Why DCC?

When I started planning my Dungeon 23 journey for the year, I immediately knew that I'd write it for Dungeon Crawl Classics, my favourite iteration of Dungeon Game Where You Go Fight Monsters Underground And Take Their Stuff. This decision was purely self-serving: I love DCC, I run a lot of DCC adventures, and so I wanted to write something that would use DCC, since I'm likely the only person who's ever going to run this.

In the past week, however, there's a sudden explosion of interest among 5e players to step back from "Corporate Dungeon Game" and try something else. So as a bonus post this week, I decided to do a quick write-up of why I love DCC so much, in case you or someone you know has been looking at this weird RPG, apparently about bushy-eyed wizards and VW vans in space, and asking "what is this thing?"

I'm not saying "everyone should drop 5e and switch to DCC immediately it's better in every way." Rather, I suspect that a lot of people, long vaguely aware of "other RPGs", are now looking for more information about them, and I'm hoping to provide one fan's perspective. So, in a particular but inscrutable order, here's four things I love about DCC:

Thing 1: DCC is Familiar

The first thing I like about DCC is that, if you've ever played any version of D&D, you're going to feel right at home here. The game is about fantasy heroes delving into the deeps, defeating horrific monsters, and getting rich off the plunder. It uses funky polyhedral dice (funkier than most), but the basic rule is "say what you want to do, roll a d20, add a number, and if it's high enough you succeed," which should feel familiar to anyone who's touched D&D or its ilk before. Characters have six attributes, higher numbers are (almost always) better, you roll to hit an opponent's Armour Class, and hope that they run out of Hit Points before you do.

For me, this familiarity means it's pretty easy for me to pitch DCC to a group of newcomers. If you've never played an RPG before, well and good (and I'm honestly honoured to be allowed to introduce you to the hobby!), but if you have, you probably will understand 90% of what's going on here right out the gate. There's this perception that learning a new RPG is difficult, and while I think it's not as hard as it seems, having all of this familiarity makes the process that much easier.

Thing 2: DCC is accessible

This kind of goes with Thing 1, but DCC has a low barrier for entry for a number of reasons. As mentioned above, it plays very similar to the most popular RPGs around, but is a fair bit simpler than they are. DCC has no skills or feats to keep track of, characters have only a couple of broad "cool powers" that improve but don't fundamentally change much as you gain levels, and on the Judging side, has a very strong, extensive catalog of adventures to pull from if you don't want to write your own. Don't be intimidated by the massive rulebook: it's like that because it's chock-full of art (almost every page has illustrations of some kind on it) and because the game relies heavily on random tables, which take up page-count but only need to be referenced infrequently. In general, the actual rules you need to remember to play the game probably fit on about four sheets of paper.

Beyond the ease of rules, however, the game is accessible in another way - it's cheap! They've got a free quickstart ruleset here (pay no mind to the "Only 5$!" on the cover, this link is directly to the publisher's website), and then if you want the game, the rulebook is only 25 USD in softcover and is the only book you need. At this point it's probably worth saying that I'm not affiliated with Goodman in any way, and get nothing from any of this except the satisfaction of sharing a game I love with the community. I'm only mentioning the prices to illustrate that you don't need a huge investment to try out this game. One thing I will add is that the funky dice are pretty expensive (30-35 USD is a lot for dice, even if you get a bunch of weird ones like d7), but there's a few online dice rollers for DCC (the crawler over at purplesorcerer.com has a bunch of rules lookups and random tables included in it as well), and Goodman themselves sell a first-time fan kit with the rules, dice, and a screen for very cheap if you've never bought one from them before.

Finally, it's worth mentioning that DCC was first published in 2012, and at the time, they chose to use masculine-only pronouns through the rulebook. They've since seen the error of their ways, and are currently in the process of overhauling the rules to use gender-neutral language. As far as I know, the latest printing of the softcover rules is now gender-neutral, and the hardcover rules will follow suit once it gets a new print run too.

Thing 3: The Funnel

It feels weird to me to list The Funnel as a thing I like about DCC, since I was pretty hesitant about it when I first picked up the rules. The Funnel is how characters are created in DCC. Rather than tailor-making a character for yourself, you are given four randomly generated peasants who are thrust into an adventure. Any that survive are allowed to take on a class and become an adventurer.

When I first came across this idea, I was opposed. I've been a forever-Judge as long as I've been an RPG-er, and I've always held the character creation process as sacred. I get to design a world and adventures, so my players get to design their characters, and shouldn't have to get a random one given to them. However, since I've been running a bunch of DCC, I've changed my mind about the funnel for two reasons:

1. Players still get to create their character. A character's starting abilities are actually not that important, especially since the ability modifiers are flatter in DCC than in other, similar games (they range from -3 to +3). If you want to play a warrior, any of your peasants, even Farmer Noodle-Arms, can learn to be a warrior, and will be a strong and capable fighter in no time. Plus, having the story of how Noodle-Arms made it through the Beastman's Temple and emerged believing in themself and their sword-arm is a great character backstory.
   
   
2. The Funnel is an amazing introduction to the game for new players. This gets back to the accessible nature of the game, but running a funnel means that a new player can sit down at the table and be playing a character in about five minutes, without needing to learn how to make a character or be presented with a whole handbook of options to digest. "Here's your peasants, here's a d20, that's a zombie vine, try not to die" is about all you need to get going. The peasants don't have any special powers, so the only rule you really need to learn is "describe to me what your character is trying to do, roll this, and hope for a high number." Plus, since peasants are supposed to die in the funnel, you don't need to feel bad if you made a mistake and lost a character - that's how it's supposed to go.

Thing 4: DCC Plays At the Table

This last thing is the thing I like most about DCC, and is the hardest to put into words, so apologies in advance if this doesn't make as much sense as I'd like it to.

Essentially, the funnel, the random tables, and the relative simplicity of the game all come together to mean that DCC heavily discourages what I call "build mentality" to your game, and instead asks you to make whatever you want real by doing it at the table, during the game. That is, you can't really pre-plan 10 levels of character progression to "build" the exact combination of game rules that let you play the character you want to play. Rather, the game asks you to play the character you want right from day one, at the table, using your choices and narration to bring that character to life.

Maybe a concrete example is in order. Lets say you envision a character who starts the game as a brigand, but then becomes a redeemed holy knight through their adventures. In other games, "brigand" might not be a class, so you'd probably choose a fighter or a rogue and play until you get the ability to fight with sneaky back-handed tactics to the level that you want to, maybe picking up a feat to make this happen. Then, when you were an appropriate level, you'd start taking levels in cleric or paladin, and suddenly become a holy warrior dedicated to good and justice.

In DCC, you'd start the game as a warrior, and remain a warrior the whole time. First level warriors get the ability to declare "mighty deeds of arms", which lets them add a cool twist to their attacks under certain conditions. Early in your character's life, you'd use those mighty deeds to do dastardly tactics like pocket sand and crippling in-fighting. Then, when you had an appropriate moment in the fiction, you'd dedicate yourself to The Light, cast off your wickedness, and then start using your mighty deeds to smite the undead instead.

So it's not that DCC doesn't let you make the character you want to make. Rather, DCC asks that you think about that character's story and express it through actions at the table, rather than through mechanics you picked ahead of time. It means that you don't have to wait until a certain level before you start to actually play the character you want to, and it means that if your character wants a new power or ability, they have to go quest for it. For example, wizards don't get to choose what new spells they get each level, so if your character wants to learn fire magic, they don't just say "I learned fire magic at the end of last session." Instead, Zyrtec the Decongested has to approach their companions and propose a trip to the Fires of Mount Mauiknockoff to learn magic from the magma queen that lives therein.

For me, this makes running and playing games of DCC much more an exercise in collaborative storytelling and unexpected outcomes than other RPGs I've run. I also recognize that this may not be for everyone - if building characters and messing around with how rules can be made to interact is fun for you, you might be frustrated with DCC's relative simplicity and reliance on randomness, and that's valid. I still humbly submit that you try a game of DCC - you might be surprised at how much fun you get playing a Luchador by doing Luchador things rather than hacking together three classes and five feats to try and make it happen.

So there you have it. Four things I love about DCC, and four reasons that you should consider playing it if you are in the market for a new dungeon game to try out.