How do you run a DCC campaign

[derv]

For those who have run an ongoing campaign using DCC I'd like to hear your approach. Did you run them like any other D&D-esque game? Do you port over material from other games? I mean DCC kinda has its own vibe that doesn't quite feel like your typical D&D. No setting is really implied, yet the mood of the game as expressed by the art and the mechanics is certainly suggestive. More pulpy I guess. I think that's what they were going for. Do you stick to DCC published material? Or have you made things up whole cloth? How about running a sandbox with it or do your games tend to be one adventure point to another?

We recently ran a one shot funnel and everyone is asking to continue on. So, just looking to hear from others before I get invested in preps.

[doublejig2]

My group has played about 10 of the DCC modules before moving into Darkness Beneath. I drew a rough map and placed the modules therein. Not so much a sandbox as a legend factory. This group started with a funnel and the survivors pressed on. In less than 3 months game time, they've seen every cult, trick, trap, more cults, freakish thing, Cthuhlu horrors, and other monsters that Goodman Games could throw at them.

They particularly liked the Curse of Kingspire but also something as dissimilar as Acting Up in Lankhmar, mainly due to the fresh challenges. I don't think you can go wrong with the published modules: The People of the Pit, The Emerald Enchanter and the others. While, I lack the motivation to homebrew DCC, all in all, a very good time for everyone involved!

[derv]

Thanks for the input doublejig2 . The way Goodman presents DCC and its adventures I was wondering if that wasn't the case for most groups. I'm sure there are some who create their material whole cloth, but it seems like its heavily geared towards using endorsed published adventures. That's likely the route I'll take for the time being.

[doublejig2]

We just wrapped up our DCC campaign tonight. The party was last seen clearing out the last remnants of the Mysterious Crystal Hemisphere of Darkness Beneath. They were well supplied and armed with disintegrators, a wrap on a 2-year campaign. Much fun.

[Deleted]

Jan 9, 2022 21:43:51 GMT -6 doublejig2 said:

We just wrapped up our DCC campaign tonight. The party was last seen clearing out the last remnants of the Mysterious Crystal Hemisphere of Darkness Beneath. They were well supplied and armed with disintegrators, a wrap on a 2-year campaign. Much fun.

Is this the Brown Chairs or a new group?

[doublejig2]

Brown Chairs!

[Deleted]

Jan 12, 2022 19:09:23 GMT -6 doublejig2 said:

Brown Chairs!

Excelsior! It's fantastic to get an old group back together, isn't it? 

[doublejig2]

Yes, indeed. And, I'm not even going to bother with, "what took us so long to return to the game table?" I really don't know the answer.

[vasious]

So how is the time between modules handled?

A lot of the tables and things like spell burn suggest tracking of time is important to give the results and mechanics suitable weight

[doublejig2]

My group didn't put up with much down time. They managed to go from adventure to adventure with little pause. Crazy, to think that just 3 months ago (game time) they were just 0-level denizens; now they're seasoned veterans!

[derv]

Our group started with the classic funnel, The Portal Under the Stars. It's a nice way to start. More puzzle and trap then combat. Still very deadly. I then ran them through a tournament module, The Shambling Undead. I found this online somewhere. This was a real slog. If I would run it again I'd do a few things different. Fortunately they had fun despite the high pressure that tournament games can create. They were particularly fond of the evil acolytes pulling the teeth of the other clerics in order to stuff them full of mind controlling wormy grubs, grubs that go plop! when you step on them. Next game I prepped for is a short adventure, The Legend of the Silver Skull. After that, depending on who survives, I'll be running this years Free RPG Day adventure, Tomb of the Savage Kings. After that, we'll see. I may try to incorporate things onto a map and attempt to be more intentional with in between adventure time and travel. I'm not sure that they don't actually prefer just running adventures with no real connection at this time.

[doublejig2]

My group also played and thoroughly enjoyed Tomb of the Savage Kings.

[ravenheart87]

I ran a ~25 sessions long campaign before that was mostly a city crawl with some wilderness, planar, and space adventures. It was one of my favourite campaigns ever.

[derv]

Jan 23, 2022 17:10:20 GMT -6 vasious said:

So how is the time between modules handled?

A lot of the tables and things like spell burn suggest tracking of time is important to give the results and mechanics suitable weight

It doesn’t seem like your question was addressed.

Can’t say I’ve run into this yet. Most likely I’ll have pc’s sit out a session if need be. Right now each player currently has a backlog of characters they can run. Kind of a byproduct of running a zero level funnel. To start out they each ran four zero level characters. Some died, others rotated in during our second session, and now they each have two first level characters and one or two almost first level. On average they each lost two or three characters.

So now I’ll probably have them run two characters of their choice for the next session (which is supposed to be tonight) with at least one being 1st level. Most of the published adventures call for a fairly large party.

[vasious]

So what level of monetary treasure does one seed to find in an adventure if one was rolling ones own?

[vasious]

Jan 25, 2022 14:44:24 GMT -6 derv said:

Jan 23, 2022 17:10:20 GMT -6 vasious said:

So how is the time between modules handled?

A lot of the tables and things like spell burn suggest tracking of time is important to give the results and mechanics suitable weight

It doesn’t seem like your question was addressed.

Can’t say I’ve run into this yet. Most likely I’ll have pc’s sit out a session if need be. Right now each player currently has a backlog of characters they can run. Kind of a byproduct of running a zero level funnel. To start out they each ran four zero level characters. Some died, others rotated in during our second session, and now they each have two first level characters and one or two almost first level. On average they each lost two or three characters.

So now I’ll probably have them run two characters of their choice for the next session (which is supposed to be tonight) with at least one being 1st level. Most of the published adventures call for a fairly large party.

Thanks, yes seems like having back up PCs or seconds might be needed especially for smaller groups

[derv]

Jan 25, 2022 17:04:15 GMT -6 vasious said:

So what level of monetary treasure does one seed to find in an adventure if one was rolling ones own?

A couple of things that DCC suggests. First, the game has decoupled treasure from experience gains, so coinage takes on a less significant role. Still, money is needed for the basics. In this the designers suggest you keep in mind the frugality of a medieval setting. Where does this treasure come from in a society heavily based on barter and trade? Even though they don't include any treasure generation tables their suggestion is that you could use one from any game you are accustomed to. It should just be tailored to the setting. Possibly this would involve changing gold to silver and silver to copper. Maybe even reducing quantities to a tenth in some cases or what seems reasonable.

[doublejig2]

One thing my players complained about was the dearth of major coin treasures in some of the DCC modules. Artifacts of epic destruction, sure. But piles of coin, not so much. I listened to their complaints but didn't adjust the treasure!

[Finarvyn]

What I did with my group is explain the "Appendix N mentality" of coins and treasure, in that if you look at the end of most of the Conan stories or Fafhrd/Mouser stories, etc., you see that they end up with bags of loot -- yet, if you look at the start of most of the stories they start out broke. I told my group that treasure is fleeting and when they hit the big score they should buy a couple of items they want but assume the rest of the treasure went into carousing and boozing it up. Appendix N style characters never seem to save for later what they can spend excessively today.

No complaints so far, and it gives me chances to give them some absurd treasures because they know that they will be broke when we start the next session. Sometimes I start a session by asking, "so tell the table how you spent your share of the loot."

[vasious]

Aye one has to have something to carouse with

[hamurai]

Carousing, keeping gear in shape, carousing, taxes, and of course, carousing all cost coin. I'd let the PCs use the money they found at the beginning of a "downtime" to buy gear, the rest will be lost during downtime apart from what you'd get for a starting character in similar games.

I've used this system in other games like Traveller as well, when we played a bunch of scoundrels as PCs, the money tends to get spent on "stuff"(TM). My players know that I wouldn't let them starve over an empty purse, but they also know that I like to use that to keep them moving. Unless of course, a PC wants to settle down, then they can save their money ofr a while, but carrying it around is another problem.

[Starbeard]

I did it basically like Finarvyn . My DCC game was/is what we play whenever we need downtime or a filler between the group's main D&D game, so I leaned into the Appendix N aspect of it.

My focus was specifically on running DCC modules that were tournament style, intended to be completed in one session. Occasionally I'd come up with my own segues or alter the module a bit for narrative consistency, but generally speaking they just hopped from adventure to adventure, with downtime summarized & handwaved.

We began with Starless Sea, but I altered one of the areas a bit so that the sleeping god thing was a hidden cave they got dumped in after the end of the adventure, sort of a postlude. Poking around there awoke the thing, which proceeded to engulf the planet as their longboat suddenly unfurled a starry sail and rose up into space. So the conceit is that they are wandering the stars in search of a way to undo the destruction of their planet, or else find wealth and power somewhere else. They have backup characters on the boat, I decide where the next adventure takes place and what resources they have, sometimes reskin the modules to better fit into the worlds we've already established, and we all buy into the set piece tournament style together.

[bobjester0e]

I was able to run "Beneath the Well of Brass" for DCC RPG day last summer for my group. It was a blast, but a little under powered for a group of 4 players, each with 4 0-level characters. Had I known that 4 players were going to show up, I would have limited them to 2 characters each.

All 16 characters survived and leveled up to 1st, but it's been over 8 months since we played, and there will only be one or two returning players, and that's fine with me, since I told them that they'll not run all 4 PCs at the same time again.

I had only one problem with "Beneath the Well of Brass" in how to run a complicated fire trap. If I were to run this again, I'd use a simpler method to adjudicate the trap, relying less on understanding how it's worded and focus more on running it smoothly and with more lethality than my initial run.

Honestly, I don't blame the writing, but more on my prep time reading skills. If anything, all print should be larger in printed modules. LOL.

Since this was a one-shot, there was no downtime to judge between sessions. Going forward after the session, I told each player that they could use the quickstart rules to level up to 1st and buy anything they had coin for.

Coin treasure in "Beneath" was a little short, but the artifact items (non-magical, but FANTASTICAL) were worth a haul. The problem was fencing it all for spendable coin, and that was the hook for the next leg of (homebrewed) adventure that we never got to.

On spending coin after an adventure, Dave Arneson had a wifty idea in his First Fantasy Campaign (or was it Adventures in Fantasy, I can never remember...) about spending treasure on your character's listed interests or hobbies for XP.

One could spend it on training, ala AD&D training rules, or spend it all on wine, women & song, library/magical research, temple donations, or squirrel it away until you have enough to build a stronghold.

I love the idea, but the implementation was a little clunky for my taste, so I re-worked it for my own 0e/Holmes game. FWIW, I've never actually used it in any game, and it would take a bit of cludging to get it to work in DCC's low XP threshold level advancement system.

Basically, a night of wenching might get you 1-3 XP, depending on how much you spend per character level. Let's say that your newly minted 1st level fighter has 350 gold coins left over from upgrading weapons, armor and equipment, and is ready to start anew, but, those tavern girls have marked you for a night of entertainment & spending gold like a king.

How much do you want to spend? Spend up to 100gp, roughly 1/3rd of your remaining loot for 1 XP. Spend up to 2/3rd of your loot for 2 XP, or ALL of it for a whopping 3 XP!

Legends must, after all, spend legendary, and impressing NPCs with your wealth lends even more credibility to your level.

I use the 1-3 XP model after the DCC XP maxim of 1-3 XP per encounter. Treat downtime, in this case - 'carousing' as an encounter, but base it off of how much is spent.

I have a hard time with other kinds of expenditures, especially if it involves gaining anything of value, like buying equipment, or a horse, repairs, etc. because you are getting something for your expenditures, and gaining XP on top of that is essentially double dipping.

Carousing, as above, is an excellent example of downtime expenditures that impresses NPCs, but has little else of value. I suppose spending gold to gain an NPC contact is nebulous enough to count as an XP gaining activity, but in spending gold for a contact, you are getting something for your gold, so maybe this should have a limited XP award of 1 point, if at all.

Contacts come in two categories - Business and Personal. They are similar in that they offer the Judge an avenue of introducing quests, but differ in motivation. A Business contact expects payment or fealty of some sort. A Personal contact does it because of mutual loyalty/affection with the PC. Perhaps a third: Wenching, as the only promises made with this contact is the promise of a fleeting good time, further trysts, or even marriage, or familial opportunities - expected or non!

This might be seen as a complication instead, but giving the PC an additional excuse to go adventuring; either to get away from familial complications ("You're pregnant!??") or promises of better baubles for your favorite taproom smash.

[oldskolgmr]

I've played several games of DCC/MCC/Umerica with different Judges, all funnels so far (we may be about to level up). I've also been lucky enough to find several games of MCC (one funnel, one 1st level game). My takeaway from playing with different Judges is find one who house rule the way I like. I really have enjoyed playing a lot with two (who know the rules, and who enjoyed our goofy player Fun on the mission). I don't like battle boards or counting movement, and I found people who encourage that style of play. I found that we had an emergent (if silly) style of roleplay at the tables (with good Judges).

Highlights of silly fun have been, my minstrel (me) composing (on the spot) a truly terrible Sea shanty to console another PC. Finding and eating weird fungus in a MCC was a hoot (we all tried it, and I didn't know if the Judge randomly rolled for effects or assigned them). 

I would really like to play in a DCC or MCC campaign at some point. Sadly, my favorite Judges don't run DCC/MCC campaigns (yet).

[calithena]

My basic answer is "buy a bunch of Harley Stroh modules and run them." (Jobe Bittman, Michael Curtis, and others have good ones too actually.) I actually wound up in a DCC game by accident which was one of the many things that inspired me to try to get the band back together for Fight On! One thing to note about DCC is that it's not really like any edition of D&D I've played. It seems similar, and in some ways it is similar, but even at first level the PCs have the ability to project overwhelming force, and some of the monsters do too, so things "blow up" and are more random when the s-t really hits the fan than in the game you know. I mean a first level party beat a Type II demon in one of my games and it wasn't even close because the demon missed a saving throw in the first round.

You could do a fun campaign with it and first to tenth is a huge power gain but the game needs to be played to be understood. And the modules, although mostly involving 'small' rather than 'large' scenarios, are pretty good. It does have an old school feel much of the time, but like your 13th level AD&D campaign got somehow jammmed into 1st and 2nd level adventures. Worth trying.

[geoffrey]

I've often wondered if you could play DCC using B2: The Keep on the Borderlands without any prior conversion.

[bobjester0e]

Mar 29, 2022 12:35:22 GMT -6 geoffrey said:

I've often wondered if you could play DCC using B2: The Keep on the Borderlands without any prior conversion.

I am tempted to try. I don't know if I want to halve all B2 levels down to scale with DCC PC levels, or just run with it as is, scaling B2 levels UP in power to match DCC levels. 

Leaving the NPC levels as-is would mean that the 6th level Castellan is really a major player in the DCC scheme.

[oldskolgmr]

Mar 29, 2022 16:36:03 GMT -6 bobjester0e said:

Mar 29, 2022 12:35:22 GMT -6 geoffrey said:

I've often wondered if you could play DCC using B2: The Keep on the Borderlands without any prior conversion.

I am tempted to try. I don't know if I want to halve all B2 levels down to scale with DCC PC levels, or just run with it as is, scaling B2 levels UP in power to match DCC levels. 

Leaving the NPC levels as-is would mean that the 6th level Castellan is really a major player in the DCC scheme.

I know when I play DCC/MCC I feel like I did (in the best possible way) when I was about twelve. 
So, 12 year old me says: Both bobjester0e! >

[hamurai]

Mar 29, 2022 12:35:22 GMT -6 geoffrey said:

I've often wondered if you could play DCC using B2: The Keep on the Borderlands without any prior conversion.

You can, just make it a funnel and use as many poor 0-level sods as you deem right.

That said, I've played Sailors on the Starless Sea with Swords & Wizardry without pre-conversion, just a few adjustments on-the-fly. It went really well. I don't see why it shouldn't work the other way, playing a D&D module with DCC. You'll have to make some calls concerning Saving Throws and such, but apart from that, I'd say you'll be fine.

[geoffrey]

Mar 29, 2022 16:36:03 GMT -6 bobjester0e said:

Mar 29, 2022 12:35:22 GMT -6 geoffrey said:

I've often wondered if you could play DCC using B2: The Keep on the Borderlands without any prior conversion.

I am tempted to try. I don't know if I want to halve all B2 levels down to scale with DCC PC levels, or just run with it as is, scaling B2 levels UP in power to match DCC levels. 

Leaving the NPC levels as-is would mean that the 6th level Castellan is really a major player in the DCC scheme.

The Castellan being a mover-and-shaker is actually a plus for me. The Keep is the major bulwark between civilization and the marauding forces of Chaos. There's no way that the Realm would send a middling guy to stem the tide of darkness. They'd send the best they could get.