Sunday, June 4, 2017

[Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG] "Hole in the Sky"

The group indulges in a character funnel with a whopping 24 0-level peons answering the call of the Lady in Blue. What will they find on the other side of the eponymous hole in the sky? (Aside from death and dismemberment, of course.)



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Joining us this week is Honorary Member Jon, from the California chapter of the Order.

For those of you who would prefer to skip the character creation portion of the session, gameplay proper starts at 1:00.30.

Featuring:

Dave S.
Sage
Jade
Renae
Des
Jon
And...Edie the Dog

7 comments:

  1. These are your standard set of polyhedrals, now roll your d24 and d30! For Des, you can roll a d12, and then any other dice that you map to a 1 or 2 to simulate a d24 (which has the advantage of allowing you to roll more dice). Similar logic for d30 using a d10 and d6.

    I know nothing about the system, but I'm a big fan of anything that generates inherently disposable characters. I've never heard of Dungeon Crawl before, but if it can allow you to generate a character with 1HP it's clearly designed towards a one-shot.

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    Replies
    1. The game accommodates one-shots and campaign play, and both of them well.

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    2. I've seen DCC criticized as being suited only for convention-style play, but I do so want to run a campaign of it. I ran a short campaign a few years ago, but I only had two players in that group and characters kept dying. I think a good-sized group (at least 4-5 players) is important for a successful campaign.

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    3. This is my only exposure to the system, so I can believe it would work for campaign play. The most important factor to me is that it has a burnable luck pool, so players can help make the really important rolls. All my favourite systems have some sort of option to represent a PC being luckier than other people. Can it be spent on other things like mitigating damage as well, or is it only for boosting rolls?

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    4. Luck can be burned to boost your rolls. In the case of a Save, of course that might save your bacon.

      Thieves and Halflings get a better than 1:1 boost from burning Luck and also recover Luck, and Halflings can burn Luck for other character's benefit...

      All characters can earn new/more Luck (like XP) if the Judge gives some out at the end of an adventure.

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  2. Just caught up with this. I'm curious to know how your group felt it went. I have a vague familiarity with DCC, and I think of it as "sort of" OSR: not a literal retroclone, but trying really hard to emphasize certain aspects of (the way people remember) early D&D, in conscious opposition to more contemporary styles of gaming.

    Which is one thing for people who remember/are nostalgic for all that. But, if I recall correctly, a significant proportion of your group didn't enter RPGing through D&D, and if they did, it was through much more recent editions.

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    Replies
    1. Correct on all counts: it's a very idiosyncratic system that is essentially Joseph Goodman's heavily-houseruled version of old school D&D. And yeah, its obsession with the vagaries of random chance and high character mortality very much mark it apart from modern trends, but in ways that work really well.

      Likewise, with the exception of yours truly, to my knowledge *none* of the rest of the group came into gaming via pre-3e D&D. I had to bite my tongue to stop from delivering expository lectures on the underlying philosophies behind the character funnel and multiple polyhedrals.

      That all being said, the game went over VERY well; I've even had a couple players lodge strong requests that we play more of the system, with Jade going so far as to say she preferred it over Dungeon World. You just never know, eh?

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