Unfocused Thoughts After Running DCC

As I mentioned earlier, I'm in Hattiesburg right now.  One of my friends said he wanted to try DCC, and I had a copy of the adventure starter from Free RPG Day, so I decided to give it a shot.  Here are my thoughts.

• The character funnel is really fun.  Even my old players who liked 3.x liked it.  I noticed that as the group thinned out certain characters gained more personality.
• Individual initiative for 18 level 0 characters is insane.  We used party initiative.  I'm going to try the individual initiative system if we run it again with level 1 or level 5 characters.
• The adventure had some really cool things in it, but too much of it was just "characters walk in and are attacked."
• I basically had to assign DCs for things completely off the top of my head.  I hope I'm supposed to do that.
• Since there aren't any experience rules yet, I'm a bit worried about the pace of advancement.  Though I acknowledge it was rather slow in the Nightwick campaign so far, I don't want something so fast that I can't have Nightwick Abbey have massive levels.
• On that note, I'm not really interested in any RPG that can't run Nightwick Abbey.
• Character creation went really quick.  This is of course a good thing.
• It was weird seeing DCs for saving throws again after having dealt with static numbers for so long.
• I think I mentioned this last time, but I really hope there is more guidance for the referee to build his or her own adventures and setting than is provided in the beta rules.  I understand they want to be elitist, but I don't have a lot of use for rpgs without random encounter tables.
• The alignment of monsters is kinda all over the place.  It's weird to see a lawful demon snake next to chaotic undead who were all supposed to be created by the same evil War Wizard.
• On that note, can one actually play a war wizard?  I hope so.
• Finally, I'd really like to see some support for non-Dungeon Crawling activities.  Don't know if that's going to be in there.

On the whole I'd have to say it was a positive experience.  The reason I hope all that stuff above is in there, and that the pace of advancement isn't too quick, is that I think it would be neat to use with Nightwick Abbey/the Dark Country.  However, if it doesn't provide the support needed for a megadungeon or hexcrawl campaign that can be run pretty much indefinitely, I'll just stick to the rules I posted previously.

A complaint about DCC

I was reminded of my earlier maxim by blog reader and professional artist Fred Dailey.  In thinking about it, I realized I did not get to draw little headshots of the three characters I rolled to test out char gen in DCC.  I call foul.

Yes there is a "notes" section, but it's just not the same.

My Favorite Thing About Old School Games

Some of you may have noticed that I almost never refer to a non-D&D game as "old school," or rather that I only use the term Old School as an adjective for the type of D&D I play.  It's rare nowadays that I play a non-D&D rpg and when I do they are almost always one that is in print.  I look at most rpgs as just rpgs, and only need the OS signifier to note that when I say D&D I don't mean 3.x or 4e.

However, I've recently had the chance to look over Traveller and I'm beginning to wonder if there isn't something different about the way it's set up that makes it similar to OSD&D but different from World of Darkness or even Call of Cthulhu.  OSD&D and Traveller and a number of other "old school" games contain a large number of tables for determining the nature of the milieu the PCs will be adventuring in.  More modern rpgs tend to assume that the setting and encounters are either lovingly crafted by the GM or spoon fed to you by the publisher.

Personally I absolutely adore random tables in general but go particularly gaga over encounter tables.  In my creative, but at admittedly stunted, mind these tables act as the physics of the universe I'm presenting.  Of course I customize them, bend them, and even flat out ignore them but I'd definitely rather have them than not have them.  It's even better when, like the tables in the Monster Manual II, the author illustrates how to customize the table to fit the particular milieu the GM is running.  That's just goddamn delicious.

Traveller of course has tables for generating is subsectors, stats for individual planets, and random encounters.  In that way I find it almost superior to D&D.  While it's unlikely that it will ever replace D&D in this sword & sorcery lover's heart, I do wish D&D possessed tables for making hex maps and such.  I would add one to my still exceedingly hypothetical Uz supplement, but I'm too dependent on the Welsh Piper's wonderful system.

This has become my biggest "fear" for the DCC RPG.*  The beta version of the rules states several times that it assumes the "judge" is capable of stocking dungeons and determining what monsters live where.  Personally, I miss the tables.  Sure they results are often goofy -- such as the owl from the last session of Nightwick Abbey -- but they provide a sense of phantasmagoric verisimilitude that is utterly lacking without them.  I dearly hope they add some, because without them I have little reason not to just continue playing AD&D.

I want to make it clear that this is not the only qualification something should have to be considered "old school," and I definitely don't require it for me to enjoy the game.  For example CoC is one of my favorite games of all time.  However, I do more or less require it for any game I run as a campaign.  It provides the laws of the campaign's reality and I greatly enjoy that.  If I end up creating a product or free download you can bet it'll have a number of such tables in it.

*I put fear in sarcasm quotes because at worst it means that I just won't purchase it.

Unfocused Thoughts on the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG Beta Rules

• I absolutely love the art.  Even the worst pieces in it are completely bearable.
• Speaking of art, they leave Trampier off of the list of influential artists. Not. Cool.  Trampier is the man.  Interestingly enough they include an homage to his famous full page illustration in the treasure section of the Monster Manual.  That's my favorite piece of D&D art ever.
• I was scared shitless when I read "skills," but they're more or less just ability checks.  It's sorta similar to C&C.  Sorta.
• I find it weird that it has a general mechanic but also has percentile skills for thieves.
• The example Wizard's patron is an evil frog demon?  That's what I'm fucking talking about.
• I wish there were a few more monsters in the play test document, but it doesn't look to difficult to spitball.
• I really really hope the final product has rules for random encounters and dungeon stocking.  Thats one of my favorite things about OSD&D (and might deserve a post on it's own).
• Right now there is no guidelines for xp, so I wonder how treasure is going to factor into that or if it will at all.
• The spell tables and crit charts remind me of Warhammer.  This is a good thing.
• I think the tone is a bit too authoritarian.  Can't the judge decide if he or she wants players to roll 4d6 and drop low?
• The setting assumptions are a tiny bit thicker than I would have liked.  I wish the god examples were more explicitly examples rather than just the gods that are in the game.
• That said, the relationship between the gods and the old ones is cool.  I'll probably steal that.
• Luck is cool, and I really like the birth omens thing. 
• I sorta wish they had split race and class, but I can deal.

Note: this is only my thoughts after an initial skimming.  One of my players expressed some interest in it last session so I may run a few sessions to put it through it's paces and to take a break from NWA, but we'll see. This should not be considered a review.