DCC RPG / MCC RPG and Resources for them.
I wanted to start a thread for current players of Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game (DCC RPG) and those that might be curious about it.
To be honest, Classic D&D isn't the right place for it, but there isn't really any other logical place to put it either, so I'll put it here. This thread can serve, now and in the future, to be a repository of knowledge on DCC RPG and it's vibrant and enthusiastic fan driven ecosystem and resources available for it. It can also serve as a place for Mutant Crawl Classics (MCC RPG), which is a sister game completely compatible with the DCC game that is due out summer of 2016.
I will first start with: What is Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG?
DCC RPG is an OGL game that uses a modified rules-light core of the d20 D&D 3e system engine to present a game that has an old school feel. "Modern Rules, Old School Feel" is one of the motto's used to describe it. Also, one close to my heart, is "It is time to PARTY like it's 1974" is the motto of the popular podcast about the game. So, what does this really mean? Modern Rules, but Old School feel. Isn't that an oxymoron? How could new school rules give an old school experience?
In order to understand this, we need to go back to the roots of our hobby. It all started when one wargamer, Gary Gygax, met another wargamer, Dave Arneson at the Origins convention and were discussing the "Chainmail" rules that Gary had published for medieval historical battles using miniatures. The idea was tossed around to make a fantasy supplement to allow Chainmail to play games like the fantasy and science fantasy books they read. The basis of this is what became the original D&D game presented in 1974. Forward things a few years and Gary Gygax, in the first Dungeon Masters Guide ever written for our hobby, put into it, Appendix N, the reading list that had inspired him to create the game of D&D.
What DCC does is posit the question, if Gary and Dave were alive today and had access to 40 years of experience in modern game design, how would they have created their game differently in order to best tell stories about the literature that was contained on that Appendix N reading list that was so inspiring to them. Thus, the Rules of DCC start with a modern game engine, but tailor it towards telling Appendix N type of stories.
If you can appreciate this fact, that it is a game that is designed to tell different stories than what your 5e, 4e, 3.5e, Pathfinder etc. games are designed to tell, then you can appreciate that this is a game that can happily coexist in your gaming life alongside your system of choice, because it is serving a different purpose and scratching a different itch.
Going back to the Appendix N Literature, we see prominently, the works of Jack Vance, Robert E. Howard, Edgar Rice Borroughs, Ashton Clark Smith, H.P. Lovecraft and Fritz Lieber, to name just a few. In those stories, we find the roots of the D&D fighter in the likes of Conan, Faffered, John Carter etc. We also see the basis for the thief class in the Grey Mouser and the tales of Lankmar. In Jack Vance, we see the basis for the magic system, in many cases, the exact spell names from the stories were brought into D&D, as well as some of the magic items.
But, how close does D&D actually mimic those tales? Back at that time, Gary and Dave were pioneering an entirely new genre of game from scratch and they didn't necessarily have the resources, knowledge or experience to make it do what they might want. We see Conan doing fantastical feats. We see magic in Jack Vance's work is variable, wild and not well understood. There are many other details that D&D doesn't quite get right in being able to tell those specific types of stories. Those are the places where DCC exells. It presents a game system tailored for those types of stories, where adventure and great danger may lay around the next corner; magic is very powerful, but difficult to accurately control, and you may owe some being for having tapped into their power; and the warrior shares his rightful place in the spotlight, capable of doing great mighty deeds that would make Conan proud. No doubt, it is a world that is not for the feint of heart. Death is always possible, but successes feel so sweet having braved those dangers.
DCC is a modern game with all the standard things you've come to enjoy, like Ascending AC, Base to Hit, the 3e Fort/Save/Will saving throw system etc. but with an old school ascetic where the danger is palpable and you'll be on your edge of the seat wondering what will happen. It is also a system, however, that puts a lot of control into the hands of the players to counteract the twists and turns of fate; it has a built in system of luck mitigation that counterbalances randomness and helps the player to control the rolls of the die based on resources they have under their control. Smart play can counterbalance poor luck of the die.
