Why Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG? It makes killing fun again!

On reflection, my traditional judging style would make me an unlikely choice to design adventures constructed to butcher hordes of beginning players. Don't get me wrong, I understand the importance of the THREAT of death to maintain tension in a campaign, and unless you follow through on occasion players will quickly, if only subconsciously, figure out that as judge you "just ain't going there", with the resulting loss of real apprehension and genuine relief when dangers are overcome.

But if I'm completely honest with myself, I've always emphasized continuity and established bonds in the party over everything else, and player deaths have been rare, momentous events.

That's what made the first death ten minutes into the first playtest of Perils of the Sunken City so illuminating. Everyone in my group laughed! And clapped.

And it wasn't like the players hadn't already gotten attached to their peasants. I'd printed out three sheets from the 0-level Party Generator for each player, and they got to choose one group of four characters to game with. The unlucky 'victim #1" to be was a Tax Collector with a 3 intelligence, who's additional 100 copper pieces and fancy lantern made him the wealthy scion of the group. Immediately the player determined one of his other characters (an Indentured Servant with a 15 intelligence) was the Tax Collector’s servant, but in reality was the brains behind the collector’s improbable success. The fiction lasted for 10 minutes until the Tax Collector, unaware of what was really happening, fell to a viscous crocodillo tail whip while lurking too close to the water,  smiling in confusion as he went down…



Immediately the player scratched through “Indentured Servant” on his character sheet, and wrote “Freeman”. Awesome!

Also, for some unknowable reason, the party had chosen to name their Free Company "Haughtnard and the Wanderers", after an unremarkable seven-agility elven forester in their midst. When Haughtnard quickly fell to an opossuman javelin, they immediately renamed themselves "Haughtnard’s Wanderers" out of respect without missing a beat.

And so it goes. Character creation is so simple, play so fast, that players are much more accepting of death, and for those that survive, the seeds of real character development are being planted about every 20 minutes or so.

I didn’t really see it coming, but at least from a judges perspective, the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG has made killing fun again!