Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG Core Rulebook - Softcover Edition Paperback – January 16, 2024

Been playing and running RPGs since 1981ish. Worked in the RPG industry back in the early 2000s. I've played the best of the best: AD&D, WEG SW d6, Traveller (All of them!), TW2K (All of them), HERO, GURPS, Savage Worlds you name it I've probably played it. But nothing, NOTHING, has gotten me to fall in love with the hobby again and feel the same way I felt rolling my first d20 with AD&D in '81 until I played DCC. It just captures that feeling of rolling wired dice, crazy magic spells, mysterious monsters, fantastic deeds, sword and sorcery nostalgia and so much more. If you want to play a FRPG old school style this is the one. Modern like mechanics tweaked to feel like old D&D. Classic classes that feel right. There is so much more to say about this game: the funnel, the expertly written DCC modules available from GG (Sailors on the Starless Sea!! Chef's kiss.), the fans and fan created materials, gongfarmers, mighty deeds, patrons, the ART!, the magic system (oh the magic system! so good), I can go on and on. Mega thick tome 512pgs! (but you really only need read about 100pgs of ALL the rules including esoteric ones) Lots and lots of tables, lots and lots of amazing art, strong binding, thick hardcover, oh and did I mention you get a FREE PDF of the book when you buy it? Starter adventure check. Lots of monsters check, NPCs check, equipment-weapons-armor-check, lots of spells check, lots of fun quadruple check! The only down is this is really not for a first timer gamer. You really have to know how to run/play an RPG to grok all the concepts. There is no "how to run a game" section or an "introduction to role-playing" part. This is not a dig just an observation. Play in a "funnel" and you'll get it. Oh and this is not for the faint of heart this is old school-Characters WILL die. This is not hand-hold group storytelling this is gonzo in your face combat with unbalanced encounters, no death saves, crazy magic, spellburn, mighty deed dice, and burning luck permanently to live. It will challenge you. Your PCs will have to run away sometimes and again Characters will die. This is a good thing it makes Dungeon Crawling dangerous again. 'Nuff said - Why haven't you bought this yet?

At a glance, the Dungeon Crawl Classics rulebook is well produced overall. The abundant art strongly evokes the very early days of RPGs. Some people might wish there were color illustrations, but I think the old-school feel of black and white is very right for this game. For the most part the game is well presented in terms of the subject order and clarity. Most of the rules are explained very well. The physical text is readable, with nice bold page numbers (thank you! WotC could learn from this). At 500 pages it's a large, thick book. But isn't that what you want in a tome of arcane lore?I like playing this game a lot. After 3 years playing 5th edition D&D, DCC is a breath of fresh air. As the author explains in the introduction, too many fantasy RPGs are closely parallel with D&D, almost like the same system with personal tweaks. He set out to create something with a different feel, and I think he succeeded.For one thing, there's a lot more randomness. The preferred method of character creation is to roll up several zero-level characters, take them through a "funnel" adventure designed to kill off most of them, then choose a character from the survivors. Not being attached to these initial candidate characters encourages a much more free-wheeling play style at the start of a campaign. After the funnel adventure you switch to a more detailed character sheet and really start building your character.Combat in DCC is fairly streamlined. You have familiar elements like Armor Class, attack rolls and weapon damage, but there are far fewer mechanical rules and restrictions. To me combat has a nice organic feel that's not as lockstep as D&D.I think DCC's most innovative feature is the magic system. Using magic is risky! It can have side effects specific to your individual character. It can misfire! You must roll to successfully cast a spell, and the roll determines the degree of success - the difference between flaming hands and a full-out fireball, for example. You can shore up your chance of success by weakening yourself, temporarily stealing energy from your ability scores. There are no spell slots or mana to limit the amount of spellcasting you can do, but failure usually means losing the spell for the rest of the day, and if you fail hard, worse things can happen - you might go blind, for instance, or your hands might turn into tentacles. If you are a cleric, spellcasting failure can displease your deity, and each failure makes this more and more likely.The effect of a spell is determined randomly by the success roll. In some cases you are explicitly allowed to choose any effect at or below your success level, but by default a specific thing happens. In the fire example I mentioned above, you have no control over whether the spell produces flaming hands or a fireball. This level of unpredictability doesn't appeal to me or the people in my game group, so our house rule is that your success roll usually just determines your set of choices instead of dictating the exact effect.The variability of spell effects means most spell descriptions take a full page or longer. Consequently the spell section is almost a third of the rulebook. A lot of any spell description is boilerplate text with a few different words or numbers for each die roll result. I suspect that this section could be trimmed down by maybe half if each spell had a general description followed by a die roll table listing the variations.All in all I give Dungeon Crawl Classics a solid 5 stars. I expect to spend years playing this game!