DCC boxed set?

[finarvyn]

With all of the "slipcase edition" talk in the other thread, I thought I'd toss in my two cents on something I've wanted for a while.

A boxed set.

I don't care if it uses the same old art again, in fact if it's the one from the original core rulebook (dude with gate) I'd be happy. And the books therein ought to be softback and not hardback.

Basically take the current rulebook and divide it into chunks. No re-creation of layout, no major changes at all.

This could come with a GM screen, or the box could be large enough to allow a GM to add his own.

This could come with official DCC dice, or the box could be large enough to allow a GM to add his own.

Here's what I imagine:

Volume I: Player's book (pages 1-103; 103 total)
* Chapter 1: Characters
* Chapter 2: Skills
* Chapter 3: Equipment
* Chapter 4: Combat

Volume II: Magic (pages 104-303; 200 total)
* Chapter 5: Magic
* Wizard Spells
* Cleric Spells

Volume III: Game Master's book (pages 304-469; 166 total)
* Chapter 6: Quests & Journeys
* Chapter 7: Judges Rules
* Chapter 8: Magic Items
* Chapter 9: Monsters
* Appendicies
* Adventures

Although I'd be happier if the adventures were seperate. I hate having an adventure bound into a rulebook.

This could come with one copy or more of some of the volumes. It could have two copies of the Magic book, for example.

If you wanted to further sub-divide into even smaller books, the Magic book could be broken up into a Book of Wizard Spells and another Book of Cleric Magic.

If you wanted to further sub-divide into even smaller books, the Monsters chapter could be seperated from the rest of the GM book.

[Ravenheart87]

There's one thing I would change in layout: make every spell single or two pages long. Otherwise I agree with your ideas.

[JonHook]

Damn. Talk about "game like it's 1976!" I love this idea.

I just won a 1st ed box set of Gamma World on ebay. I'm going to try and re-collect all of the great old TSR box sets.

[MrHemlocks]

A box set would be nice, BUT I will not pay $$$ for a box sets that contains the same old core rulebook (again) just broken down and hashed out as something special. If you want to make a boxed set than make a campaign setting and box it. Tired of the core rules getting redone and sold as a collector item...box or no box.

I realize that DCC core rules need to be reprinted but many of us have 4+ copies of the same rules...just different covers. There needs to be a change If going to make a box set for Pete's sake add something new to the table...like campaign setting.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/DARK-SUN-CAMPAI ... 3684764%26

[Radish]

This could come with a GM screen, or the box could be large enough to allow a GM to add his own.

This could come with official DCC dice, or the box could be large enough to allow a GM to add his own.

If the box set came with both the screen and the dice, it would probably convince me to part with my money. Yours is the first reprint idea that really grabs me. Having the spells in a separate book, especially if said book adopts the formatting changes suggested by Ravenheart87, would make spell-casting faster at the table. Your suggestion of splitting them down into cleric and wizard books might be even better.

There needs to be a change If going to make a box set for Pete's sake add something new to the table...like campaign setting.

I can't say that a campaign setting really excites me. I'd probably just continue to make up my own stuff.

[darjr]

I also love this idea!

[Mazkarel]

This is a *fantastic* idea. I've just spent a couple weeks acquiring the old Mystara CD box sets by TSR (I had them all back when I was truly just a kid) and I'm definitely on a boxed set kick right now!

[finarvyn]

There's one thing I would change in layout: make every spell single or two pages long. Otherwise I agree with your ideas.

I would have proposed this, but figured that it would be a lot easier to do this without any layout changes. I thought it might be easier to sell the idea to Joseph if he didn't have to change anything from the core rules. Also, leaving the layout the same wouldn't change page numbers in the table of contents or index.

Otherwise, I'd rather have spells as you describe.

Or, I'd still love to see an official set of "spell cards" with one spell per card (single or double sided as needed per spell) on some nice cardstock.

[Exedor]

I would love a boxed set broken out into manageable soft-covered books. I would buy a few, for me and my players who could not afford one. Including the Zocci dice would be perfect, and would tap into some 1980 red box nostalgia. If GG could publish supplemental materials in the same format that would be great too. The existing rulebook is unwieldy, especially the spells. I use the "People them with monsters" reference booklet but would like to have a bound, GG-ified version if not a DM screen as well.

A great expansion to include in the boxed set would be a spells and patron supplement. I would like to see something along the lines of the AD&D Deities and Demigods, with patrons drawn from mythos, fiction, and historical fantasy.

[DM Cojo]

Damn. Talk about "game like it's 1976!" I love this idea.

I just won a 1st ed box set of Gamma World on ebay. I'm going to try and re-collect all of the great old TSR box sets.

Awesome! I have the 1e gamma world book, but not the map or box. I have the only 2 1e GW modules too. I have Star Frontiers, plus the mentzer basic, expert, and companion boxes. I have the master's set books, no box.

I would love to get Top Secret S.I. too.

[Maxwell Luther]

I find that Purple Sorcerer's Crawler's Companion solves a metric butt-tonne of problems vis tables, dice, etc. Really, if you have a smart phone, play DCC and don't have this app, you've either not heard of it or you're too old school for your own good

That being said, I too would absolutely love the option of a DCC boxed set. I bought the PDF and use that on my tablet because, quite frankly, it is a lot lighter and much easier to reference than a 450 page book (I ran my entire first game using my tablet for the rulebook, my smartphone for the Crawler's Companion and a printout of the PDF module I bought on RPGNow. And I didn't really need the latter, I'm just too old school for my own good).

If GG makes a DCC Boxed set and sells it for a good price, I'd be first in line to buy it for practical (dice, separate books, etc.) and non-practical (nostalgia) reasons...

[finarvyn]

I find that Purple Sorcerer's Crawler's Companion solves a metric butt-tonne of problems vis tables, dice, etc. Really, if you have a smart phone, play DCC and don't have this app, you've either not heard of it or you're too old school for your own good

I've heard of it but I have a dumb phone that can call and text only. No cool screen, no internet. I have a vague notion of what an "app" is, only because my daughter seems to have bunches of them on her phone.

Yes, I probably am too "old school" for my own good.

[MrHemlocks]

I find that Purple Sorcerer's Crawler's Companion solves a metric butt-tonne of problems vis tables, dice, etc. Really, if you have a smart phone, play DCC and don't have this app, you've either not heard of it or you're too old school for your own good

I've heard of it but I have a dumb phone that can call and text only. No cool screen, no internet. I have a vague notion of what an "app" is, only because my daughter seems to have bunches of them on her phone.

Yes, I probably am too "old school" for my own good.

I also do not have, nor want, one of those fancy cell, cancer stick, phones. I have a cheap phone, no internet nor text, that the entire family share. Only used in emergencies. People are so glued to the internet, cell phones, tablets these days. Guess that is why most people look and act like zombies...living in the matrix.

Old school and loving it....life is better this way. Try it?

[Maxwell Luther]

I've heard of it but I have a dumb phone that can call and text only. No cool screen, no internet. I have a vague notion of what an "app" is, only because my daughter seems to have bunches of them on her phone.

Yes, I probably am too "old school" for my own good.

As old school as I like to be, I have to admit that, at my age, carrying a ton of crap around with me to game is getting even older. It is liberating, in the physical sense as well as the mental, theater of the mind sense. There is less interruption in the flow when you have a device handling a lot of the more tedious chores that come with table-top gaming. So in a way, using such devices allows you to play more fluidly, without tons of page flipping and delays while you search for rules, etc, which can only enhance the role-playing experience, which is really the whole point. True, those of us with great experience, who were often taught by others, can easily make crap up on the fly if we're stuck, but modern generations are less likely to get to that level if we can't streamline the process for them.

I still like rolling dice, though. I can't stand computer generated random numbers, as no program I have ever seen seems to generate them properly. But if I'm stuck without a proper surface to play on or I don't have my gear with me, I'll use it in a heartbeat. Right now, with the CC, the PDF rulebook, and my collection of adventure PDFs on my phone, I could run a game of DCC in an instant no matter where I am, including the middle of the woods or in a car going down the highway (so long as I'm not driving). And with all the tools on the internet and in app form at my disposal and the disposal of my smartphone equipped players, we don't need any sort of physical anything to play DCC, especially when all that technology is coupled with my 30+ years of GMing experience and ability to whip things out of the air on the fly. How pure old school is that?

I also do not have, nor want, one of those fancy cell, cancer stick, phones. I have a cheap phone, no internet nor text, that the entire family share. Only used in emergencies. People are so glued to the internet, cell phones, tablets these days. Guess that is why most people look and act like zombies...living in the matrix.

Old school and loving it....life is better this way. Try it?

Part of being a game designer (and the focus of my grad studies these days) tends to include finding ways to pull younger folks, who share no experiential base with those of us who played at the dawn of our hobby, away from video games to the table-top. You and I can play with a book some dice and paper and pencils, but if we want the hobby to carry on, we've got to make allowances for the next generation of gamers for whom digital devices are like a secondary body part.

Marcus Aurelius said, and I'm paraphrasing here, 'if you want to understand a thing, you must break it down to its base nature.' I have identified three elements that separate TTRPGs from other game mediums, like video games or board games:

1. Play takes place in the acoustic area of the brain, not the literal visual center. This creates 'truer' secondary memories, exo-memories, that are more personal and more mentally stimulating, more second life than 'Second Life.'
2. Play is unrestricted in length, and very often spontaneous, something largely impossible with board and video games.
3. Social interaction is a necessary focus of the game (solo games are possible but not as gratifying) and a large draw of the medium. As such, behavioral contracts are necessary, though often unspoken. In other words, you behave very differently in the presence of people who are within striking distance of your nose than you would with random people you're slagging off on the internet.

Technology, interestingly enough, is not one of those things that defines TTPRGs and you can have an old school experience even if your tools are all digital, so long as those other three essential elements are present. The smell of books, the clatter of dice, the scratchings of pencil on paper covered with Cheeto dust is not essential to creating an old school experience, but a series of mneumonic hooks that attach the actual elements of role-playing to the shared experience of those a who grew up playing D&D in the 70's and early eighties (most typically in a basement with Pink Floyd in the background, the smell of incense in the air and feet deep in shag carpet).

I assure you (based on my research), players under the age of 30 do not share this experiential base with us and trying to get them to truly understand growing up in that time would require a time machine and is largely an exercise in futility. But they can and will take up the old school banner if you can present it to them in a language they can understand based upon their frame of reference, which typically involves personal technology. I know, I do it weekly. I did it all summer by introducing kids in their early twenties to a lot of old school gaming experiences from the dawn of RPGs and giving them historical references to explain why we played the way we did back then. They ate it up. It fascinated them. And they're running their own games. In fact, I'm giving them a demo of DCC in a month to show them Appendix N role-playing and introduce them to classic fantasy and sci-fi literature.

They are not zombies, that is a gross over-simplification of the problem, they are just not forced to interact in the same way as we did when we were kids. Their world is much more insular due to technology. And if you want to get them to be more 'old school', you meet them half-way, absorb their technological culture into the hobby and mold it to enhance those elements that make RPGs great. Succeed and years from now, they'll be experienced GMs struggling with new generations demanding holographic miniatures and so on and talking about how back in their day, miniatures were made of metal. And you had to paint them. And they didn't move on their own. And they LIKED IT!

My company is trying to pioneer this next generation of RPG publishing, which you can see an example of here http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jab ... al-the-rpg, but, oddly enough, the resistance isn't coming from the younger crowd, but the older one. In this particular case, the failure of this Kickstarter is in part because I'm trying to use a new medium (a totally tablet based publishing one), which the older gamers dislike, coupled with referential material (eighties gaming and music) that calls back to a day and age younger players don't 'get.' There were other reasons the KS failed (a $900 backer had to drop out and this caused a 1929 style collapse in the funding, for example) but I think this product, which was meant to bridge that gap, was entirely too niche for its own good. It is an interesting challenge trying to bridge the generation gap...

[Skars]

Technology worth adopting is transparent in practice. You make some really great points and I totally agree with you about dice rolling scripts. Too many of these "app programmers" need to revisit the fundamentals.

As I mentioned, I believe good technology is transparent to the user. It feels and becomes natural. In my opinion the place technology has at the RPG table is bringing us together across long distances. Beyond that, I becomes a distraction.

I have four kids all under the age of ten and with the exception of my infant they have all latched on to classic tabletop RPG and Board gaming (my oldest even got her feet wet with historical miniatures). None of them have mobile phones or tablets and all of them have access to those devices through me and their mother via limited, patrolled, exposure.

Before you call me a Luddite, I can assure you I work for one of the largest tech companies in the world in the heart of the silicon valley-born and raised. I get it. But, the point I am trying to make (feebly) is that really we just need to introduce them to these ideas and "low tech" options for entertainment and they will latch on just like we did. Meeting halfway is certainly a compromise.

[Maxwell Luther]

Technology worth adopting is transparent in practice. You make some really great points and I totally agree with you about dice rolling scripts. Too many of these "app programmers" need to revisit the fundamentals.

As I mentioned, I believe good technology is transparent to the user. It feels and becomes natural. In my opinion the place technology has at the RPG table is bringing us together across long distances. Beyond that, I becomes a distraction.

I have four kids all under the age of ten and with the exception of my infant they have all latched on to classic tabletop RPG and Board gaming (my oldest even got her feet wet with historical miniatures). None of them have mobile phones or tablets and all of them have access to those devices through me and their mother via limited, patrolled, exposure.

Before you call me a Luddite, I can assure you I work for one of the largest tech companies in the world in the heart of the silicon valley-born and raised. I get it. But, the point I am trying to make (feebly) is that really we just need to introduce them to these ideas and "low tech" options for entertainment and they will latch on just like we did. Meeting halfway is certainly a compromise.

We're not in disagreement. I'm already playing board games with my son, who turns 3 in October, and you can bet he'll have played a lot of analog games and read a lot of classic literature by the time he gets to be a teenager. Raising them with analog games and controlling the over-exposure to technology is by far the most effective method of making them more well-rounded human beings, as opposed to 'phone zombies.'

But what about all those kids whose parents are content with just giving them a phone and shutting them up? Or houses where the parents were never part of gaming culture, having barely broken out the Monopoly board in the last three decades? Or orphans? Analog gamers are a much smaller group then most would imagine and it is actually through technology that the recognition of our hobby has grown.

In all honesty, I am a bit of a Luddite, and technology (especially designing with and for it) can be a massive headache for me. Sometimes, I don't want an electronic device anywhere near me (as when I'm playing board games). But, modern apps can fade into the background so effectively that it actually enhances the acoustic emphasis of playing in a collaborative brain-space. I'm using this advantage to pass on the history and appreciation of a significantly unique art form to those who may not have a clue what its all about...

[Skars]

We're not in disagreement. I'm already playing board games with my son, who turns 3 in October, and you can bet he'll have played a lot of analog games and read a lot of classic literature by the time he gets to be a teenager. Raising them with analog games and controlling the over-exposure to technology is by far the most effective method of making them more well-rounded human beings, as opposed to 'phone zombies.'

But what about all those kids whose parents are content with just giving them a phone and shutting them up? Or houses where the parents were never part of gaming culture, having barely broken out the Monopoly board in the last three decades? Or orphans? Analog gamers are a much smaller group then most would imagine and it is actually through technology that the recognition of our hobby has grown.

In all honesty, I am a bit of a Luddite, and technology (especially designing with and for it) can be a massive headache for me. Sometimes, I don't want an electronic device anywhere near me (as when I'm playing board games). But, modern apps can fade into the background so effectively that it actually enhances the acoustic emphasis of playing in a collaborative brain-space. I'm using this advantage to pass on the history and appreciation of a significantly unique art form to those who may not have a clue what its all about...

Subtlety is the key. Take 3D movies for example and how they all but vanished from existence due to the IN YOUR FACE aspect of that special effect on motion pictures-killing the ability to suspend disbelief and immerse yourself in the program: the opposite of the intended effect. 20+ years later with improved technology producers can simply add depth and texture without really being noticed. Sure some movies still misuse the special effect, and those are the ones with loads of negative reviews about folks getting vertigo and such heh.

I also think that you are selling kids short, if that is truly your target audience. Expose them to books, art, music...regardless of sociotechnoeconomic circumstances (analog or digitally) and positive things happen. I personally feel analog brings the most pleasurable continuity with real life but fully understand the joyous portability of digital products.

A phone app without the connectivity aspect - the thing that phones are intended for, connecting people via voice, now internet and video to a segment of the market (android smartphones) is destined for just that, limited exposure.

I love your game idea. Hell, I even run a Heavy Metal themed DCC RPG campaign via google hangouts. I also love the idea of an rpg with an enhanced digital rulebook. But, in my opinion, the game should stand on its own merits first and then allow technology to transparently make things easier and enhance the experience. I should be able to strip down to my core rulebook, some dice, and a notebook and ride the tails (and tales) of imagination unfettered.

Good luck to you and your kickstarter nonetheless.

[Exedor]

Marcus Aurelius said, and I'm paraphrasing here, 'if you want to understand a thing, you must break it down to its base nature.' I have identified three elements that separate TTRPGs from other game mediums, like video games or board games:

1. Play takes place in the acoustic area of the brain, not the literal visual center. This creates 'truer' secondary memories, exo-memories, that are more personal and more mentally stimulating, more second life than 'Second Life.'
2. Play is unrestricted in length, and very often spontaneous, something largely impossible with board and video games.
3. Social interaction is a necessary focus of the game (solo games are possible but not as gratifying) and a large draw of the medium. As such, behavioral contracts are necessary, though often unspoken. In other words, you behave very differently in the presence of people who are within striking distance of your nose than you would with random people you're slagging off on the internet.

Thank you Maxwell Luther, for your Marcus Aurelius reference and your astute deconstruction of what makes TTRPGs qualitatively different from MMORPGs. These are useful insights. I occasionally find myself talking about my TTRPG hobby with people who don't "get it," who wonder why I am not just playing WOW. I can use this to both explain my experience and spark interest.

A generation that does not play TTRPGs has been robbed, in my view. It is exciting to see parents pass on the hobby to their children, and all my gamer friends intend to do so as do I.

[Gameogre]

Way before I would like to see a Box set for rules, I would want to see a Boxed Setting.

[maxinstuff]

I would want a boxed ANYTHING to have a damn good reason to be in a box.

Unless it contains things like a cloth map, cardboard miniatures, battlemat, GM screen, dice, etc. etc. I just don't see the point.

Print digest sized paperbacks and put them in a box? Why?

Personally I really like the 'one tome to rule them all' apprach that DCC has taken. Everything is there is one book. DCC is so simple anyway that the only reason we crack it at my table is to reference spell tables - and the page numbers are right on the character sheet so this is no fuss.

But I wasn't even born yet when the white box came out so go figure.

[ctaylor]

I would flip out for a boxed game or setting as long as it had a Judge's Screen and a set of dice.

Flip out.

[Skars]

Flip Out.

yeah me too.

[Desrimal]

A Judge's Screen, a quality dice set and a seperate book with just the spells - yes please!

[NJPDX]

I'll just add my two bits and echo the other yes votes. I would find this kind of thing eminently useful. My one reading copy of DCC gets passed around the table quite a bit and I'm loathe to use my limited edition print in play.

The judge's screen would be especially welcome.

[Eisenmann]

I would be all over this.

Heck, I develop mobile apps, but when I'm going all retro, I want the funky dice.