DCC vs. C&C

Castles & Crusades and Dungeon Crawl Classics are completely opposite games. Both have an old-school feeling, but this is where the similarities end.

C&C is about simplicity, eliminating as many charts and tables as possible. The game plays like a "rules light B/X" but with fantastic depth and heft to the systems. The game feels much more complicated and profound than it is, which is a tremendous feat of design. This is one of the best fantasy games out there, capable of doing anything: pulp fantasy adventure, high fantasy, dark fantasy, gritty fantasy, and even any fantasy fiction book written. The game can be modded into high-power super-heroic 5E style gaming with feat-like abilities, higher ability score modifiers, and infinite-use cantrips.

C&C is also compatible with everything from zero-edition to AD&D 2nd Edition, a genuine Rosetta Stone of fantasy gaming. Keep on the Borderlands? It plays that. Tomb of Horrors? It plays that. Ravenloft or the Forgotten Realms? Those too.

Both are rooted in the 3rd edition game. C&C is more like 3.0 but with the modern parts removed, and DCC is more like the 3.5E version, clinging to the familiar Fort/Ref/Will saves.

C&C is one of my all-time best fantasy games. One 4x6 index card is all you need for a character. You instantly get that classic AD&D feeling when you play without all the reference work. The multi-classing is fantastic. The SIEGE Engine seamlessly handles everything from saves and ability checks to skill rolls. The game does a lot with a little.

Some dislike the SIEGE Engine because the default CL of 18 for a secondary attribute makes actions "too hard" at level one. The game tells you to "add your level" to the roll if the ability is not covered by another class, and you are supposed to move up the levels (up to 24) pretty quickly. You are supposed to have it tough at level one; wait six to eight more levels, and then things will be too easy.

C&C is not D&D; campaigns don't need to end at the 8th level because the high-level rules are broken. You can keep playing, and it will be fine!

Also, the CK can modify the roll by up to a -10 to +20, so feeling a "level 3 trap" is a CL of 21 is just the starting point. Is it a "level 3 easy" trap? Modify it by -5 for a CL of 16. Is it a "level 3 trivial trap?" Make it a CL of 11. Also, if you use a primary, those CLs get lowered by six points.

The system is meant to be flexible, so be flexible!

People coming from 5E need to be told that.

DCC reminds me of the old-school Paranoia game in ways that make it a love letter to the genre, a parody of fantasy gaming, yet a capable fantasy game in its own right. This is a fever dream of fantasy tropes and Appendix N fiction, and it plays like the original inspirations of fantasy gaming. This game revels in its random charts, creating chaos, insane outcomes, and emergent gameplay through randomness.

Where C&C strips out every chart needed during play, DCC asks for more.

DCC achieves commentary on a hobby that only comes from finding truth through parody, reverence, and introspection. The things that happened to characters in Appendix N books can happen to you. With a straight fantasy game like C&C, we will fall into our biases and assumptions. What can happen in a game is what we expect to happen, and nothing else can happen. The odd, strange, spooky, creepy, and unknown things that can happen - never do.

The dice selection, fourteen instead of the regular seven, also breaks the genre's expectations. Suddenly, the familiar seven fantasy shapes are mixed in with others, and the certainty of relying on one or two dice is broken. In addition to moving to-hit dice up and down the chain, I will move any other die, damage dice included, up and down the chain depending on the situation. When asked to roll a d16 or a d24 for a to-hit, you realize you are playing DCC, and your view of AC and hit modifiers flips on its head. As a warrior, your deed die as a component of to-hits becomes very important with those smaller dice.

As for ability score rolls, in DCC, the only checks you roll a d20 and under are Luck checks. All the others are the standard 3.5E DC skill check system, modified by ability score. A character's occupation and class determine if skills are trained (d20) versus untrained (d10). Level does not modify skill checks, nor is there a "skill system."

You can easily bolt on a skill system to the game by assuming level one characters get two "level zero" skills, one in their class and the other in their occupation. At every level, you get one skill point. With a skill point, you can add a +1 to a skill or buy a new level zero skill. You can give level-one characters a free skill point to see someone with "farmer +10" at level ten instead of +9. Skill points can be banked and saved, but training or practical use is needed to spend them.

Note that the above system will introduce DC inflation, but in 3.5E, that is easily handled by moving the max DC to 30. You can cap skill levels to +3 or +5 if you want.

DCC relies on breaking down assumptions, changing the norm, destroying expectations, and taking the train off the rails. Like any great "S" series module, and this includes Tomb of Horrors, you are forcing a party "outside the box" in terms of expectations of understanding and success. In S3, you are dealing with an alien environment; with S1, your success depends on your thinking ability. "Damage per turn (DPT)" is secondary to these adventures, and that traditional measure of success and capability is turned on.

This is completely opposed to the design ethos of 5E since 5E is all about character power, and your passive skills automatically spot and see everything in the environment—the referee is "supposed to tell you" things based on a fixed skill value. In these modules, you poke, prod, push, and listen. Understanding and the ability to query and interact with an environment is critical. Not numbers. Not DPT. Not builds. Not cheese action economy hacking. Not linking powers and effects.

And death is a "player at the table" in DCC, which is refreshing. Characters always die in this game, from zero-level funnels to a powerful high-level wizard getting backstabbed in an alley. In D&D 5E, character death is near impossible, and this was done by design for marketing and "identity gaming." If you "see yourself in the game" and "buy microtransactions to support that identity," then why would the company want you to lose that character by having them die?

If character death is impossible, it is not D&D. There is no way.

C&C and DCC are more faithful to the spirit of D&D than 5E's software-as-a-service game, and it isn't even close.