DCC RPG and I (with a sizeable side of METAL)

TL;DR: I’ve been running DCC RPG for three sessions, killed 9 PCs and while initially being overwhelmed I’m now rolling with it and I homeruled it already.

Longform: Last year I saw DCC RPG in my FLGSes and I left it on the self because, well, AFG. AFG is a small game. AFG has very few tables. I can run it without using the handbook, and I’m supercomfortable with it. In part because I wrote it, but mostly because it’s tiny and designed to be nimble. It’s my OSR game, and does things the way I mean them to be.
DCC is an A4 book two inches thick. It’s full of tables. Spells take two pages each. Critical hits go on and on and on for pages. Compared to my usual fare, it’s incredibly baroque, and the characters have such a badass feeling, almost a comic-book aura of WRAAGHH to them.

But since it was reduced to 24 quid and I had store credit (because of FLGS AFG sales) I got myself a copy. I figured I could do worse with my money.

Anyway, I read it and I realized it was more or less an homeruled S&W. And i struggled a bit because the handbook is not well organized, and I needed to search for stuff, but now it has a bunch of bookmarks and it works much better.

But the homerules are all METAL. Like, EFFING METAL MAN.

IT’S OSR PLAYED REALLY LOUD.

So, yeah. For the non DCC-enabled, here’s a brief rundown about what’s different:

• Casting and healing need a successful roll, but can be cast way more often. And depending on the casting roll, the effects can be more or less awesome. If you fail, bad shit happens. I like the strategic approach of spellcasting of D&D, but here METAAAAAL being potentially awesome or fucked up because you summon spells is good.
• For the same reason, critical hits and fumbles in combat. Especially fumbles. Criticals are dope. METAAAAAAAAALLL
• Fighters get to deal more damage and hit better, but instead of adding flat bonuses, they roll more dice. MORE SWINGY MELEE, MORE METAL.
• You get to start with four lvl0 commoners. You can’t even pick a race. A cobbler, an elven falconer, a rutabaga farmer and an artisan? All really squishy with 1d4 HP, and 3d6 down the line for stats? And that if they manage to survive he first adventure, only then they become level 1? And that they die, like, a lot, because with 2 hp, even if you’re conservative, a bad initiative roll can fuck you up? BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD OF METAAAAALLL
• Thieves when backstabbing deal automatically critical hits. Let me restate the supersweet concept in all caps:  BACKSTABS ARE AUTOMATICALLY CRITICAL. I think that no words mo’better than AUTOMATICALLY CRITICAL have ever been written in the history of RPG. So the thief after a backstab can roll on the critical hits table. THIS IS GOOD. THIS IS METAL.
• There’s a spell that transforms stuff in SNAKES. You can’t control them and they slither away, but you can just TURN WEAPONS, BELTS, RINGS, ROPE, CROWNS, PANTS, IN SNAKES. EVEN ON OPPONENTS. SNAKES EVERYWHERE. METAL.

So, yeah, expect DCC content.

Procedural GM-less Terrain Generation for Crusaders in the Snow

I started writing a cooperative, umpireless wargame. All players are in the same team, a small chapter of knights of the Teutonic Order converting and fighting the pagans in the lands across the Eastern Baltic. A game of exploration and conversion. But it’s really about oppression and reprisal.

Why?

First, I had a few hours on a train going to an OSR-UK meetup.

Second, a while ago I started writing Crusaders in the Snow, an OSR domain game on the same topic. And the writer’s block on that is massive because of many reasons.

Third, cooperative wargames are interesting. You need rules for handling the fight without risking that any of the players will pick dumb choices for the opposition.

Fourth, I love terrain generation, and the terrain around the Eastern Baltic was awful.

Mires and forests and lack of roads made overland travel a pain. Horses drowned in swamps pulling down their riders. Travel times of five miles a day. And the locals knew the ground like their pockets. And you thought your DM was severe. This is high-level douchebaggery.

How did the Order wage war in such a place?

First, they had boats that could easily go up and down rivers. And there are plenty of rivers in the area, so, during the summer, river movement is easy-peasy, which is useful because the rest of the terrain is a big mire.

Second, during the winter the frozen landscape became a warpath. Rivers froze enough to allow knights to use them as roads, and battles were fought on them (sometimes going really badly for the Crusaders).

So, what do we have now? Randomly generated terrain, asymmetric wargame, difficult movement.

More next time, where I discuss the randomly generated terrain.