Recommend me stuff for Dungeon Crawl Classics

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Fun as it looks, I've still decided not to dive into the Lankhmar stuff.
 
I want it but I'm holding off while a bunch of other KS stuff fulfills first (mostly Free League stuff).
 
I want it but I'm holding off while a bunch of other KS stuff fulfills first (mostly Free League stuff).
Well, unlike most people here, or so it seems, I'm unfamiliar with the Lankhmar setting so I am not a fan and neither are my players. Is there anything about the Lankhmar setting that really sets it apart from other fantasy settings?
 
Well, unlike most people here, or so it seems, I'm unfamiliar with the Lankhmar setting so I am not a fan and neither are my players. Is there anything about the Lankhmar setting that really sets it apart from other fantasy settings?

Well I know Lankhmar mainly from the Leiber stories although as a teen I did like the D&D adventures set there but looking back I'd say they only captured the more obvious elements of the setting, like its relatively lowmagic feel in terms of the PCs at least. Worldwise it is full of often extravagant, wildly fantastic elements.

In many ways it is the ur-Sword and Sorcery setting (Leiber coined the S&S term to describe his stories) so it may not strike us as original as it was today.

The tricky thing is what set Leiber's stories apart are their wit, satire and sly, sometimes perverse eroticism, something hard to capture in an rpg unless one was as talented and witty as Leiber himself. I've seen many claim that DCC is a great fit for Lankhmar, not sure that I agree but I'd like to see how well they did or didn't succeed.

One thing I would say is that Lankhmar itself, the city, is a vividly realized and living urban environment that almost all subsquent fantasy cities are aping to one degree or another. Whether that is something that can be captured in a supplement or not intrigues me.
 
Well I know Lankhmar mainly from the Leiber stories although as a teen I did like the D&D adventures set there but looking back I'd say they only captured the more obvious elements of the setting, like its relatively lowmagic feel in terms of the PCs at least. Worldwise it is full of often extravagant, wildly fantastic elements.

In many ways it is the ur-Sword and Sorcery setting (Leiber coined the S&S term to describe his stories) so it may not strike us as original as it was today.

The tricky thing is what set Leiber's stories apart are their wit, satire and sly, sometimes perverse eroticism, something hard to capture in an rpg unless one was as talented and witty as Leiber himself. I've seen many claim that DCC is a great fit for Lankhmar, not sure that I agree but I'd like to see how well they did or didn't succeed.

One thing I would say is that Lankhmar itself, the city, is a vividly realized and living urban environment that almost all subsquent fantasy cities are aping to one degree or another. Whether that is something that can be captured in a supplement or not intrigues me.
Yeah, that's why I figured I'd be OK if I didn't dive into it as an RPG setting.
 
Well, unlike most people here, or so it seems, I'm unfamiliar with the Lankhmar setting so I am not a fan and neither are my players. Is there anything about the Lankhmar setting that really sets it apart from other fantasy settings?

Well I know Lankhmar mainly from the Leiber stories although as a teen I did like the D&D adventures set there but looking back I'd say they only captured the more obvious elements of the setting, like its relatively lowmagic feel in terms of the PCs at least. Worldwise it is full of often extravagant, wildly fantastic elements.

In many ways it is the ur-Sword and Sorcery setting (Leiber coined the S&S term to describe his stories) so it may not strike us as original as it was today.

The tricky thing is what set Leiber's stories apart are their wit, satire and sly, sometimes perverse eroticism, something hard to capture in an rpg unless one was as talented and witty as Leiber himself. I've seen many claim that DCC is a great fit for Lankhmar, not sure that I agree but I'd like to see how well they did or didn't succeed.

One thing I would say is that Lankhmar itself, the city, is a vividly realized and living urban environment that almost all subsquent fantasy cities are aping to one degree or another. Whether that is something that can be captured in a supplement or not intrigues me.


Lankhmar and the World of Newhon are fantastic settings. There are sufficient parallels to the real world that it's not too "out there", but it is definitely fantastical.

Leiber's heroes are mighty, yet there is often a sense that they are puppets or pawns, either of the gods, or of their own patrons.

There is a cynicism and a sense of grim humor about it all.

Magic is unpredictable and dangerous.Gods are petty. And men are as they always have been.

I must confess that Leiber's tales of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are my favorite fantasy works. I find the pair's by-the-sleeves-of-their-shirts adventuring style to be far more in line with an average RPG session than the world-hanging-in-the-balance tales so many fantasy authors feel obligated to write. It's refreshing to see two of the mightiest swordsmen anywhere struggling to make ends meet. To find a meal, a bed, or companionship, if only for the moment.

And while a large part of the appeal of Lankhmar may lie in the two main characters, the world itself is rich and exciting as well.

There are seven books of Fafhrd & Gray Mouser stories written (mostly) by Fritz Leiber, as well as a posthumous book by Robin Wayne Bailey, the latter of which I have not read. If you want to see whether you might like to adventure in Lankhmar, I would recommend picking one up. Except for the fifth book, The Swords of Lankhmar, which is a single, novel length-tale, the books are all collections of short stories and novellas. They do have a chronological order, according to when they happened in the lives of the main characters. But they were not published in chronological order, Leiber's work often having been serialized in magazines.

To be frank, I find the first book, Swords and Deviltry[/i], to be the weakest of them all, and had I read it first, I might not have ventured further! If you must read them in order, fine, but I'd recommend starting with Swords Against Death, Swords in the Mist, Swords Against Wizardry, or Swords and Ice Magic. each of these is a fine jumping off point, with my personal favorite probably being Swords in the Mist[i/].

There are a few omnibus editions, with the newest, from the Orion/Millennium imprint being the best. The white Wolf omnibus is edited, and an earlier Science Fiction Book Club omnibus came out before the seventh book was published.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the stories were originally published between 1939 and 1988. So there is a marked change in certain elements, reflecting the morality (or at least the publishers') of the time. Some of the earlier stories are merely "suggestive", while later stories are "racy" at times, and the seventh book features passages that border on the pornographic.

Above all, if you like the main characters- Fafhrd, a hulking and sometimes idealistic barbarian who yearns to be civilized, and the Gray Mouser, a small but deadly swordsman, thief, and dabbler in magic, then you will likely enjoy the stories. But there is much more to the world of Newhon, much indeed.
 
I feel like Lankhmar suffers from the popularity of D&D. A lot of D&D emulates Liebers stories so at this point a new reader would look at it and say it rips off D&D so it's not as special.


Kind of reminds me of reading Catch 22. It's such an integrated concept into modern life that reading the story is sort of meh.
 
One of the longer DCC campaigns I've been in was very much 'planes hopping' and traveling between worlds in a wizard's tower. Our GM pulled together a lot of threads between various DCC modules and other sources to create a sort of grand cosmology.

We weren't using the 'Crawljammer' zines, which aim at a DCC-ized Spelljammer, but they would have been a good fit for what we were doing. They don't present a detailed setting so much as some specific space-sailing mechanics and glimpses/hooks regarding stuff to do.

Another DCC zine I picked up recently is 'Akashic Titan' and that fits a similar notion... except traveling through a fantasy cosmos as the crew of an enormous alchemical robot. Again, no detailed setting... but some places of note to suggest further ideas. Very wild and weird... the sort of thing you'll like if you like that sort of thing.
 
Not a fan of plains hopping, but I don't mind some weirdness.
 
Not a fan of plains hopping, but I don't mind some weirdness.
Well, I'm not actually positive whether we were traversing different planes, traveling in time or just moving from one celestial sphere to another...
but there was a bit where we were floating through some etheric space on the body of a ginormous god-thing... home of a town full of miners who were digging for strange ores. Then something happened to wake the thing up and we left... so that seemed like planer travel to me.
 
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If used sparingly and very occasionally, I suppose I'm OK with it.
 
Neat! I can say with certainty that I do not own anything in a similar vein as Purple Planet, whereas the mini setting from the Chained Coffin - the Shudder Mountains - seems less unique or distinctive. I may well pick up Purple Planet once it's available again.
I love the Shudder Mountains. Great little campaign area, whether or not you use The Chained Coffin.
 
Not a fan of plains hopping, but I don't mind some weirdness.
The DCC modules aren’t “some weirdness”. Unfortunately, most of them are full-bore gonzo with comedy/satire elements.
 
I'll probably add the compiled Crawling Under A Broken Moon to my to-buy list. While I won't set any games in Umerica as-is I'd just pick whatever I like from the zines to throw into my own post-apocalyptic MCC thing. This is listed as DCC-compatible, but is it safe to assume it ports over to MCC with little to no trouble as well?
 
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Mentioned this in another thread, but I just picked up a print copy of Blackout in Crater Valley, a sort of hybrid funnel/minigame. It's basically set up to be like an '80s B-movie, with a high body count. I missed the Kickstarter, but picked it up after. 34 pages, plus a 2-page foldout map. Basically a lighter-rules implementation of DCC (no Classes) that looks like it would make a damn fine one shot. You could definitely do more than that with some tinkering. They're teasing a sequel, so we'll see. But for ten bucks, I feel it was more than worth it.
 
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Damn it. I rode my motorcycle today and towards the end of the day found myself near one of the game shops and decided to stop in and check out the goings on. I ended up watching a type of Battletech kinda tactical game called CAV Strike by Talon Games I think it was. Looked interesting.

The main reason I'm posting here though was I also noted a funnel for DCC in play and ended up snagging the Core rpg and a GMs Screen, and dice as well. DCC looked like a lot of fun.

Dungeon Crawl Classics Core.jpg
 
DCC also has a "first time fan pack" available in their webstore. Hardcover corebook, dice set, GM screen and 1 adventure for 35 bux plus shipping. A good deal.
Next month I might snag all of the Lankhmar stuff that I can get my hands on. Always been a huge fan, even my first DnD character back in 78' was a rip off of Gray Mouser. Hehe. Just twisted the name to Greyslayer for his nom de guerre, gotta keep your real name safe after all, names are power!

I loved how the core book had a code for the pdf, nice touch on the part of Goodman Games.
 
Next month I might snag all of the Lankhmar stuff that I can get my hands on. Always been a huge fan, even my first DnD character back in 78' was a rip off of Gray Mouser. Hehe. Just twisted the name to Greyslayer for his nom de guerre, gotta keep your real name safe after all, names are power!

I loved how the core book had a code for the pdf, nice touch on the part of Goodman Games.
I snagged all the stuff as well, it's so good. Heads up: Module 10, Unholy Nights In Lankhmar, is OOP, but last I checked Amazon had some for cover price.
 
So, uh, what happens if a character uses a weapon they're not trained in?
 
For some reason I thought they all dropped by 2. That jump from d20 to d16 seems like an elegant way to handle non proficiency to me.
Here's the break down from page 17 of the core book.

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The dice chain seems cool in concept, but it was one of the reasons we never got DCC to the table.
Was is just too inconvenient to determine and find the correct die all the time?
 
It can be clunky and slow the game down trying to find the correct die.
I've played a lot of DCC and I can't say that I've seen the dice chain alterations come into play all that often. I've gotten pretty familiar with the dice to where I can just pluck out the right one most of the time... but also, most of our games were online and we used dice rollers... which remove any such difficulty.
 
It's not at the (very high) level of Chained Coffin or Lankhmar, but I just got the Crypt of the Mummy Bride and it is pretty great. It's a classic pyramid crypt crawl, but quite creative and distinctively meso-american in its flavor.

(re. dice chains and so forth: I use pretty much all of my DCC stuff to run adventures for other game systems, generally TFT, mostly because I don't get into all the screwing around with tables)
 
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If it's the dice chain that bothers you, just use plusses instead. Something like this:

d2 -> average of 1.5 -> +1

d3 -> average of 2.0 -> +2

d4 -> average of 2.5 -> +3

d5 -> average of 3.0 -> +3

d6 -> average of 3.5 -> +4

d7 -> average of 4.0 -> +4

d8 -> average of 4.5 -> +5

d10 -> average of 5.5 -> +6

d12 -> average of 6.5 -> +7

d14 -> average of 7.5 -> +8

d16 -> average of 8.5 -> +9

d20 -> average of 10.5 -> +11

d24 -> average of 12.5 -> +13
 
This. And when you're just starting, it's not exactly intuitive so you have to keep looking back to the chain.
As someone who just started a DCC campaign with a group who has never played the game before, Purple Sorcerer's Crawler's Companion (web and/or app) had not only been indispensable, it's also added to the fun for a few of my players. And it's eliminated the die fumbling.

 
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I've never had problems with the DCC dice chain, either as a GM or a player. Most modifiers in the game involve shifting the DC. Shifts in the dice chain that are explicity explained in the text tend to involve either incremental character improvements, like your spellcasting die going up as you level, or a player using a special class ability. It's never come up enough in play to slow things down.

The GM can always declare dice chain shifts on actions if they want to, so it might come up a lot more in other people's games. I don't really have that strong feelings on the matter really. I'm sticking with the dice chain, but I wouldn't care much if someone was using the method finarvyn finarvyn presented in his last post.
 
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