Dungeon Crawl Classics - old school metal

 

DCC is a gonzo old school revival RPG from Goodman Games

[5 min read]

I just finished running a mini-campaign of Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC), and wow, what a crazy experience it was! 

Out of all the Dungeons & Dragons retroclones out there as part of the Old School Revival (OSR), DCC was the one I chose to dive into and run myself. This was not just because there was a Humble Bundle chock full of DCC goodness earlier this year, but I felt like if I was going to embrace some of the concepts from the OSR - a high degree of randomness, magic being incredibly dangerous, and character death around every corner - then DCC turns these concepts up to eleven!

My play experience

Over a handful of 3-4 hour sessions, I ran my in-person group through two published adventures - Beneath the Well of Brass, and also Shadow of the Beakman. The former is an example of the infamous level zero funnel, where each player controls 3-4 level zero peasants with the aim of at least one of them surviving the adventure to graduate to level one. The second is a level one adventure for 4-8 characters.

The titular well of brass makes for a deadly first encounter
Image by Goodman Games

The adventures ran well as written, despite my unfamiliarity with the system. And for low level quests, they certainly covered a lot of ground. Minor spoilers here, but the characters were exposed to death and resurrection, interplanar travel, sentient magic weapons, and a grimoire that allowed a character to gain a level as a wizard if they were able to read it! This made the game feel both simultaneously epic, but also incredibly lethal. There were no fewer than seven zero-level peasants who gave their lives, and the group of four level-one heroes had a total party kill at the climax of the second adventure.

These aren't your common level one party fodder, nope, no goblins here
Image by Goodman Games

What I liked

• Level zero funnel - works surprisingly well and doesn't bog down play even given the number of characters since the the peasants have very few options to work with.

• Weird dice chain - instead of advantage and disadvantage or modifiers to checks, you move up or down a dice chain that includes some very bizarre denominations of dice (e.g. from a d20 to a d24 for an attack roll if the circumstances are favouring the character). I even bought my own set!

• Critical hits and fumbles - the highest and lowest die result can bring a critical hit or a fumble, with each character having their own die and table to roll on for (often) hilarious results.

• Magic system - rolling for a degree of success where higher spell checks result in more impactful results, plus literally stat-draining consequences for failure, made magic really exciting.

• Burning luck - the very finite resource of luck makes for a really interesting risk / reward mechanic. There are luck checks where you need to roll a 1d20 under your luck, while the luck points can be burned to add to an important roll, then reducing your chances of making a future luck check. Ingenious!

The weird dice of DCC add to the crazy nature of the game
Image by Goodman Games

Concerns I had

• General tone - the gold and glory, sword and sorcery style of books like the Conan series are not what I grew up exposed to (which was more traditional fantasy like Lord of the Rings and D&D) and therefore harder for me to identify with. I'm not sure if thematically I would run a whole campaign with this DCC style of shenanigans. I am sure you could adapt the theme to be more grounded or high fantasy, but at that point, why not stick to D&D?

• Digesting specific rules - I wouldn't call DCC rules-heavy in comparison to something like Pathfinder 2E (see my impressions here) but the nuances of the Warrior's system of mighty deeds and the Cleric's deity disapproval vs the Wizard's mechanics for spell failure can be complex to start with. They are also split through character class and general rules sections in the book, making it a little unfriendly to beginners.

What I would bring to other systems

I really enjoyed DCC, and unlike other systems I've tried where I might adapt the components I enjoyed into D&D 5E, I think I'd rather convince my regular group to play this as-is, full strength DCC, and embrace the craziness of it all. It could be a great palette cleanser between campaigns!

That said, the level zero funnel is something you could adapt - either homebrewing level zero characters, or just running multiple level one characters through a meat-grinder and keeping the survivors to start the campaign at level two. No need for complex back stories in this case - just make that first funnel a memorable one and the stories write themselves!

In summary

DCC is not the simplest of retroclones to run if you want the old school feeling (try my impressions of Old School Essentials if you want the lightest, most true to the source material, OSR game) but I thoroughly recommend it - it is just sheer fun to play and relatively easy to run.

See you in the funnel, peasant.