When most folks think of old-school revival games, I suspect that they think of Dungeon Crawl Classics, by Goodman Games.
At the risk of causing a riot in the comments, I can’t stand Dungeons & Dragons 3E, so take what follows with a shaker of salt (why do I hate D&D 3E? That’s a story for another week).
DCC is a mix of ’74 D&D, Moldvay Basic Rules and a streamlined 3E, with some other novel things thrown in. Goodman’s primary inspiration is the famous Appendix N in Gygax’s AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide, which was a suggested reading list. Goodman makes the case that DCC aims to be a pre-RPG RPG, a return to an era of fantasy without preconceived notions, before the very RPGs we play cemented tropes and clichés, where possibilities are endless. It is an admirable goal. I…don’t entirely think DCC succeeds in it.
It makes its attempt by embracing randomness. You roll for everything. Instead of one character, you roll up 2-4 0-level characters, trusting the dice to make something that functions, taking every result, even if it doesn’t make sense. Then you march them, along with everyone else’s 2-4 bakers and stable boys, into a dungeon to mostly get murdered. Your last character standing is the one you play going forward. They call this the character funnel. It is certainly a novel character creation process. I can’t imagine running it. Or playing it, TBH.
Randomness also makes the magic system interesting and dangerous, but also at the expense of having to roll – a lot – and consult charts – a lot – every time you cast a spell.
The real appeal of DCC for me is the art. My goodness. There is such joy in the pages upon pages of art in this book, all of it in the old school style, much of it by old school artists like Jeff Dee, Russ Nicholson, Jim Holloway, Jim Roslof and many more. Every piece makes me want to play…well…D&D, actually. That’s my main problem with DCC (and, honestly, most OSR material). If I want to play D&D, I’m going to play D&D. If I want to play something different, DCC isn’t different enough.
