I’ve still been able to keep swinging away at my DCC campaign at the FLGS and a few things came to mind about some things that I’ve really grown to like about the game.
Dungeon Crawl Classics is an awesome game. It’s solid and simple. While some disagree whether it truly is an OSR game, it’s close enough in feel and mechanics for me. Sure there’s page flipping when a spell is cast or there’s a crit or a fumble but these times are where the game really shines. In the sales blurb for a lot of games, there’s a plug that reads something like “the rules don’t interfere with the game”. You know things like not having the Walk and Chew Gum Feat (looking at you 3.x/Pathfinder). The rules for DCC don’t interfere with the game. They participate. It’s like having an extra GM and/or player at the table. Let me explain.
One of the player’s characters became a cleric. The character is Neutral. So I said of hand, “You could be a cleric of Cthulhu.” And the player jumped at the chance. Through the adventure (We’re playing Doom of the Savage King) The Elf went down. The cleric got there in time heal but nope. Disapproval. Later the dwarf was injured. Lay on hands. Nope. Disapproval. Again, heal the dwarf. Cthulhu says, “Hell no!” Disapproval. We get the point. Cthulhu doesn’t like demihumans. So here’s the setting house rule. Demihumans count as opposed alignment for clerics of Cthulhu. The rules helped add something interesting to the game.
While I’m on a little rant about there’s another one I’ve been using (lifted from Lamentations of the Flame Princess). No Weapon Proficiencies. Now I might add a penalty if a halfling tries to swing around a great sword. And I haven’t even mentioned this to players. Just letting them use whatever weapon they want. Fighters are already way better at fighting so it really doesn’t make any difference. Plus it makes for a neat story when it’s the Magic-User who takes out the big bad with a crit while wielding a hand axe. Yep, that happened last game session. It was a good thing too. The fighter couldn’t make the game. The dwarf couldn’t hit anything. And that Wizard was out of spells. That little quirk of fate made that fight just a little more memorable.
Remember folks. Have Fun. Roll Dice. Kill Monsters. Take Their Stuff.