Dungeon Crawl Classics: OSR 101

DCC exists because people forgot how to play roleplaying games.

It takes a lot of random charts, forced 'bad stuff happens' rolls, bad things happen, random sudden death, and insane modules to come close to how we played the game back then - but this comes close.

For some, it is too much—it was for me the first time I read this. I felt it was impenetrable—a giant book with hundreds of pages and charts everywhere. I was reading it, telling myself, "This is cool, but I do not need all this to role-play how we used to."

I would just do it.

And I could do it with any version of B/X; just pick it up and go. Something insane may happen? Make a save, or it does. The old "save or die" roll, and we interpreted that as "save or this crazy stuff happens to you."

An arm turns into a tentacle, and you are turned into a green slime. Your face melts, and your sword is destroyed. You are teleported, sans gear, into a random dungeon room. You fall into another plane of existence, and your soul is torn from your body.

Deal with it.

I feel future D&D books will ban these sorts of things from the game and forbid the DM from using these "save or die" mechanics because they are traumatic. The entire game will be written around "protecting the player's ego and mental health," and at that point, it will be time to throw the books out. We are almost there with institutionalized safety tools; even though I support their use, people will abuse them - and game designers will just keep extending what they can do into other parts of the game.

Every monster will have a safety tools section.

Most Safe (recommended): The gelatinous cube will not dissolve the character in acid but merely carry them around in a comical and slapstick way. The character will be able to breathe and speak normally. As a result, nothing terrible will happen to the trapped player character, and they will be let go in 1d6 turns (in a safe area). If the X card is touched, merely push the character back a square without encasing them. If touched a second time, the cube blocks forward movement without forcing backward movement (DM: Ask the player if they fear substances like Jell-O and do not serve them this type of food during the game).

We would not want players to have panic attacks because they fear being dissolved alive and suffocated! You may laugh, but this is the cozy game D&D is slowly turning into. I am all for non-violent solutions and problem-solving, but I do not believe in pulling punches to protect someone's character. I have had a player believe their character could not die, step off a cliff to prove it, and I ruled the character died.

Cha'alt has a simple roleplaying game (Crimson Dragon Slayer) written into the book's appendix, and it is a complete, rules-light version of 5E meant to run the adventures at conventions. With every book, this gets iterated on and improved, and I can see why it is there. For convention play, why do you need anything more? Why do we need character sheets? Say what you are and the rules. Figure out your hit points, attacks, and bonuses, and tell me what you do.

And compared to DCC? Why do we need all these charts, character sheets, rules, and dice? This game goes all around the barn to walk in the front door. You don't need all this extra stuff if you know old-school play.

Fail a spell roll? Critically hit? I will tell you what happens. I only need a few pages of charts and rules. DCC, by comparison, is old-school play with training wheels. It is a very harsh way of putting it, as I love DCC as my go-to OSR game, but I can see where the feeling comes from. The charts train you how to "do all this" without a book telling you to "just make up something cool."

The charts are a starting point; if you can think of something better now, go with that! The book tells you to. In fact, DCC tells you to go beyond the book and the rules if you want to, so the entire game is optional.

So DCC is too big and unwieldy, and if you look at it another way, all of DCC is optional - so it isn't.

But DCC does train you on how things are done and gives you ideas. In this day and age of role-playing games written to take all imagination and fun out of the game and make the events in them "reflect your mundane life," we need this game more than ever.

So, playing Cha'alt with DCC makes sense.

In other ways, it doesn't.

The old-school answer to the question?

Are you having fun?

If you say yes, then it doesn't matter.

DCC on the Storage Shelf

Sometimes, I put games on my storage shelves to see if I can live without them. If I don't miss them, okay, they get sold. DCC went there recently, and this is a game where you embrace the randomness and take what the charts give you.

You will be OP and unhappy if you cheat the rolls and push characters towards the best results. The weaknesses and bad results balance the good ones. The strange, sometimes underpowered, and overpowered in some areas results balance out in the cosmic scheme of things.

And nothing says you can't give characters equally strange and extraordinary abilities as awards. A peculiar gem gives you a +1 die shift to your magic missile checks. You can complete a patron quest and gain a few ability score points. It all balances out.

Embrace the random.

Embrace the old school.

If you come in with predesigned characters with pages of backstory or ideal heroes, you dream up to be cool ahead of time - you will be disappointed. If you want those, play GURPS and buy the excellent character features you desire without relying on charts to give you the results.

Otherwise, accept that your characters can die at any time, and you will create a new fun bunch using the generators next time and go right back at it. They are disposable; terrible things can happen to them, which is okay.

DCC is a statement against the sickening lifestyle gaming trend put upon the hobby by Wall Street to increase attachment and damage mental health. Go read any game published in the 1980s or 90s - you are never your character, and doing that damages your mental health. Where did that go?

It is better if you are a random character with flaws.

That ideal character in your head? Try to make this character like that through progression, or not, or do your own thing.

So, why am I thinking about pulling this off the storage shelf and back onto my most played?

I got in on one of Venger Satanis' Kickstarter offers and finally got the three full-color, hardcover, psychedelic, drug-trip adventures, and campaign settings as an add-on. People don't like this guy, but I love him on YouTube and anything he does because he is so outrageous, strong-opinioned, and insane in the best way. I love the community's zany and unhinged creators, they breath life into an otherwise stale, overly safe, and dreadfully dull hobby this is turning into. I swear as the lifestyle brand marketers, slick corporate shills, and therapists take over the hobby it is turning into an overly sensitive pile of suck.

And Chal'alt has to be one of the best DCC and MCC campaign settings ever.

It is stupid, insane, random, vile, and crazy. It breaks all the rules. It breaks so many directions, the ones you established inside your head begin to break too. This is the point. People use "triggered" to avoid breaking through the walls they build inside their heads and around their hearts.

Pretty soon there is no more room inside your hear to imagine, and no space left in your heart to love.

And if you don't like dated pop-culture jokes and so-rando hilarious encounters, that could kill your character. And to be honest, many of the early TSR books had the same "dated pop culture" references, so give me a break. Castle Greyhawk had a Star Trek in-joke and dozens of other pop-culture references. And if you think a particular pop-culture joke in this adventure is dated, just create a fresh one and go with that. Riff on who you hate! I am sure Venger would say you have his permission to play it your way. You can come at this from any political leaning and idealistic bent and put encounters here to lampoon that.

This is satire, a lost art.

Embrace it.

Free your mind.

Snap the chains of fear.

Reading these books puts you in a strange, psychedelic state. Some weird and bizarre things are there to produce that mind-altering effect. You feel uncomfortable or on unsteady ground and question reality. Yes, there are dated jokes here, but again, drop in some from today. You are fine, and the humor works. Parts of the book read like someone's private Twitter news feed, with a mix of political satire, dirty jokes, and adult content right next to each other. The book makes people uncomfortable because it hits too close to home - which is as it should be.

And yes, there is suggesting material and art in here, but nothing out of the realm of a 1990s Heavy Metal comic. It is more mature-themed than pornographic. Go in knowing that, and you are fine.

And expect to be offended, but who cares?

I want to be offended. Challenge me!

This is not a game for therapy sessions, and you are free to pull out the safety tools if you want (this is what they are made for, so get some use out of them). But just have fun and try to laugh; this is a huge missing part of this overly-serious, everything-is-a-statement, too-political, stuffy establishment hobby the mainstream has turned into. Mainstream gaming sucks these days, it is worse than AD&D 2nd Edition, like some televangelist religious group has a TV-camera pointed in your gaming room and monitors what you say and do - and you will be punished for transgressions against the state religion.

Twitter has turned into the Jim & Tammy Baker show, but worse - twice as moralistic and judgmental and just as likely to try and ruin your life. I remember the 1980s and the whisper networks in small towns. Say the wrong thing against a televangelist, popular subject, or public figure, and your parents would get harassed at work, and the family would get run out of town.

It could never happen today, right?

Cha'alt is DCC's missing and unsaid half - the strangely perverse and pop-culture parody part missing from the core rulebooks. It is the part of the game we old-school players feel should be in there, but since modern sensibilities would drive the company out of business, it is left out for us to put in there ourselves.

I considered playing this with GURPS, but it did not make sense. I am sure some would get a good laugh at that, too. DCC is the far better choice because there is an element of 'who cares' for characters, and watching them fall prey to the strange and bizarre dangers in this world is a massive part of the fun.

And the OSR-5E-like lite rules and stats he has here for encounters seem mostly compatible with DCC, with a few tweaks here and there. Saves are saves, damage is damage, attacks are attacks, and just play damn it. It all works, if you feel during play it doesn't - change it!

This is the way.

This setting works equally well with any character from any DCC-style game. MCC, Weird West, DCC superheroes, space characters from Star Crawl, Operation Bug Hunt soldiers, Gunzo True Vigilantes, the Class Alphabet randoms - any of them. It is a science-fantasy space setting, and while star travel is possible, the characters are assumed to be random riff-raff, strange nobodies, vagrants, or opportunists who came to this planet of madness looking for a quick profit and hustle.

Magic can exist alongside mutants and space marines. Elder gods exist. Alien intelligences are out there. There are ancient ruins of high-tech civilizations alongside medieval villages.

Nothing matters, but it all does.

This is like an adult version of Rifts, the humorous version of Hubris, a random Heavy Metal fantasy strip, and I love it for its unhinged and mind-altering nature.

What sets you free makes you question reality.

Cha'alt isn't something that should make sense. It is a feeling, an anti-reality, something that breaks our minds. Procedural logic is the enemy. The walls inside our heads are choking us to death.

If all you know is a prison of fear and doubt, your mind will never be free.