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First Impressions: Dungeon Crawl Classics

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20 May 2013 21:59 #152532 by SuperflyPete
1. Holy shit. This isn't a rule book, it's a rule encyclopedia.
2. This is as thick as my phone book.


Great illustrations, really simple to understand gameplay, and I love the fact that there's this really cool "character funnel" where your party, which amounts to untrained rabble, starts with almost nothing, knows pretty much nothing, and is almost certainly doomed.

The neat thing is that it's like the DM guide, player's guide, spellbook and bestiaries all in one compendium. More than half the book is on spells and campaigns, which is simply awesome.

Just need to find suitable players, and once my Dwarven Forgeries come in, it's so on.

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21 May 2013 02:13 #152542 by dysjunct
Sweet!

I will say that the thickness is really overstated -- something you can probably relate to -- since most of it is reference material. The chart for each spell is about a page, but you can ignore spells you don't know. Same with critical hit tables for classes that aren't you.

DCC is one of the few games that I prefer using the PDF for. I bookmark the relevant charts and pull them up as necessary. See also the Crawlers Companion, an app for iOS and possibly Android that is a complete reference for the game in play. Pretty sweet.
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21 May 2013 18:02 #152573 by SuperflyPete
Downloaded! What a sweet app!

It's a little confusing for me still, but I've only read through it once. I think I'm going to sign up for a couple events at WBC or Gencon...I really want to dig the game.

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21 May 2013 19:02 #152578 by the_jake_1973
I am adapting my WHFRP to include the mercurial magic effects.

After rolling the effects, the Magic Dart verbal component has to be yelled.
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21 May 2013 19:24 #152579 by HiveGod
We just finished our first session of this, funneling through the adventure in the back of the book, "The Portal Under the Stars". Sixteen townsfolk piled in, four made it out alive... and permanently scarred.

I'm working on a recap titled D&D FOUND DEAD, CHAINED TO TOILET IN MOTHER'S BASEMENT.

If you prefer low-level, lethal fantasy RPGing, DCC can't be beat. That night was, hands down, the best dungeon crawl session of my entire gaming life.
The following user(s) said Thank You: Almalik, Jason Lutes, Dr. Mabuse, mikecl, wadenels

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23 May 2013 05:49 #152708 by DukeofChutney
sell me on this sucker...

I don't mind DnD, but don't really like the cosmopolitan high fantasy nature of it. I have Burning Wheel but its more of a characters interacting with each other type game.

I do want a dungeoncrawler and i do like classic trashy adventure style plots and i do like lots chaos and brutality (i play abit of WFRP and few survive long).

How easy is this to run. I already have plenty of complex rpgs so im looking for something that is light and functional on rules systems.

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23 May 2013 12:17 #152718 by bryce0lynch
I'm not an expert on DCC, but I believe it only adds two things to a BASIC experience. it has a spell mishap/success table for every spell and it uses the concept of a "character funnel" for 0-level adventurers. Otherwise you might as well be playing BASIC D&D. That's not a bad thing, BASIC is my go to edition, put it surrounds BASIC with a dictionary sized set of rules.

It's default setting has attitude. That style is communicated through the adventure modules. You could easily snag the modules and use the BASIC D&D rules and get most of the flavor, as long as you can inject gonzo/weird in to your D&D style.

I've not been impressed with Goodmans 4E, 3E, or 1E modules so it's unclear if the DCC line will deliver. It does have at least one VERY good author writing for it, Michael Curtis, so maybe they will deliver something good.

They did a playtest of the rules so you might be able to find a copy floating around to look at before you buy.

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23 May 2013 12:21 #152719 by Gary Sax
I finally got around to finishing Jason Lutes' blog on his first funnel adventure of DCC. Awesome stuff.

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23 May 2013 16:55 #152748 by hotseatgames

Gary Sax wrote: I finally got around to finishing Jason Lutes' blog on his first funnel adventure of DCC. Awesome stuff.


Do you have a link?

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23 May 2013 17:15 #152753 by Gary Sax
lampblackandbrimstone.blogspot.com/

Jason is such an amazingly creative guy, even reading about how he works on something like a DCC campaign is jaw dropping.
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24 May 2013 03:50 #152810 by dysjunct

DukeofChutney wrote: sell me on this sucker...

I don't mind DnD, but don't really like the cosmopolitan high fantasy nature of it. I have Burning Wheel but its more of a characters interacting with each other type game.

I do want a dungeoncrawler and i do like classic trashy adventure style plots and i do like lots chaos and brutality (i play abit of WFRP and few survive long).

How easy is this to run. I already have plenty of complex rpgs so im looking for something that is light and functional on rules systems.


This is all based on memory so take at your own risk. That said, DCC is great. Per your criteria:

- not so cosmopolitan, not high fantasy.
- as far as dungeon crawlers, it's pretty good although not as focused as OD&D. It's more focused on the gonzo experience and less on the push-your-luck resource management of old DnD.
- classic trashy adventure plots are up to you. Choose or make the adventures you want.
- chaos it has in spades. Tons of random tables make things fun and unpredictable.
- brutality, kinda. The 0-level characters drop like flies, but they get tougher and tougher as they go up in level. If you play RAW then you lose stat points every time you fall unconscious though, so that is the main killer.
- easy to run, I've never run it but I'd say so. Get a good megadungeon and you're set.

Per bryce0lynch, the core system is essentially Basic but with some streamlining. AC is ascending. Saves use the 3e model (fortitude, reflex, willpower) instead of the grab bag of categories from 2e and earlier. Race as class. A whole bunch,of other minor tweaks that increase the random factor and make for really fun emergent stories.

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24 May 2013 04:00 #152814 by tscook
It kind of makes fighters interesting but its 3.x core is still a steaming pile of shit. Dungeon World is way the fuck better.

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24 May 2013 14:52 #152843 by dysjunct
Dungeon World is really great, but it is pretty different in a lot of ways from traditional RPGs due to being completely divorced from the wargame roots and focused entirely on storytelling. For example, there's no rules for initiative (the GM asks what you want to do, when it would be appropriate in the story for your guy to do something). There's no difficulty modifiers; it is as easy to jump over a 20-foot gorge as a 6-foot one (although the consequences for failure will be different). It can be hard to wrap your head around as a traditional GM, because every response to a player's narration is supposed to fall into a particular category (Reveal An Unwelcome Truth, Show Signs of an Approaching Threat, Separate Them, etc.). (Granted most of what a good GM does in any game will naturally fall into one of the categories.)

Quite a lot of people like DW, and I am among them, but it's definitely in the try-before-you-buy category.

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24 May 2013 19:20 - 24 May 2013 19:28 #152861 by Camshaft
My group started the funnel adventure, The Portal under the Stars, included in the base book last night. Had a great time.

**Spoilers Ahead**

The group picked up on the clue at the entrance and just waited until the stars were right, so no one tripped the first trap by trying to force the door.

I rolled terribly for the spear-men in the first room and only ended up dealing one point of damage.

The giant rotating statue in the second room really gave them fits. Instead of panicking and trying to hurriedly run out of the room after the first two immolations, the rest were very deliberate in trying to disable the trap. They ended up throwing all their flasks of oil (they kept rolling them randomly during character creation) into the gap where the statue rotated in an attempt to burn away any lubrication that would help the granite statue rotate. One PC also climbed the statue and hammered an iron stake into the hole where the fire was shooting. Then they all held onto the rope that the aforementioned PC used to climb in an attempt to further prevent the statue from targeting the PCs as they left the room. I ruled that while these schemes wouldn't completely disable the trap, I did reduce the attack die of the statue by several levels and no one else was injured.

They tried the crystal statues room next, but when they saw the statues plodding towards them, they quickly shut the door and tried the demon snake room. It ended up eating one PC, but that was all.

We ended the evening in the tomb with the skeletons that couldn't quite animate.

So, yea, only 3 deaths out of 15 PCs so far, but we will see what happens with the last few rooms. I haven't heard as much laughing in an RPG session for a long time.
Last edit: 24 May 2013 19:28 by Camshaft.
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24 May 2013 22:04 #152866 by DukeofChutney
I picked it up. Looking forward to reading it. I do already have Burning Wheel, but i wanted something simpler for much more dungeon centred adventures rather than the character driven stuff that BW is more suited for.

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