r/DungeonCrawlerCarlRPG

If you are a backer of the project and have been anticipating the early digital release of the core rulebook, it's dropping in 10 days.

600+ pages.

It's gotten so huge they have raised the price from $60 to $65, no additional cost if you already backed or pre-ordered on their site.

November 23rd is the Physical release date.

INFO per email from Renegade 4 hours ago as of this posting.

I’ve finished running a “session 0/Prologue" of sorts for the dungeon crawl, and thought I would write a post-mortem here.
Note: I have just 2 players, both of whom have played other table top systems, but neither have read DCC.

From what I’ve seen. The DCC TTRPG, is designed to start on floor 1, which to me seems like it may introduce some aspects which go against the nature of the books as we read them.

1. Very explicitly the dungeon crawl is a surprise to everybody on earth.

2. The “playstyle” of the participants comes about circumstantially. The characters find themselves with a good item or stat, and then their decisions and playstyle is built around that. I consider it a little bit Mcgeyveresque. Adhoc problem solving should be key to success.

3. Characters are motivated by the trauma of the events. I remember reading elsewhere on reddit, someone pointing out that although absurd and humorous, the books are Horror at their core. Allowing players to design characters knowing that they’re entering a meat-grinder allows for optimization in build, and makes it easier for there to be emotional detachment from their characters' response to the events. I feel that starting on floor 1 with characters that have been designed for the campaign will result in characters that feel more in place on floor 4-5 than a shellshocked human thrown into the blender.

Therefor, my goal was to create a mini-adventure, set on a “regular” earth which the players would go into expecting a one-shot of a slightly different genre.

All going well this would be fun, engaging and drive the creation of real feeling characters. In the last act after resolution of major internal plotlines, the dungeon collapse would occur, the genre would shift. Leading our characters to enter the dungeon as fully fleshed out and motivated characters.
This adventure would also act as a tutorial of the DCC system, so that by the time they enter the dungeon, they understand how combat, skills etc work. Importantly the adventure should also be good enough that it works as a standalone story. If the players decide they don't want a dungeon crawl, they’ve still had a good mini-campaign. (Note: I know my players well enough that I knew this wouldn’t be a problem.)

—
What I came up with:

THE DOVER PASSAGE: A 1913 NOIR ONE-SHOT.
The players were given the following blurb, before I sat them down to create characters.
“The year is 1913 and England is a country divided by class.
Suffregettes and Union leaders fight against established power and change seems inevitable in Europe.

You are private investigators. Ordinary People who’ve taken a high priority (and high paying) contract with the Law firm Sterling & Harrow.
Your client has asked for absolute discretion: Board the cross-channel ship the SS.Empress, find the fleeing law-clerk Julian Croft, and recover the highly sensitive documents that the man has stolen from the law firm, before the ship reaches Callais and the documents are sold to the french tabloids”.

In this gritty, noir detective thriller, the clock is ticking and the ruin of several high-profile figures rests entirely on your actions during THE DOVER PASSAGE.

—

Setting the prologue (and subsequent collapse) in 1913 was simply an easy way for me to compartmentalize/separate my idea of a DCC story/scenario from that of the books. Plus gives an aesthetic and dynamic that I really enjoy. The juxtaposition of gaslights and early radios vs Aliens and AI technology is a fun one visually- while narratively I found it easy to lean on the kind of cosmic horror story telling you'd expect from a call of cthulhu campaign which tend to be in that kind of time period. In practice, once in the dungeon, the fact that its 1913 earth rather than contemporary shouldn’t make too much of a difference.

–

My players came up with two characters:
Dick Rieker: A former cop from New-Orleans, fresh faced to Europe, with a friendly golden retriever everyman's attitude- who skillfully bursts into “character acting”, to deceive and smooze his way through social situations.
Trysten Ivey: A cornish gamesman with a quiet sharp eye for detail, and a formal butler-esque appearance.

During the character creation session there was an emphasis on the skills being very open to whimsy, and the gameplay of the session being winnable through any means of creative play. Dick ended up being proficient at Origami from his childhood and capable of making a good seafood boil, while Trysten is more of a survivalist with fishing and camping.

—

The campaign itself took place over 6 in-game hours, all taking place on board the ship.
A 6 sided dice sat on the table marking the progress, acting as the ticking clock. In real life this took 3, 2 hour sessions.
The ship was full of various plots and intrigue which players could interact with, or ignore, in favor of others.
As part of planning, I prepared a table of the events that happened before the players arrived on scene. I.e where each character was, what they were doing, so everybody could be questioned, as well as rough timelines of what they would continue to do if not interacted with.

The many plots where:

1. The stolen documents. The “A” plot of the adventure, the players find the dead body of the thief in the coal bunker, lying on top of a pile of newspapers with some interesting stories

2. The Fog: A strange fog has rolled into the channel, casting a white light through every window. The crew are unsettled, the 2nd class below are drinking into a frenzy unable to sleep through the feelings of paranoia. While no other ship is currently crossing the channel, the strange radio operator Artie Finch is guiding the ship well.

3. Ms. Nellie: A well dressed lady is drinking alone in the first class lounge. She will be found weeping in her room from hours 2-6. 

4. Captain Alabaster owes a large favor to the same law firm that hired the players. He spends more time writing his novel, than acting as a leader to the crew.

5. The Viscount Jean-luc in first class is apparently a frequent traveler on the ship. He seems particularly interested in the players and what they’re doing onboard.

6. A pair of children Penny and Iassac are playing hide and seek and other games on the ship, always popping up when least expected. 

7. To combat the seasickness and general unease, Doctor Thorne has been administering mild sedatives to the passengers.

8. The Radio operator has been making everyone he interacts with uneasy with his odd.. Interviews.

By the end of the adventure the players have successfully solved a number of mysteries, made some new friends, (and new enemies.) Used a range of skills unique to their characters and developed a feel for their characters motivations and personalities.

To prevent too much whiplash, one of the above plotlines develops into an introduction to the dungeon crawl- taking the players slowly from:

This is a mundane story -> this is a bit odd -> this is a strange psychological horror -> Ah, Aliens are real -> collapse happens.

--

My players were excited to continue and tackle the next chapter/ the dungeon crawl, and they still weren't aware that it had anything to do with DCC- to them, it's just the adventure of Dick and Trysten.

--

No compelling closing one-liner for this post-mortem. If you feel inspired, I would recommend making your own mini-campaign as a lead up to the collapse. There are many sources online which can be adapted or you can design your own!

I’m midway through book 3 relisten right now so I’ll try to start tracking. Wish I had thought of this at the start of the relisten.

If anyone already did this or has ideas for other global announcements the players would want to hear please share.

I really don’t want to go the route of using AI. I’d love if there was a tutorial on how to make your own with that slight robotic sound that Jeff Hays does. I’d also like to have the two modes for when the AI starts going primal.

I’ve got a really good idea that I’d like to toy around with for when the DCC RPG comes out.

Unfortunately I missed out on the backerkit due to a lack of funds. I’m curious when I might be able to officially get my hands on these books?

I missed the backerkit but am still going to get the Roll20 VTT integration. Have they announced if that'll be purchasable at a later date? I have to assume that it will be but wanted to see if I missed it somewhere.

Hello, Crawlers.

For the last few weeks I have been gathering all that I can to convert my ongoing GURPS game to CarlRPG. So, here is what I gathered so far:

Character Creation: 
Before the dungeon

10 skills: can’t stack skills. 2 from childhood, 2 from Adolescence and 2 for Career and 2 for hobbies and 2 combat (from the start)
- Childhood And adolescence begins at 1
- Career begins at 3
- Hobbies begin at 2
- Unarmed at 3 for everyone
- 1 weapon (improvised) (also at 3)

Stats: 2 5 4 3 6
Str Int, Con, Dex and Cha

Health bar (10 X Con)
10 Health box (each 10% of your health)
Con modifier is a threshold. If damage goes over, takes one box (ex: your modifier is 2, you take 7 damage, mark 2 boxes)

Emotional Baggage
- Past trauma
- Loose ends
- Regret

Heal Spell (2 mana, heals 2 Boxes)
1 action to use on Hotbar
2 actions to put on hotbar and use it
Move 20ft, Step 10ft
Step costs no action

Skills
Aiming
Animal Handling
Catcher
Chopper Pilot
Climbing
Deception (Cha) Int Opposed
Detect Lies
Determining Value
Driving
Dumpster Diving
Endurance
Engineering
Escape Artists
Fabricate
First Aid
Good First Impression
Hide in Shadows
Intimidate (Str) Cha-opposed - gives the Staggered debuff
Investigation
Jumping
Negotiation (Cha) Int-Opposed (discounts 10%)
Perception
Performance
Pugilism
Repair (Int) Unopposed
Running
Salvage
Sleight of Hand
Stealth
Streetwise (Cha) Unopposed
Survival (Con) Unopposed
Swimming
Tactics
Taunt
Throwing
Tracking

Ambush (Int) Int-opposed: gain a surprise action
Attack of Opportunity (Passive) Interrupt Attack Spend one action to make an Interrupt attack against a nearby target that moves
Double Tap (Passive) on 2 attacks, if first is an Amazing Success, 2nd is a crit (If it hits)

Upgrading
When you level up, you get 3 Attribute points to assign at will.

Skills have a chance to increase when you use them. Every time you use a skill, either succeeding or not, mark it for upgrade.
After 2 hours of game, roll a d20 for each marked skill.  On a result equal or greater to your rank in the skill, it raises one rank
Skills above rank five only get one such tests per floor.

Grinding raises a level after accrued hours equal to current level (for example, you are level 4, want to rise to level 5, you need 4 hours of grinding).
The main use of Grinding is leveling skills up: after a grinding session, roll to level the skill you focused on up.

Skills (and spells) gain automatic upgrades at levels 5-10-15- (very rarely) 20
the narrower the use of the skill, the biggest bonus they would get at those levels

Pets increase level twice as fast as crawlers until lvl 15.
Pets can’t increase their Int Score.

Combat and Systems
Mobs: Each crawler has two Actions per round.
Each Mob gets a Move Action and another Action, typically used to Attack.
Bosses get one Action per crawler, so prepare to die.

Basic Difficulty: 10+Floor+Situational
Opposed Checks: 10+Antagonists stat mod+Floor
Stat mod may be changed by size, spell rank, etc etc
Unopposed Checks: 10+ Floorx2 (Climbing, Swimming, etc)

Success by 10+ Amazing Success (in case it was an attack, deals +2 dmg)
Failure by 1 or 2: Near miss (can succeed with a complication or with the help of another Player - Intervene)
Crit (Nat 20) deals Double Damage

Mobs Statistics
Surprise 10+Int
Evade 10+ Dex
Atributos Initial 1 each, +3/ nvl

Popularity

- Doing Great in Combat
- Brave and interesting acts
- Interesting Problem Solving
- Interview Shows outside de Dungeon (if they do well)l
- Good Catchphrases
- Extremely High Charisma
- Playing to the Audience (once per session) - Make any significant action with a self imposed Disavantage to gain +1 Pop (+2 on an Amazing Success or Crit)

There are a few other info about Skills and Spells, but you can get that from previous posts on this sub.
Hope it helps someone.

Now, let's get out there and KILL KILL KILL (our players).

Hey fellow crawlers! I backed the DCC RPG and am super excited to play!

As my group’s GM, I’m already thinking up ideas about how we’re going to play…but I need to decide WHAT to play.

Will your group be playing as Carl, Donut, Katia and the squad roughly following the story of the books?

Will your group be playing the story of the books, but as custom characters?

A completely different crawl?

I’ll be honest, I usually run prepublished adventures that I modify for my group like Curse of Strahd, but I’m a little hesitant to run a narrative story that’s literally being told in a book many of the players are reading. I don’t want us to feel like we need to mimic the story and relationships. But I’m also busy and don’t know about making a new crawl on my own, so I’m just curious what other folks are doing!

Hello Crawlers!

So, I have seen a few sheets and sources so far, and a lot of them mentions 2 debuffs: Staggered and Stunned.

Anyone knows what are the mechanical effects and diferences between them?

Thanks in advance!