Crawl! #3 Arrives!

I got my  copy of Crawl! #3 on Saturday morning and finally had a chance to go through it this morning on the subway. As you can see, this issue's theme is the magic and features rules for NPC magic, Patron Spells for Van Den Danderclanden, Familiars and more. Building each issue around a theme is a smart decision, and there are some real treats in here to make either your adventuring or party-killing lives easier.

As you know, magic in DCC RPG is very different from most other FRPGs on the market. Success is never guaranteed, failure is catastrophic, and, should you be so lucky so cast a spell, the effects will wreak havoc on your targets. While these rules are a blast to use, it can be quite time-consuming to fully implement them for NPCs. Reverend Dak has given us simple rules for handling NPC magic that I will be adopting for my future games. You still make spell checks, but it the effects are static and the spell check is handled similar to a skill check. Also included are rules for critical hits.


The real highlight of this issue are the patron spells for Van Den Danderclanden, the patron that one of Dak's players made and introduced to the world from Craw! #1. If you have spent any time on the Goodman Games forum, one of the most common requests is rules for creating patrons. While you'll find no how-to rules here, these are an excellent example to model yours after. Now that we have the full rules for Van Den Danderclanden, he will beshowing up in my game as soon as a Wizard shows up in the party.

I also really appreciate Raven Crowking's Magic Wand spell, as the rules for doing so were not present in the DCC RPG book. At the same time, you may wish to disallow players access to rules for creating every type of magic item available and just offer them as rare loot. No matter how you approach Wands, these rules will be useful. 

I can't stress this enough: if you're playing DCC RPG and not getting Crawl!, you're really missing out. While your mileage is going to vary from issue to issue, it's a steal at $3.50 (that includes postage!). Besides, if you're not finding the kinds of things you want to see, you could always submit.

Crawl!

Just as I thought I was going to have nothing to post about, Reverend Dak dropped this in my mailbox today. Now, given that I've only had it for about two hours and haven't really had a chance to go through it, I can't really give a proper review.

What I have managed to digest is very useful. The DCC RPG book doesn't have any treasure tables or mechanical guidelines for handing out treasure. What it does have is an explicit warning about handing it out carelessly. The world of DCC RPG is a grim one, and most commerce happens with as an exchange of goods, not coin. The piles of gold we associate with fantasy gaming are only won through adventuring, and even then it is no guarantee.

This issue gives us plenty of random tables fit to the scale of DCC RPG. It's also jam-packed with lots of art from various artists across the blogosphere who are involved in this game one way or another. My normal gaming schedule has been a little off this week, so rather than run my usual Sunday game I will tear through this. I'll also be working on my first homebrew class for DCC RPG which is in the final stages (I hope) right now. In the meantime, get over to Dak's blog and snag yourself a copy now!

Chasing the Dragon

This next sentence could be a complete falsehood: the majority of people who play roleplaying games either find their ideal system or they leave the hobby. It seems true to me, but that doesn't necessarily make it so. In my high school, when I began roleplaying, there was a rather large crowd of people interested in P&P gaming and we played a wide variety of systems: various editions of D&D, Werewolf, Vampire: The Masquerade, Mage, Big Eyes Small Mouth, Shadowrun, etc. I don't live around the area anymore, but, from what I can tell, a lot of those people don't play games anymore. Those who do pretty much play whatever system they have the most books for, or whatever is most nostalgic for them.

Maybe I have some genetic disorder where I'm predisposed to wanting to see what hue of grass is on the other side of the metaphorical fence, but I'm always looking at new systems. I've become pretty good at finding ones that fit particular needs but I've yet to find the one. This is not a quest for perfection; rather, the ideal system for me and my players.

Without getting into semantics, let's define the ideal system as one that serves my purposes best. These change depending on the type of game I want to play. The Burning Wheel game I'm running right now is intensely story driven. There's plenty of action, too, but each fight, due to the nature of the system, means a whole lot more as combat is so lethal. The players have to want to risk death and seem to do so only if it means accomplishing their goals. This is, bar none, the best ruleset I've found for any fantasy game where the focus is going to be on roleplaying. The Duel of Wits rules function like a social combat for negotiating conflict; players write beliefs as part of character creation and are rewarded for testing them in play; the lifepath system creates fully-formed personalities from which to easily build back stories.

It is everything I want for a campaign that will have a narrative focus. Should I want to do a dungeon crawler-style campaign or something flavored closer to high fantasy, it would be a poor choice. It's not that the rules couldn't handle those types of games; it's just not well suited for it. The mantra-like response I get to this idea is that the type of game is determined by the players, not the system. I feel like this is one of those nature/nurture arguments. Both are important, but to say one trumps the other is conjecture.

I've yet to find my ideal system for dungeon crawling campaigns. I've never played 1st or 2nd edition D&D, but 3.X and Pathfinder are definitely not those systems. At low levels, it's hard to see why, but anyone who has taken characters over level 10 can attest to the exercise in tedium that combat becomes and anyone who has DMed high-level is well-aware of the amount of prep work it takes to hold this game together.

I'm holding out for Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG, but I am skeptical. Without a doubt, it's going to replace Pathfinder for most of my high-fantasy needs, but I hesitate to say that it will be ideal. I hope I'm wrong.

And there is the other, larger issue at the core of this post: does a RPG system exist which handles RP-intense campaigns and combat-heavy games with equal grace and measure?