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Some call it the Old School Renaissance (OSR) echo chamber, others call it a conversation. Here’s my contribution. 🙂
I read Dan Proctor’s Observations and Comments about the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role-Playing Game (DCC RPG). He’s somewhat critical. I found myself nodding along as I read his post. Some hours later, I realized that even though I might not be playing the DCC RPG, it exhibits some properties that I’d be adding to my own (hypothetical) old school RPG:
Dungeon Crawl Classics Role-Playing Game
1. *funky dice* – back when I started playing with Das Schwarze Auge (The Dark Eye), it came with a d20 and three d6. When I later moved on to AD&D, I was excited to see all these new dice. Thus, if I were to design a new game, I’d use as many funky dice as I could lay my hands on. Back then it wasn’t easy to get the necessary dice, but that didn’t stop us. Plus, I already belong to the Order of the d30. 👌
2. *lots of line art* – I love line art. If I could, I’d commission sketches for all my adventures, all my characters, all my locations. If you are in fact an artist and would like to help me draw the stuff I need for my *Caverns of Slime* Adventure, please contact me! This is for Level 13 of *The Darkness Beneath*, the megadungeon published in Fight On. I already started with some sketches, but I’m going to need about four or five times as many. But back to the game: Some of the pieces look very familiar, but I like them anyway. 👌
3. *random character generation* – I don’t like the character generation mini-game. Random character generation is how I roll. 👌
4. *wild magic* – I’m not too attached to Vancian magic. *Das Schwarze Auge* used a form of Mana points, and it worked just as well. What I don’t like are the dry and lame names for the spells. I’m not sure I like the random tables for each spell, but I do concede that one of the Sword & Sorcery tropes is that sorcerers are usually evil or insane or both. Sorcerers are rarely protagonists. Perhaps this would work for me. I’d have to try it. 👌
character generation mini-game
Not bad, thus far!
The main problem, of course, is that I don’t have the time – and not enough friends – to play everything out there. I must also confess to a certain anti-consumerism ideology. I’m sure I read too much To Have or to Be? by Erich Fromm. Thus, while I like elements of the game, I probably still won’t buy it. I’m not going to ask myself: is this a good game? I’m going to ask myself: how much better is this game than my current favorite? My current favorite is Labyrinth Lord, but any of the other old school systems out there already sets a pretty high bar. I’m thinking that maybe the difference is small enough to not be worth the cost, the shipping, the discussions with potential players, the time it takes to learn about the differences.
We’ll see.
#RPG
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I don’t even have enough time to play the stuff that’s on my shelf, let alone everything else that’s out there!!
– David 2011-06-10 14:09 UTC
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Hehe, point taken. 😄
– Alex Schroeder 2011-06-10 23:50 UTC
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Despite my dislike for LL I decided to check out the beta rules for DCC and wow, I was really surprised! Nearly all of the things I dislike about the old D&D rules were changed. I just wish they would also get rid of that weird thief skill table (at least they use only D% and not some other dice mixed in for no apparent reason) and make Elf and Dwarf more different from Warrior and Mage. Besides that though? Certainly a System I would like to play. 😄
– Florian 2011-06-12 21:40 UTC
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Haha-in the league of non-D&D Fantasy games that are more or less *light* we now have one more alternative: *Dragon Age RPG*, *Barbarians of Lemuria*, *Dungeonslayers* and *Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG*. I guess in your case, Florian, the question would be: which elements of the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG are better than Barbarians of Lemuria-and are they worth the hassle of switching system, again?
– Alex Schroeder 2011-06-12 22:28 UTC
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None! BoL still crushes the other systems when it comes to playing brawny barbarians who cant be bothered to buy proper clothing... But if I would ever run my own hex-map based exploration sandbox campaign it would be on my short list, together with Pathfinder and Dungeonslayers.
Out of curiosity though: Ist Dragon Age RPG good? I just heard the name a few times but never anything specific...
– Florian 2011-06-14 09:18 UTC
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Having only read small parts of it and heard about it online, I’d say Dragon Age RPG is good. It is short, flavorful, light on mechanics, with a cool stunts system. At the time I read the three *Design Diary* pages on the Green Ronin site (The Dragon Age Begins, The Heart of the Game, Character Creation). That was an excellent overview. Further reading: a review on RPGnet, a comparison with D&D 4E, comments from a guy that does not know the computer game.
that does not know the computer game
For me, however, the problem is similar to the one discussed on the blog post: the question is not whether the game is good—I assume it is!—the question is whether the game significantly better than my current favorite. As far as I am concerned, and not being interested in the Dragon Age setting, it is not.
– Alex Schroeder 2011-06-14 13:28 UTC
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I don’t know if I agree on the notion of the DCC to be rules light, with all the extra tables. It is sure without a skill system, but a roll on an extensive table every time something happens (like critical fumble or hit, spellcasting etc.) sounds like something more in the line of rolemaster from reading...
– rorschachhamster 2011-06-17 11:37 UTC
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I did not like the Rolemaster character generation. That took way too long. But I don’t mind using the attack and the critical hit tables. I guess I don’t consider a simple look-up table to be a lot of rules.
– Alex Schroeder 2011-06-17 12:36 UTC
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Florian, you can borrow Dragon Age from me. DA is not an old school simile like LL or DCC, but a “modern” take on the idea of a “simple” game. I’m still waiting for the second box to come out. I am still buying games, but my choices became way more eclectic over the last years …
– Harald 2011-06-18 10:06 UTC
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Thanks for the links Alex, was an interesting read. I am not really sure if I would call it “modern” but I would like to borrow DA some day Harald to take a look.
– Florian 2011-06-20 08:11 UTC
