Using Carcosa, Dungeon Crawl Classics, & Mythology To Building A Sword & Planet Old School Sandbox Campaign

So I've been talking  with my buddy Steve who does a ton of long haul trucking and Dungeon Crawl Classics. He wanted me to help him out with getting his newest DCC campaign off the ground but there's already a complication! Its the Geoffrey McKinney AD&D Carcosa adventures and we're going to dive into how to get this material to work together with his DCC campaign.

I got a phone call yesterday from my buddy Steve whose perplexed with an awful case of gamer OCD over the Geoffrey McKinney's Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Carcosa modules which were announced a week ago. The problem is that he's running Dungeon Crawl Classics and there's so much good OSR material coming out. Sigh. Alright let's look into getting a whole bunch of desperate adventurer types to Carcosa. The Carcosa adventures are a sandbox campaign setting  and hex crawl  they don't have PC levels on them. The setting is also geared for gonzo Lovecraftian adventuring and so your not going to break the setting by introducing DCC style characters.


So let's actually go back to 2014 and dig out from the recesses of gaming Crawljammer by Moon Dice Games. Its one of those wonderful DCC fanzines that inspired me to get into the DCC game myself. It is gonzo space opera cum sword & planet setting that emulates all of the tropes from the ray gun age of science fiction & science fantasy. You can easily have your DCC characters picked up by a Carcosian flying saucer and captured or do a prison break out for the classic DCC PC's. Crawljammer brings some very interesting options to the table for the game and easily for  Carcosa for that matter.

• New races of aliens, new PC classes, and lots of other DCC goodness comes into play. 
• There is also new magical and technological devices that can be incorporated into Carcosa. A new relice or item in an alien treasure vault or other place might easily be found by adventurers. Finding power cells or ammo might not be so ease. This means even more adventure hooks.
• A bunch of minor god powers like GARUN, GOD OF SCIENTIFIC SLAUGHTER,ARS-ELEETA, GODDESS OF TECHNOLOGY,etc. all of which could easily have minor shrines and places of worship on Carcosa but it should be remembered that the Old Ones always have the power over Carcosa. 
• The deadly nature of the setting is a perfect addition onto the DCC gaming ethos.
  
  
  

Now I know that I'm going be taking some real heat about the fact that the conversion of DCC and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons is a bear for some folks. So last night I ran across the  DCC Monster Helper (PDF) by Jeremy Deram .Basically a  one-page document  that can be used to help quickly convert old-fashioned D&D/AD&D monsters to be used with DCC. Jeremy Deram has made my DCC gaming much easier over the last year or so. 
But let's say that you need to get your waste landers from Crawling Under A Broken Moon's setting over to Carcosa? Well that's pretty simple, once again those space aliens from Carcosa might be picking up mutants for study experimentation or worse. The aliens  most likely are given the nature of those bastards on Carcosa and have been raiding 'Merica for years. The alien prison break idea could even be turned into a character funnel for DCC on Carcosa.




Look I'm not done yet folks, last night I'm sitting up at four A.M. and I'm reading this great little article about the differences between Marvel Mythology vs. Norse Mythology. 

How will you deal with the vast polar opposites of these two cultural icons? Well don't, one is a mythology of incredible cultural complexity and the other is an alien god set of  pop culture creations. The fact is that both pantheons have been feeding of the beliefs of mortals for years and clashing in the heavens leading too epic warfare or at least they have in my campaigns. The debris of these conflicts might be found in the wastelands of Crawling or on Carcosa. This give the DM even more fodder for hex crawl encounters. But what about the levels of PC's? Well these are hex crawls and the disparaging of encounter levels is to be expected.

No that's not the only option or two on the table, a recent O5R review by Rpg Pundit put something very interesting on the table. 

Yes I'm going to mention  "Alpha Blue", writen by "Venger As'nas Satanis" again and in reference with Carcosa.

One of the parts that really struck me was this bit of review material,"Now, the good: even if you take out all the tables related to eye-rolling benny-hill type naughtiness, this book comes with TONS of spectacular random-tables that could be of use for any number of sci-fi games.  The setting itself, divorced of the excessive sleaze, is very interesting, and a GM who wanted to could ignore the nudge-nudge wink-wink schoolboy salaciousness and you'd be left with a great premise for a sci-fi campaign.
Ultimately, whether or not Alpha Blue will be worth buying for you will depend on how much you want to either engage with the smarm or surgically reduce it; and whether you will be interested in playing with the house system or doing your own work to adapt it to another system (OSR, for example).  If you're already running a sci-fi game (or planning to), and your game has a 1970s-style softer sci-fi feel to it along the lines of old Doctor Who, Battlestar Galactica or Buck Rogers, you could use the setting material and random tables to enhance your game."
I've ignored some of the sleaze & naughtiness more then a couple of times I've run Alpha Blue with Carcosa and the various tables make some superior PC backgrounds for castaways on the planet  and for various NPC adventurers that players have encountered in the past. Alpha Blue's tables and bits can easily be used with DCC.

Now all of the above can easily be converted back into the OD&D Lamentations of the Flame Princess version of Carcosa with a bit of fifth grade math. The free Lamentations of the Flame Princess Referee book even includes conversion notes for OSRIC which give a good solid base line for the AD&D Carcosa adventures.

So remember to keep those dice rolling!

The Dungeon Crawl Classics Rpg System As NPC Generator & Old School Adventure Plot Point Creator For Your Old School Campaigns

I love getting the most out of my rpg books and this includes the massive DCC rule book, now DCC claims to be a part of the OSR movement. But could it be used to generate some really nasty opponents for other OSR games and perhaps some guidelines for exciting adventures? Here's how.

There are more then a few uses for the Dungeon Crawl Classics rpg system at the table besides the usual ones that have been talked about. Let's talk about the funnel system which is at the heart of the PC system of DCC for a moment. Try and imagine that your actually the person whose going through some horrendous PC funnel for a moment, you've just watched friends or even countless strangers die for a moment. This is going to leave some terrible scares on your mind and whip you around in all kinds of ways. Because of the way the game is set up every single adventurer is going to go through this process. This is going to create some really twisted folks who are in the same profession as your PC's.



In other words the same process that creates incredible adventurers and outlaws is going to create tyrants, twisted wizards, murderous and psychopathic cut throats, whacked out space adventurers, and post apocalyptic ass hats just waiting to slit your PC's throats. And that's really the way the gods like it. The gods are involved in chess games of fate and chance and adventurers are the pieces, so this creates all kinds of opportunities to cause misdeeds  for characters. Each and every NPC is motivated to get ahead in the world of Dungeon Crawl Classics, the clerical and magic systems are rife with this meta plot point.
The DCC game is a perfect add on for something like OD&D or AD&D when you need a reaver, outlaw, or other personality that will cause your adventurers all kinds of headaches. Yes those same awesome PC creation tools can be adapted very easily to suit your motivations as a DM. Because of the class level scale differences in OSR games NPC's are going to be tough,dangerous, and deadly opponents. They'll be moved across the infinite planes by the gods who want to see their favorites used in contests of adventure, myth, and legend. The funnel system ensures that only the strongest, most ruthless, and nasty survive. In regular 1st edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, and original Dungeons & Dragons terms we call these folks villains. Now if only there was a set of guidelines that made things almost like a Hollywood block buster action film that you could apply for your old school adventures?
Well Open Culture bless their hearts this morning released 10 Tips From Billy Wilder on How to Write a Good Screenplay. 

These are also very good guidelines for writing & creating old school adventures in the Hollywood tradition. Let me show them to you to save time.

1: The audience is fickle.



2: Grab ’em by the throat and never let ’em go.




3: Develop a clean line of action for your leading character.


4: Know where you’re going.


5: The more subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you are as a writer.

 

6: If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.

7: A tip from Lubitsch: Let the audience add up two plus two. They’ll love you forever.


8: In doing voice-overs, be careful not to describe what the audience already sees. Add to what they’re seeing.

9: The event that occurs at the second act curtain triggers the end of the movie.

10: The third act must build, build, build in tempo and action until the last event, and then — that’s it. Don’t hang around.


All of these of course are perfect for creating, running, and DMing your own  old school adventure.  By adding in those twisted & weird NPC's from another cosmos your well on your way to having fellow  adventurers your players are sure to loath and be talking about for years to come. But what about those weird dice conventions? Ignore them and use your favorite edition or retroclone as base then deal with the level issue as needed.
But surely DCC is a fantasy based sword & sorcery game, there isn't a chance in Hell of one of those characters popping into a science fantasy world. Well the stories of Elric had and have that character popping up in everything from post apocalyptic wastelands to dream lands and lots of other places mentioned in Appendix N. So if its good enough for Michael Moorcock then it might also work in your old school adventures.
Keep those dice rolling.

Some Commentary On The Dungeon Crawl Classics Rpg System & A New 'Heavy Metal' Inspired Funnel Idea For Your Old School Campaigns

So today I got a chance to look over Dungeon Crawl Classics hardback with a friend of mine & gave him a hand with a new character creation funnel idea. Dungeon Crawl Classics can be a bit of an intimidating beast of a book weighting in at four hundred and sixty pages. The game is a favorite of mine because of its leveling and PC balance issues.


The funnel I helped Steven with was a simple affair based around the Heavy Metal film from 1981, the sequence that we settled on is one that we've used before. We settled on O’Bannon’s “B-17” from the film a pretty horrific little nod to EC and precode horror comics from the Forties & Fifties. The PC's are all survivors in a lost world where the dead are ghouls and the characters must survive against the background. The idea of the funnel sequence wasn't too bad but the dice conventions make the game a bit of a pain in the ass but all in all it went down fine.

There are several great resources on the web for DCC including the the 0-level character generator at Purple Sorcerer Games.  The resources at People Them With Monsters are absolutely essential to working with the DCC game in my humble opinion. 

The PC's are going to have a hell of a time with this one, Steve's got a number of encounters already planned out based on several of the back half of some of the DCC games we've run in the past. There's also the fact that this is going to be both a story & adventure driven campaign. So what's the reason for all of this prep work on our part? Well the Mutant Crawl Classics kickstarter is starting to wind down and if you want to get involved you've got two days.



Now here's the thing this game isn't going to be out for months yet and there are so many folks who are putting together DCC games to get the jump on it. There are several options on the table at the moment one of which happens to be the Crawling Under A Broken Moon DCC fanzine whose setting is going to be cross compatible with Gamma Crawl Classics. The amount of material in CUBM makes this a great low cost resource for both DCC And MCC's.



So what's the premise of this DCC funnel, well its quite simple the PC's are castaways on an island. They can either be the crew of a wrecked B-17 plane or castaways straight from the DCC rule book. The ghouls are waiting among the undead crews who have already crashed on the island and its various adventure locations.
 
I'll let you know how it works out for my fellow DM and his players in the next couple of weeks but for now keep those dice rolling.

Review & Commentary On Beyond the Silver Scream From Forrest Aguirre For The Dungeon Crawl Classics Rpg System

The postman brought me a copy of  Beyond The Silver Scream by  Forrest Aguirre

on Saturday. The book is a very clever slight of hand take on several Eighties horror  cliches  and transforms them into a clever zero level funnel. I got a physical copy of the book from Forrest himself and really was excited to get this book. This is a zero level funnel and you're going to need the Dungeon Crawl Classics book to use this material properly.
So grab some quarters from your dad's change tray, score a ride, reach for your Members Only jacket, and get your Walk Man ready its time to journey into the Silver Scream! YOU CAN GET THE PDF RIGHT OVER HERE

 The basic premise for this funnel is a reworking of the usual Dungeon Crawl Classic tropes of taking four or five base level PC's and running them through the DCC gauntlet of adventures to see who survives the Eighties horror movie fun. It takes this idea and twists it into the DCC mold with some pretty damn nice style.
"Welcome to Beyond the Silver Scream, a Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG-compatible 0-level "funnel"! Players begin as high school kids in the mid-'70s - early-'80s who go to the local seedy theater to catch the premiere of the new horror flick "Screaming Sorority Girls from Planet Playtex". But the horror isn't confined to the screen! And the special-effects are all-too-real. So take a seat and brace yourself for an adventure where the director isn't the only one doing the cutting!"

 A word about the psychical product, this booklet clocks in at thirty six pages of high class card stock with some very solid paper. It actually feels nice in your hands and doesn't feel as if its going to come apart at the gaming table. This is pretty damn important for the fact that I don't want a product from a small press producer to fall apart. This one won't! Its well made and well done.

 The graphics are crisp and well done, the artwork evokes the fun and nostalgia of that era with a very defined sense of the absurd but make no mistake this a deadly funnel if there ever was one with a few twists thrown in. The NPC's are nasty pieces of work and there's plenty of room for DM customization in the meantime. Forrest does a good job of setting the stage and then taking the action to the next absurd level of DCC horror here. But this funnel does it very well and the author knows his source material very well.

 Here we're taken on a journey into the heart & soul of Eighties horror with more at stake then your mere flesh and bone. Your PC's very existence is defined by the events in this adventure and wrung though a whole host of weirdness to see if your DCC PC emerges from the other side. Did I mention that this happens to be very twisted stuff but done very well. The adventure takes the 'victims' and transforms them into a pile of gore or a horror forged hero ready to take on the worst that DCC has to offer and that's saying something.

 The adventure funnel walks the razor's edge between parody and high weirdness with a special brand of the odd just bubbling under the surface. What emerges is a PC that could be ferreted over into cultclassic or post apocalpytic Eighties fueled campaign. This adventure made me think of Venger Satanis's Crimson Dragon Slayer in a good way. In fact with a little bit of work the dungeon master could transition they're PC's right over to a DCC fueled Thule with very little work and that's a good thing in my humble opinion.

 There's more here lurking in between the pages as well, there's a brand new patron set along with spells but your wizard's are going to have to tread carefully in this one. The material here is both homage and love letter to Eighties horror and a very twisted take on a great idea. Do I think its worth the cash? Yes! Can you get a physical copy from Forrest himself    and follow more of his twisted musings right over here.

 The bottom line is that this book takes the idea of the DCC funnel and turns it out on its head and its a pretty damn fine take Eighties horror and turns it into an original idea while forging your PC's into horror bad asses ready to take on the worst of Dungeon Crawl Classics. Five out of five.

Grab it today and take your DCC game in a new direction today, I haven't write a whole lot of details because I don't want to spoil some of the twists and turns that the author has brought to the gaming table. This is a nice twist on the usual funnels that I've seen used in DCC.