You can see the Dungeon Crawl Classics seeds being planted with these early 3.5 adventures. They had the short adventure format down perfectly, the tone, the old-school feeling, the deadly nature of the dungeons, the shorter scenarios, the creepy factor, and the sense of fun in these early DCC releases.
But the game just wasn't there with D&D 3.5e. I feel what Wizards was releasing as rules just could not do these adventures justice. This is always my problem with big-publisher games and third-party material, and this applies to Pathfinder 1e and 2e as well, along with every version of D&D from 3e to 5e. You buy a third-party "cool setting" and it changes the feeling in a great, new way. And then the main rules trundle on with new releases and the main rules diverge in tone from the "cool thing" you want to keep cool.
And you have this cool dark elf sourcebook, and someone wants to play their war-forged fae-aspect plane-walking druid introduced in a later supplement. Not that I would say no, but the cool, unified, focused feeling of living and surviving in an underground world of shifting alliances and treachery feels lost with a plant-loving robot wandering through there. Sure, that robot is an outsider like a human down here would be an outsider, but this outsider is so outside the tone and feel of the setting they might as well be from outer space.
The D&D 3.5 Feel
D&D 3.5 feels like D&D 3.5, not really old-school. To me, there is this D&D 3.5 power gaming going on that feels hard to ignore. Cleave to great cleave. Feat choices. Multi-classing, and taking some of this and some of that. The higher-level builds that break the game, like the infamous whirlwind build. It starts off great like B/X, and then the characters get really inwardly focused on making their builds even more powerful. Old-school games don't have that tree-like build as you level, and to me, the characters feel more outwardly focused on the world, story, exploration, and strategy.
That exponential curve of power is built into a lot of the D&D 3 and later games. Where B/X games tend to be more linear power progression, games like D&D 3 and later start you off in a B/X feeling level one, and then quickly pile feats, choices, and power-ups to your class as you level. It is satisfying for players, but the downside is slow and complicated high-level play, tons of monster hit points and super-high ACs, an MMO-like dependence on magic item gear, and all sorts of interlocking combat rules, conditions, and rules interrupt mechanics that drag down play.
This is the shell game a lot of the newer editions play. It starts just like B/X, look! And then you hit high levels and the complexity of the system pulls the old "system mastery" platform lock in on you. If you don't stay on top of the builds, strategies, errata, new options, increasing combat choices, party synergy, and system complexity you can't perform well at the table. And often playing these games is so mentally demanding you don't have the time or desire to learn a new game.
Some people like the increasing complexity. I prefer games that have a fixed level of complexity at the start and to the end with a linear progression curve, so you have similar options, but you are better at them.
While these adventures at a low level may feel old-school, as you level things will progressively get more complicated and gameplay will slow down considerably.
The Early DCC 3.5 Adventures
They are still fun adventures, totally worth converting to your OSR system of choice, and this includes the DCC game itself. But they are not really DCC in spirit since they feel more like old-school tributes to the classics, so they have that AD&D tone and feeling to them.
This 3.5 series of adventures started in 2003. Of course, Pathfinder 1e steamrollered everything 3.5 back in 2009, and the world these were set in and the adventures themselves were sort of forgotten. D&D went 4e in 2008, and we liked that as a tactical miniatures game more than a roleplaying game. Pathfinder 1e, to us, was a continuation of the Grayhawk legacy of the level 1 to 20 heroic path. And we did find Basic Fantasy and Labyrinth Lord back then as well, as the OGL was just getting started.
Dungeon Crawl Classics was released in 2012, and these adventures were more legacy throwbacks and it is still cool to be able to pick them up in PDF form and read them.
The Game, Refocused
Dungeon Crawl Classics was developed as an Appendix N rebuild of an AD&D-like game using the OGL if the conventions and tropes of the Appendix N books were seen as "more important" to the rules and systems of the game than the older Chainmail-based rules of the early era game. I love this reimagining of the game since it is almost like this Moebius-level art and style that changes your perception of roleplaying and fantasy gaming.
It is Heavy Metal, Moebius, grimdark, deadly, crazy, and gonzo. Once you get it, you cannot unsee it, and your perceptions of fantasy roleplaying are forever changed.
The old DCC 3.5 modules almost feel like "don't entirely get it" throwbacks in comparison, written for someone else's game and of high quality, but they feel like early works leading to the DCC game that feels like the result of someone's vision quest in life. There are hints and little clues in these adventures that you can see are clear inspirations for what is to come.
And DCC changed it all entirely and became a phenomenon.
Part of my problem with some of the 5E versions of AD&D modules is this tonal thing. D&D 5e just isn't AD&D anymore. The tone has moved on. To me, D&D 5e does not feel like a game where you wander into a room full of 30 kobolds and slay them all for 50gp and a tapestry. It feels wrong. It does feel more like a superhero game these days, with a lot of pop culture appropriation and anime emulation, with a dash of lifestyle branding and bucket-list life experience simulation tossed in there. The tone is way different.
Just like DCC's tone is way different.
And the tone matters. This is like Guardians of the Galaxy compared to John Carpenter's The Thing.
Worth Playing?
I still see the older DCC 3.5 modules as worth playing, perhaps in the Greyhawk-like world of Aereth, and this world could fit in all the classic A-series, S-series, B-series, and other classic modules in the world as sort of a throwback retro-remix sort of experience.
Heresy, I know. This world isn't even as detailed as Greyhawk or Mystara. But it does have a lot of the D&D 3.5-isms that later turned into main-game staples, such as tieflings and eladrin, which don't feel right in Greyhawk, at least not to me. And it has more than 50 brand-new adventures to collect and play. And if most of this world is undeveloped, well, I am breaking out my book of stickers and my sharpies and creating parts of the world myself - and that is a good thing. Hex-crawls here we come, and we are not stepping on anyone else's lore, sourcebooks, or novelizations.
A blank slate is a good thing.
I am a little torn on what system to use to play this with though. I would like to say Castles and Crusades for a more modern feel, but a part of me is just wanting to use Old School Essentials Advanced and have the perfect classic experience right there. Maybe throw in a few OSR things from Labyrinth Lord and other games. Sometimes simple is the best, and if you are going for classic feeling emulation, OSE is still one of the best games out there for that style of play.
I would not use the DCC system though, since that tone thing feels like a disconnect. With DCC, I could hex-crawl the entire world and just say "well the darkness has lifted like something out of Forbidden Lands" and go out and explore! Build the world as you go. Have crazy adventures in a post-apocalyptic world of the ancients, cross into extraordinary realms, and travel to the far future.
Comparing these early DCC adventures with what was to come is fascinating to me, but it also opens my eyes some to these classic-style adventures and what best to play them with. To me, the tone needs to fit the adventure. With the classic AD&D modules and these early DCC 3.5 adventures, the tone of OSE fits perfectly.
D&D 5e is a different thing entirely.
So is DCC.
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