Dungeon Crawl Classics

As most of you know, Goodman Games is offering a beta of their Dungeon Crawl Classics game along with a Quick Start Rules.

When I first heard about DCC and that it was based on 3.0 I was really skeptical as to how "Old School" it would actually be. After all 3.0 is the beginning of why I was growing tired of D&D as a system.

Some of the gaming glut DCC is doing away with is as follows: Prestige Classes, Attacks of Opportunity, Feats and Skill Points.

They're keeping the following things:

-Race and Class as the same thing like in the Original Edition.

-Ascending Armor Class

-All attacks, saves and skill checks are resolved with a d20 roll.

Vancian magic seems to be somewhat here, the ability to recast a spell will be dependent the success of the spell being cast (seems like a good way to handle it).

One thing I'm not sure I like is that spell's success and results are determined by a die roll. It's not a make or break issue with me though.

There are quite a lot of tables like the occupation table determining your characters lot in life, luck table, critical hits table, etc... That's a bit of a draw back for me.

Character classes include: Cleric, Thief, Warrior, Wizard, Dwarf, Elf, Halfling. Just like in OE!

Skills are included in the system and to me this is a biggie in my opinion. I think the introduction of skills is a big reason why the free-form system of D&D started to disappear. I know that it started with 2nd Ed. but I've only played 2nd ed. a few times so I associate skills with 3rd ed. Although the way it is presented in DCC abates my fears a bit. It's only to be used when the situation isn't really covered by the rules. This would also take away the DM fiat issue, I'm not sure if that's good or bad.

Overall it's an interesting book that is presented very well and has some great "Old School" art in it. So far the Beta clocks in at 168 pages, when most of the OSR tomes are around 60-100. It has enough of 3.0 in it that makes it hard for DCC to win me over, but I will check out the book when it is released. At this point I'm going to wait until it's release to decide, but for me personally I don't need another clone I can just go back to the original source through "Rules Cyclopedia" and supplement that with the many OSR products or I can still play an enjoyable and rules light game with Tunnels & Trolls!

Keep Rockin' and Roleplayin'!