I blame all of you for this. I caved into peer pressure and snatched up a copy and it was money well spent. So in case, you’ve been living in a freaking cave or dungeon, Dungeon Crawl Classics is the spiffy and deadly old school game from Goodman Games.

Way back when I looked at the beta rules and let things go by the wayside. I fully admit I wasn’t that crazy about the Zocchi dice or the plethora of charts. I’m still not all that happy about it but it’s something that I could learn to enjoy. But damn there is just some awesome bits for this game. This game captures both old school feel and that desperate and strange feeling that you get from the Weird Fantasy of Lamentations of the Flame Princess. Did I say it was cool? Yeah, it’s cool. It really takes to heart the simple ideas that magic is strange, mysterious and dangerous. Magic items aren’t just things that you can grab at the local shop. Monsters should be cool. Especially, “named” ones. You know what I mean. It’s a tough game. There will be blood and much of it will come from the player character’s. I’ll let Bill Cavalier explain it to you.

When I picked up the book, I thought, “Damn, this thing is huge. It’s bigger than the Pathfinder book, Hell, you could kill a dragon with this.” But then I also realized that it contained not only the player stuff but all the stuff for GM and a few monsters.
Putting a bunch of 0 Level characters through a meat grinder, err, I mean “funnel” just sounds like it’s be blast to play. Yes, there is a high mortality rate for player characters. Leveling means something. And the death rules are pretty damned good. Crap, a character might “die” during combat but you really don’t know if he is dead until the fight is over. And bonus this rule is simple. The way the Luck attribute works is an idea that I’ll probably transfer over to other games. Like I said, I’m still not sold on all the charts especially when it boils to a chart for each spell. But the actual spell casting checks for clerics and wizards is great. You don’t know how many times you can cast that spell during a day. You might even blow it really badly. Cool and fun.
Despite the few things that I have reservations about, it was a good investment for the good old gaming library. Chances I won’t play it RAW but I’ll throw in all sorts of stuff for my home game. So get it while you can. From what I heard the first printing was sold out but more on the way.