Mail Room: Dungeon Dwelling Creatures (DCC)

From DCC, MCC, Star Crawl, and XCrawl, Goodman Games has the best "games for your imagination" in the industry right now. Today, we continue that run with Dungeon Dwelling Creatures, a DCC-genre game where you play the monsters. I got the crowdfunding PDF release for this today, and I like this game.

The monsters are quirky and strange, sort of mirroring DCC-style classes, but using the system in interesting and unique ways. Instead of luck, we get Vile, which is your Luck-like "power of evil." All the monsters have an icky factor, and none of them are cute or adorable. A huge problem with "play a monster" games is that they get too cutesy and chibi, and that opens the door to hurt feelings and problem players. A cute fairy dragon with butterfly wings would be inappropriate for this game, where a spider that sucks people's brains out would fit right in.

I would love to see expansion monsters for this game. What we have is great, quirky, and cool.

This reminds me of the Monsters Monsters! game from Flying Buffalo, the spiritual successor to the classic Tunnels & Trolls game. You play the monsters. Civilization is crushing you. You are the minions and mooks that live in a dungeon (and even the DCC modules) as the bad guys. The good guys show up and crush your dreams, loot the place, laugh, and head back to town.

A few times.

Maybe they burn everything out in a 10-minute adventure day, and you are watching them pull the typical party nonsense by coming back daily. Maybe you follow them back to town and give them a lesson in how the monsters who put up with this nonsense teach them a lesson.

This is close to being a new, major game in the DCC line, and it feels like a surprise release. The bestiary is excellent and covers many more of the classics than the main DCC book. This feels like "the other side" of the DCC experience, putting players in an unfamiliar yet cool situation.

You are the monsters.

Deal with those pesky heroes.

A very surprising release, and I can't wait to get my hardcover.

(Cross-posted from SBRPG.com on 7/12)

DCC Is Still My Jam

Games come and go, but DCC is still my jam. The game has that "fun factor" to it, where you get emergent play through the tables, your actions, spending lock, and random chance. This beats 5E for me eac hand every time, and even games like Nimble. The character sheets are far easier: you are not micromanaging a build, there is no multiclassing, and the zine culture ensures I have a wealth of adventures, classes, spells, and other material for my worlds and adventures.

The game is designed around table play, conventions, and making each class fun. Some 5E classes are just not fun to play. Every class in DCC is fun, even the cleric. I get a blast out of playing them, and they are awesome. There is something to a game in which the designers ask, "How is this class fun?"

Many games miss that, put the OSR too high on a pedestal, and don't think of "fun first."

I appreciate the attention to detail at Goodman Games. Watch any of their videos about their crowdfunding projects, and you'll see them talking about their boxes, paper quality, art, presentation, cover artists, and a commitment to quality and to getting it right. Some say Joseph Goodman comes across as a bit slick, like a guy who runs a used car lot, but I see someone who genuinely cares about what they ship every day, what goes out the door, how they look as a company, and their values. He is one of the good guys left in the hobby, easily on par with the crew at Troll Lord Games.

And DCC is fun. It stays out of the way. The game isn't about the rules; it is about the fun they can deliver. I think this is where 5E lost its way, the game is too focused on character power, loading characters up like over-decorated Christmas trees full of ornaments and flocking, and 5E characters are heavy and bloated - nobody is asking "is this power any fun at the table?" You will get a poorly-designed subclass you want to take, it will give you a power that is essentially a save modifier or some other minor stat adjustment, and it isn't any fun! It does nothing. The power just adds another paragraph to an already overloaded character sheet.

75% of the junk 5E throws at you is not fun, has little use at the table, and it is just another "thing to have." This is the collector's mentality, but brought to character sheets.

There is no power or ability in a DCC character that I don't use during play. 95% of them are useful and fun. The game drills down on the fun of the designs, makes them iconic, and it does not waste your time with fluff and pointless powers that you need but never use.

And DDC is weird, and it has managed to stay in the realm of strangeness even after 100 adventures. I get the feeling D&D has been stuck in its product identity IP for decades now, and can't escape it. Blah blah blah, another mind flayer with a displacer beast. The drow. A beholder. The githyanki are back with a cloaker. It is funny that all these "strange monsters" were intended to be "things no player has seen before" in the original Greyhawk campaign, and here we are, 50 years later, enshrining them on a pedestal as "definitive fantasy gaming."

See all those monsters on the DCC module covers? Those are the same thing. Strange monsters no one has seen before. Only in DCC do they not enshrine them, make them part of the product identity, and try to sell you nostalgia with them. One and done, and they move on to the next strange beast.

I am sick of the D&D product identity, and the team at Wizards is not committed to doing much of anything new. They are a nostalgia strip mine at this point. The current team does not have the ability to write a new adventure on the level of The Tomb of Horrors.

They do not have the commitment to quality.

Nor do they prioritize imagination and new things.

And they do not design for fun.

While Goodman Games & DCC? That is how they compete with a billion-dollar company. They enshrine those core values in everything they do and stay focused on delivery. Those values are what they sell. This is why they are the third-place company in the industry right now, right behind Paizo.

And the recent break between DCC and the OSR (the social media post featuring a sign reading "DCC != OSR" in the Goodman offices) was not a slight against the OSR, but a declaration that their values are what they deliver first. The OSR is a nebulous thing; there is one YouTube channel that can declare "X is OSR," and they will control your brand. If the current OSR-de-jour conflicts with the core values the company delivers, guess what? The game is not OSR and should not try to live up to outside values.

Goodman Games sells its values first.

Nobody controls who they are or what they sell.

And they have done an amazing job figuring out exactly what people want.

They sell fun based on the memories of a golden age.

Dungeon Crawl Classics: Beloved

Dungeon Crawl Classics is gaining a cult following and a beloved status. There was one D&D YouTuber who criticized the game as a paragon of poor organization, only to eat their words after fans called them out. It is not poorly organized; the style harkens back to the original inspirations and the adventures' style. An apology was issued, and all is well, but the episode highlighted that the game is not like Old School Essentials and has sort of established itself as a different experience, catering to a different audience.

This is a game where you read the adventure rather than skimming it or just looking at bullet points.

While I like the condensed, OSE-style of clear organization and bullet-pointing of all the rooms' contents, that style is more their game, and I enjoy taking time to prep a level of an adventure and having enough flavor text to figure out what is going on, while also being entertained and enjoying the reading.

But DCC is an excellent game, and while some say it is OSR, I feel it has moved beyond the OSR and become something all its own. It is one of the best D&D 3.5E reimaginings, with Appendix N inspiration and a gonzo aesthetic.

DCC is less old-school and more gonzo science fantasy.

OSE is more OSR and traditional fantasy.

Cleaning Up My DCC Library

I have too much junk!

The zine culture, small publishing, endless modules, crowd-funded mega modules, and all this other "stuff" for DCC have my game bloated and unplayable. The DCC bloat feels as bad as the Shadowdark bloat at this time, and I find myself having to pare down my collection to the absolute best of the best and put all the junk in storage.

I am there with 5E, and I found focusing my collection just on Tales of the Valiant, and using the Shard VTT to support it with character creation, is my best answer for the mire of junk I find myself stuck in.

All of a sudden, 5E feels playable again.

The mess of options and fluff is gone.

And I am left with a smaller, more focused, compelling game. It is so easy to get overwhelmed when a game reaches a specific size; you just quit playing it.

I am there with DCC right now, and I can't play the game and shy away from it since my shelf is a mess, crowded, filled with junk, and unplayable. I would play you more if I had less of you. I want a smaller, cleaner, more focused "fun center" and not one stocked and jammed with so many books it looks like a disaster zone.

Right now, I don't even have any room for my dice on that shelf, and it is a huge shelf. When a game gets larger than one shelf, it is too much game.

I get why some flock to one-book games, like the excellent Dragonslayer. One book is all you need. Not a library. I could play this and one of the megadungeons, and be set.

DCC vs. Second Edition

 If I had to keep one game for fantasy, would it be Second Edition or Dungeon Crawl Classics? While my love of a combined Second and First Edition is strong, the fun factor of DCC can't be discounted.

DCC has far, far, far better support than Second Edition, and even ongoing and regular crowdfunding projects, and if there is only one reason to put Second Edition away, this would be it. DCC's support is better than 5E's at the moment, with giant adventure modules released regularly and a steady stream of smaller adventures with varied and imaginative settings.

With Second Edition? I am either playing BX adventures, which are not bad, or recycling AD&D adventures. The support is "sort of what you can find or convert in." It is not bad, but it is not dedicated support. There are a few adventures written for For Gold & Glory, and they are nice, but they are still nowhere near the support DCC regularly receives.

On the other hand, every adventure written for BX, OSE, Labyrinth Lord, Swords & Wizardry, and any other retro-clone is compatible, and it gets easier if they support descending AC. So, really, you do have pretty good support if you expand your thinking and pull in adventures from BX. These work well for FG&G, and really, this is the OSR; your choice of rules is how you express yourself today, and that is cool.

It comes down to a few things. Can I get the full rules to a new player for free in PDF form? Is the publishing license open and free for anyone to create under? Is the book attractive and invites new players to join in and have fun?

FG&G hits all three points perfectly.

And there are some amazing ones. I like a lot of the mega-dungeons written for these games, and each one is easily a 10-year campaign. There is an open question of "Are mega-dungeons too much?" I love how huge and expansive they are, but there are times I prefer a larger campaign area with a few dozen medium-sized dungeons rather than one huge, multi-level monstrosity.

Second Edition has the nostalgia factor, while DCC gives me a tribute band experience, not bad, but not the real thing. There are some tribute bands of classic acts that are better than the real thing. As age takes its toll on these bands, the tribute bands can play with an energy and technical level that shocks me. I don't know the hard-working tribute bands; they pour a lot of heart into what they do, struggling and endlessly compared to the real thing, but putting in the time and effort just out of pure love.

DCC hits that same level of respect from me. This is a group of hard-working people who love the hobby as it was and are trying their best to bring back those days with fun, imaginative ideas. As a tribute band to old-school play, DCC hits all the right notes and brings me back to those days. With the Second Edition, I am playing a game that has seen better days, still the beloved original, but there is a danger here of my memories clashing with the reality of a game that has seen better days and fallen out of active support.

With DCC, every class is designed for maximum fun at the table. They are great class designs, and they have that "instant fun" designed into them, so if you sat down at a random table in a convention to play DCC, you are guaranteed to have a good time. With the Second Edition, it is the slow grind, and while I appreciate that, in today's world, where lots of things ask for our time, I will gravitate towards an instant-gratification game more than a slow grind.

I still like Second Edition; it is the best version of the game for me, across every edition Wizards or TSR put out. For the classic feeling and play, little matches it, and they loosened up the racial level limits to a point where they don't matter as much (or could be ignored), and the story XP is a solid system that is like a lot of the modern XP systems we have today. Taking away "gold for XP" and boosting moster XP makes a huge difference in motivation and why we play. The second edition is 100% compatible with anything made for the first edition or AD&D, so it is a solid choice.

For instant gratification and fast play, DCC wins.

For campaigns and classic play, the second edition, using For Gold & Glory as my rules, wins.

Dungeon Crawl Classics: Pinball Crawl Classics

https://www.backerkit.com/call_to_action/891f2362-d05c-43a2-857f-417bb038207d/landing

I really like the idea of Pinball Crawl Classics, a series of DCC and MCC adventures based on classic pinball machine art and the imagined stories behind those games.

For a while, I felt DCC was leaning too hard into adventure remakes, and the game had felt stale. I love the deluxe treatment of classic adventures, but one can only have so many megadungeons before they start to feel a bit overdone. They are all fantastic and incredibly crafted, but I longed for something different and new.

I felt myself drifting back towards BX, BXA, and 1E.

DCC is always fun, but the classics call to me like a siren's song.

https://www.amazon.com/Art-Atari-Tim-Lapetino-ebook/dp/B01I1YU47U

Adventures around the art of pinball games? What a silly and cool idea. This reminds me of the box art from classic Atari games, where each one told a story you brought to life in your head as you played. There is a jump in that time where "you made the story in your head" that captures the essence of the era perfectly, and we did the same with pen-and-paper games.

Yes, the games were just collections of blocky pixels, but our minds did the rest.

Yes, D&D was just six 3-18 stats, a class, level, and some hit points, but our minds did the rest.

We never needed the "3d VTTs" of today, the pages-long character sheets, the character builds as complicated as a tax form, and all the layers of depth and detail that end up robbing your imagination of its ability to craft stories in your head.

Wizards' D&D is designed to strip the game of all imagination and turn it into an online character sheet. Pathfinder 2's character sheet is filled with hundreds of boxes for mostly pointless modifiers. There is a myth about a camera taking a piece of your soul when you have a picture taken. With modern games, you lose a part of your imagination when you have to fill out a soulless, complicated, mechanical character sheet, and we dream of "builds" and "power gaming" rather than story and make-believe.

This one project has reignited the love I thought was fading from the game and tells me the team there "gets it" when it comes to the magic and make-believe of the old-school games. Goodman Games understands the myth and magic of old-school games far better than many of today's soulless recreations that get the rules right but the inspiration eludes them.

The game we loved is more than a word-for-word recreation of the rules.

It is the era and the myth of the time, with the digital mind trap of technology stripped away, and imaginations free to create worlds in our awakened dreams.

They get it.

Happy DCC Day!

https://goodman-games.com/dcc-day-2025-store-locator/

Happy DCC Day!

Check the link above, and if a store in your area is participating, please drop by for some free swag and to say hello! Let's show some support for local game stores and stop by to let them know you're "With the Band."

DCC was a game I gave up on early on, feeling the charts were too much, and I could not understand the spell duels. It seemed fun, but not enjoyable enough to warrant putting in serious time to learn. I was wrong, just as I was about many games I gave up on early. Since then, I have grown to love the game.

There was a time when I felt all the gonzo and crazy charts were not needed, and by the game's own rules, it says you are free to ignore them. They are there to inspire and motivate you, and if you can think of something better, then you are free to use that! For many players, they would have no idea that we played like this and that anything like this was possible, so the charts are needed as a starting point; otherwise, the game would play like 5E, since that is what most people are familiar with.

I also like the game not being complete, and this keeps your mind open to all the possibilities. You are supposed to tweak and add to the system, pull in monsters from other OSR games, use the treasure tables from different books, and generally hack and slash, creating a mutant, monster-filled game collection that starts with your DCC book.

For me? I use my old copies of Labyrinth Lord and Mutant Future as add-on books for the game. I am not using them for a stand-alone game right now, and they are delighted to see some use as my "+1 games" for DCC and MCC. As a bonus, I get rules on construction, ships, water travel, and other game rules to fill in the gaps. The fact that an old OSR game, nearly 20 years old, is still beneficial and handy today amazes me and speaks to the strength of the entire old-school gaming movement.

Me? Hey, the books are not in a box and are getting used! I love this!

The Mutant Future game is excellent, since this gives me a lot of old-school mutant mayhem monsters and high-tech treasures to use to populate my radiation-blasted post-apocalyptic worlds. I highly recommend this one for MCC, and it's perfect for the game.

And play some DCC, MCC, or X-Crawl today! Use this day for fun and imagination, delving into strange dimensions and arcane ruins, getting lost in unexplored jungles, and wandering over the frozen tundra in search of the lost wizard's tomb.

DCC is all about fun.

Go have some today! Meet some people, hang out, say hello, and become a part of something.

It may just change everything for you.

YouTube: Let’s cut open Dungeon Crawl Classics and see how it bleeds

Dave Thaumavore's RPG Reviews is a great channel, and the above is one of the classic reviews of DCC, providing a great introduction to the system and its ethos. As always, please like the video, watch the video through, and subscribe to the channel! This is great, positive, and hobby-forward content that I love.

This is the best introduction to the game that I have seen, presented positively, pointing out the good and the bad points, and laying out the most important differences between this game and others.

A classic DCC video from the hobby community, and worth watching, even for those of us who know the game. It is a great inspiration for new players and veterans alike.

DCC Rulebook: Erol Otus Cover

This is a beautiful variant cover of the Dungeon Crawl Classics rulebook. Granted, this is the same book underneath, but the strangeness and alien nature of this scene grab me as something different than anything we have seen in the hobby before. It is alien, strange, violent, sexy, perplexing, and has almost an underwater battle quality to it all, as if we were looking in on some fever-dream alien world of sea monkeys battling kelp creatures.

This could be a spirit combat on the astral plane between a powerful Wizard and an alien intelligence seeking to dominate the world.

This could be a spell duel with each caster taking a new form to do battle with.

This could be a normal battle between the party's fighter and a dragon worm, and the viewer wandered too close to the hallucinogenic mushrooms in the final cave.

This could be the final bosses of a dungeon, and you arrive in the middle of an epic fight, where the best you can hope for is to escape with your lives.

Who knows what this is? Make it up yourself.

DCC is the game you want it to be, and it never tells you that you are playing it wrong. It's a game that you can make it what you want, not just what the designers tell you to play. So, D&D's designers took humanoid enemies and alignment away from us because they know better? DCC has an adventure with a chainmail bikini cover, and then sells pride merch in their store. It does not care, and I love it. The divide and conquer "game puritans" can find another game to direct selective outrage at, as this one is 100% just for the fun.

I am tired of D&D and its endless parade of tieflings, githyanki, mind flayers, drow, and other alien races with British and other strangely out-of-place European accents. All the bad guys are good now. The races have been gentrified, spayed, and neutered to be neutral player options. The orc and humanoid monsters are gone, and anything we liked about old-school D&D, the designers now tell us we should be guilty for enjoying.

D&D is not their game to ruin. It is our pastime to pass down and enjoy.

Baldur's Gate 3 was the end of D&D like Avengers Endgame was the end of the MCU. Years of work, build up, cultural relevance, shared relevance, and then a massive release. Past that, nothing compares, and I really don't want to see constant weak rehashes of it all, either. Like the MCU, D&D keeps plodding along for a few years while everyone slowly realizes it is dead, a zombie IP that only the marketers get excited about.

It is time for something different.

DCC is a fresh start for me, harkening back to the early days of the hobby where anything goes. Any version of 5E has this designer's hubris baked in, like it is the designer's job to tell you what options you have, how you have fun with the game, how to build encounters, and how adventures are supposed to be. You will find some in the OSR mirroring that opinion, like their ideas of gaming should be the ones everyone should follow. With DCC, anything really goes.

I have been playing D&D since it first hit the shelves. I have seen games come and go. I have seen endless OSR games trying to recapture lightning in a bottle, telling us the one proper way is their vision. Very few of them can deliver on that promise. Only ACKS II remains compelling because it tries to be different and eliminates the garbage in the SRD that doesn't align with its vision. It creates an imaginative world. It opens the possibilities to me. Too many feel mired in restating the past, and the only one that does successfully is Old School Essentials, since it stays out of your way as much as possible and lets your imagination run free.

DCC does that, too, in its own way of going back to the source material and rebuilding on a 3.5E-style framework. The monsters are not supposed to be endless classic rock repeats put on shuffle. Every module, every beast, and every adventure should be different and new. If there is an ogre in the world, there is only one. Defeat it, and it is gone forever in that reality - get some new monsters.

This is cool.

Do not do what you always do, look for some dusty campaign setting to park yourself in, find the nearest tavern, and wait for someone to walk in, hiring adventurers for the next dungeon. DCC is active, something strange happens, something that cannot be easily explained, and heroes are needed! The dungeons are full of bizarre and deadly things. There are times when the solution will take some creative thinking and non-linear logic.

When I am looking at my game shelves, what am I looking at? Am I looking at things that inspire me or bore me? Does the game take away parts of the lore and history I remember? Is the game visually compelling? Does it excite my imagination?

D&D has fallen into its own look and feel. It is this stuffy, overly manicured, modern hairstyle, 3D-game-looking, thee-thou fake accent, pseudo-modern Ren Faire slop. They got lazy and fell into a McFantasy style, where if something "looks D&D," it "is D&D."

DCC is the antithesis to the modern D&D look-and-feel.

Admittedly, this is more of a display cover to be put on a book stand as a call to action, a reason to play, and something to sit proudly on your display shelf next to your battle-hardened play copies. It is a premium work of art, a tribute to one of the artists I love, and an excellent centerpiece for a DCC collection.

Mail Room: Caverns of Thracia Legendary Adventure DCC

Caverns of Thracia has finally arrived, and good thing the books aren't damaged since this came in a half-split-open box, and the shipping left a lot to be desired. You rolled a critical failure there, Goodman Games, please do better next time! They were severely behind on all their shipping, as evidenced by the three or four update emails I received over a few weeks.

Considering this was a Kickstarter, I expected more care in shipping an order this expensive. Usually, I have no problems with their shipping, and the books are always well-protected. I will update people on the shipping of my orders and see if this is a new problem or just a one-time thing.

The entire adventure and island remind me of X1, The Isle of Dread, only less islander culture and King Kong style adventure, but with more Greek-style ruins and serpent people. The structure is the same, a hexcrawl lost island with a dungeon as the climax. I would still love to see a Goodman take on the classic King Kong jungle expedition, more than the original film that terrified audiences in the black-and-white era, with giant monsters fighting and a doomed expedition (funnel) trying to make it to the ruins.

You get more here in the Caverns of Thracia than you do on the Isle of Dread; the island, only described in the original adventure, is given a map, and there are plenty of places to fill in your own dungeons and adventures. The booklet that came with the Kickstarter is a good campaign overview and base, along with a nice expansion area for waterborne adventures.

I will need to break out my copy of Labyrinth Lord as my +1 Game for ships and naval combat rules. These two games were made for each other, so I am not complaining. This game and Mutant Future are indispensable add-on games for DCC and MCC for me.

I also got some of the adventure collections in hardcover, and those are nice to have. Besides the shipping, I am happy. I can't wait to see what the next Kickstarter from them brings!

YouTube: The Best Solo RPG Experience? (DCC)

This is a fun video that I just stumbled upon. A solo playthrough of DC from Legends & Dice Cafe. The video has this rough-cut charm with pauses, delays, random comments, laughs, and a raw, unedited format that is just like being in the room with someone.

"The art in here is super sick. I enjoy it a great deal." - video, 16:50

It's a lot of fun to listen to in the background, and it's also a positive, refreshing experience of listening to someone learn and play DCC solo. Even filling out the character sheets by hand is fun to listen to. Please like and subscribe! I'm always on the lookout for under-the-radar videos that offer a more positive perspective on the hobby than the constant Wizards drama we see on D&D YouTube.

The highlighting in that book drives me crazy! To each their own, your books are yours to do what you want with, and I love it.

We need more of this positive, fun content in our hobby.

Shipped: Caverns of Thracia Legendary Adventure DCC

I finally got my shipping notification for Caverns of Tharcia! That took a while. Goodman Games appears to have been overwhelmed by the shipping of so many books, which is a good problem to have, and I am happy for them.

These adventures and DCC itself are just fun, and nowhere can you get so many tributes to the old-school, recreations, and re-published classics in one place.

DCC: Monster Hide Edition

 

https://goodman-games.com/store/product/dcc-rpg-dungeon-crawl-classics-core-rulebook-demon-skull-monster-hide-edition/

Dungeon Crawl Classics has some nice special editions, like the Monster Hide core rulebook. I love these special editions, and they're great to display on my shelf.

And I still love DCC, this is the best version of D&D 3.5E or Pathfinder 1e ever written. I loved Pathfinder 1e, and it was my go-to dungeon game for over 10 years. The insane spell charts, make-it-fun class mechanics, and over-the-top adventures all make one of the best tabletop experiences in a 3.5E framework.

The negativity surrounding DCC will be short-lived. This is a strange mix of people upset about City State of the Invincible Overlord on one side and old-school gamers on the other, both looking to take down a game due to a mistake and attract more players to their favorite systems. I swear, the fans of tabletop games spend more time acting like Xbox or PS5 fans, yelling at each other online instead of playing. That's what you do when the standard edition of video games costs $80 and the only new games are remasters of things you've already played.

Once City State ships, people will be on to the next thing.

And I saw the product release video featuring the furry costume and those with the strange masks. I don't care. The game is supposed to be fun. Let people dress up to do those. If I got mad over every silly thing a publisher did or put in a book, I would not play any game. There's stuff in my games stranger than that; come on. If I don't get mad about this, then the other side needs to cut some slack on chainmail bikinis and bare-chested Frazetta Conan art.

There are a few things, however, that are beyond the pale, such as D&D 2024 sanitizing the monster list and what Wizards attempted to do with the OGL. I will never buy those D&D 2024 books, and I support Tales of the Valiant instead. Those actions are hurtful to the hobby; silly costumes, cheesecake art, and masks are not.

And DCC replaced Pathfinder 1e for me, a game I loved for nearly 15 years. I like that 3.5E framework, but I've always wanted something more over-the-top and extreme, with fewer rules and more fun. But the rules mess that all the 3.5E games turned into was a constant sore point, which led us down the road of D&D 4 and 5E. DCC is rules-light 3.5E, and that is an excellent sweet spot to hit, just like Shadowdark being rules-light 5E.

I look at the old covers for my Pathfinder 1e books, and those sing DCC to me. That isn't Pathfinder 2, nor is it 5E. That is not the OSR either, since the casters would never get that close. This isn't Shadowdark either; it is too bright.

The only game that does that is DCC.

Dungeon Crawl Classics: Pool-Based Improvement

We have a new optional rule for Dungeon Crawl Classics today, and I added this as a page to the blog to collect them together. This also works for MCC or any other game based on this system. Today, it is Pool-Based Improvement! Enjoy!

Pool-Based Improvement

Take 90, and subtract the total of all your ability scores from this value.

Example: If all our scores were 11, the math would look like this: 90 - 66 = 24.

Write this number on your character's ability score sheet as their improvement pool. If this number is below zero, ignore the rest of this rule; this means your ability scores are too high to benefit from this improvement, and you rolled fortunate!

Example: We would write 24 on our sheet as our improvement pool.

Now, divide this number by 8 and drop all fractions, do not round up!

Example: In the above case, this would be 24 / 8 = 3, with no fractions.

Write this number on your character sheet as your bonus value.

Example: We would write 3 on our sheet as our bonus value.

At levels 2 through 9, add the bonus value to your ability scores. You can add them all to one, or one to three, or two to one & one to another. Any combination works. Make sure to adjust your modifiers accordingly. These can be used to replenish permanent ability score decreases. Every time we level, subtract the bonus value from our pool.

Example: Every time our character levels, we would add 3 to our ability scores. We would also subtract 3 from our pool, so when our character reaches the second level, our pool would be 24 - 3 = 21. At level 3, we would add another 3 points to our ability scores, and our pool would drop to 21 - 3 = 18.

At level ten, add the remaining number in your pool to your ability scores.

Example: At level ten, we would have zero left in our pool (I did the math), so we would not add anything to our ability scores.

What does this do? This ensures all level ten characters have a minimum average score of 15 in every ability. No matter how horrible scores you roll at level one, you will slowly improve your ability scores to heroic values as you level. You do not need to set them all to 15, and this may allow some characters to go to values above 18, so you may want to put a cap on how high a score may go, such as 18.

Example: If you were the person who rolled all threes for all six ability scores, you would increase by 9 points per level from levels two through nine, and have no increase at level ten.

If you find the 15 average score at level 10 to be too high, you can adjust the 90 value to your liking, as  15 x 6 = 90. This is simple math, and the pool mechanic accounts for all remaining fractional points at level 10. For example, if you felt an average level 10 ability score of 13 was better, replace 90 with 13 x 6 = 78.

You will still suffer at low levels with terrible scores, but these will slowly improve to heroic levels. You can use this pool value as a suggested amount of points to reward as a GM each level, or just let the players freely add them. If you roll terribly at character creation, do not worry! This system will ensure you eventually become a hero as you adventure, building up your scores with each level.

Coming Soon: Castle Whiterock

 

https://www.backerkit.com/call_to_action/5642027b-7207-40e9-ae27-72ebc8318a3f/landing

Here is another cool project to track: the classic Castle Whiterock is being remade for DCC and 5E, and it's expected to arrive in about three months. This is a five-book set, comprising over 700 pages of adventure. You can visit the site above to be notified when it launches.

I choose DCC for these, since that game is a lot easier than 5E and gives me the old-school vibe that I crave. I have enough 5E books, and those are being focused more on Tales of the Valiant to support Open 5E. DCC is my Pathfinder 1e replacement game, and it does a fantastic job at that.

You know what I would also love to see? Some of the classic Tunnels & Trolls adventures rewritten for 5E and DCC, like Naked Doom and others. These are solo adventures in T&T, but a guided path through each dungeon could be recreated from the entries, and this could be presented as a solo adventure in a book in the set, or the full version could support party-based classic exploration play. This I would be all over, and Goodman Games has worked with the Flying Buffalo IP before with Grimtooth's Traps.

There are numerous options available, and they help raise awareness of T&T while also introducing these classics to a new audience. This is nostalgia-fueled greatness for gamers like me, and brings back memories of seeing them on hobby shop shelves.

Please make this happen!

Caverns of Tharcia Shipping Update

Goodman Games says 61% of the Caverns of Tharcia have shipped, and I am in that last 39%. I am still waiting for this, and the PDFs are amazing. I love these old modules updated, and Dungeon Crawl Classics is a fantastic game with all sorts of crazy, gonzo, insane things going on in it.

DCC is also amazingly rules-light, and a stripped-down 3.5E that replaces Pathfinder 1e for me. The game plays fast and is fun, even for spellcasters. You never know what will happen! Where Pathfinder 1e had that high drama, deep exploration, hard-hitting magic, and powerful characters, DCC does all that as well, and even better. I can run these characters without computer software. Each class brings something amazing to the table. The game is built around the concept of 'everyone has fun at the table.'

I love the Zocchi dice, too. The dice chain is ingenious, and collecting them is also great fun.

Limitations are fun, too. If a character starts off terrible, nothing says the referee can't reward you with special bonuses if you quest for them. Want an extra point of strength? Find a powerful entity and quest for it. Do something amazing? The referee may just reward you with anything.

Drinking from a magic pool may change an ability score. Nothing says you can't do this, and nothing in the game says ability scores must be static and never change. Tunnels & Trolls is infamous for changing a character's ability scores multiple times per adventure. If a character compliments a statue of Aphrodite, and the goddess is flattered, she may just reward the character then and there with a +2 PER change, permanently. If someone else complains about it being unfair, apply a -2 PER change to the vain one, permanently. This only happens once.

Don't ever put yourself in that "D&D mind trap" of feeling nothing changes, ability scores always stay the same, and everything must be balanced and fair. Stuff happens! Ability scores can be given as quest rewards, gifted, changed because of fantastic rolls, changed by magic, trained higher for gold and time, granted by the referee's whim, or reduced due to misfortune or injury.

Ability scores are starting values, not numbers etched into a gravestone.

These are your books. This is your game. Play it how you want.

That is what I love about Dungeon Crawl Classics.

DCC: Advanced Labyrinth Lord as the +1 Game

Dungeon Crawl Classics always needs an "extra game" to pull from, which I call my "+1 Game." Why do we need a +1 Game for DCC? Well, DCC leaves a lot up to you, such as:

• Equipment Lists
• Vehicles
• Horses
• Wagons
• Boats & Ships
• Wilderness Rules
• Monsters
• Retainers
• Specialists
• Treasure
• Treasure Tables
• Magic Items
• Stronghold Construction

Advanced Labyrinth Lord has it all, even ship combat rules. Since Mutant Future is my +1 game for Mutant Crawl Classics, these two books complement the MCC and DCC rules nicely. And I am not using these books for an active game, so if I use them as reference books, that is fine.

You will not use the spells, which is a large portion of the book, but that isn't a problem. You will also use the DCC armor AC values and weapon damage.

AC is descending from 9, so DCC AC = 19 - LL AC. An unarmored AC of 9 in LL would be 10 in DCC. An AC of 2 in LL would be 17 in DCC.

Hit dice need to be increased by 1/3 or 33% from LL to DCC, using the giant types as a baseline. Also, use the larger hit die sizes like DCC does for larger creatures. Damage is about the same. Mostly, the monsters work well as-is, and you can throw a few special or extra attacks in as needed.

The magic item selection is excellent, and you can customize these with as many special and different properties as you like. Remember, in a DCC world, every magic item is unique! You could always tag a random LL spell (and the spell lists are numbered like random charts) to every magic weapon and armor, and give it one to three uses per day, and be fine. This way, the spells get used and are not rolling on the DCC charts; they are just spells for item properties.

If you have LL and are not using it, place it with your DCC collection and use it as your monster, gear, and treasure book. This book has it all, is easy to use, and works very well as an expansion to the game.

Dungeon Crawl Classics

It is hip to trash DCC these days, but I still love this game. A lot has been made about a controversial Kickstarter project. Still, assurances were given that this was only to complete the project, preserve history, and repay those who backed the original project. 

Goodman dropped the ball a few times. A huge mistake was made when the campaign started, as it failed to communicate these goals and what was happening, so everyone assumed the worst. They also ended up apologizing ad nauseam, and one would have been enough.

A few newsletters acted horribly, resorting to full clickbait tactics to elicit anger. I won't be dealing with them anymore, or the games they publish. Similarly, a few YouTube channels have also done this, and they are being unsubscribed from.

I hate the gaming market and content creation space these days, which is why I stick to writing.

A lot can be learned from this, but I don't have much hope, as the industry is in a downturn, content creator channels are not being recommended by YouTube, and everyone is struggling for attention in a rapidly declining tabletop gaming market. The entire landscape of gaming has turned cutthroat, so whenever a mistake is made or bad news comes out, expect everyone to jump on it and look for blood.

Those who act with ethics and in the best interest of the community, while staying positive and not getting into fights, shall earn my support.

A few have lost my support over this.

Goodman Games still has it.

Swords & Wizardry

Swords & Wizardry is becoming one of my favorite gonzo old-school games. It hits many correct notes, and it is careful about doling out ability score modifiers to everyone. Only fighters get the STR damage and to-hit bonuses! The DEX bonus also stacks with the STR bonus for fighters and missile weapon to-hits, making fighters highly desirable and valuable as both melee and ranged weapon damage dealers.

S&W is also a small game that borders on rules-light compared to many other games. Still, it delivers a complete experience with many classic elements. The game is comparable to an AD&D-type experience, but with far fewer rules and much more room to modify and adapt it to your liking.

Bards, barbarians, warlocks, necromancers, and many other classes exist in the Swords & Wizardry Book of Options, putting the more modern character classes into the game. This book elevates the experience to a higher level and puts the entire system on par with the options found in 5E and other games.

As a "quick system" for fantasy, S&W is becoming my number one option. This pushed Dungeon Crawl Classics out of my top spot just because S&W has a few books that do everything, plus more, than DCC does in a massive tome. I get more monsters, a larger selection of magic items, more classes, more spells, and more of everything that matters to me in fewer pages. S&W does not have all the random charts, corruption system, or other DCC "features," but if I want those, I can use my imagination and open the game up to ability score checks for stunting during combat and spellcasting.

And "stunting," skill, or ability score checks are easy in S&W. They are just a saving throw. Or you can do a roll equal to or under on a d20 to the ability score.

Castles & Crusades is the only game competing with S&W for the top spot, with Old School Essentials a substantial third. DCC has fallen off my radar substantially because the system is heavier than it needs to be for my liking. I still like the system, but not enough to make it my go-to game for fantasy.

Adventures Dark and Deep is also up there as my number-one first edition retro-clone. This is not a rules-light game, but it does amazing, incredible things while staying true to the original and best role-playing game ever written.