DCC Level 0 Character Funnel is a Bad Concept

[Retreater]

So I had the misfortune recently of playing a Level 0 Character Funnel for my first experience of Dungeon Crawl Classics. I'll describe the ordeal for you.
1) Six players. Four characters each. Two actions a turn. For a ridiculous 48 actions per turn (plus the monsters actions.) Keeping up with positioning of 24 characters, what they're doing, etc.
2) Random character creation is awful in the system, because your class/background has no bearing on your ability scores. So I had an elven sage with a 4 Int. Even if he survived, what would I have wanted to do, play a worthless elf who couldn't even use magic.
3) Random die rolls to kill characters. If you're going to use a character funnel with a stable of characters, the player should be able to volunteer the character to be killed as "tribute" - or at least have their actions lead to the character death. My best characters died before I got a chance to make a single decision and I was left with garbage tier random generated losers unfit to adventure.
The experience has completely soured me on the game system.

Edit: more thoughts from Page 7...
"I had a bad experience and had some holdover gripes from that game when I made the OP. While I don't want to tell anyone they're having "badwrongfun" I can say that the experience I had with the the funnel at the con game was badly run and poorly implemented. The game was so bad that I can't imagine another Judge(?) being able to present it differently due to the inherent flaws in the structure of the character funnel concept in that adventure."

 

[Parmandur]

So I had the misfortune recently of playing a Level 0 Character Funnel for my first experience of Dungeon Crawl Classics. I'll describe the ordeal for you.
1) Six players. Four characters each. Two actions a turn. For a ridiculous 48 actions per turn (plus the monsters actions.) Keeping up with positioning of 24 characters, what they're doing, etc.
2) Random character creation is awful in the system, because your class/background has no bearing on your ability scores. So I had an elven sage with a 4 Int. Even if he survived, what would I have wanted to do, play a worthless elf who couldn't even use magic.
3) Random die rolls to kill characters. If you're going to use a character funnel with a stable of characters, the player should be able to volunteer the character to be killed as "tribute" - or at least have their actions lead to the character death. My best characters died before I got a chance to make a single decision and I was left with garbage tier random generated losers unfit to adventure.
The experience has completely soured me on the game system.

I'm sorry to hear that, I've always found it an amusing experience. And from Level 1 on, it's a much more standard RPG experience.

 

[Smackpixi]

Why would anyone track 24 characters on a grid? What I assume you mean by tracking positions. Don’t Do that.

Um, overall, feels like a weird reaction. for me the funnel is like the best part of the system. Survival is pure chance, yeah. The idea is discovering your character through the experience, whatever it is. So your stupidest character is the only one to survive, make what you can with them and, yeah, sure, might be a short future, but that’s their life, live it, role play it.

Random character creation is random, what part of that don’t you understand? Don’t want random characters, don’t use a random generator.

But really, if you don’t embrace chaos, DCC isn’t for you. Once your perfectly rolled character survives the funnel and starts casting spells you’re gonna be back here with more complaints about the unfairness of the system.

It’s a different game. Be prepared for it to play differently.

 

[Parmandur]

Why would anyone track 24 characters on a grid? What I assume you mean by tracking positions. Don’t Do that.

Um, overall, feels like a weird reaction. for me the funnel is like the best part of the system. Survival is pure chance, yeah. The idea is discovering your character through the experience, whatever it is. So your stupidest character is the only one to survive, make what you can with them and, yeah, sure, might be a short future, but that’s their life, live it, role play it.

Random character creation is random, what part of that don’t you understand? Don’t want random characters, don’t use a random generator.

But really, if you don’t embrace chaos, DCC isn’t for you. Once your perfectly rolled character survives the funnel and starts casting spells you’re gonna be back here with more complaints about the unfairness of the system.

It’s a different game. Be prepared for it to play differently.

Yeah, that's a good point: TotM works better for this, and the stats don't make that big a difference, relatively speaking.

 

[Retreater]

Why would anyone track 24 characters on a grid? What I assume you mean by tracking positions. Don’t Do that.

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 character creation is random, what part of that don’t you understand? Don’t want random characters, don’t use a random generator.

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.

But really, if you don’t embrace chaos, DCC isn’t for you. Once your perfectly rolled character survives the funnel and starts casting spells you’re gonna be back here with more complaints about the unfairness of the system.

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.

 

[Smackpixi]

"roll on a chart and your character is dead."

Curious about that, I’ve run a few funnels and there was none of that.

 

[Retreater]

Curious about that, I’ve run a few funnels and there was none of that.

This was Accursed Heart of the World Ender. There was a random chart to mutate your character, which could lead to your character's death - or at least "forced retirement from the adventure."
Other moments were like, "this villain appears and you can't get away or act - I'm going to roll randomly around the table and kill a character each turn. Based on what comes up on the die, it could be your best character, worst character, character with the most defined personality, etc."

 

[Parmandur]

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.

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

 

[Retreater]

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

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.

 

[Lanefan]

If you happen to roll something that is race-specific, like "elf" that means you have to be an elf class at Level 1.

That's more a flaw of having race-as-class baked into the system, I think.