Goodman Games

Just dropping a line to mention that I was thrilled to pick up all the XCrawl books at GenCon. At first I wasn't sure what to make of the game, but after reading the core rulebook, my mind was a twitter with the possibilities.

As with most RPG games, I've tweaked and modified things slightly to fit my game group's mentality and my own preferences (less focus on the Roman/Gladiator premise and more on a dystopian Paranoia-lite sort of future). And the players are gobbling it up.

I love the creative freedom the format allows -- I've been developing rooms and designing challenges that simply couldn't make it into a Dungeon Crawl Classic adventure. The format and premise work so incredibly well to really cater XCrawl events to the skills of the party, allowing for a good mix of physical challenges, creative combats and tough puzzles.

All of the "Usual Suspects" -- the crew I game with that does such a killer job playtesting all the DCC stuff I do for Joseph -- are in the XCrawl campaign, and so far, so good. They really seem to be enjoying the spectacle and TV-minded setup and play, and having their characters becoming celebrities and pop culture icons.

Kudos on XCrawl, Brendan LaSalle. It's a lot more than meets the eye. I strongly encourage folks who may have passed it over w/o knowing what it was to take a closer look. As the focus of a wholly new campaign, or as a great way to fill in sessions between legs of an over-arching campaign, XCrawl has really impressed me. And it'll impress you, too.

Well, we just wrapped up our first two sessions of XCrawl -- the Phoenix Open XCrawl. I designed it myself, being partial to that sort of thing, as the first "Pro" XCrawl event for teams mired in the minor leagues or playing amateur events. Think of it as a proving ground to separate the posers from the pros.

I had a blast designing the levels, as I could really go after some odd, quirky rooms that just wouldn't cut it for a standard, predictable fantasy setting, and things like dungeon ecology and logical progressions could fall by the way side, replaced by things that make for entertaining television and would throw the party for a loop.

I'll state again that the format really lends itself to creativity. With the popularity of "reality" television, there are tons of sources to draw on for XCrawl adventures and rooms. Obstacle courses, immunity challenges, physical tasks, puzzles -- and then throw in some monsters and the possibilities are endless.

If you haven't checked out XCrawl, I can't recommend it strongly enough based on my first impressions, which our sessions so far have confirmed. It's a damn fun game!