Less Mercy, More Doom! - Dungeon Crawl Classics - TTRPG Review

Hello Dungeon Crawl Classics from Goodman Games, part of the Old School Renaissance of TTRPG's.

You look interesting and full of doom for my players,

And you promised to kill three quarters of their characters before they even reach Level One?

I like you already.

Welcome to my ten-shot review of Dungeon Crawl Classics.

More than the one shot, less than a campaign, but enough to really get to grips with the system that was new for me and the players at my table.

Would you like to learn about funky dice, funkier spells, Ssisssuraaaaggg, the immortal demon-snake and that aforementioned doom?

Good. Keep watching.

My name's Rich. And this is Renegade Rolls.

Quick disclaimers and spoiler alerts: this video is not sponsored at all.

I paid for my version of the PDF as well as the online resources.

I'll be talking about The Portal Under The Stars adventure, which is in the back of the core book.

New systems deserve more than a single evening's play, but committing to a full campaign can be a lot.

I decided to run a ten-shot, which was enough to get familiar with the systems, check out the mechanics and really kind of understand the vibes that the system was aiming for.

We began with the starter adventure of The Portal Under The Stars, though I changed a bit about the ending and then the party veered off into homebrew territory for some overland exploration, falling in puddles and running away from this thing.

Before we get into that, here are the Dungeon Crawl Classics mechanics in 30 seconds.

Players aim to roll high, usually a d20.

There's a dice chain, including funky dice

Use them for damage and for modified rolls.

Classes are Cleric, Thief, Warrior, Wizard, Elf, Dwarf, and Halfling.

And yes, the species is a class.

It assumes the other characters are human.

The stats are Strength, Agility, Stamina, Personality, Intelligence and Luck, and you can burn stats to help with your rolls.

They recharge like hit points with rest, except for luck.

At Level 0, you get a background and a star sign.

Alignment really does matter and spells are weird.

For character creation, we followed the rules as written, with each player taking on four Level 0 characters.

Other than picking a name and alignment that there's no player choice here, just lots of random rolling with the potential for some really awful stats.

In the end, the characters were an interesting mix with some fun backgrounds and no two characters felt overly similar.

My players said they really enjoyed this though it felt a bit scary coming up with four characters on the spot where usually they'd have a week or two just to come up with one, but it was pretty easy to get up and running.

We used the Foundry VTT Portal Under The Stars map pack for this and it's been really well put together with the room descriptions and box text available to the GM here, but hidden for everyone else.

It's also got a couple of cool macros like the statue, which rotates to follow the players, and then the buttons to shoot fire as well are magic!

This made for a memorable but deadly start for my players, and a real demonstration of just how squishy the characters are at Level 0.

In Dungeon Crawl Classics, it's save or die at Level 0, with no Death Saving Throws or opportunities to come back. They're just dead.

This is actually where I made my first mistake GMing for this one.

I've taken a look at the setup for this adventure and decided rather than having the characters be enthusiastic dungeon delvers as per the book, instead I decided they were forced to go into the place by the local knight or face the pointed spears of their guards if they refused.

This meant that my players quite rightly created characters with an unusually strong sense of self preservation, which weren't as curious as they might otherwise have been, or as enthusiastic about exploring every nook and cranny of the dungeon.

Not helped by the fact that the front lines of characters got mown down by the traps, leaving only the most tentative and least suited to combat.

The upshot of this is a scary room with some vital information went unexplored and an epic battle with my little friend Ssisssuraaaaggg, the immortal demon-snake just didn't happen as the party shut the doors and just noped out of the encounter.

The lower level of the dungeon is where I found myself disappointed and my players frustrated.

The key to solving it is to realise that the room full of clay soldiers is directly underneath the shimmering pool on the level above, but there's nothing in the description of these lower levels to give any clues that might be noticeable to the characters relies on the players remembering the physical layout of the level above.

No one picked up on this and to be honest, I don't blame them.

They just saw an advancing army of clay soldiers with no realistic way to defeat them.

So I broke the game I gave them the clue which left everyone unsatisfied.

I think if I was to run this again, I'd come up with some foreshadowing.

Maybe clues about rains from above being the way to defeat the immortal army.

Or maybe just make some wet patches in the ceiling.

Maybe a single drip was coming down, and one clay soldier had dissolved.

I reckon little clues like that would be enough to set the players on the right path. But I didn't think of that in the moment.

They still got to fight the big chief at the end, and this was the first real test of the combat mechanics.

The players all said it was simple and intuitive and coming from DnD5E they were already mostly familiar with the mechanics, although there were few options on their turn at Level 0 and they were highly aware of just how fragile the characters were.

The final room contained some tasty tasty loot as well as a crystal ball which set up a load of exposition for a campaign ahead.

As written, and the voice in the crystal ball can plays on the characters greed, but I've decided to change that to be something a bit more neutral and a bit more mysterious.

Gazing into the crystal ball, you see an endless field of bright stars on a faint grey background, the ghostly image drifts in the star strewn ether, and a serene veiled face appears.

You are not him.

You're not the one fated to save this world.

He is... lost to me.

Your fate is uncertain.

But your task is not.

This world is wounded.

The forces of Bran-Dubh search for where the walls grow thin.

They cannot. They must not succeed.

You must go to the heart of The Wychwood.

There you will find danger but also artefacts of great value which could change the tide of dark wings.

Go with my blessing.

From there, the party levelled up and went out into the wider world.

Turns out you can do some very cool stuff in Foundry with fog of war.

I made a base map, then sketched over it in Krita, showing only the parts of the world that the characters were familiar with.

The lines get vaguer and less accurate the further from home that they go.

As the party moved around, they uncovered the more detailed base map.

A real highlight of the campaign for me, which was entirely system agnostic, was when I made a character and make a roll for picking a course through some rough mountainous terrain.

They rolled a 1 so I said "you misjudge the depth of the puddle and disappear under the surface"

Once they were down there, I had them roll a Luck roll, which they rolled pretty well.

And because I'm a collaborative GM, I said "yeah, you find something small and shiny at the bottom. What is it?"

And they replied with "I don't know. A sense of purpose?"

Everything goes black for you as the sound in your ears: this rushing of water, as you fall deep into the puddle.

It's replaced by something more rhythmic.

It's the sound of waves.

And you don't feel you're below the water anymore.

As your feet strike the bottom, It feels like wood underfoot.

You're you're on the deck of a ship.

You feel it's rushing around you, you feel a storm intensified as shouting, shouting on the wind.

This maybe cracks of thunder, but you can hear the words:

"My child. Come to me, come to the shore. Come to the coast.

You will find me. Find me there."

Yeah. I was quite proud of that.

Players, be careful what you wish for!

From there the story progressed. They went into the Wychwood, They found the heart of the forest.

Gonna take a moment to shout out these wonderful maps from Creora.

They were absolutely perfect for what I was looking for, and you can find them for free on the Foundry plugins page.

Our campaign ended at this massive pylon structure.

I decided it was part of some sort of celestial sundial, so light and shadow were very important.

As the characters approached, there was a massive storm as Bran-Dubh fought in the clouds against the spirit that the players encountered at the start.

This storm was massive and unnatural and tore through the landscape.

Meanwhile, the players had to fight the shadows lurking among the towers, and as they read out the runes at the base of the main pylon, portals opened.

And one depicting each alignment of lawful, chaos and neutral.

I gave the characters just a few seconds to decide where they wanted to go as the landscape around them tore to pieces and they each chose different ones.

I don't know what's gonna happen next, that might need another ten shot to find out.

At the end of the campaign, I asked my players for some feedback on the system.

Starting with the mechanics.

Overall, they said the mechanics were pretty simple and intuitive, though for those playing martial classes they felt they didn't really get much to do on their turn.

The Deed Dice didn't really add options, it was just an extra little perk they got.

Whereas spell cast has had a whole load of options and things they could do, including buffing their spells to magnificent proportions.

Everyone really enjoyed the first session: that Level 0 funnel and the morbid humour of seeing half the party mowed down by a flame throwing statue was a really memorable moment.

They said that making multiple characters was fun and trying to come up with little mini back stories for them on the fly was a really interesting experience, and they agreed with me that the dungeon design for that second level was, yeah, disappointing, and would need tweaked if we were to play again.

We did discover that the players maybe weren't quite as invested in their characters as they might have been in other systems, but they said it was still fun playing characters that they might not have gravitated towards otherwise.

Our scheduling didn't help as we missed a few games and it required quite a solid recap to get everyone back in the flow at the start of sessions again.

Compared to DnD5E, the things that the players found most difficult were the lack of online tools.

It feels like the system's well suited to being around a table and playing with pen and paper, but that just wasn't possible for our group.

Everyone said that yes, they'd be keen to play with the system again and yeah, just jump into the chaos of the Level Zero Funnel.

My thoughts from behind the GM screen were it's a refreshing change of tone and feel from DnD5E.

I love the scary nature of the spells and the corruption mechanics.

From a GM's perspective. I really enjoyed the Level Zero Funnel as well.

If I do it again, I'm picturing an entire village raising pitchforks like at the end of Beauty and the Beast and going into the castle to slay the monster.

All the while, the real monster is Gaston, but yeah, that's different story.

I felt the combat was really clever, though it did get a bit bogged down in the multiple pluses and minuses and different dice you had to roll.

I don't own any of the funky dice, so we're doing everything with the online rollers.

If you're a combat focused group, I think you'll get a lot from it, though there are so many fun narrative opportunities, especially within the spell descriptions, that it could suit all kinds of styles of play.

I'd like to go back to it again with the intention of running a full campaign, but it's also ignited my interest in other Old School Renaissance style games, so I'm going to investigate Cairn, Knave Shadowdark, Old School Essentials, or even some old versions of DnD, assuming I can figure out THAC0 at last.

Until then, I'll see you in the next video or at a table near you, rolling an improbable succession of ones.

Cheers!