DCC RPG Playtest at DunDraCon 2011

[Fullerton]

I played in Joe's DCC RPG playtest on Sunday. It was a blast! Joe is a great ref, and was a pleasure to talk to! Someone took pictures and mentioned to Joe that they may get posted on facebook I think, but I haven't seen them show up yet on the Goodman Games facebook page or the DCC RPG facebook page.


Joe ran People of the Pit, and I think we had slightly higher-level characters than the module will call for (we had 3rd, and I think Joe said the module is tailored for 2nd), but we still had one PC death in the first combat, and almost had a three-fer PC death shortly after that. We wrapped things up after a big battle, but before we would have been done with the whole module. (Some of the players had to leave for other events.)

Part of our success was, I think, due to a bunch of natural 20s while casting, plus copious use of spellburn. I have a feeling that, had we gotten further into the module, we would have been in big trouble. Most of the casters had already lost the ability to cast some of their spells, and had spellburnt away the "easy" stat points. Some of the PCs had already lost luck. I bet our earlier bad choices would have come back to bite us in the end, as it should be


I probably won't run the DCC RPG as a home campaign, but that's not meant to be a slight on the game itself. I'm an AD&D and OD&D player, and I personally prefer to run lighter-weight systems ... at least for long-term games. For me, the DCC RPG was a bit too character sheet-intensive.

That said, I *do* think it's a great game, I can definitely see how it will appeal to many folks, I plan to buy it, and I *certainly* would play it at a convention again. No question. Especially if Joe is running the game. I can envision myself running it at a convention too, or as a one-shot in my home campaign.


People of the Pit was similarly impressive. Great atmosphere, opportunities to use both swords *and* wits, and little embellishments that *really* fit the genre. That last point is key: It's hard to get the balance right on flavor details. Too many details, and they get lost amongst one another; too few details, and the flavor is lost. As far as what we played through, People of the Pit looks just right.

My only knock is that it felt a bit linear. This doesn't mean it *was* linear; we didn't see the whole module, and our party perhaps gave up too early on trying to force open some doors that could have led to other, later-reconnecting and tactically exploitable, exploration paths.

And of course, since this was a convention game, you typically don't want to give the players *too* much freedom of movement, otherwise it's hard to reach a satisfying point in an N-hour time slot, so in some ways the linear-ness was beneficial to the format.

Despite the linear-ness of what I saw, I plan to buy People of the Pit. I'm pretty certain I'll be able to use most/all of it for AD&D or OD&D. (I'm very comfortable doing on-the-fly conversions of rpg material.) The backstory was compelling, the atmosphere was great, and the set-pieces were clever!


I'm looking forward to the release

[finarvyn]

Envy, envy, envy.

[Geoffrey]

I probably won't run the DCC RPG as a home campaign, but that's not meant to be a slight on the game itself. I'm an AD&D and OD&D player, and I personally prefer to run lighter-weight systems ... at least for long-term games. For me, the DCC RPG was a bit too character sheet-intensive.

Could you expand a bit on that? What was on the character sheet that isn't on AD&D or OD&D character sheets?

[Fullerton]

It wasn't so much the amount of stuff recorded on the character sheet. (Pretty comparable to an AD&D amount.) It was that the character sheet info needed to be looked-up more frequently.

Compared to AD&D/OD&D, the DCC RPG has more consultation of the character sheet to determine miscellaneous modifiers to various actions. Luck might modify this, but not that; spells were likely to grant a medium-term bonus to different activities; fighters summed two dice (plus other modifiers) for their attack roll, and then summed two dice (including one of the same dice that was added into the attack roll) for their damage (plus other modifiers); bonuses to individual initiative; spellburn; luckburn; and so on.

For those of us using spellburn, reducing an attribute could (and did) change stat bonuses, which in turn needed to propagate to other parts of the character sheet (skills, spells, initiative, etc.). So you can either pre-calculate final values for various activities, and then adjust on the fly after you do some relevant spellburn; or you can write down just the atomic values and sum everything up on demand. I'm not sure which way would ultimately be more efficient.

There were more rolls in general to resolve situations. Spell result rolls, individual initiative, critical table rolls, "cost" of spellburn (i.e., "cut off a fingertip" or "sacrifice a pound of flesh"), etc. And since most of these rolls are player-intensive, the ref would have to fight the system to go back to a early D&D ad-hoc resolution method (just wing it with X-in-6, or 2d6 or whatever). Spell casting could really explode the number of dice you need to roll: A roll to determine the basic level of success, dice to determine the duration, number of affected targets, and so on. So it's harder to memorize the effects of even a low-level spell and play by memory, which, by contrast, is easy to do using most low-level AD&D spells.

We also had to look at the character sheet to check/remember whether you should use a special die to resolve some actions. My wizard used only a d14 to cast detect evil, and the guy next to me had a wizard that used d30 to cast one of his spells. He forgot to use the d30 for that spell on one occasion, possibly multiple. (Every one of a wizard's spell's had an additional special effect that was rolled randomly during character creation. These might be different die sizes, atmospheric effects, etc.)

So recording all of the data for the above meant character creation took longer than the equivalent 3rd level AD&D character. For some classes, the per-level benefits varied based on alignment, too, which increased the amount of time I spent considering how to build my Thief.

In addition to character sheet lookups, there were other table lookups. Each spell had a chart that needed to be consulted as part of successful casting. Crits were resolved on tables. Healing spells were resolved using a matrix that compared the alignment of the caster to the alignment of the target.


None of this was particularly cumbersome on its own, but taken as a whole it ended up heavier than my preference. It wasn't horrible, mind you; I'd certainly choose to play the DCC RPG again! It's just heavier than I'd like for my home campaign.

[goodmangames]

Guy, I'm glad you had fun! I had a blast that game. You guys did very well...only one death on the staircase battle is above-average for what I've had so far in this adventure, although that daisy-chain of falling characters was very close to being 3 more deaths. Overall some smart playing and a good "danger sense" -- you guys did better against the "hallway of urn traps" and the giant psionic devil-toad than any other group I've run through this adventure. I'll let you know when I'm at future Bay Area cons (I also do KublaCon and others on occasion) and we can game some more.

As far as the linear nature of the adventure, I do seem to recall that you guys bypassed the first two doors. I ran the same adventure at a game store up in LA a couple months ago. If you were to compare notes with those players, I think you'd find that they chose a different door to start at, and your two parties had very different experiences. I'm glad you're open to checking out the final adventure; all will be revealed in print, of course!

My experience in con games, as opposed to my long-term home campaign, is that people use spellburn a LOT more in con games. The "re-calculation effect" of spellburn modifying ability scores is more pronounced in con games. In home games, with PCs that the players are more attached to, there's a certain reluctance to hamstring one's Strength or Stamina!

[Rick]

Hi Joseph,

Had a fun time playtesting DCC on Sat. w/you, Erol, Derek, Cedric, Jon and Brad. Here are a few impressions I had about the game:

Dislikes:

"Straight-Up" stat rolls. I know this is implemented by design to make for a more interesting mix of characters (my Warrior with 8 STR and thief with 17 hahah), just not my preference. The 'hard' stat rolls were painfully so on a few of the characters; I don't mind the straight-up, but would've liked a little leeway, like the traditional 4d6 drop lowest rule, or since you like to mix dice, 3d6+1d4 drop lowest or go craaazy like a d12 + d8 to really push extremes!

Incidentally, some of 'weaker' stat-ed chars turned out to be the most effective in-game due to inherent class powers so this helped (ex: Cedric's Elric-ish cleric with 6 max HP which I think dropped to 3 max at one point! lol)

Likes:

"Effects" description tables. I loved these when referring to different results for actions or die rolls, be it combat, side-effects of spell casting or whatever. Things like an extra die-roll dmg, or getting knocked to the bottom of initiative, or a tramp-stamp tattoo on a caster's back (lol) from spell use were nice, unexpected accents to the game. I like descriptive charts like this that specifically say "you lost your right hand" or "you accidentally shot your left eye out" when referring to the result/outcome of some action. They can be brutal or benign, but either way help to visualize the character better. It might even be cool to implement some type charts like these in the Stats-creation phase, to explain why some stats might be very low or high to start. Ex: you suffered a life-threatening illness as a infant (low Stamina) or you father was part Minotaur (high Str) etc.

Game flow and combat felt smooth and I'm sure many things that I needed to refer to on my char sheets (ex: what die to use for whatever roll/check) would've quickly become committed to memory if it were a longer-term/campaign game. I liked that combat felt loose and free-flowing, allowing for moderate tactical planning, without becoming overly bogged down by too many technicalities.

Highlight of the night? Without a doubt, Cedric's "Apprentice" expending most his stat points to invoke his deity's aid one time too many during the evening's finale, a natural "1" followed by a natural "20" to determine his fate (after being told by the DM, "you wanna roll low!") and of course, his being consumed whole in fire and brimstone by a giant, underground otherworldly servant of the frog queen! LOL

All n' all? Good times and fun game.

[Fullerton]

That makes sense. I suspected People of the Pit was less-linear than what we saw, so that's great, I'm really looking forward to it.

I'll also dig around to see if I can find that other playtest report...

[GnomeBoy]

First and foremost: I still want to know what that gong was for...!

This was easily the fastest-flowing and breeziest game of the weekend. I think some of the 'character sheet consultation' would be greatly minimized in 'normal' play, since every player would only have one character to track. Plus, we were learning the system on 3rd level characters, so there were more bits and bobs to juggle.

I do remember thinking the Healing/Alignment mechanic was not as streamlined as I had thought it might be. It could be as simple as "Healing is a dX; one alignment step away from the cleric is the next lower die, two steps is another die lower still (i.e. normally 1d8, one step=1d6, two steps=1d4)." That concept could perhaps be extended further (lawful->neutral->chaotic) to arrive at a mere one point of healing for someone who is your antithesis. Easy to remember and needs no chart. Just my two cents.

And by the way, I realized about an hour after we stopped how I could have possibly saved the mighty Bronwyn from her fate on the stairs: She had that 10-foot long chain that she wore wrapped around her -- she could have potentially whipped it out as the tentacle wavered closer to the group in hope that the others might be able to grab it and save her. Or at least save the chain. But I was a bit distracted by watching everyone else play and seeing how the system worked and so my mind wasn't in my A-game.

...Next time.

[goodmangames]

First and foremost: I still want to know what that gong was for...!

Only way to find out is to ring it. And hope the giant tentacle doesn't come back.

I do remember thinking the Healing/Alignment mechanic was not as streamlined as I had thought it might be. It could be as simple as "Healing is a dX; one alignment step away from the cleric is the next lower die, two steps is another die lower still (i.e. normally 1d8, one step=1d6, two steps=1d4)." That concept could perhaps be extended further (lawful->neutral->chaotic) to arrive at a mere one point of healing for someone who is your antithesis. Easy to remember and needs no chart. Just my two cents.

Great idea...let me think on that but I like where it's going...

And by the way, I realized about an hour after we stopped how I could have possibly saved the mighty Bronwyn from her fate on the stairs: She had that 10-foot long chain that she wore wrapped around her -- she could have potentially whipped it out as the tentacle wavered closer to the group in hope that the others might be able to grab it and save her. Or at least save the chain. But I was a bit distracted by watching everyone else play and seeing how the system worked and so my mind wasn't in my A-game.

Good point. But you have to admit, that was a great finish: picked up by the massive tentacle, hauled over the edge of the steaming pit, and dropped to her death! Definitely gets "cool points" in memorium. You know the legends always die young, right? If she had survived, you would have forgotten her by now...

[GnomeBoy]

Oh, someway, somehow, somewhere -- Bronwyn will be avenged!

I am amused that the first PC death of that session was the character with the highest stats.

And on the healing thing, I think using the 3-by-3 alignment grid concretely (each hop from yours to theirs is a lower die, or something similar) is easy to remember without page flipping.



*begins the wait for People of the Pit 2*