Gamer Goals 2023 – Play RPGs that aren’t D&D pt. 2

See pt. 1

New game to my table, would play again

• Dungeon Crawl Classics (new RPG for me – check out the free Quickstart
  Old school chaos, combat, and carnage! I’m up for playing it again.
  

DCC is one of the Old School Rules games out there, seeking to bring a stripped down rule set that gives the feel and excitement of the White Box D&D of long ago. It certainly has the pulpy feel to it and it’s already assumed that most of the PCs won’t survive to gain a level. DCC calls this a funnel, of level 0 commoners armed with a pointy stick and a random object. Overcome 3 – 5 challenging encounters and gain a level in one of the basic classes of cleric, fighter, thief, wizard, elf, dwarf, or halfling (yes, race is a class, just like the 70s all over again).

I grabbed a quick start guide and a bunch of level zero character sheets off the internet, each page with room for four characters. My players and I walked through the first PC together and then let them work up the remaining three. To set the mood, I played Metallica’s Call of Ktulhu in the background as I invoked the grim passage at the start of the DCC manual – 

“You’re no Hero
You’re a Reaver, a Cutpurse, a Heathen Slayer, a tight lipped Warlock guarding long dead secrets.
You seek Gold and Glory,
Winning it with Sword and Spell, caked in the blood and filth of the weak, the dark, the demons, and the vanquished.
There are Treasures to be won deep underneath, and you shall have them.”

We used little wooden pawns with numbers on them, for as the DM growled, “These characters are expendable and I’m not even going to try to learn their names! They’re gonna have to survive and earn that privilege.”

The first turn of the first encounter we lost two PCs and another before it was over.

One player was down to her final character by the time they got past the second encounter.

As each one dropped to zero hit points, the little wooden pawn was dropped into a craft store coffin at the side and a red marker was handed out so that the player could write in big block letters D E A D.

We kept initiative simple and just alternated between either PCs or Enemy going first, each player activating their pod of characters as their turn came round. Likewise, we used a single pawn to represent their personal horde until those numbers dwindled to more manageable on the abstracted map. I’m normally a very tactical crunch kind of player so this was a big challenge for me to keep things loose for distances, but not as free form as games like Conan 2d20 and Fantasy Flight Games’ Star Wars with their zones. Maybe I was a little free with the experience points, but this was a one shot opportunity and my three big goals were to grind through a funnel to the final characters standing, level up one surviving character per player into a class, and have at least one spell cast.

The spell system is unique, as each spell has it’s own random result page based on skill roll mixed with a random element, so even two casters using the same spell will have different results and consequences. It could be something as random as lose a finger every time you cast it, could be the sounds of thunder, even before random side effects from spell burn (temporarily sacrificing characteristic points to gain a bonus to the spell check roll) and corruption from failed rolls. The total rolled tells a story about how power that spell is and the versatility available for shaping it. A second level spell like Scorching Ray could fizzle and cause open oozing sores to appear on the caster, or it could deal 1d8 + caster level in damage, or it could summon a jet of magma and flame that deals damage to multiple targets with multiple d20s of damage depending on if you have a single target for 6d20 or 51 – 100 targets for 1d20 damage each unless they save.

For future plays, I am totally keeping the red marker and coffin. I suspect I’ll be photocopying a little booklet for each player about their PC class. Overall, I enjoyed the simplicity of the whole thing. The streamlined character creation was something most of the players commented on. Getting class abilities with level one starts to complicate things a bit with the individual mechanics like spell casting, thief abilities, and warrior deed dice. It’s not the punk of MorkBorg but it does have a rock & roll /metal feel, like a van painted with a Frank Frazetta barbarian on the side, blasting out some Iron Maiden.

Inspired by the excellent podcast, “Into the Meepleverse” and their discussion of gaming resolutions for the year, I decided to make some resolutions of my own including trying to play at least ten boardgames new to me.