First Impressions: Dungeon Crawl Classics

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I've been reading up on DCC. I can't wait to give it a shot.

tscook wrote: It kind of makes fighters interesting but its 3.x core is still a steaming pile of shit.

No wonder we hate playing it so much!

Bad, wrong fun.

Just finished reading this through (not every single spell, but a fair chunk of the content).

I can attest that this book is the real Wigwam!

Some of the spell fail results are awesome. My favourite that i read was actually a draw in a spell duel, which could bring forth a dice rolls worth of demons. Also an elder being such as Cthulhu emerging to claim the spell caster would be very amusing.

D4 wounds at lvl 0, most weapons do D4 or greater damage. Amazing

Finished up the second half of the Portal under the Stars last night.

We had a slight hiccup as one of the players from last week didn't show and a new player did. I ruled that the no-show's characters decided to abandon the dungeon and that the new player's characters decided to pile on in.

**Spoilers ahead**

The characters went into the star pool room "guns a-blazin", if you will, and charged the crystal statues, who ended up killing a couple of characters. They messed around with the crystals at the bottom of the pool for a while, but started to get nervous when the water started to drain out, so they moved on.

Next, they headed downstairs and pocketed the silver statues before going into the clay warrior room. After I set the scene up with mimis in all its 70 clay warrior glory, the characters high-tailed it back up the stairs. I ruled that these constructs probably wouldn't follow them out of the room, especially with the characters barring the door. I also did this to avoid a TPK, since the 70 clay warriors would have easily killed the whole party if they chased them. They had gotten the hint that the pool above was draining into this room, so the group high-tailed it back up to the pool to mess with the crystals some more. When the floor started to buckle, everyone but one character got out of the pool, as the one remaining character attempted (and failed) to secure himself to a column with torn clothes (the character with the rope had left and the player rolled poorly on his check).

The water eventually came crashing down and the party only had to face the war-wizard's facsimile, which they killed with no further deaths (they had smashed the skeletons tied to the general's statues). They also found the treasure room with an amazing roll, so they left with quite a haul.

I haven't quite decided what to do next, since the characters are already at different XP levels due to the attendance problem (decided to give out XP based on the guidelines in the book and not just level everyone to level 1 since there were so many characters that had only experienced half of the module). Maybe run another funnel adventure with the survivors to advance the 0-level PCs and to thin the herd some more or just go to a level 1 adventure and let dice fall where they may with the 0-levels.

I think we ended up with 6 level 1 PCs after all was said and done: 2 warriors, 2 clerics, 1 thief, and 1 wizard.