>Be me
>Started RPGs with D&D Basic back in 1982
>Drawn to DM’ing more than playing
>Finished with RPGs in late 90’s with Vampire: the Masquerade after dipping through Traveller, Shadowrun, Cyberpunk, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, In Nomine, HoL, SLA Industries, Hunter Planet and maybe a few others I can’t remember
>Haven't felt the itch in a long time
>Massive Jack Vance fan
>See that this ‘Dungeon Crawl Classics’ has a Dying Earth game
>Immediately buy it, core rules etc
>Now waiting for it to arrive
So fa/tg/guys, what am I in for? Anyone else have experience with DCC in general and Dying Earth in particular?
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disappointment
>Immediately buy it, core rules etc
>Now waiting for it to arrive
Why on earth wouldn't you try it first before deciding to buy it? Physical copies at that.
Why wouldn't you buy something if you think it could be good?
Because I can afford it? I spent less than $300 on all the shit. That’s about a day’s wages for me, after tax.
Anyway, back on topic, do you know anything about the DCC system or the Dying Earth supplement?
>gishposting
yikes
DCC is shit, but some people enjoying eating shit by the spoonful. If you're one of those old grogs who likes to pretend we never roleplayed or engaged in combat in old D and D you might enjoy it, I guess.
But then again you already owned the best version of those types of rules, and without shitty things like the funnel , spell backfiring, or dumb gay woke shit in the preamble. yes, they changed their original somewhat based author foreword to be woke. Yes, that's gay.
And that's why we try before we buy, even if we're overpaid Gen X morons.
>old grogs who likes to pretend we never roleplayed or engaged in combat in old D and D
What else was there BUT those two things?
>you thoroughly explore the dungeon in complete silence, touching every square inch with your 10' poles and grubby little dwarvern fingers for an entire week without encountering anything
>What happens when I put this portable hole inside this bag of holdi-
AND THEY CALL IT A MINE. A MINE!
>Because I can afford it?
That's a dumb reason to spend money.
Can we please get back to talking about DCC/Dying Earth? My finances are entirely irrelevant.
Every other post ITT is an intermittent 9th page bump to reply to a post from 2 days prior. We get it, you like DCC. No one here has anything left to tell you because you already conceded the main point of the thread. It doesn't matter if you should or shouldn't buy it, what alternatives their are, or how it plays. You already spent the money and continue to spend more every day on a game you haven't played yet. Frick off or make a general
Or maybe I’m Australian and I like to check/reply to my thread every morning when I get up?
Nobody’s forcing you to be in here. You are free to post elsewhere.
based I wish I made enough money to just buy books that catch my eye.
I don't know much about Vance or Dying earth. I'd love to hear which books of Vance you recommend for eurotrash science-fantasy-gays like me.
I do know that DCC absolutely shines when running a level-0 funnel at the start. It gets players into the gonzo high lethality mindset. I have successfully turned a group of storyshitters who would literally RP shopping for groceries into a fun group of players by running a DCC like level-0 funnel. We still storyshit, but now a manageable amount.
I also have the book, and a couple of modules, their material is some of my favorite material to just page through, because the art is absolutely amazing and the monster and spell descriptions are great. The art and random tables alone of the book would be worth 20 dollars imho. If soul warranted a rating DCC would get 9/10.
However, DCC does have a problem with streamlined writing. For example, there are tables where ability modifiers are suddenly inverted, that subtracted instead of added, because they could not be bothered to reorder the tables in a matter that you either always subtract or always add. There is a couple of instances like that where even a beginner can identify ways to make the rules simpler and better.
Not OP, but there is currently a collection of all the dying earth novels in a single volume that is very easy to find used for cheap. It's only four books, and they are all very good, although the Cugel books, Eyes of the Overworld and Cugel's Saga, are the most fun.
Vance’s best fantasy works IMHO are the Dying Earth books for antihero fun and Lyonesse for Game of Thrones style epic high fantasy kingdoms at war.
Be warned that the Dying Earth is actually more science fantasy as was a lot of Vance’s work. If you want pure high fantasy go for Lyonesse.
Thanks for the tips bros. Science fantasy has actually really grown on me after reading a whole bunch of Dune, and running a long gonzo campaign.
Funny how I really hate vancian magic as a game mechanic, but his books seem right up my alley.
For a more hardcore science fantasy experience, The Dragon Masters is fun and Showboat World is a very unique setting.
His science fiction is pretty good too, with Alastor 2262 being a personal favourite: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trullion:_Alastor_2262
If you like Dune you’ll almost certainly like Vance, because Herbert was sharing a house with Vance while writing Dune and Herbert’s writing style, um, owes a lot to Vance, if you know what I mean.
No way, I'm gonna blow my pa's mind with this. He's a big dune fan.
Thanks anon. For some reason Vance has really flown under my radar. Maybe he just was less popular in europe.
Yeah he was, I’m thinking because his use of English can be a bit baroque and arcane even for some lower-end native speakers, and I don’t think his style would translate at all well into other languages. Although apparently he has a following in Japan, so who knows?
But yeah, Herbert actually learned a lot about writing from Vance. I read Vance first and when I read Dune I could see Vance’s fingerprints all over it- the flowery language, intricate cultural details, well defined parties whose interests clash or align. If Dune is your thing then the Lyonesse trilogy will very likely appeal to you. It has a lot of the elements that make Dune good and view of the ones that make you want to hurl some of the sequels into the recycling bin in frustration.
I am a different euro and who the frick reads translated works unless absolutely necessary. I know the germans and the italians like to translate everything because they are degenerates but still.. It literally kills the voice/prose/whatever you wanna call it of the author.
also the French used to do that. I still have my copies of Bilbo Le Hobbit and Lo Hobbit o la Reconquista del Tesoro.
Not everyone speaks a foreign language and a good story is still worth reading; you can buy translations of Scandinavian detectives and Andrea Camilleri in the UK
Some general themes about DCC are that the focus is on the emergent narrative instead of a grand overarching plot. Adventuring and magic use will inevitably lead to extreme consequences which can become character defining both narratively and mechanically. DCC will throw you into situations were the stakes are high from a narrative and mechanical standpoint right out of the gate and does not let up. As soon as level 0 or 1 you might be doing something like stop an evil god from being summoned in to the material world. Crazy shit is always happening when you are out adventuring. The style of the game is bizarre and absurd. This is the "Gonzo" vibe that DCC is well known for.
Magic is cool as frick, and probably the best part about the DCC system. You roll a spell check, and there is a table of results. The bigger the roll the more powerful the result. A simple spell cast that happens to roll high can completely turn the situation in, or out of combat. Alternatively you can fail the spell cast and suffer negative consequences. When you get a new spell you also roll on a table for a special effect. They can be good, bad, neutral(ish?), and very impactful or sometimes the spell manifests plainly. This means its very unlikely 2 characters will cast the same spell alike.
DCC in general is more heavily influenced by Vance than 5e is. You will find some fun stuff in the books as a Vance fan, like a Vancian vocabulary table with 100 entries. You will find some spells bearing the names of familiar characters.
The character funnel is no joke, do not skip it! Its basically going to serve as a tutorial adventure, giving players simpler lvl 0 peasants to play, while creating the back story for their surviving characters. People get attached to their lvl 0 shit shovelers that make it to level 1.
Really great info Anon, thanks. I also ordered the DCC Dying Earth #1 module for Lv 1 characters, so I assume the box set has at least a couple of Lv 0 adventures to get the party up to that lofty height.
Cugel is how you fricking do Chaotic Evil PCs
>Cugel is how you fricking do Chaotic Evil PCs
Was going to argue for chaotic neutral in that he’s entirely self serving, does he really do that much ‘evil’? Not saying you’re wrong but definitely wanting to understand your position.
He sells people as slaves and is okay with rape
Okay fair enough. I’m not sure what happened with the Yelisea-worshipping village girl was rape in the strictest sense but that’s dangerous territory for a thread to head into.
Just report, ignore and move on, life’s much easier that way.
He also murdered that shell creature in cold blood over a pramk
I don’t remember that specifically but it’s been a while. Was that in Eyes or Saga?
Eyes, right after he gets the bracelet that summons demons
Cheers will dig out my copy for a re-read. Probably a good idea anyway to get me in the mood for running DCC DE.
You know what he meant and are deliberately arguing in bad faith to shitpost the whole issue into oblivion then move to the next one. Commit suicide, moral parasite.
>same arguments and return to pasture style yearning for games from back in the 80s/90s
>decides to play 3.x
Theres no help to be given because youre the same as every other dumb boomer I guess, enjoy the outcome of "less than a days wage" with your fellows. Probably wouldve been better spent on the next UFC fight and a 30 rack of beers for you to play poker over, while you pirate some actual classics or beg for ACKS II in the pdf share thread like everyone else lmao
Uh, thanks for the thread bump, I guess? Sorry if my description of my personal position has upset you.
"Your personal position" is thinking that DCC is OSR. It is not. Just wanted to warn you.
>nogames drops $300 on shovelware he didn't even read and acts like the people calling him a moron are jealous instead of disgusted by his mindless consumerism
>doubles down to be even more obnoxious
Many such cases
>Nogames
Rude. I have shelves groaning with games.
It’s more about the setting than system. If I want to go ‘old school’ I have my copy of Runequest 2nd ed. from 1979 or AD&D 2nd ed.
>rich boomer
I’m Gen X, just in case you actually think I’m a boomer and aren’t just meme’ing. But thanks, it’ll make a nice change from all the Warhammer, Flames of War and Bolt Action I’ve been playing over the last 25 years.
>DCC is shit
Maybe I’ll find some corn niblets of happiness studded in it then.
I did mention it already but it’s out of print and came out when I was playing wargames. I couldn’t be bothered scouring the net for secondhand copies. Maybe I will in the long run but the ability to just get exactly what I want in one fell swoop is a big choice driver.
Correction: I wrote a post mentioning the Pelgrame Press game on my tablet while fading out to sleep and my tablet refreshed the browser and deleted it while I was on a different tab looking something up. My mistake.
>OOP
>the ability to just get exactly what I want in one fell swoop is a big choice driver.
It's available as POD on the Pelgrane Press website, fella. You can afford it.
https://pelgranepress.com/product/the-dying-earth-rpg/
And available on Amazon used for... holy shit, I'm rich!
https://www.amazon.com/Dying-Earth-RPG-Robin-Laws/dp/0953998002/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=dying+earth+pelgrane+press&qid=1707090440&sr=8-2
Yeah but I like real books that look good on a shelf and serve as artefacts that I can hand down when I go, not drive-thru RPG trash that’s essentially valueless. I might get the Pelgrane stuff if the DCC stuff doesn’t scratch the itch, wait and see.
>Rude. I have shelves groaning with games.
No, you have books that you don't use, not games.
tl;dr
homosexuals like you throwing money uncritically at "creators" has caused the slop to multiply and strangle the hobby. If you wanted updoots and likes you should've gone somewhere else.
>you have books you don’t use
Do you have any idea how few people are interested in playing my copies RuneQuest 2nd ed or SLA Industries? Shit I can’t even tell you the last time I met someone under 40 who knows that D&D wasn’t always D20.
>homosexuals like you throwing money uncritically at "creators" has caused the slop to multiply and strangle the hobby
Wait, the hobby’s being strangled because it has a massive amount of choice on display in a free market? And here I was thinking it’s being strangled by an unholy alliance of parrot-haired crybully progtards, Big Bang Theory/Critical Role latecomer trend chasers and soulless corporate ghouls with their hands wrapped around D&D’s throat. Agree to disagree I suppose.
When I was younger, RPGs were all about what you COULD do, not all about what you aren’t allowed to do, like today.
>nooo you can’t have half-orcs or half-elves with distinct racial characteristics because race is a social construct
>nooo you can’t have alignments or naturally evil races, drow, orcs and gnolls are just culturally misunderstood
>if this next dungeon isn’t wheelchair accessible I am going to hold my breath until I die or Hasbro intervenes to punish you
If me buying DCC hurts Hasbro/WoTC then GOOD. Frick them.
>haha yeah frick supporting creators and shit
I didn’t want to go there but when the frick did /tg/ get this toxic?
Do you younger guys ranting about me being a dumb boomer and a moronic Gen X’er think I haven’t gone through hard times and sacrifices to get where I am? I didn’t even own a fricking car until I was in my 30’s. I got into RPGs and fantasy/scifi as a kid and young adult because my life was fricking shit and I was poor as dirt and I desperately needed escapism. I’m you, just a decade or two down the track.
Instead of hating me for where I am in life, why not aim to join me by the time you’re my age?
I feel really sorry for you if you feel I deserve scorn for finally starting to make decent money after literally thirty years of hard work both on and for myself.
Ignore the trolls, anon. A lot of zoomer kids are bitter at boomers/genx cause they can't buy their own house yet. I'm like you, worked hard to get a good place and can afford all the rpg shit I want now. As long as you're not buying garbage critroll slop you're doing it right. Dying Earth is quality.
>when the frick did /tg/ get this toxic?
Approximately 2006.
I mean you didn't even skim the books or at least watched some youtube review so there is some valid argument to be had that you went full consumer.
on the other hands homosexuals like this guy
should die in a ditch. If you re gonna spend your money it might as well be on tg stuff.
Finally stop it with the old guy pep talk, when you 're my age you can do it too bullshit. It's obviously unattainable in most countries if not almost all outside the US, and even for US guys it sounds so patronising that i wanna hit you in the face.
It's tg. You ll obviously get trolled and flamed a little but that's part of the fun of being here. If not youtube reviews are your friend
>you didn't even skim the books
This is true.
>or at least watched some youtube review
Incorrect assumption. But I value the input I get here much more than what can be gained from some view-chasing chinless pube-beard thirty years my junior trying desperately to break into the semi-profitable world of shilling shit online. Most of those douchenozzles are cringe as frick.
>stop it with the old guy pep talk, when you 're my age you can do it too bullshit
At the risk of going off-topic, that was only brought up in response to the ‘hurr durr stupid boomer paying money to people for their time and effort’ moronation. How these people can whine and b***h about not getting ahead because they can’t get a fair days pay for a fair days work, then turn around and justify stealing shit from creators is a mystery to me. Those guys deserve to get paid for their labour too.
Maybe one day the parrot-hairs will figure out that the globalist shitheads they keep voting for aren’t on their side and things will change, but I doubt it. That level of stupid takes a serious impact to correct.
Jack Vance wrote some great stuff, the first short story of the Demon Princes always stood out to me. If the books end up being interesting and fun please post about it op.
>Maybe one day the parrot-hairs will figure out that the globalist shitheads they keep voting for aren’t on their side and things will change, but I doubt it. That level of stupid takes a serious impact to correct.
I was married to someone who thought like this and foolishly thought they would change with some kindness and reason. Nothing will make them learn.
The main reason I was drawn to the supplement despite not knowing that much about the system is that it also seems to be a pretty neat mini-atlas of the Dying Earth setting. I was much more interested in it for that purpose, and when I found out that you still need a core rule book to play I just decided to go all-in.
I was also attracted by the fact that the artwork and philosophy that seems to permeate the work. That is, it seems truly fantastical and a little unhinged, which aligns nicely with my own feelings about how Vance’s work is best appreciated.
Would I wear a T-shirt with the art on it? Probably not. But would I get it airbrushed on the side of a volcanic orange GMC panel van with a wood panel and shag carpet interior and a chandelier? You bet your bell-bottom jeans I would.
Pirated and skimmed through the books. It's good enough for some boomer nostalgia. Be warned that it is not greatly formatted though and you will need a lot of back and forth, before you get your bearings.
They have some small descriptions of locations that aren't enough for people who haven't read the books imo but get the job done. They have tried to keep a decently Vancian prose when providing some description with moderate success and i appreciate it.
About the rules, it's classic DCC frickery with a billion tables splattered all over the book so i can't say without playing it but they tend to work kinda and most of the time.
Enjoy your rpg hobby revival journey rich boomer
>Pirated
From where, if I may ask? Newvola or nusr?
I haven't used the trove for some years and i can't bother to figure out the new trove with all the disconnected repositories that all require their own passwords or a mail for admission like the dusty self or whatever they seem to ask of me.
I use an irc client called hexchat and find books through there.
rebrand {dot} ly {slash} o-s-rchive
DCC isn't osr but the curator has an affection for it.
Thanks, anon!
If you're a massive Jack Vance fan then surely you already own or have at least heard of the Pelgrane Press Dying Earth game? It's far better at conveying the witty repartee, skullduggery, peawienerery and pomp of the original novels than any backported dungeoncrawler.
I was going to post this as well. Why didn you buy the DCC game over the Pelgrane Press game? I'm not sure about the DCC one, but I'm pretty sure Jack Vance had a hand in at least partly making the system for the Pelgrane Press version.
Both the system and the flavor of it feel like the Dying Earth.
Try to stick to the subject you vapid mong. We are talking about Jack Vance settings here. If you have nothing worthwhile or on topic to add, shut the frick up.
I've been running 2e ravenloft in dcc with some 3rd party classes and we have been having a blast!
Use a blowdryer on lowest and peel the sticker off
they came off super easy
I got 2 boxsets and 16 books for 100$
Whoops don’t mention money or you’ll piss off the poorgays!
Yeah the Pelgrane Press one’s been mentioned and I might buy it down the track. Not sure if pedantic argument is my idea of a fun resolution system though.
Half price books is a gem for rpgs sometimes
So I floated DCC DE to the proposed group of old farts and they are all quite enthusiastic. Most of them have turned out to have some familiarity with DCC and have nothing but praise for its brutal early-game mechanics and old-school balls-out approach.
I'd like to thank all the people who contributed to the thread in good faith and a big frick-you to all the others.
I hope you enjoy it, anon. I'm running a weekly DCC game and really liking it. Don't get bogged down by what /osrg/ purists have to say about it, it's a good time.
Replying to bait baka, I doubt its even the OP. Imagine consulting tg for advice after spending 300$+ but before even asking your friend group. Not to mention the constant politics spew and "its osr" bait
Even if he is baiting, I hope he does actually give the game a try. It's fun and I like it a lot. It's a shame there isn't really a good place to discuss it.
>It's a shame there isn't really a good place to discuss it.
OP here, if nobody else beats me to it I’ll probably start a DCC general once I start coming to grips with the core rules.
Also I bought another couple of modules/adventures today and preordered #10. So that makes a funnel each in the base set and supplement, the first three modules, and a future one. Feeling pretty confident given the generally positive feedback.
>if nobody else beats me to it I’ll probably start a DCC
Good luck, dude. DCC thread attract trolls like flys to shit.
>DCC thread attract trolls like flys to shit.
You’re not fricking wrong holy shit
It's weird. osr """"purists""" hate DCC and thus come in to shit on it, osr haters come in to say that is belongs in the osr general, people with no joy in their lives come in to talk about how cringe the oath is, it uses funny dice and people on /tg/ get fricking *mad* about funny dice, and now they've changed a bit in the beginning so it mentions diversity so the fricking culture warriors are all over it. It purpose built to piss pretty much everyone who does actually play it off.
Great rundown, thanks. I have to admit I wasn’t expecting the fricking three ring circus of dipshittery that this thread has turned into when I posted it. But now I know, if I do create a general, it’ll be with the fractured-ass brigade in mind.
>osr """"purists""" hate DCC
I'd say most of us are perfectly fine with it, but just don't like it being brought up in OSR discussions.
The feedback I’ve had from friends is that it’s a lot like the original Basic D&D from the early 80’s with a touch of the charts from MERP and character career stuff from WHFRP. As an OSR player, do you agree with that? And if not, how would you describe it instead?
I'd say it's like a telephone-game idea of old school play. It vaguely resemble how original D&D played without actually being much like it at all. It's closest in spirit to the 2e era when dungeons were just the set dressing for your action-adventure.
Well then that’s perfect because AD&D 2e is my preferred flavour.
>van art D&D
I laughed NGL, that sounds awesome.
Yeah, give me that nutty crazy shit.
The only similarity with b/x is race-as-class. I dont know about MERP, but it has absolutely zero in common with the WHRP career system, I don't know how anyone could think that.
It's a highly RNG based, bare bones version of 3.0 d&d. It has some interesting ideas (the funnel, the way arcane and divine spells work) some poorly implemented ideas (no one actually uses the die steps) and outright bad ideas (fricking spell duels).
The module design is much, much closer to 3.pf than b/x. The dungeons are far more limited and "fun house" than something truly old school. It's a fun game, but it's very much it's own thing. It's basically van art d&d.
>van art d&d.
Best summary I've heard yet
There are plenty of osr grogs that are fine, but you guys also have some dedicated trolls who go out of there way to shit on everything. I'm not talking about gatekeeping it out of the general, I'm talking about people losing their minds about it in DCC threads.
He did indeed reply to OP (me).
>consulting tg for advice
Opinions and experiences, not advice.
Cheers. Weird how DCC seems to be 90% loved and 10% hated but I’m happy with those odds.
For the record, if you read back in the thread, I actually bought the box set as more of a reference. I thought at the time it was a standalone product and only decided to buy the screen, dice, core rules, extra modules etc because hey why not, and I might want to play one day.
Fortunately several members of my big-ass online friend group have played DCC before and like it.
How are the Dying Earth books? Are they functionally just fantasy or does the fact that it's set on a future Earth figure into the plot?
You know the old line about sufficiently advanced science being indistinguishable from magic? Yeah it’s mostly like that. Some of the stories, like ‘Guyal of Sfere’ are a bit more science than fantasy but overall, yeah… it’s magic.
A lot of clones/vat grown people. A lot more sci-fi with spellcasting than fantasy.
It's a fantasy of the far future. The fact that the Earth is winding down is just background fluff really, but it helps contextualise everyone's pettiness and indifference to the wonders that surround them.
Read Cugel's Saga anon. It's just fun.
I'm not familiar with the DCC version, but I do recommend the older Dying Earth RPG by Robin Laws. It may still be in print somewhere.
It's much more of a storygame than a dungeon crawler, but to me that's more fitting to the tone of the stories. You can tell he really gets the material by the way pedantic argument is the core conflict resolution system.
The magic rules are the only part of it I'm not a big fan of, but in my ideal Dying Earth game PCs aren't playing magicians anyway. And to do it justice, the way magic seems to work varies enormously in the interval between The Dying Earth and Rhialto the Marvellous.
This is really the kind of question you should be asking BEFORE you drop the cash.
I'm actually running a DCC DE campaign and it's been real hoot! I absolutely adore the Spell Provenance rules and seeing how each and every spell has been tinkered with by magicians before. Got one guy who transforms into a swan every time he casts Color Spray.