DCC Level 0 Character Funnel is a Bad Concept

[harliequin]

We didn't use a grid. You still have to know what characters are where and what they're doing in theatre of the mind. If anything, it's probably even more to keep up with when you don't have a visual representation.

Random ability scores is one thing. But then to add to that a random background to imply you're a warrior with a terrible Str and Con score. Or a wizard-type with no Int. I've never seen a system that makes race/class AND ability scores random. It makes no sense.

There's chaos, and then there's just random "roll on a chart and your character is dead." And then it doesn't come down to skill, good play, or anything besides dumb luck. At that point you're just playing Yahtzee with your die rolls.

Maybe it was a bad GM, a bad group, a bad adventure, etc., but I can't understand how in Hades you handle 24 characters in an adventure without it becoming a bogged down, bad experience.

You have your characters work together...sort of how DMs control mob/swarm type monsters. Instead of thinking as your 4 characters as separate individuals, you control them as a team.

Bob the dung farmer has a rope and tosses it to Shelly the halfling who weaves around the monsters legs with it, meanwhile the other two taunt the monster, distracting it so it doesn't squish Shelly. Boom boom boom boom. Have 4 d20s and indicate which character is which color before rolling them all at once to determine who is successful and who isn't and then role-playing the result with the assistance of the judge.

Then when some of your characters inevitably die as they are meant to in a funnel, your turn becomes a bit less chaotic, but you also lose some advantage to being able to control the entire team and have to actually interact and work together with the other player characters too.

 

[harliequin]

You don't actually choose a Class priper till you reach Level 1: the "backgrounds" don't really play into that at all.

Except dwarf, elf and halfling which are automatic. The backgrounds play into it by using player cleverness. If you can come up with a reason why your character has an ability, knowledge, experience or applicable wisdom to a certain situation, the judge has a lot more freedom and liveliness to allow things to happen.

For example...Jacob the armorer has tons of experience working metal and a keen eye for defense, so he has an advantage when looking at a doors hinges, perhaps gaining an advantage on his roll to investigate it...so sees that this door could be removed from the hinges and possibly used as a shield.

 

[harliequin]

If you happen to roll something that is race-specific, like "elf" that means you have to be an elf class at Level 1.
Of my 4 character funnel characters, I had 2 elves that would have made terrible elves. Then a potato farmer with no positive ability scores. And another character who could basically cuss at the monsters.

Yeah and DCC is just slightly more aligned with reality in that you work with what fate gave you. You might be an elf whose dumb as a box of rocks, but maybe you stay alive simply by pure luck, or because somehow you're able to just barely avoid the swinging axe blade when you bent down to pick up a shiny pebble that caught your eye.

 

[Retreater]

There just aren't many RPGs out there that appeal to me less than DCC.
1) Level 0 Character Funnels (for the 12 pages that we've already discussed)
2) A thick rulebook crammed with charts that you have to constantly look at so you can't just "enjoy the game" (if I wanted to be constantly flipping through a rulebook, I'd be playing Pathfinder)
3) Dice that look "gross" with the numbers printed on the edges. (In fact, the entire look of the game is amateurish and nasty. It looks like a 1970s pizza menu.)
In the 2 years since I made the first post, I've had friends try DCC and basically get the same result. Different games, different GMs, different conventions.
What else has happened? Well, Shadowdark has jumped on the funnel bandwagon, spreading more Lulz for peasants in meat grinders.

 

[payn]

My buddy, before he passed away, ran us through a funnel convention game. He had a pile of like 60 level 0 characters. As the game went on you just got dealt more and more of them. The goal was to try and uncover as much of the dungeon and challenges while still having a decent number of level 0's in the bank. We had an absolute blast! I would kill any saturday afternoon just doing one of these one shot games to see how far we could get. In the past, we would have a similar survive as far as you can dungeon one shot games. However, we usually had characters of a higher level. One game at 5, another at 7, and I think even one at 9.

I really enjoy the short burst of old school skill play that you can get from DCC. They have some truly weirdly interesting modules to play through. It's certainly not for everybody, but if you want a good old school experience I think DCC goes a long way.

 

[Alzrius]

It's still possible in Most Traveller editions.

Fun fact, you can die in character creation in AD&D 2nd Edition as well (though it's extremely unlikely).

If you're using the psionics rules from PHBR5 The Complete Psionics Handbook, and elect to have your character roll for a wild talent, it's possible that you'll not just fail the roll so badly that you don't get a wild talent, but you can actually take a 1d6-point penalty to ability score (though you get a saving throw to avoid it). One of these can be Constitution, and so if your Constitution is a 6 or lower, you can potentially go kaput.

(Now, I'm pretty sure the rule about not being able to have an ability score of less than 3 would kick in here, so your character wouldn't actually die, but I prefer to think that your character was trying to master the Force so hard that their brain exploded!)

 

[Swanosaurus]

I'm kind of a fan of DCC (mostly for the art and the adventure design, less for the rules, TBH), but I must confess that I too, still, struggle with funnels.
It's not that I have a problem with my characters dying; I'm usually the first one to throw even an experienced character under the bus for some more or less dramatically appropriate reason. There's always a new character idea just as attractive waiting around the corner.
I don't have a problem with random chargen, either; sometimes, it's frustrating because you get something boring, but most of the time, it's inspiring.

What I do have a problem with it is something I realized recently when running that adventure with the space jellyfish starship that the characters are supposed to enter in search for treasure (I can't remember the name - Danger from the Air or something along the lines):
So, the most crazy and adventurous villagers enter the jellyfish. Fine. Then, they start dying ... well, okay. That's what happens. But, as in most funnels, the only way to really continue is if the other characters act like psychopaths who don't really care that people they have known their whole lives - in one case, a husband - just died in a gruesome manner. They're not supposed to snap, to kneel at their side sobbing uncontrollably, or to just GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE ... because that what surely put an end to the adventure. Also, playing up the tragedy would go against the fun spirit of a funnel. I get it. It's just that I really, really can't get into playing that person that would loot their dead's husband body and then continue on, looking for more treausure. And it was obviously the same for my players: They were stumped at how to roleplay this, and the whole adventure devolved into "Well, I guess we're supposed to continue, so that's what we'll do", but in the end, we just broke it off.

I think the concept of the funnel could work for me if it is quite clear that the characters have no other choice than to continue, trying to stay alive - in a true horror-movie setup. But continuing out of curiosity or for treasure after losing a bunch of friends or at the very least acquaintances? No, I really don't want to keep playing that kind of people ...

 

[Retreater]

The shame of it is that I have the rule book and dice set (I picked up the "new fan" pack - which is a great deal). And I got a big PDF bundle that has a lot of content that could keep me gaming with the system for years.
I had a bad experience with it the funnel - and I think my experience (while bad) is "roughly" the way it's supposed to go. And while I could try the system without it, that would be cutting out one of the major selling points about the system. Along with my players not liking the "strange dice," it would be like taking out the Escalation Die from 13th Age, Cyphers out of Numenera, or Sanity from Cthulhu.

 

[Swanosaurus]

The shame of it is that I have the rule book and dice set (I picked up the "new fan" pack - which is a great deal). And I got a big PDF bundle that has a lot of content that could keep me gaming with the system for years.
I had a bad experience with it the funnel - and I think my experience (while bad) is "roughly" the way it's supposed to go. And while I could try the system without it, that would be cutting out one of the major selling points about the system. Along with my players not liking the "strange dice," it would be like taking out the Escalation Die from 13th Age, Cyphers out of Numenera, or Sanity from Cthulhu.

I don't think so - sure, the funnel is a big part of their sales pitch, but it's usually just one or two sessions out of a whole campaign. I've been playing in a DCC campaign for more than a year, we reached 5th/6th level. I went into that campaign with a whoppin 3 characters left over from the funnel (not always playing all 3 of them) and subsequently lost only one of them, and it felt very much like a "normal" campaign in a gonzo setting and with lots of magical mishaps. I really liked it. You can cut out the funnel if you don't like it and still enjoy the rest of the campaign.

 

[overgeeked]

I had a bad experience with it the funnel - and I think my experience (while bad) is "roughly" the way it's supposed to go.

That's an incredibly bad assumption to make.