The “Everyone Else” series of blog posts
will explore what other people are doing with the DCC rpg, and will offer my
own views on various products available.
I have been picking up everything I can, as soon as it is available, so
I feel I can offer some insight to those who have yet to purchase some of these
fine products. I am a strong proponent
of the Goodman Games licensing
policy for DCC materials – it means that you know anything published with this
logo is going to meet a high minimum standard of quality. That might make some of these posts sound
like a broken record, for there is much to praise. So be it.
I am going to try to talk about these
things in the order I got them. This
places the core rulebook first, and Harley
Stroh’s Doom of the Savage Kings
second. Well, I suppose that technically
the 2011
Free RPG Module would be first, but that material is reprinted in the
core rulebook. Subsequent posts will
talk about Sailors on the Starless Sea, People of the Pit, DCC
Free RPG Day module 2012, Perils of the Sunken City, Crawl!
Fanzine, Transylvanian Adventures, Sepulcher of the Mountain God, The
Emerald Enchanter, Attack of the Frawgs, The Jewels of Carnifex, Alternate
Occupations, and The Ooze Pits of Jonas Gralk….roughly
in that order.
By the time I have finished with those
posts, I certainly hope to have more to add!
I’ll have to keep doing posts to update information on Crawl!,
for instance, and I hope to have more to buy from these good publishers (Goodman Games, Stray Couches, Land of
Phantoms, Purple Duck, Purple Sorcerer, Thick Skull Adventures, and IDD. In addition, I am very much looking forward
to the initial offers of Brave Halfling
Publishing, Chapter 13 Press, Cognition Pressworks and Sagaworks Studios.
I will not be talking about my own work,
except tangentially as these products relate to it.
Because I pre-ordered, I received the core
rules as a pdf long before I had the actual book in my hands. Distribution in Canada is not always all that
it should be, and it was long before I had a physical product to whack down on
the table with joy. Be that as it may,
even in pdf format, the core rules are impressive!
I have spoken so often of my love for this
system that the average follower of my blog surely need read no more of the
same; indeed, he or she can probably not stomach more! So I am only going to add to it a little.
Imprimus, last night I GMed RCFG for the first time in months,
and had a lively discussion about which game was more fun. I know which game is more fun for me; DCC
wins hands down. There was some
discussion of having the RCFG characters transmigrate to DCC, and that’s where
the real fun began. First off, what
level is equivalent between the two systems?
I think 1 DCC level per 2 RCFG levels, but that might not be directly
correct. Probably more like 1.3 DCC
levels per RCFG level. We’ll have to
figure it out.
More importantly, though, could their
character concepts be ported between the two systems? One of my players was certain that a fire
sorcerer who manipulates odds mathematically could not be….but, as a result of
the patron system, I was not only able to convince him otherwise, I was able to
generate some enthusiasm for the project.
Way back, in those long ago days when Holmes
Basic and the original AD&D introduced me to the hobby,
one of the really cool things about the game was how the artwork inspired me to
devise encounters, adventures in which the encounters took place, and a world
in which the adventures were set. To
each his own, but I seldom got that same sense from the artwork in the WotC
editions, even when they were clearly homages from first edition AD&D
illustrations. The artwork of 3rd
and 4th edition screams to me, “This is what these guys are!” The artwork of 1st edition – and DCC
– screams out “This is what these guys do!”
I find that I vastly prefer the latter to
the former.
Tertius, the advice Joseph Goodman
gives to aspiring judges is very much worth reading. No game has ever made me want to create
adventures that span planets and planes of existence the way this game
does. The art, the advice, and the rules
all combine to truly recreate the feel of Appendix N fiction. While I had been a fan of several Appendix N
authors prior to my involvement with this game, certainly no previous game
encouraged me to go so far out of my way to read or re-read everything I could
on the list…..and there will be a series of posts about my Appendix N reading,
too.
Quartus, while I had some doubts about creating monsters as part of
adventure creation, most of these qualms are now gone, smoothed over by actual
experience. I fully intend to pick up
the Creature
Catalog from Cognition
Pressworks, but more because (1) I’ll steal whatever I like to present in
my home campaign, (2) I suspect the mutation rules and the stats for common
animals are going to come in handy, and (3) I cannot get enough of this game. But I don’t feel that DCC needs standard
definitions for creatures. It’ll be nice
to have an idea what someone else thinks, say, a bear’s stats should be, but I
will certainly feel free to differ from those stats, both for individuals and
for whole species. I had been doubtful
about this, but DCC really has made monsters fun again. As I discuss various adventure scenarios in
this series of blog posts, I’ll try to highlight how the DCC monster philosophy
makes these adventures better.
Quintus, I wanted to talk about adventures.
The core rulebook contains two adventures, largely reprinted from the
Free RPG 2011 module. These are The
Portal Under the Stars, which I have already looked at a bit when
discussing 0-level adventures and elsewhere, and The Infernal Crucible of Sezrekan
the Mad.
I have now played through Portal twice,
with wildly different outcomes. I have
mixed feelings about this adventure. I
really like all of the encounters, but something about the overall module seems
missing to me still. I think that is
partly that I believe a 0-level funnel should include a chance for the players
to show that they have grown, and I have only played it using the Beta Playtest
rules. Had I been using the XP rules
from the full game, I might feel differently.
I need to introduce a new group of victims…er, players….to this
game to explore Portal’s potential further.
I haven’t yet had a chance to play through
Sezrekan. Frankly, I have been saving it
for when PCs in my home game reach the exalted 5th level. The read-through is fantastic, though, and
was an early introduction (for me) to the works of Harley Stroh. It was only
after falling in love with DCC that I realized Harley had written several other
excellent adventures for other systems, including AD&D 1e, 3.5, 4e, and Call of
Cthulhu. Although this adventure
is only three encounter areas long, it contains a full evening of fun, and I
expect it is going to be even better in play than on the page.
Sextus, I wanted to mention errata and the index. The first printing is unfortunately riddled
with small editing mistakes that have required extensive errata. The first printing also, unfortunately, does
not include an index. Both of these
problems are being solved as far as possible in the second printing. I agree that it would be nice had the first
print been pristine and fully indexed, but I do not feel “ripped off” in any
way, shape, or form. The core rules are
offered in a huge, beautiful book which is a bargain for its price. Sure, I could have gotten an index had I
waited, but it was worth it to play now, I will pick up a second print anyway,
and, if one is to fear no rule, should one fear a typo?
Make no mistake, the core rulebook is not
just a home run; the ball was knocked right out of the park. If I take away half a star for the production
problems, it still gets 4.5 stars out of 5, and the second printing – which is
likely all you will be able to hope for by now – will be a solid 5.
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