met a toad person dressed as a school boy skipping down the road.  What they didn't know is that "Poppy" was a Death Slaad out to sow confusion and chaos in the world.  He taught their magic-user some interesting spells.

Greetings!

In the Thandor World, I have developed 5 different races of humanoid Frog-People. One race is a barbarian, tribal race that lives on the surface, and primarily in tropical jungles and marsh regions. The second race of Frog-People are an ancient and advanced urban-based civilization, with fortified settlements and provinces on the surface, as well as within the subterranean lands. The third race are a race of semi-barbarian tribal peoples that live on the surface, typically dwelling in temperate forested and marsh regions. While warlike and fierce, they engage eagerly in trade relationships, and are primarily focused on hunting, herding, and farming. The fourth race of Frog-People are distantly related to the third race, having the same appearance and physiology, but being adapted to living in urban cities. They are generally an impoverished urban racial minority enduring an oppressed urban life of squalor. Despite being non-human, their numbers grow prodigiously, creating enormous masses of urban citizens. The fifth race of Frog-People are a savage race of tribal barbarians which carve out large, shadowy realms deep within the subterranean world, where they march forth in gibbering hordes to conquer and enslave their enemies. Many of their conquered enemies are not fortunate enough to survive being broken to the yoke of slavery, but instead are gulped down in great, savage feasts, or slaughtered on black, torch-lit altars in bloody, mass sacrifices.

Finally, there is a hybrid race template which is applied to any humanoid that is half Frog-Blooded, or otherwise has Frog-Blooded heritage in their ancestry. Most of these, in general terms, are culturally related to the urban tribal race which live within the cities of more civilized kingdoms.

So, I have a good number of different Frog-Races which can be encountered by player characters across the World of Thandor, or selected as character types by player characters if they wish to play a race that experiences life very differently from most mammal-based races.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK