Warning: There’s some minor body horror stuff in this post.

You’re no hero. You’re an adventurer, a reaver, a cutpurse, a heathen-slayer, a tight-lipped warlock guarding long dead secrets.

Those are the first few lines for Goodman Game’s excellent Dungeon Crawl Classics; an old-school-renaissance RPG which aims to bring back the spirit of B/X Dungeons and Dragons, while streamlining away some of the fiddlier aspects by introducing some modern game design principles. The mechanics are mostly great, but I’m less interested in them than I am in the philosophy of the game, as highlighted by that quote. “You’re no hero,” it says; indicating a tonal shift so far away from Dungeons and Dragons as to be jarring. DCC leans hard on that idea, and I knew I wanted to bring it to my table almost as soon as I had read the first few pages.

Most games take it for granted that a character is special. Since 3.0 (and maybe 2nd edition, I can’t remember), Dungeons and Dragons has asserted that even at level 1, player characters are unique; they represent a small fraction of the overall population of the universe in-game, and as such, aren’t beholden to whatever constraints are placed on society at large. Pretty much every other game I’ve played takes this approach, because after all, who wants to play some “normal” who can barely swing a sword.

The knock-on effect of this kind of framing is that games have (as a trend) become less deadly over the years, at least in terms of their mechanics. This makes some sense — if you’re character is special, according to the rules of the game, an easy or cheap death runs counter to that assertion. To prevent that, modern games tend to be designed with character death being fairly difficult to achieve.

Now, I’m not saying characters can’t or don’t die in modern games; my experience is just that games work hard to prevent a deadly outcome, and that’s ok — death is one of the least interesting things which can happen to a character, and it’s often not appropriate for the narrative or game being run. Some people lament how “easy” games have gotten as a result but, the fact is difficulty is a terrible measure of game quality when it comes to RPGs. While roleplaying games have their roots in wargaming, that’s been left behind in large part. Even a murder-hobo-simulator like D&D puts up a mask of narrative; indicating, on the surface anyway, the game is at least as much about story as it is about gutting goblins for treasure.

However, dungeon delving is supposed to be dangerous. These are holes in the ground filled with deadly traps and monsters, after all, and no sane person would ever venture into one unless they had to. This then, is the fundamental shift which DCC presents: your character isn’t some badass born to demigod status; they’re a nobody, with no money, no skills, and no gear; who for whatever reason has no choice but to risk their life chasing after treasures which might not even exist.

To support this mechanically, DCC utilizes the concept of a “funnel;” each player begins the game with 2–4 level 0 characters, most or all of whom are expected to die during the first adventure. Any surviving characters are both wealthier (having looted their comrades for gear), and hardier (having survived the gauntlet). Having never run a game that was so uncompromisingly brutal, I was excited to see if my players would share my enthusiasm.

It turns out, playing “normal” characters like these can be incredibly entertaining and rewarding.

Bringing it to the Table

As I’ve written about before, my group runs short sessions, and this puts some constraints on the games we play. DCC skirts the line of what I’d be comfortable running in a two-hour session, and even then I had to make sure I was as prepared as I could be to get things moving quickly. The first part of this involved familiarizing myself with the rules. These are fairly straight-forward for anyone who’s ever played D&D, or the various games it spawned. There are some key differences, and DCC goes out of its way to keep most of the mechanics elegant, at least for low-level play.

With the rules mostly sorted I got down to some of the other requirements. First, I bought a set of funny dice. DCC utilizes Zocchi dice in addition to the standard set of polyhedrals, which adds to the weirdness factor (something else the game embraces). Next, I generated a whole mess of characters. With the game predicting a high rate of character death, I wanted to make sure the group could quickly add more grist for the mill. While the rules for generating characters in DCC are quicker than D&D, they aren’t nearly as fast as something like Apocalypse World. Thankfully, the fine folks over at Purple Sorcerer Games had me covered with their excellent character generator.

I built out starter-groups of three characters each for my players, then generated a list of 100 additional characters to drop in as others died off. Finally, I resolved to adopt two imperatives from other games: Say “Yes,” or roll the dice, and let it ride. Say “Yes” ensures that I only have to worry about mechanics when there’s a reason to do so — some point of drama in the game that needs dice. Otherwise, the character gets what they want. Let it ride means that once a roll has been made, that same roll can’t be made again until the circumstances change. This eliminates constant re-rolling for things like checking for traps or searching a room.

Prep done, I grabbed a copy of Sailors on the Starless Sea and read through it. This module came highly recommended, and after reading it I agree that the adventure is a great way to introduce people to DCC. It leans heavily on the westernized fantasy style, which is so integral to DCC’s predecessors, while also showcasing a lot of the weirdness which DCC itself pushes. That being said, I wasn’t entirely happy with it. While there’s a lot of good stuff in the module, I wasn’t totally thrilled with the flavor — that is to say, beast-men and haunted castles. Luckily, that stuff is easily resolved with a new coat of paint. Instead of beast-men in a haunted, vaguely European keep, I turned them into demonic ogres in a cursed, vaguely Asian fortress. Instead of a swampy, forested environment, I put the dungeon deep in a mountain pass. This made things just different enough so that my players wouldn’t be too bored with the setting (I hoped). The adventure runs fine without the cosmetic updates, of course; I’m just tired of characters with terrible Scottish accents assaulting ho-hum castles and keeps.

Bring Out Your Dead

I narrated a bit of a cinematic opening to set the tone and provide some background, and then the group of would-be heroes were standing beneath the ruined fortress, its collapsed walls looming above the mountain road. There are three entrances into the ruins, and the group chose the most direct — straight up the road to the gatehouse. Not very imaginative, but it certainly got combat started quickly!

Starless Sea puts two “vine horrors” (undead infected with some kind of evil weed) along the path to assault intruders. Having read through the adventure, I knew these creatures didn’t really make sense; there wasn’t any kind of thematic relationship to the rest of the enemies or plot. There aren’t any other plant creatures deeper in the dungeon, nor does the “plant-body-horror” theme carry any further. What does come up are worms and tentacles, so I did a quick swap. Instead of “vine horrors” I made these creatures “worm horrors;” poor souls who had been killed, filled with writhing, demonic maggots, then left on wheels outside the gate. To amp up the body horror a little bit more, I gave them large gashes across their abdomens which were, in fact, toothy mouths which attempted to spew demon worms onto their foes. I left the stats the same though, since the module was clearly balanced against that. “Balanced” being relative here; DCC states up-front it isn’t interested in the kind of play balancing D&D attempts (and often fails) at.

The fight went fairly well. While most of the characters engaged the creatures directly, one group tried to use the two spiked wheels, which the worm horrors had been spread upon, as weapons. While they were successful in getting the wheels moving, the player rolled poorly to hit anything. So instead of hitting the enemies, the wheels crashed into his allies, killing one of them. One or two more characters died during the normal course of the melee, and two characters ran past the combat all together; hoping to get into the fortress and find the treasure rumored to be there; before anyone else.

Those remaining on the road eventually overcame the undead monsters, looted them, and then headed up to the gate. Before they did so, however, I let the dead characters make Luck checks to see if they actually survived. One of them did, and was reduced to 1 hit point, and took a -4 penalty to all their rolls. I actually missed an important bit of the rules here; along with the -4 penalty, DCC also requires a character who’s had a brush with death to take a -1 to a stat. This is something I wouldn’t discover until after the next session, which means several more characters weren’t properly penalized for dying. Not that it mattered — most of this group were going to end up dead, anyway.

The Way is Shut

While the main group had been fighting the undead, the two opportunists; a vagrant and a jester; slipped through the gatehouse and made their way to a tower (the rumored site of the treasure). Now, there was a trap in the gatehouse; two demons who were to drop the portcullis down on the party; but they could of course see what was happening on the road below, and weren’t going to give up the chance to trap the main body of the group. The vagrant and the jester quickly found their way to the tower, and set about trying to open the closed door.

In the meantime, the main group entered into the gatehouse, and the demons above sprung their trap. The portcullis slammed down, killing two more of the party. They then rang a bell and retreated along the battlements to the tower. One of the PCs trapped under the gate made their Luck check, while the other was one of those poor fools who had already been dead on the road. He stayed dead — no second chances!

By the time the main group had made it through the gatehouse, the two who had raced ahead had just about gotten the door to the tower open. Most of the main group went to go and help, while one player’s group instead set off to investigate a mysterious well in the middle of the courtyard. Her group had heard rumors about the well, and she wanted to see if they were true. On their way there, the characters stumbled across a hidden cache in the ground. Now, the module states that character’s shouldn’t be able to find this secret unless they specifically search the courtyard, but I wanted to give this group the opportunity to find it for two reasons; 1) there was an elf present (elves get a bonus to finding secret doors) and 2) I wanted to communicate to the players they should expect things in unexpected places. Now, we can argue over whether a stone slab counts as a door, but I think the other point stands.

The stone slab covering the cache was too heavy for anyone in the group to lift on their own (the rules called for a Strength check of 30; the average strength bonus in the group was +0), so the characters called out to their fellows across the yard to come help. In the meantime, one of the characters already at the slab continued on to investigate the well.

About the time the lucky treasure finders were calling to their companions, those party members had burst through the door of the tower, only to be confronted with a small hoard of demons, led by an elephant-headed champion. Roll for initiative, please.

Tower of the Elephant

Confronted with half-a-dozen enemies, one group of characters broke and ran toward the treasure discovered in the courtyard. The rest stayed and made an attempt to fight it out. They managed to score a few solid hits on both the champion and one or two of his underlings, but in the end, even eight or so level-0 characters were not really a match for these creatures. The champion cut several of the characters down himself, and the other demons picked off a few more.

Just as before on the road, two characters slipped past the fighting and into the tower itself. There they found a prisoner (a replacement character for someone who had lost all of theirs to the demons), and two more demons to fight. With the champion focused on those outside, the characters in the tower actually managed to best their opponents; each coming away with a few less hit points, but a few pieces of loot for their trouble.

Outside, things were a different story. There was now only one character left fighting the demonic champion, and he (wisely) decided to make a run for it. The champion and the remaining demons decided to let him go; instead focusing on the group across the courtyard. These characters had managed to get the treasure cache open (finding a few weapons and some treasure), but were now basically stuck in the hole with the demons approaching. The final character, who had gone to investigate the well, decided to try and goad the demons into charging her. She rolled spectacularly, and one of her adversaries charged pell-mell for her, only to end up falling down into the well. She couldn’t do that for all of them, however, and was soon faced with a spear-wielding demon.

Long story short — all of these characters met their grisly end at the point of a spear or the blade of an axe. The remaining characters (the three in the tower and the one who had fled), made their way back to the gatehouse and retreated to town. Not the most heroic end to their first outing, but certainly a pragmatic one.

Lessons Learned; Things to Improve

Thus ended my first session of Dungeon Crawl Classics, and my first session of any OSR game. The group really enjoyed themselves, even though only 4 of the 17 characters we began with managed to survive. The players had all entered the game knowing the characters might not survive, and that a total party kill was a possibility, so no one was upset about the outcome.

I think as a system DCC accomplishes a lot of what it sets out to do, at least at low level. There’s a refreshing elegance to a fantasy RPG which doesn’t rely on skills. If the characters wanted to do something; say take a reading from a tarot deck, or try to identify a particular undead horror; they just make an attribute roll against a difficulty the GM assigns. There was no fiddling around with finding the right skill to roll. This reminds me a lot of games like Dungeon World, where actions are abstracted to keep the game moving.

I’m also impressed with how DCC walks the line between being deadly, and being fair. The game very rarely feels like its cheating the characters, even though almost any roll can be the end for them. I say rarely, because there are some places where it might be a bit more lenient. For example, many of the characters began with 1 hit point. That guaranteed death from a single hit. While I understand the nature of the funnel is to be deadly, this might be a bit too unforgiving. Of course, players could potentially side step this problem by playing more carefully, but it might also be good to start characters with the maximum possible HP (which is only 4, anyway).

Which brings me to the first thing I need to better at; emphasizing non-combat options. I began the game by trying to stress that combat was not the best, or surest, way to victory, and that characters advanced by overcoming obstacles; not just killing them. Looking back, I needed to do a better job at this. While several of my players had been through funnels before, we tend to play more narrative games, where death isn’t an imminent threat. This, in turn, caused several of them to overestimate their character’s abilities.

The second thing I need to do better at is handling splitting the party, and dropping hints that overcoming things as a group is more likely to succeed than overcoming them individually. The first point is important because our sessions are so short; when one character in a group of three goes off to do their own thing, and there are five groups of three characters; things slow down considerably. The second is important because had I done a better job, say, of letting the characters know that the champion was the lynchpin of the second combat, they might have all ganged up on him.

The remedies for these problems are pretty straightforward. For level-o play, I should probably make each group of characters move as a unit; that way we aren’t splitting more attention than necessary when one player wants their characters to split off from the party. Secondly, I just need to describe things better in the moment to help the group focus.

So that’s it. The players might have left several characters dead on the field, but they’ll be back next week with some fresh “recruits,” ready to wade into the depths of the fortress to rescue or avenge (and loot!) their fallen comrades. The next report shouldn’t have as much preamble as this one, either, since I won’t be too worried about setting up what DCC is about.

What are your thoughts on DCC, or the way I ran this adventure? Drop me a comment to let me know, and in the meantime, I’ll see you next week!