Joseph Goodman informed me this morning that the public beta of the Dungeon Crawl Classic Roleplaying Game begins this Wednesday (June 8th). You'll be able to download the current draft of the game and take it for a test spin. Better yet, you'll be able to contribute feedback to Goodman Games in order to help make the final version of the game (to be published in November) as good a game as it can be.
I'm definitely looking forward to hearing what people think about the game after it's made available. I suspect a lot of gamers will either be sold or turned off DCC RPG based on what they see this Wednesday. Either way, it'll be illuminating.
The make/break of DCC is the spell and the random tables that they are made up of. That seems to be the sticking area as combat is fast until you get to spells then you have to randomly roll on a table and see what happens.
ReplyDeleteAs long as the tables aren't too complex and are easily referenced on a screen, I don't foresee any issues with their spell system. We'll have to see though!
ReplyDeleteExciting! Thanks for the update! I'm hoping to play test this at Gencon.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of old school, I'm working on a Gygax/OSR poem in the vein of Dr. Seuss at http://digitalorc.blogspot.com/2011/06/guy-with-die-part-1.html
Thanks for the heads-up, James!
ReplyDeleteI love when game companies do this---I'll be downloading it for sure!
Keep in mind that the Beta rules download won't be a full rules set -- there are sample spells and monsters but not all of them.
ReplyDeleteI played in Harley Stroh's DCCRPG demo at NTRPGCon yesterday (Sunday) morning, and I can confidently say two things:
ReplyDeleteFirst, Harley is a great GM. My brother-in-law (who attended with me) and I will certainly be seeking out any openings for games he runs in the future.
Second, even after reading all of the outstanding feedback from past DCCRPG playtesters, we were taken aback by how great this game is... so much so that on the 11 hour drive back to St. Louis, as we were reading printouts of all the character class descriptions that Harley was gracious enough to give us, we quickly reached a decision to begin using the beta rules for our home game, starting this Sunday.
I couldn't be happier with my decision to pre-order this game.
OK, I'm so torn with the hype machine that this DCC RPG has become! It just seems like it's becoming too good to be true, you know? I mean, I guess I'm skeptical as to how innovative this game came be. Well, I suppose I'll have to download this thing on Wednesday and start taking a look for myself.
ReplyDeleteIf comments I heard after the NTRPG con games are any indication, Joe and Harley have a hit on their hands. I got excited just looking at the promo artwork, but sitting next to one of their games as it played (I had to work the register for awhile on Saturday) I am convinced this is going to get lots of strong reaction, most all of it positive.
ReplyDeleteI've heard nothing but good things about DCC. I'm still on the fence about the funky dice and the charts for all the spells. But I have faith that it should be cool
ReplyDeleteKeep in mind that you can "fake it" through the funky dice with regular polyhedral sets. Not really as big a deal as some folks would have you believe. My first few playtests, I didn't have my cool dice yet. No one noticed.
ReplyDeleteSecond, the spell charts aren't so bad if you have xeroxed copies of the appripriate pages. It's not like most magic-users have that many spells, anyway. Again, not really a bid deal.