I've noticed people speak highly of DCC, which seems to be the crown jewel of OSR games. Being a quasi-grognard, I am of course familiar with the DCC line from back in the OGL era, but never checked out the RPG. I just downloaded the quick start rules and will browse through that, but I'm wondering about play experience.

Specifically, what edition of D&D does it play most similarly to? Specifically, how does it compare to 5E? How would you summarize DCC in a sentence or two? Etc.

Quote from: Mercurius;1140257I've noticed people speak highly of DCC, which seems to be the crown jewel of OSR games. Being a quasi-grognard, I am of course familiar with the DCC line from back in the OGL era, but never checked out the RPG. I just downloaded the quick start rules and will browse through that, but I'm wondering about play experience.

Specifically, what edition of D&D does it play most similarly to? Specifically, how does it compare to 5E? How would you summarize DCC in a sentence or two? Etc.

DCC draws inspiration from all editions, but I'd say it plays closest to Basic. What with race as class, and it's simplified systems.

I'd summarize DCC with the sentence "Your character will be changed in the course of the game." I don't mean gaining levels and xp and loot, although that is part of the game. But there's a great illustration in the core rulebook that hits this idea home for me.
*I can't find it online* It's a guy, maybe a dwarf, with a hook for a hand. When I saw that illustration, I wondered what happened to his hand. And that's DCC. Characters have scars and wounds and if they're a spell caster, even stranger things as mementos of their adventures. The life of an adventurer is strange and wonderful and terrifying.

Note that beginning characters are as mundane as possible, gong farmers, tailors, etc. The go through the infamous "funnel" and IF they even survive, they choose a class. The first change of many.

Characters gain and lose Luck, and if I were to GM DCC today, I'd lean very heavily into the idea that the Luck stat should change during an adventure. If the characters aren't spending Luck, the GM is going too easy on them.

Spellcasters go even further with spellburn and magical mutations. Another of my favorite pics from the game.



Unfortunatley, my DCC campaign didn't last long. But we did do the funnel and played a few adventures after that. It's dead simple to re-use old D&D modules, and I used some of the Saltmarsh stuff, sprinkled into official DCC modules, and a few adventureres of my own. (My favorite was a crashed flying saucer with HG Wells inspired "martians". The players charmed one to fight for them... was pretty hilarious)

DCC is about the unknown, and sticking your hand in the mouth of the Green Devil Face to see what happens. Hmm. I wonder if that's how the dwarf guy lost his hand...

It takes the roots of Basic, goes full on into the realm of gonzo heavy metal guitar wielding barbarians riding dragons, then tosses in some interesting mechanics for fighters, rogues and spellcasters. The mechanics seem like they'd work well with the gonzo vibe. Fighters shoulder charging a demon through portals, while the halfling acts like a luck charm next to your wizard who's frozen in time dueling an enemy sorcerer with arcane spells.

Doesn't seem to be a game with a ton of character options and choices where you can play for years and never be the same character twice. But it seems like a really fun system to use now and then when you just want to have some easy, over the top fun.

Sounds terrific. I'd love to hybridize it with 5E, to provide a wider range of options. I'd have to read the rules more thoroughly to decide whether I'd want 5E core with DCC embellishments and flavor (love the funnel idea, harkens back to zero-level characters from Greyhawk Adventures), or take DCC and add 5E options. Sounds like it would be easier to do the former.

I love the funnel concept. It's the best part of the game in my experience. RPGPundit has run a lengthy DCC campaign so hopefully he'll drop in with some input on how DCC does over many sessions.

Quote from: Mercurius;1140257I've noticed people speak highly of DCC, which seems to be the crown jewel of OSR games. Being a quasi-grognard, I am of course familiar with the DCC line from back in the OGL era, but never checked out the RPG. I just downloaded the quick start rules and will browse through that, but I'm wondering about play experience.

Specifically, what edition of D&D does it play most similarly to? Specifically, how does it compare to 5E? How would you summarize DCC in a sentence or two? Etc.

DCC is a love letter to the spirit of 1E AD&D.

DCC is not a clone of any edition of D&D.

Magic is dangerous.  There is a great chance that your arcane magic user will come to a horrible end.

Character death is possible for all classes.

Your character is not a super hero.

Level 10 characters are a big deal.

Just 1 book, for a complete game.

I've played in a few DCC campaigns and each had a very different flavor.
It doesn't seem to me that it has fewer PC options than 5e, it's just that they're not codefied... like, the warrior's 'Mighty Deeds' cover the concept of Feats without the need for long lists of descriptions.
It's not a game that supports the 'build' mentality. DCC's mantra is 'quest for it', so any particular character tweak is a possible source of adventure.
What with Patrons, Mercurial Magic and Spellburn (and the dreaded corruption!), no two spell casters look alike... and the same goes for Clerics, since their gods tend to take a much more active role than in any regular D&D game I've played.

The funnel is great, there are dozens of them out there. Adventuring beyond 6th level starts to be a challenge for the Judge as the magic system is so overpowered that a 4th or 5th level wizard is a demigod and the other classes don't keep up as well after 3rd level sadly. Fun at first though, I have run DCC dozens of times.

I've browsed the book and played in one game. My (admittedly limited) experience gives me the impression that it's a flawed gem, but your assessment may differ if so do your needs and expectations.

In general, it strikes me as an OSR game which includes a lot of interesting ideas, but sacrifices simplicity for those. For example, the idea that magic users can draw their power from different sources, and that spellcasting can have side effects and you're not sure how powerful the spell is going to be until you cast it is cool in theory and the results can certainly be fun... but it means you have to make an extra roll and then look up the result in one of several tables every time you cast a spell. Remember how in 1st ed. AD&D you made an attack roll and then had to find the appropriate table (with tables spread over several pages) to cross-index your roll with your level and the target's AC? Well, it's a bit like that, only for wizards. And for me that's a negative, because I didn't like the attack tables, either.

As for the much-vaunted "character funnel", that's like Trump's presidency: a publicity stunt that too many people took seriously, got out of hand and became a much bigger thing than it ever should have been. The idea that "finally, your characters start out REALLY FRAGILE and can DIE BY THE DROVES because IT'S SO OLD-SCHOOL" doesn't hold water, because actual old-school D&D already has REALLY FRAGILE characters potentially DYING BY THE DROVES. It's called "being first-level." The "let's make them ZERO level so they're EVEN MORE REALLY FRAGILE" thing is the die-rolling equivalent of walking 10 miles to school and back in waist-high snow very day, uphill both ways.

Now, I'm not saying DCC is not good. It has very interesting ideas, it just pays a price for those ideas that I personally value higher - at least in a product which is supposed to be old-school and simple.

Imagine if all arcane magic users were wild magic sorcerers, ala 5E; but with the potential for even more chaotic results.  Welcome to DCC!!!

I know there are some groups that just play funnels... but I haven't run into them. The DCC groups I've been in have either started with a funnel and moved on or they skipped it and started at higher level, usually for a one-off.
The highest lvl character I've had got to 5th, and I was intending to retire her because she was getting too powerful for my taste (she was higher lvl than any other PC in the group too)... but luckily she got killed before it came to that.
I think it reads as being a lot more complicated than it is in play... and with the addition of The Crawler's Companion software it can run even faster.

Even if you don't run DCC itself, it is chocked full of flavorful inspiration for your other fantasy genre RPGs.  It's so dang different, yet it looks and feels like dangerous D&D.

Quote from: Mercurius;1140257I've noticed people speak highly of DCC

It's a fun game and I recommend it. It's especially worth playing a funnel as a one-shot; for a longer campaign I think it'd best to do most of the heavy lifting coming up with adventures, despite their published catalog (which are almost all railroads).

Quote from: Mercurius;1140257which seems to be the crown jewel of OSR games.

Wut?

Every single retro-clone of any variety is a better OSR game than DCC. DCC lacks xp for gold. It's got a low-granularity xp table that's almost to the point of milestone/level up when the GM says so. Unless I missed them it lacks rules for wandering monsters and dungeon exploration. The published adventures being outrageous railroads are opposite of the OSR best practice of jacquayed dungeons with player choice. And mechanical compatibility with the great majority of published OSR adventures and settings is low.

Quote from: Mercurius;1140257Specifically, what edition of D&D does it play most similarly to?

It feels to me like a spiritual descendant of AD&D. The funky classes, each with it's own shtick, the patrons and spell charts, that all feels like a road not taken, if AD&D had embraced metal instead of sanitizing in the face of the satanic panic.

Mechanically it's probably more like Hackmaster or Rolemaster. Really its it's own thing though, I wouldn't put it too close to any one edition of D&D. That it's built off the 3.5 OGL is an accident of history and legality that doesn't actually make it similar.

Quote from: Dave R;1140560It's a fun game and I recommend it. It's especially worth playing a funnel as a one-shot; for a longer campaign I think it'd best to do most of the heavy lifting coming up with adventures, despite their published catalog (which are almost all railroads).

Is an adventure automatically a 'railroad' just because a dungeon layout is linear?
Not that all DCC dungeons are linear either.

There is Even an included adventure or two in the book that already contains a complete RPG.  It's a massive toolbox, and not very expensive for a hardback either.