Let's take this on like a sword to the face.
This is Not Like AD&D at All
Seven classes. Wild magic powers. Insane die results. Dangerous magic. Buring off scores for better dice rolls. Race-as-class. Piles of funky dice.
Want AD&D specifics? No multiclassing. No magic resistance. No spell components. No AD&D weapon changes. Missing a bunch of iconic classes. Missing the iconic monsters and many spells.
But does any of that matter?
No.
This is totally an AD&D heir to the throne. One that kicks the throne over, discovers the secret passage and gets ten level 0 party members killed when the trap attached to the throne goes off. And then one of the survivors rides a flaming unicorn to Venus to fight the Moon Titan.
Not a Fair Comparison
Putting this game on an heir to AD&D list is not really fair at all. Not fair to Dungeon Crawl Classics, or fair to any of the other games on the list. The real reason it is on here is that this game was derived from the same inspirations as AD&D, the Appendix N list in the back of the AD&D book. One of the best passages in the designer's notes of DCC is this:
There is a great set of designer's notes in the back of DCC that states this: The most powerful trait of Appendix N, insofar as influencing fantasy adventuring, is what I call “pre-genre storytelling.” In the current era, all gamers, and many laymen, have preconceptions of fantasy archetypes: one knows what an elf is like, and what a dwarf is like, and what powers a dragon or vampire should have. Most of the authors in Appendix N, however, were writing before “fantasy” was an acknowledged literary category. The conception of an “elf” as expressed in Tolkien is now “common knowledge,” but the elves described by Lord Dunsany and Poul Anderson were completely different creatures. The same is true of dozens of other fantasy conceits. When you read Appendix N, fantasy once again becomes fantasy; the concepts escape modern classifications.
I love this. This game recognizes that AD&D set up a lot of what we come to expect from fantasy and fantasy gaming. All elves are the same. All dragons are the same. Everything is this sort of mass-market McDonalds' version of what we have already seen in D&D products and nothing will ever be different. They make a great game with incredible lore, but a few product managers and marketers in Seattle do not get to define what fantasy is to the world.
In the Runequest game, elves are plant people. They can even be talking mushroom people.
In the Shadow Elves supplement for Mystara, the "drow" of that world were not inherently evil, had white skin, and lived in a kingdom of mushrooms and danger.
But once you realize what the designers of AD&D were working with, they were setting the standards of what we see as fantasy tropes today. They did not have anything to work with, so anything was right and anything was possible. Once you realize your game can be like this too, your gnolls can be a peaceful tribe of hyena people who live at peace with nature and the Earth Mother, your mind will be freed from the stereotypes that have colonialized your mind from endless years of playing versions of D&D.
When you play your game, it is your right to create your world and make it however you want.
You should have every freedom the designers of D&D did.
Do you want beholders in your game? Do they even work the same way? Are they good? Do they sit in libraries using their eyestalks to read eternally, and mages go to them for sage advice? Do they talk with British accents? Are they even called beholders? Do they wear long flowing robes? Did they once live among the stars and have stories to tell? Are they friends with civilization and wish to protect us from the evil elder gods of space and the consuming darkness? Do they have favorite foods? Do they like bad puns? Do they love collecting books?
You play DCC and accept those freedoms, these can be the beholders in your world.
You only play D&D, and you are mostly stuck to what they say in the Monster Manual.
Yes, you can change things and are allowed to, but I feel the homogenization of D&D at times works against our creativity and shackles our minds to what they give us in the books. The changes they are making in the new 5.5 edition are a step forward, but I do not feel they even go far enough. I don't think they can. They are bound by history and to keep their IP recognizable and marketable for their shareholders.
DCC Breaks the Crayons
Why I love putting DCC on an AD&D list is because it is the kid who breaks all the crayons in the box, makes the other kid cry, and then shows that kid how once you take the paper off the broken pieces you can use the sides of the crayons to make a beautiful sky and a majestic ocean in a few broad strokes. You can use a smaller piece to color the edge of a cloud. You can use a triangle edge to make trees with a single stroke.
And the kid who was crying realizes that perfect crayons sitting in a box have no value.
And when they are broken they can be used to create beautiful things which come from inside.
And he goes from being a sad collector of perfect things to a happy artist who creates and shares with the world.
And the world is changed.
DCC is the warning that chasing AD&D as some sort of golden idol and standard is a waste of time because all you are doing is trying to recreate a game that was created from pure imagination in the first place. Your time would be better spent creating your own interpretations and lore. You should not be chasing what others have done, and you should be out there dreaming and building things that express your creativity.
I do like my AD&D standards and the world that the game built, and it is a part of me, which is why I seek it out - and seek out other people's experiences with this world too. This is the language that those of us who have been to this place understand and share. By looking for AD&D, I get to experience it again, and through the eyes of others who have been there.
But in the end, the world is you.
What are your monsters? What do you fear? What inspires you? What makes you sad? What makes you happy? Does the game let you express these concepts through your play? Or does it ask you to transpose "hate" onto "this monster" and tell you "hate equals this?" Does it lead you through a maze a thousand people walked before with a well-worn path through, or open a door to a new experience no one has seen before because it comes from you?
I do like my AD&D and B/X games, but I always remember what I learned from DCC and use that as a warning to others walking this path.
You can spend so much time looking back that you miss the future.
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