Helpful NPC Thom
Adventurer
It's currently on Kickstarter and I love Jack Vance's Dying Earth series. I am eagerly anticipating the game, but I'd like to hear thoughts from anyone who has read the rules or playtested it.
Can anyone give some information on the Dying Earth DCC rules set?
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Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
I haven't played the Dying Earth variant, but I can answer questions about Dungeon Crawl Classics, if you need.
theCourier
Adventurer
Helpful NPC Thom
Adventurer
I'm familiar with the basics of DCC, but the funny dice have always been a bit of a turn-off. I know there's a Unusually-Sided Polyhedral Roller app that is usable for the game, but I'm interested in your favorite parts of the system. If you've played MCC, I'd be interested in hearing how DCC contrasts with MCC, too.
The Robin Laws version captures the Dying Earth feel magnificently, and I would be delighted if they re-released it with something closer to their Yellow King RPG.
Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
I love Goodman, but they do not understand the value of editing video down. Long-ass, typically unedited videos, are the norm for them.
Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
The dice are basically a meta-joke. When D&D came out, actually getting the dice required was incredibly difficult -- one of the boxed sets I got, back in the day, had little scraps of numbered cardboard to use instead. So when Goodman wanted a recreation of the late 1970s vibe for the DCC game, they wanted to again confront players with confusing dice. It's not a big hassle to just use a larger die size (there's only one occasion that you use a d30 in the game, as I recall, so you can safely ignore that one) and reroll anything that's over the range.
The good news is they make good use of all their different die sizes, with some abilities scaling up and down via die size, and the whole game is built on randomness, with wizard spells in particular having a random effect when used, from a cantrip-like fart to, effectively, a much higher level mass-effect version of a spell. But screwing up on a spell or in combat generally can also provoke sometimes devastating random effects on a character. Eventually, a wizard's luck will run out and they will accumulate a number of magical deformities, like fingers that wriggle like tentacles, a third eye, a cloven hoof, etc. Clerics run the risk of alienating their god and wizards and elves deal with alien patrons (similar to warlock patrons in D&D), all of whom can grant power, including unique spells, but each of which tends to be far more petty and moody than even the worst gods of Olympus.
Monsters and treasures are typically unique and the core book doesn't describe many default examples. (You don't see Conan in his stories saying "ah, a behir, let me equip my ring of lightning protection before we attack.") Third parties -- which Goodman supports and encourages more than any other RPG company I've seen -- have filled in the gap, but still, the line is full of weird one-shot creatures and the whole range has a tone of surprise and mystery. It's standard operating procedure for even experienced player characters not to know what they're facing and have to figure it out before moving in.
But getting there is challenging. To echo the experience of feeding lots of low level PCs and henchmen into a meatgrinder dungeon back in the day with OD&D, DCC starts characters as classless level 0 characters by default, and players are expected to bring three or more to the table initially. Most of them will not survive their first adventure -- known as "the funnel" -- and many won't survive their first encounter. The survivors, when they reach level 1, typically pick a class based on what they did to succeed at level 0. The whole thing, generally, is played for gallows humor, although Goodman also produces horror-themed modules that are fairly scary, in a slasher film way.
Leveling is slow and grinds to a halt before level 10 unless something remarkable is happening at your table. A level 6 character is assumed to be one of the most powerful of their kind on the planet. So while characters are significantly more resilient than they are at level 0, none of them could stand up to a D&D character of comparable level. But they'll be thrust into big adventures anyway, by virtue of being all the world has got. Higher level -- level 6 and up -- DCC adventures include going to other planets, John Carter-style, or fighting golems or robots the size of skyscrapers or joining a congress of wizards on a city flying through space. Even lower level adventures thrust characters into the political struggles of powerful extraplanar beings (think Elric or Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser), where talking fast is at least as important as a strong sword arm.
Appendix N isn't just loosely inspirational material, as it often was even for 1E. The style of adventures is intensely drawn from the idiosyncratic fantasy stories from the 1930s through 1970s, along with a 1970s art aesthetic that embraces funk and even disco. (DCC also features iconic characters of color, earlier and more often than D&D did or does, although it doesn't make a big deal about doing so -- it simply is a more multi-racial and diverse RPG, by default.) Genre is a loose guideline at best, and a single adventure can have fantasy, science fiction and horror elements without breaking tone.
I haven't played MCC, but folks complain that it's too much like DCC with some names swapped around, rather than being a true spiritual descendant of Gamma World, so it has sentient AIs instead of patrons, etc. But it's also entirely compatible with DCC, so lots of folks use it as a supplement to that game, so one can create post-apocalyptic science fantasy adventures for their table. (I'd love to see them license Ralph Bakshi's Wizards movie, myself, as that really seems to capture the overlap between the two games.)
The Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser line adds in some rules to make DCC more like traditional D&D, including new classes, and the Dying Earth boxed set will similarly shift things in that direction. (I have to assume that magic isn't going to be dangerous in quite the same way -- maybe it affects casters' sanity more than it does their physical form, or something.)
I've run a D&D campaign for 15 years straight. I can't see DCC sustaining that kind of long-term play, but it does lend itself to a more beer and pretzels feel, with players laughing about the hideous predicaments characters get into (and only sometimes survive) than 5E does. (Can you imagine a Critical Role campaign where three-quarters of the player characters are dead by the end of the first adventure?)
It's a really good game and Goodman's systemless books like the Dungeon Alphabet do a great job supporting it or bringing the early 1E gonzo flavor into other games as well.
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Ralif Redhammer
Legend
I've done neither, but as a backer I've gotten some of the messages where they talk about the rules a bit. They're rejiggering the magic system to feel more Vancian, while still keeping DCC's core mechanics. You can totally play a vat-born creature. And the one class has a luck mechanic that ebbs and flows, so that your luck gets better and better, until it totally deserts you, to mimic the fortune and misfortune of some of Vance's characters.
Everything they've said about the Kickstarter so far gives me complete trust that this is 100% in the right hands. They've previously done Leiber's Lankhmar and Saberhagen's Empire of the East, and both perfectly evoked the source material.
Everything they've said about the Kickstarter so far gives me complete trust that this is 100% in the right hands. They've previously done Leiber's Lankhmar and Saberhagen's Empire of the East, and both perfectly evoked the source material.
Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
DCC's got a default luck mechanism that all characters have access to, and halflings (they do race-as-class in DCC) have heightened access to. So building that out for Dying Earth seems like a natural way to go.
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