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| Dungeon Crawl Classics and an assortment of modules, published 2012 by Goodman Games. |
What is it?
Dungeon Crawl Classics is the graddaddy of what we know today as OSR. A d20 system built from 3rd edition D&D, but it embraces the tables and weird rules as an homage to older TTRPGS. The Judge rolls in the open. The traps are deadly, the monsters are terrifying, and martial classes have separate critical hit tables based on their level.
Why play it?
Nostalgia, but also a solid gameplay experience. Tons of exciting sword and sorcery adventure modules, some licensed directly from those famous writers. Far more zany, wild, and surprising than average fantasy fare. Fast to put on the table and get moving. Roll weird dice, kill some characters, roll up new ones.
Novel features
Level 0 character funnel, weird dice (d5, d14, d24, etc), classes have unique systems (thief skills, mighty deeds of arms), deep and quirky magic system (mercurial magic, spell duels).
Resolution mechanic
D20 roll high with lots of small modifiers to add and keep track of. A dice chain is used with an expanded set of Zocchi dice (d3-d4-d5-d6-d7-d8-d10-d14-d16-d20-d24-d30) and players with an edge or penalty can move up or down the chain from the default d20.
Rules crunch
Very light / Light / Mid / Crunchy (480 pages)
Ease of learning rules
Easy / Okay / Difficult
Deadly?
Safe / Dangerous / Deadly
Character classes?
Yes. Level 0 characters have occupations and they gain a class upon reaching level 1. Races are disparate classes.
Adventure included?
Yes, the core rulebook includes a single short dungeon.
Setting agnostic?
Yes
System compatibility?
Virtually all OSR content.
Overview
Dungeon Crawl Classics is a phenomenon. It was built from the ground up
to represent the “Appendix N” swords and sorcery fiction of Robert E.
Howard, Fritz Lieber, Michael Moorcock, and Jack Vance (among many others), and arguably
spawned the now ubiquitous OSR movement. It is a very well-regarded and
mature system with a tremendous following and hundreds of adventures and
supplements built around it. It's a rulebook with amazing illustrations, big chunky tables, and relatively streamlined mechanics with lots of extras hooked on to give it a retro feeling.
The Funnel
To encapsulate the feel of “old school” roleplaying, Joseph Goodman’s idea was to have players make lots of 0-level characters and run them through a deadly adventure. The characters that come out the other end become the players’ 1-st level characters. These characters are fragile--3d6 for each stat, 1d4 hitpoints, and a pitchfork and a goat--and they’re expected to die. The fun comes from watching these characters scrape their way through and then falling in love with the plucky farmer with 2 hitpoints that survives a battle with a demon. Characters that reach level 1 get a class and equipment and the real adventure begins. Instead of writing up an elaborate backstory and painstakingly balancing a character, you end up with a peasant with completely random stats and you’ve experienced their backstory.
Quirky Magic
DCC loves wizards. More than half the book is devoted to special rules for spellcasters. Every spell has a table that describes what could happen when you cast it; the result is based on your roll, and it could be a total failure. Magic is mercurial, unpredictable, and dangerous, which is a core belief of the game (and sword & sorcery). Clerics that roll poorly could end up needing to undertake a quest to regain the favor of their god. Wizards who have spells backfire or fail can find themselves mutated, mutilated, hunted by demons, or worse. They can sacrifice points from their ability scores (strength, personality, dexterity, etc) with a mechanic called spellburn in order to add more oomph into the casting (a modifier to the d20 roll.) Learning new spells and working with a patron are designed to be story seeds and great quests in themselves, and the “strange magic” is intended to take its toll on the caster by mutilating them and changing them.
An entire rule system exists for spell duels between wizards. While this is decidedly clunky, I cannot overstate how badass this idea is. These rules invoke and imitate the amazing work of classic 70's and 80's fantasy art. There is a lot to love about these systems, but there are also a tremendous quantity of spellcasting rules to take into account.
Class Systems
True to its roots, DCC features 7 classes: cleric, thief, warrior, wizard, dwarf, elf, and halfling. Each class feels distinct because they interact with totally separate systems. Clerics have a table for turning unholy creatures, thieves have special skills only they can gain bonuses to, warriors can opt for interesting combat maneuvers or called shots on top of ordinary attacks, and wizards have access to a patron and a huge variety of spells. The demi-human races have unique flavors, but basically surround a fighting style: the elf can sling spells and swing a sword, the halfling can sneak and dual-wield, the dwarf is a warrior based around shield bashes. The classes invoke the asymmetry of basic D&D, while also retaining parts that modern systems might call clunky. The thief will never interact with the Mighty Deed chart, and the dwarf doesn’t need to know how spell duels work. Not only are the classes unique, but the systems that underlie them are too, which is a design feature that contributes to the oldschool feel.
Quirky Dice
DCC uses more polyhedral dice than the standard 7-die set. The game utilizes a "dice chain" where modifiers can bump a roll up or down the chain:
d3 - d4 - d5 - d6 - d7 - d8 - d10 - d12 - d14 - d16 - d20 - d24 - d30
The addition of more dice makes this a finer dial to tune, adding more nuance to dice that grow as your character advances in level. It has the secondary effect of rekindling the experience of first encountering polyhedral dice: here is an assortment of strange dice you may have never come across before, which is not something experienced gamers encounter often!
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| A 3d-printed dice tray for DCC dice from the Goodman Games shop |
Juggling Crunch
While the underlying systems are relatively straightforward, they almost always involve referring to a table or doing some math, so I can't call it a sleek system. The majority of the game’s crunch comes from the magic system. This is designed to make magic both intriguing and deadly and there is a charm in having such a huge quantity of spells, each with their own rollable table.
The inclusion of Mercurial magic is puzzling to me. This is a large table of effects you roll on when you learn a spell that happens each time you cast it, like attracting rats or corroding nearby metal every time you use Color Spray. There are already so many considerations to keep in mind when casting spells--patron whims, modifiers, equipment penalties, spell slots, monster saving throws--that adding still another quirk makes the magic quite unwieldy on paper. I would treat this as an optional rule until my table is more comfortable with the system, and even then I don’t feel that it adds interesting tactical decisions, but only limits them. Increasing the cost or danger of casting a spell when you’re already wondering whether you’re going to get your skin melted off if you goof the roll just seems like a barrier to doing what the class is designed to do. However, the intention is for wizards to burn themselves out. DCC is a high mortality game, after all.
The martial classes aren’t exactly left out in the cold, but the amount of rules they’re expected to remember is nil compared to casters. The mighty deed of arms allows fighters and dwarves some style and open-ended flexibility: with an ordinary attack, they can call a shot (attempt to shoulder a dragon off a ledge, kick aside an incoming dagger, swing from a chandelier) which succeeds or fails based on their deed die, which they roll alongside every attack. This can result in some advantage, like tripping up an opponent or disarming them, but it's a relatively nebulous decision lumped on the judge. Some included examples highlight the severity of the negative effect on the enemy being greater based on how high the warrior’s deed die turns up.
I love that this encourages creativity and allows martial classes to also have their spotlight moments. On the other hand, limiting “cool combat maneuvers” to certain classes also seems like it discourages the same creativity from other classes for fear of stepping on their toes. I think every character should be empowered to be creative in every scenario, particularly in combat, and I don’t like the prospect of relegating that to only the dwarf and warrior. However, at most tables, I'm sure it results in the mechanics directly rewarding creativity.
Nostalgia
DCC’s appeal is in its presentation and distillation of nostalgia. Just a glance at the fantastic art and bizarre dice opens up a portal to the joy of encountering the hobby for the first time. The core rulebook is packed with charts, funky rules, and a level of asymmetry absent from modern game design, with all the clunkiness and page-flipping that entails. The art is forefronted, though sometimes they've opted to cram tiny text into weird-sized shapes atop that art; it's not the most accessible choice, but it's fun. While DCC has a lot of systems and spells to learn, I think it’s something a Judge can get accustomed to and enjoy as a streamlined experience, which is part of why it’s still so popular and influential ten years down the road. First time players who have an experienced mentor or guide will have a blast killing some peasants and hewing out their first campaign-ready character without ever touching the rulebook. Fans of "Appendix N" and sword and sorcery will find no better TTRPG to explore the strange, weird, and unexpected.
Dungeon Crawl Classics has an incredibly strong sense of identity that’s splashed boldly across every page. The game knows exactly what it is and hands those tools to the Judge, and trusts you to adapt them to suit your table and players. The book is refreshingly straightforward about this, and I would argue that no other rulebook is better at teaching you how to achieve the intended experience of a game. While OSR has iterated on these ideas for years, it’s safe to say that nobody has done it better and no game out there is quite so stylish and evocative as Dungeon Crawl Classics.
Worth Stealing
When DCC started playtesting in 2011, there was nothing quite like it. The fact that this game basically began the OSR movement is an indicator of how much people love this game and have repurposed its core ideas and themes. I'll throw out some salient concepts that are interesting:
The dice chain is a great concept that has seen widespread use, and the magic system is the basis of many systems since; its echoes are evident when you look at GLOG. Rules surrounding patrons can add exciting flavor to a game. Characters have action dice which change based on their class and level; the first action dice is usually a d20 and the other gets larger with higher levels, which emulates a penalty to doing many attacks during your turn. The character's worn armor determines the severity of their fumble: peasants might trip or fall, whereas paladins in full plate could get very badly hurt, creating a risk-reward for better AC.