DCC RPG

[Finarvyn]

I don't see much chatter about this game here, so maybe nobody plays, but I've been thinking of running some DCC with my group. I have all of the Lankhmar stuff for DCC, several of Goodman Games' main modules, and am thinking of kickstarting DCC Dying Earth later this week.

My older group playtested DCC back in the day and I thought my current group might find it fun. The artwork tends to be very "Appendix N" in feel and the adventures are written much in that vibe as well. I'm pondering running a "no clerics" campaign to cap out some of the healing effects, but the cleric magic rules are kind of neat so maybe that's not a great idea.

Anyone have any thoughts about this game?

[doublejig2]

Currently playing homebrew King's Land DCC campaign. The players love the system: deed die, spell check, the power of wizards in general, disfavors, how character death is handled, the funnel, etc. We played 7 or 8 DCC modules (all of them were impressive, including one from Lankhmar), which I linked to the setting and are now adventuring in a converted to DCC, Darkness Beneath, which was arrived to through a pit in waysoftheearth's Secrets of the Old City one page dungeon. Gripes: I don't like the DCC monsters so much or its underlying milieu, but I love Darkness Beneath, so it's not a problem. It is remarkable that the adventurers started out as 0-level peasants and tradesmen and over the course of much less than a year of game time, they've become hardened freebooters and now mega dungeon delvers.

In a nutshell, though I'm already considering another system for my next campaign, that said, we're having a blast playing DCC for now.

[flightcommander]

I was a player in two (roughly) weekly DCC games for (roughly) 3 years, and it was good fun. I played (a) a Dwarf and (b) a Wizard. Playing a magic-using character in DCC was interesting because of the variety of spell effects, and the various ways those effects could be influenced. This lead to some wild plot moments.

It's a great blend of B/X simplicity with AD&D extras and some gonzo 80's home-brew flavor.

I'm a huge fan of Vance's Dying Earth and am looking forward to seeing the DCC edition.

[geoffrey]

Yeah, I'm really curious what DCC's Dying Earth set will be like. If it is more like the first Dying Earth book and less like the sequels, I will be pleased.

[Finarvyn]

Jun 23, 2021 9:10:57 GMT -6 geoffrey said:

Yeah, I'm really curious what DCC's Dying Earth set will be like. If it is more like the first Dying Earth book and less like the sequels, I will be pleased.

I like the first two ... The Dying Earth is really like a half-dozen short stories strung together and I like them, but I think I like Eyes of the Overworld even better.

[Falconer]

I’ve been wanting to try the older Dying Earth RPG by Robin Laws and Pelgrane Press. It seems like it would require a pretty talented group of players, but my group might fit the bill.

As for DCC RPG, I never got into it for a number of reasons.

#1, the rulebook is a huge whopper. Not my thing.

#2, it touts itself as modern and streamlined and 3E. Also not my thing.

#3, Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea covers a lot of the same ground without the above issues.

[Deleted]

I like the fact that there is a lot of support on DCC, like various settings on kickstarter showing up.
There are some ideas that sounds good on the system as well, like their magic system.

But I don't buy the funny dices idea, it doesn't makes sense to me probabilistically and it makes you spend even more money on custom dices.
I already don't like to use d8, d12 and I often avoid d4's, what a d7 and d22 even means?
I'm not only criticizing, I really don't have a clue about why they need those dices and why they felt like increasing the complexity of the game with them.

But I would like to buy some of the settings, I'm looking at that DCC Lankhmar for a while, the only reason I didn't bought it yet is that I just received a box of the AD&D Lankhmar as a gift from a friend recently. But I'm always happy to see them launching new products.

[geoffrey]

Jun 23, 2021 13:22:39 GMT -6 @jacksonbenete said:

I don't buy the funny dices idea, it doesn't makes sense to me probabilistically and it makes you spend even more money on custom dices.
I already don't like to use d8, d12 and I often avoid d4's, what a d7 and d22 even means?
I'm not only criticizing, I really don't have a clue about why they need those dices and why they felt like increasing the complexity of the game with them.

I'll go to bat for DCC's additional types of dice. Sometimes I need to generate a number between 1 and 7, and a 7-sider would come in handy. Etc. I wish I had a set of 28 dice: a 3-sider, a 4-sider, a 5-sider, etc. all the way up to a 30-sider. A 23-sided die (amongst others) would come in handy sometimes.

Yes, I know one can do work-arounds with other dice: re-rolling certain results, dividing by two, using a high-low die, etc. But imagine a list of 23 monsters on a random table: Rather than rolling a 12-sider and a 6-sider (the latter a high-low die) and re-rolling on a 12 and a 4-6, it would be so much easier to grab your 23-sider and roll the thing!

Plus how cool polyhedra are.

[thomden]

Jun 23, 2021 15:13:05 GMT -6 geoffrey said:

Jun 23, 2021 13:22:39 GMT -6 @jacksonbenete said:

I don't buy the funny dices idea, it doesn't makes sense to me probabilistically and it makes you spend even more money on custom dices.
I already don't like to use d8, d12 and I often avoid d4's, what a d7 and d22 even means?
I'm not only criticizing, I really don't have a clue about why they need those dices and why they felt like increasing the complexity of the game with them.

I'll go to bat for DCC's additional types of dice. Sometimes I need to generate a number between 1 and 7, and a 7-sider would come in handy. Etc. I wish I had a set of 28 dice: a 3-sider, a 4-sider, a 5-sider, etc. all the way up to a 30-sider. A 23-sided die (amongst others) would come in handy sometimes.

Yes, I know one can do work-arounds with other dice: re-rolling certain results, dividing by two, using a high-low die, etc. But imagine a list of 23 monsters on a random table: Rather than rolling a 12-sider and a 6-sider (the latter a high-low die) and re-rolling on a 12 and a 4-6, it would be so much easier to grab your 23-sider and roll the thing!

Plus how cool polyhedrals are.

I have to agree. While I don't play DCC, except a few times at conventions, its "gonzo" approach is its best selling point. When the designers asked themselves what dice should be used the answer was "all of them". There is a certain cool factor to that.

[Deleted]

I played in one game of DCC about three years ago. My longest-lived character was a Vancian mad magic user who became obsessed with experimenting on slaves and eventually managed to become a horribly deformed frog creature who had to be put out of his misery. 10/10 gaming experience. Would play again.

[tkdco2]

Having to roll those weird dice is one reason I was turned off from DCC. the other was having to start out as a level zero character. Just not my thing.

[Finarvyn]

I know that the DCC rulebook is absurd in size. I kept trying to convince Joseph Goodman to make a rule book and another spell book instead of putting it all into one. The number of pages of actual rules is amazingly small. The rest of the book is spell effects, since each spell has its own individual effects chart.

Also, I hear all sorts of dislike for the weird dice. A couple of thoughts:

(1) Same complaint in the 1970's over sets of polyhedral dice. Folks wanted to use d6's only. A few decades later, poly dice are pretty standard for almost every game. Goodman dice are becoming more common and may do the same thing.

(2) The "dice chain" is just a simple way to factor in different effects that might influence a situation. A lot of folks complain about C&C's SIEGE (prime versus not-prime skills) or 5E's advantage/disadvantage; they say those mechanics don't have enough granularity. Well, teh dice chain fixes that problem. Instead of funky dice you can substitute different bonuses to regular dice. Easy fix

[geoffrey]

Jun 23, 2021 17:05:52 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

Also, I hear all sorts of dislike for the weird dice. A couple of thoughts:

(1) Same complaint in the 1970's over sets of polyhedral dice. Folks wanted to use d6's only.

Yeah, we with our four-sided, eight-sided, ten-sided, twelve-sided, and twenty-sided dice have been playing with weird dice long before there was such a thing as Goodman Games.

[tkdco2]

The large book can be daunting, but I prefer things all in one book. The HERO system rulebook for 5th Edition was similarly massive. HERO 6th edition and GURPS 4th edition both had two core books instead of one, and I didn't buy either.

I really don't have much use for the new dice, so I won't buy them just for this one game. I found a few uses for the d30, so I've had one for a long time.

[jeffb]

I'm sorry if anyone feels offended, but get a kick out of it when people complain about DCC's "weird" dice.

First of all it's a minimal investment. Most of us have a gigantic bag of dice. And spend hundreds of dollars on game products. It's not a big deal in the grand scheme of things.


Second, I think the "weird dice opposition" have forgotten how alien the "normal" polyhedral dice of D&D are to everyone else in the world who doesn't play RPGs. I've had people unfamilaiar with D&D look at me like I have two heads when I break out a set of "normal" polyhedrals Most of us never had this opposition to D20s, and D8s, etc when we started playing D&D whether it was the late 70s, 80s, 90s. We are all here on a D&D forum, and I'm guessing all of us own and have used the "normal" set. Ken St. Andre did have an issue, but that's because he couldn't find them in Arizona in 1975. Had no clue what they were. The majority of us never had this problem.

As for the game, I've chronicled my past with it in a thread here in this section of the forum. Short answer- Elements I love, Elements I hate. I use it mostly as a book for inspiration, and I rip off a few mechanics.

[geoffrey]

One of the things that immediately attracted me to D&D back in 1980 was all the weird dice. They are awesome.

D&D with only six-siders would feel very wrong to me.

[tkdco2]

I once started a thread on Dragonsfoot about playing D&D with only d6. Then again, I played the HERO System for a long time.

[thomden]

Jun 23, 2021 20:55:57 GMT -6 tkdco2 said:

I once started a thread on Dragonsfoot about playing D&D with only d6. Then again, I played the HERO System for a long time.

The d6 is interesting in its mathematic properties. You can use it as a d2, or a d3. You can get a great spread: 1-3 common, 4-5 uncommon, 6 rare.

For a designer it is pretty versatile.

But other than that it is boring and mundane. Polyhedrals have a real magic to them that helped to sell D&D, besides creating a wider range of probabilities to work with.

[tkdco2]

I don't find the d6 boring or mundane, but YMMV. That said, I do like the regular polyhedral dice.

I have used playing cards instead of dice. The Castle Falkenstein game is set up that way.

[geoffrey]

Here's a good post by Jeff Rients explaining how to roll 1d6 when all that you have are 2d6:
jrients.blogspot.com/2021/04/a-side-result-of-some-dice-math-other.html

[Finarvyn]

Jun 24, 2021 6:34:18 GMT -6 geoffrey said:

Here's a good post by Jeff Rients explaining how to roll 1d6 when all that you have are 2d6:
jrients.blogspot.com/2021/04/a-side-result-of-some-dice-math-other.html

Jeff is a great guy and I love his sense of humor, but everyone knows that the way to do this is to roll 2d6 of different colors so that one is the "control die" and if the control die is 1-3 you keep the result of the other die and if the control die is 4-6 you reroll the whole thing. How could Jeff have not seen that?

To tie it back to DCC and funky dice, why not roll a d7 and if the result is a 7 then you just reroll? Seems a lot easier than rolling two d6's.

[geoffrey]

Fin, I'd give your post two or three thumbs up if I could.

[jeffb]

One of the great things about DCC is how the Dice Step works for Attacks/Actions, and the Zocchi dice are key.

It keeps modifiers the same, and you use dice of smaller size for secondary actions (and possibly tertiary, I cant recall at the moment). 3.X and all it's derivatives made it way more complicated by the change in attack bonus for additional attacks (-5,10, etc).

DCC has your dice improve over time and not modifiers. E.G. You roll a D20 for your primary, and a D16 for your secondary and add the same combat mod to each roll. As you level up you may be rolling a D24 or D30 as your primary, and a D20 as your secondary. And in DCC the Casters also have to make these rolls. I find this much more satisfying and fun. But I *AM* a fan of dice step mechanics (Earthdawn, in particular)

I think what kept me from going "all in" on DCC are the following

1) funnels (fun for a one-off, way too much emphasis in "core " play)

2) The tables get tiresome/cumbersome over time

3) Gonzo for Gonzo's sake

4) Overt punishing nature (especially spellcasting)

5) quirky/clique nature of the DCC community

That said, I think it has some brilliant takes with certain game mechanics, and it's a load of fun in small doses. I just can't do it as the daily driver.

[geoffrey]

Jun 24, 2021 11:42:36 GMT -6 jeffb said:

One of the great things about DCC is how the Dice Step works for Attacks/Actions, and the Zocchi dice are key.

It keeps modifiers the same, and you use dice of smaller size for secondary actions (and possibly tertiary, I cant recall at the moment). 3.X and all it's derivatives made it way more complicated by the change in attack bonus for additional attacks (-5,10, etc).

DCC has your dice improve over time and not modifiers. E.G. You roll a D20 for your primary, and a D16 for your secondary and add the same combat mod to each roll. As you level up you may be rolling a D24 or D30 as your primary, and a D20 as your secondary. And in DCC the Casters also have to make these rolls. I find this much more satisfying and fun.

I've never played DCC, but changing dice rather than changing what you add to an unchanging die type sounds fun.

[tkdco2]

Gonzo for Gonzo's sake is pretty hit or miss for me. I have to be in the mood for that setting or style of play, and it puts my players off more often than not. Ditto the funnels and overt punishing nature. The character funnel also has no appeal for me. Considering how fragile level 1 characters are in D&D, why nerf them even further?

One guideline I've taken whenever I purchase something, including rpgs, is the cost per use. Just divide the cost of the item by the number of times you use it. So if you buy a $1000 suit and wear it only once, you've paid $1000. If you wear the same suit 10 times, its actual cost is $100. And so on. That's what has kept me from buying a lot of products. Why would I buy a game I may only play once or twice? That's my main reason for not investing in the rulebook and the dice.

[jeffb]

Jun 24, 2021 13:16:30 GMT -6 tkdco2 said:

Gonzo for Gonzo's sake is pretty hit or miss for me. I have to be in the mood for that setting or style of play, and it puts my players off more often than not. Ditto the funnels and overt punishing nature. The character funnel also has no appeal for me. Considering how fragile level 1 characters are in D&D, why nerf them even further?

One guideline I've taken whenever I purchase something, including rpgs, is the cost per use. Just divide the cost of the item by the number of times you use it. So if you buy a $1000 suit and wear it only once, you've paid $1000. If you wear the same suit 10 times, its actual cost is $100. And so on. That's what has kept me from buying a lot of products. Why would I buy a game I may only play once or twice? That's my main reason for not investing in the rulebook and the dice.

FWIW- they have a free quickstart for levels 1-2,Quickstart with adventure

And the dice of course are usable otherwise (and they also go over how to play without the Zocchi dice, if you don't have)

So really not much investment at all to check it out. The free adventure, "Portal Under the Stars" ended up being one of my "Kids Group"'s favorite adventures of all time. I had alot of fun running it for them as well. I ran it as a normal level 1 Adventure.

[geoffrey]

Overall the DCC game does not appeal to me. My favorite part are the dice. If they weren't so expensive, I'd buy some and use them in my D&D games.

[jeffb]

Jun 24, 2021 14:05:59 GMT -6 geoffrey said:

Overall the DCC game does not appeal to me. My favorite part are the dice. If they weren't so expensive, I'd buy some and use them in my D&D games.

Are you in the US? Amazon has them for under $8 shipped (PRIME of course).

link

[geoffrey]

Jun 24, 2021 14:12:23 GMT -6 jeffb said:

Jun 24, 2021 14:05:59 GMT -6 geoffrey said:

Overall the DCC game does not appeal to me. My favorite part are the dice. If they weren't so expensive, I'd buy some and use them in my D&D games.

Are you in the US? Amazon has them for under $8 shipped (PRIME of course).

link

Hey, thanks for that link! I've added the dice to my wish list, and I'll order them when I need to order other stuff getting me above $25 for the free shipping.

[asaki]

Another option is to use a digital dice roller (though it's not as much fun as the real thing).

Jun 24, 2021 14:05:59 GMT -6 geoffrey said:

Overall the DCC game does not appeal to me. My favorite part are the dice. If they weren't so expensive, I'd buy some and use them in my D&D games.

If you buy this kit, you practically get the dice for free! goodman-games.com/store/product/dcc-first-time-fan-kit/