Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG (with Brendan LaSalle)

Summary

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The GROGNARD Files - Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG (with Brendan LaSalle)

Podcast: The GROGNARD Files
Host: Dirk the Dice
Guests: Judge Blythey, Brendan LaSalle
Release Date: July 18, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC) RPG: its old-school inspirations, distinctive mechanics, and community culture. Hosts Dirk the Dice and Judge Blythey reminisce about their journey with DCC, unpack what makes it tick, and challenge each other's impressions—before interviewing renowned game designer Brendan LaSalle, who shares insights on both DCC and his own creation, Xcrawl Classics.

The conversation oscillates between affectionate ribbing, thoughtful critique, and infectious enthusiasm for the creative weirdness at DCC’s core. The episode is full of anecdotes, rules breakdowns, and nostalgia—as well as advice for both the DCC-curious and the initiated.

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Main Discussion: Dungeon Crawl Classics Dissected

What Is DCC? (00:12–04:29)

• Dirk opens by situating DCC as, "blending an old school feel with modern chaos, emphasizing random tables and innovative mechanics... making every session distinctive."
• The hosts nod to the game's roots in fantasy adventure, its evolved editions, and its penchant for unpredictable, high-stakes play.
• Notably, DCC’s introductory text is quoted:
  "Remember the good old days when adventures were underground, NPCs were there to be killed, and the finale of every dungeon was a dragon on the 20th level. Those days are back." (00:56–01:16, Dirk)

First Impressions & Zealotry (04:30–06:41)

• Judge Blythey recounts initial skepticism:
  "People used to enthuse about it... it was like white noise, they were speaking but wasn't being listening." (05:11)
• Both hosts discuss how the “cult” excitement around DCC may push away skeptics, especially given its hefty rulebook and abundance of tables.
• They feared it would be a "GM's game" with high character death—"as if it's all ha ha ha, the evil games master's gonna kill you all." (06:41, Dirk)
• In practice, they find it surprisingly player-centric, contrary to expectations.

Rules & Mechanics: Why DCC Stands Apart (07:24–13:07)

• DCC is built on familiar D&D "chassis" (AC, hit dice, d20), yet isn’t truly part of the retro-clone OSR scene.
  "It's not really a stripped back version of D&D, it's more like a kind of D&D on steroids." (11:31, Dirk)
• The game’s wildness is due largely to its custom mechanics atop classic roots.

Cult Membership & Funny Dice (13:07–16:09)

• The hosts joke about "death stamps" (the physical stamps for marking deceased characters), DCC t-shirts, and the unique dice set (d5, d7, d14, d24, d30).
• Dirk: "It recaptures the magic of rolling funny dice because we've all got used to it, haven't we?... but it is a way of getting you to sign up to the cult." (14:15–15:18)

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Judge Blythey’s DCC Highlights & Critiques (16:09–47:20)

1. Character Classes (16:29–30:39)

Fighters & Mighty Deeds (19:50–23:08)

• Fighters are enlivened by the Mighty Deed Dice mechanic:
  "What you do is when you attack, you roll your mighty D dice... if the deed dice is three or more, you achieve the stunt." (20:28, Dirk)
• This allows cinematic, swashbuckling maneuvers: "Knock them into a barrel, they can't get out." (22:10, Dirk)

Thieves & Luck (23:33–26:31)

• Thieves use a unique Luck mechanic to power through failed rolls, making them feel effective and true to their archetype.

Clerics & Disapproval (26:35–29:06)

• DCC makes clerics compelling via the "disapproval" rule—casting spells risks incurring the wrath of one’s patron deity.
• Dirk: "It brings the whole idea that you are communing with some kind of higher being into the game on a constant basis, doesn't it?" (27:43)

Races as Classes / Moorcockian Influences (28:08–29:06)

• DCC’s alignment system evokes Michael Moorcock's Law vs. Chaos rather than strict good/evil.

Summary

• Each class receives loving mechanical twists:
  "None of the character classes are boring... In DCC, they're all equally interesting." (29:22–29:51, Dirk)

2. Spell Tables & Mercurial Magic (30:40–38:35)

Complexity and Unpredictability (30:42–33:24)

• Judge Blythey raises concerns about complexity; Dirk argues for the tables’ charm:
  "Magic is chaotic... you roll on the spell table and the effects can be wildly different..." (35:14–36:01, Dirk)
• Spells trigger weird results: “When you cast a spell your skin becomes transparent... or rats appear... or someone you know dies.”
  "That's the spirit of the game... it likes to create chaos." (37:15, Dirk)

Spellburn Stories

• Spellburn (sacrificing stats for power) is famous at convention tables:
  "Spellburn is what it's famous for, isn't it? ...everybody has a story about Spellburn." (33:43–34:53, hosts)

3. The Funnel (38:44–44:05)

• At 0-level, players run four hapless peasants through a deadly adventure:
  "I don't like this idea. So I play like four or five characters and oh, they just cannon fodder. ...But they don't all die. And it is more player friendly than you imagine." (39:07–44:05, discussion)
• Surviving characters become “heroes”—with real emergent backstories.
  "Even though they are a gravedigger with a shovel and one hit point... if they survive, you'll feel attached to them." (41:29, Dirk)
• The funnel has become beloved:
  "I've gone from hating the concept of it to loving it..." (41:06, Judge Blythey)

Critique: Too Many Critical/Fumble Tables (44:36–47:20)

• The hosts agree the biggest slog is the critical and fumble tables for different monsters/classes, which can slow the pace:
  "It's the point where it gets a bit too much because... there's a bit of a delay while you work out... through these various critical tables..." (45:15–46:23, Judge Blythey)
• Workarounds exist (pamphlet reference books), but it’s minor friction in an otherwise dynamic system.

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Interview: Brendan LaSalle on DCC & Xcrawl (47:20–83:39)

Brendan’s RPG Origins & Philosophy (47:42–55:23)

• Grew up between New York and Georgia, with a love for customizability and “spectacular set-piece combats”—inspired by running Villains & Vigilantes.
• Sees roleplaying as “kitbashing” and encourages “gloriously unpredictable” play.

What Sets DCC Apart? (56:11–59:49)

• Brendan:
  "We get lumped in with OSR games... but DCC has way too many novel rules and systems for it to truly be considered OSR. ...If you have to put a label on Dungeon Crawl Classics, I always say it's weird fantasy." (56:56)
  • DCC creates “rollercoaster experiences” with “higher highs and lower lows.”
  • Magic is especially chaotic; unpredictability is core.

The Funnel, Community, and Player Attitude (60:02–62:41)

• The funnel “self-selects for the best players”—those eager for emergent stories and wild outcomes, not just tactical survivability.
• The community aspect is highlighted by the camaraderie and shared war-stories around tables.

Notable Quote

"Dungeon Crawl Classics is the system most likely to have you walk away from the table with an amazing story... Something really unique. It's just built into the DNA of the game."
—Brendan LaSalle (59:49)

Death Stamps and Zealotry (62:41–63:10)

• The DCC tradition of physically stamping dead character sheets is celebrated:
  "That's just like, that was a day, you know what I mean? ...a whole lot of red on the table. That's a good day right there." —Brendan (62:52)

Innovation in Scenarios, Monsters, and Adventures (63:31–65:40)

• DCC modules break rules, integrate Appendix N fiction influences, and allow for wild, singular monster design:
  "Monsters just break the rules... so you can infuse them with a lot of personality... that's fantastic from a design standpoint." —Brendan (63:31–64:20)
• Funnels are "addictive" to design.

Short Adventures vs. Campaign Play (65:46–67:35)

• DCC is famed for one-shots and convention play, but supports campaign/long-term play—especially with Lankhmar and Dying Earth settings. Over time, characters gain wild quirks:
  "By the end of it, everyone's a mutant. Everyone owes a God a favor..." —Brendan (66:06)

Appendix N and Literary Influence (67:40–68:37)

• DCC takes heavy inspiration from the pulp/weird fiction of D&D's famous Appendix N, with Lankhmar novels as a particular compass.

Xcrawl: DCC Meets Dystopian Game Shows (70:01–78:31)

• Xcrawl, designed by Brendan, imagines dungeoneering as televised deadly sport—"think Gladiators meets Running Man and Smash TV."

• Brendan:
  "When you come across a bunch of laser penguins who are all on scooters in a room, why are they there? Some producer thought it would be a good idea..." (72:45)

• Xcrawl is both satire (of sports, celebrity, capitalism) and a legitimate dungeon challenge:
  "You all gotta come correct as a crawler, you know?" (75:14)

• The tone, though often absurd, is not "comedy RPG"—players face deadly serious scenarios laced with emergent, unexpected humor.

• Influences include The Running Man, Gladiators, Smash TV, and Star Trek’s “Bread and Circuses.”

Xcrawl’s Future Plans (82:28–83:36)

• Brendan hopes to establish large-scale organized play, with competitive progression, and to finally realize his “stage two” vision for the Xcrawl world.

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Closing Reflections & Gaming Chatter (83:54–92:32)

Dirk’s Confession: Buying & Running Dragonbane (84:11–86:08)

• Dirk admits to acquiring and running the new Dragonbane RPG, finding it well designed and modern yet old-school in feel.

GMitis: The Doldrums of Running Games (87:02–91:49)

• Judge Blythey opens up about “GMitis”—a lack of motivation to run games despite enjoying playing.
  "It's that effort to pleasure ratio. I thought it required a lot of get doing to do this. And yet when I finished it, I ended up feeling a bit dissatisfied." (90:27–90:40, Judge Blythey)

• Dirk suggests perseverance, but acknowledges that everyone has slumps and that sometimes, positive play experiences help break through.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• Dirk on DCC’s unique flavor:
  "It's not really a stripped back version of D&D, it's more like a kind of D&D on steroids, isn't it?" (11:31)

• Judge Blythey on emergent character backstories:
  "Because you're facing adversity... you get close to them and the fact that they've got a pig becomes very important." (41:06)

• Dirk on "funny dice":
  "It recaptures the magic of rolling funny dice because we've all got used to the d8, haven't we?... rolling a d7 or a d24 was a bit like I used to feel when I was 12, rolling a d8." (14:56)

• Brendan LaSalle on the funnel:
  "A direwolf may as well be Godzilla for a zero level character... so it lets you throw design principles out the window." (63:31–64:20)

• Brendan on DCC’s core:
  "Unpredictability is always going to be a part of it. There's no monster that's out of reach, there's no player that's out of reach..." (59:49)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• DCC Introduction & Nostalgia: 00:12–04:29
• First Impressions & Skepticism: 04:30–07:24
• What Makes DCC Unique: 07:24–13:07
• Lighthearted Cult Talk & Dice: 13:07–16:09
• Class Mechanics Analysis: 16:29–30:39
• Spell Tables & Chaos: 30:40–38:35
• The Funnel Explained & Defended: 38:44–44:05
• Critical Table Critique: 44:36–47:20
• Interview—Brendan’s Origins & Philosophy: 47:42–55:23
• What is DCC? OSR or Weird Fantasy: 56:11–59:49
• The Funnel & Player Experience: 60:02–62:41
• Death Stamps and Zealotry: 62:41–63:10
• Scenario & Monster Design: 63:31–65:40
• One-Shots vs. Campaign Play: 65:46–67:35
• Appendix N & Influences: 67:40–68:37
• Xcrawl Pitch & Discussion: 70:01–78:31
• The Future of Xcrawl: 82:28–83:36
• Dragonbane & GMitis Chatter: 84:11–92:32

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Summary

This episode is a rich, entertaining primer on what makes Dungeon Crawl Classics a standout in the crowded fantasy RPG field—its mechanical eccentricity, wild unpredictability, and the community’s almost evangelical love for its quirks. The interview with Brendan LaSalle deepens understanding by exploring both the design goals of DCC and the satirical, gonzo world of Xcrawl. The hosts’ conversational style anchors the nostalgia and fun, while still offering honest critique and practical advice.

Perfect for grognards, new-schoolers curious about DCC, and anyone who believes that the best RPG memories come from chaos, camaraderie, and dice you’ve never seen before.

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Transcript

[Dirk the Dice]

Have you seen me die, Spike the.

[Judge Blythey]

Grognard Files hello, my name is Dirk the Dice, and this is the Grognard Files podcast where we talk bobbins about tabletop RPGs from back in the day, and today I'm coming live from my den here in the heart of the northwest of England. I'm completely and utterly surrounded by my stuff. Here on my right is the great library of RPGs and my Grognard files, though there's almost 10 years of it. Here on my left is the ridiculous homemade shrine to the actor Caroline Munro. I'll just give it a tap. Ah, the Eternal Champion has appeared as Magiana from the Golden Voyage of Sinbad. Yes, we must be back in the realms of fantasy for Dungeon Crawl Classics, launched by Goodman Games in 2012. Blending an old school feel with modern chaos, emphasizing random tables and innovative mechanics, it has evolved through editions and supplements, standing out with its gritty, unpredictable style and making every session distinctive. At the start of every module it says, remember the good old days when adventures were underground, NPCs were there to be killed, and the finale of every dungeon was a dragon on the 20th level. Those days are back. Dungeon Crawl Classics doesn't waste your time with long winded speeches, weird campaign settings, or NPCs who aren't meant to be killed. Each adventure is 100% good. Solid Dungeon crawl with the monsters you know, the traps you fear, and the secret doors you know. Are there somewhere? Yes, in the room of roleplaying Rambling. I'm joined by our resident rules lawyer, Judge Blythey, who casts an eye over the rules and mechanical elements that make Dungeon Crawl classics work. He's a fan. He's an acolyte of the DCC cult. Thanks to the high priest of the UK contingent of the DCC movement and longtime member of the Grog squad, Julian Haley. We managed to get a chat with Brendan LaSalle, a DCC GM at large and the designer of Xcrawl Classics, a variant of DCC set in a future dystopia where dungeons are spectator sport. It's a great interview. You're going to enjoy it. Me and Blithey have had some closing time chatter with a confession from Blythe and me moping about my antediluvian complex. Jmitis, I'm off GMing, but more of that later. I'll be back at the end. So ramblers, let's get rambling. Just play these rules. Welcome to the room. Overall playing Rambling the light is bright Blistering through the attic and the little pigeon with the white eyes tapping on the window.

[Dirk the Dice]

Let me in, Cuckoo.

[Judge Blythey]

I've got Blithey with me. Hello, Blythey.

[Dirk the Dice]

Hello, Judge. Miles are disturbing.

[Judge Blythey]

Miles.

[Dirk the Dice]

Miles. Later.

[Brendan LaSalle]

I remember.

[Dirk the Dice]

I'm used to you. I'm used to be a bear coco. Lesbian coco. I've lived a long time.

[Judge Blythey]

That pigeon on it, it's been there for one second.

[Dirk the Dice]

How long the pigeons live? How long do pigeons live relative to that one with the white eyes? Might be.

[Judge Blythey]

It might be a different one. Yeah, that could be my regenerate like a Time Lord.

[Dirk the Dice]

Although the white eye disease is rife amongst the pigeons of Bolton, which I wouldn't. Wouldn't surprise me. No, but that illnesses.

[Judge Blythey]

Blythe, it has been a long time just Blithey since I've seen you in.

[Dirk the Dice]

Your full ermine ermine with your gazelling hand fingering away, fingering away at the gallop.

[Judge Blythey]

It's a past judgment on yet another game. And this is a game that you play quite a lot, isn't it?

[Dirk the Dice]

Yes, it is. I quite like this game. Yeah.

[Judge Blythey]

Dungeon Crawl classic.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythey]

Now I need to say, my lord, that as you know, there was a time when I turned my face against Dungeon Crawl classic.

[Dirk the Dice]

I think so. Did I?

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah, I think.

[Dirk the Dice]

Did I. I think the. I think a few people have. That you speak to. I think one of the problems is it's quite a hefty old rule book and it's full of tables, isn't it? And I suppose you look at it, you can bounce off it a bit. I think I certainly did because you. I remember you gave. Was it Eddie or you gave me a copy of the rules, A bound copy, the rules. And I remember having it and not really being able to remember looking at it and thinking, can I be bothered? Yeah, bothered with this.

[Judge Blythey]

People used to enthuse about it and I think I explained once on this podcast, said it was like white noise, they were speaking but wasn't being listening. And I don't know why that is and I don't know what it is about the game, whether it is the robot or whether it's the zealotry that people have.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah, there is a bit of zealotry, isn't there? I mean, I'm a bit like a member of the cult now. I know what you mean. There was. There is that zealotry. People get very excited and I suppose sometimes maybe our natural cynicism kicks in where when people go, oh, this is really good, this is great. I play all the Time I run it at conventions all I want to play. You instinctively think, oh come on, get out of it.

[Judge Blythey]

I think part of it is how people get over excited about the death stamp.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah, they do. Don't.

[Judge Blythey]

It made it initially when people were talking about it. It made me think of those kind of games that we didn't, we didn't particularly like where you had to roll a character that time we had to keep rolling characters and yeah, yeah, everything was hazardous.

[Dirk the Dice]

Harks back to the bad old days of oh, another character's died. Oh, another one's died.

[Judge Blythey]

And people taking delight in death of characters. Yes.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Judge Blythey]

What I've learned about it is that it's quite surprising. When I played Dungeon Core Classics and when I votes the rules, it is absolutely not what you expect, is it?

[Dirk the Dice]

No, it's not really. And I think that death stamp thing maybe puts you off it a bit. Cause you think it's very much a games master's game. As if it's all ha ha ha, the evil games master's gonna kill you all. Particularly with a funnel thing which I'm sure we'll come on to talk about. There's that sense of well, as a player, am I just at the mercy of a GM who's gonna be quite malevolent and kill my characters all the time? Is that what I have to do as a player? As I'm just gonna dare as cannon fodder. But I think when you play it, I would say it's probably one of the most player friendly games I've ever played. Yes. Where actually when you get around to playing it, it is all about creating a really good experience for the players.

[Judge Blythey]

Yes.

[Dirk the Dice]

That's what's surprising about it when you actually get into it. I think.

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah. I made that point when speaking to Brendan that it's a game that loves its place cause gives you stuff to work with, doesn't it?

[Dirk the Dice]

Yes. Yeah.

[Judge Blythey]

And to create experiences.

[Dirk the Dice]

But on the face of it, I know what you mean. There was that sense of oh, it's loads of random tables, you're going to die a lot and the GMs going to have great fun killing you. But what does that leave for me? And I think as well, one thing always stuck in my mind when I got that rule book years ago that you lent me, I flipped through all the tables because there's fumble tables, different Fumble tables for different classes, different criticals, different criticals for different types of monsters.

[Judge Blythey]

There's.

[Dirk the Dice]

There's all the spell tables, all loads of tables in It. Loads of tables. A little voice in my head from years. Do you remember years ago, back in the 80s, when we were kids, we read somewhere. Yeah, I was. Simon, who quoted this. Or somebody quoted. You can always tell a bad game by the number of tables. So the idea was if there were loads of tables in a game, it was a bad game because nobody wants to roll on tables all the time. And I think when I first encountered dcc, that was my instinctive reaction was to think, oh, God, we've got these tables. What's wrong with these people? Don't they know that putting loads of tables in a game is a bad thing? But I think what we found out is quite a good thing.

[Judge Blythey]

It's quite a good thing. And it's not just DCC that's done that, is it? There's a number of games that have introduced tables and a random element to me.

[Dirk the Dice]

And I suppose what was the thing with it is what differentiates it from a bad game with tables is you're not always rolling on tables. No. Tables kick in at certain interesting points to make it interesting. I suspect the person who made that quote was perhaps alluding to games that you're rolling on tables all the time, so you're rolling on the table for every combat round, which of course you don't in dcc.

[Judge Blythey]

On the face of it, it seems like a very traditional game, like something that we would have played back in the 80s, but in other ways it's like completely different from anything you'd play. It's his own thing, isn't it? Yeah, it's very much its own thing. You can't really categorize it. I wouldn't have thought.

[Dirk the Dice]

Well, it's sort of. I suppose if you had to describe it, you'd say, well, it's like D and D because it's built on. That is the word chassis, isn't it? Chassis. The chassis has the armor class, hit dice, hit points. It has all those familiar things, roller D20, beat the realm of class, et cetera, et cetera. It has lots of other things in that feel very different, but it's different.

[Judge Blythey]

From, for example, Black Hack or osc.

[Dirk the Dice]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Judge Blythey]

Some of those games that go back to the original D and D and say we're going to strip it all down and redeliver is its own thing. You can see remnants of D and D in it.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah, yeah.

[Judge Blythey]

But it produces its own effects and that's what's.

[Dirk the Dice]

That's an odd thing about it as well, because one of its marketing Strategies is the idea that. Because it says, I think all the modules and the rulebooks start with an opening paragraph that says something like, remember the days when dungeons were deadly. And this, that and the other. So it sells itself very much on a nostalgia thing, doesn't it, Tink it? Well, Gungeucall Classics and it has elements of traditional old school gaming. It. So a lot of the module, a lot of the adventures are very old school in that the concept behind is old school. Go in a dungeon, do this, do that, do the other. But you're right on top of that. It feels. Doesn't really feel like it fits in with that O S E OSR thing. Yeah, I know. You mean it's like it's not really a stripped back version of D and D, it's more like a kind of D and D on steroids, isn't it, really?

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah, it's more.

[Dirk the Dice]

It's like a pumped up version of it, really. Yeah, yeah.

[Judge Blythey]

Perhaps if we get a chance, when we look at the Games Master screen, we'll look at some of those adventures. Because I do think that that's what makes it stand out. In all the different versions of Dungeon crawl Classics, it's the modules that are very distinctive and inventive, aren't they? They have a particular callback to appendix N type things and you might find yourself on the COVID of a D and D manual. It's that.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythey]

It's so embedded within the world of gaming and weird fantasy that it can do that.

[Dirk the Dice]

I. I always thought as well when I, when I first read the rules, it does have a feel of somebody, like it's been written by somebody who's taken D and D and house ruled it. Yes. In such a way to try and fix some of the problems that are in D and D. Whereas some of the old school games try and solve the problems by stripping back the complexities. So they look at Advanced Dungeons and Dragons and go, oh, this is a bit of a mess, isn't it? So what they do, they strip it back. And what Dungeons Called Classics did is it kind of took that and thought, well, do you know what, instead of stripping it back, let's just add lots of extra house rules on that, make it work. It feels a bit like that produces.

[Judge Blythey]

Eccentric results which we might come onto it. But are you a member of the cult?

[Dirk the Dice]

I probably am, actually, yeah.

[Judge Blythey]

Have you got a death stamp? No, I've not got a death stamp.

[Dirk the Dice]

So that, that means maybe I'm at Initiate, but I'm not quite a lay Member of the cult.

[Judge Blythey]

How many. How many sets of the funniest dice?

[Dirk the Dice]

Three. Three sets.

[Judge Blythey]

Because the dice are different, aren't they?

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah. You get a D5 and a D7 and a D14 and a D24 and a D30, I think, which are the extra pieces?

[Judge Blythey]

And is that out of awkwardness or does that lend something to game?

[Dirk the Dice]

It does lend something game because it has the dice chain thing, doesn't it? So what? It does it occasionally. You think, this is just by. This is silly. This weapon does a D7 damage rather than D8. Well, so what? Come on. But I think the funny dice. The funny dice do two things, right? Two things. One, it does have some relevance in the game because you get an action dice and your action dice can go up and down. So your action dice to do things is a D20, but sometimes it can be bumped to a D24 or a D30, and sometimes it can be reduced to a D16 or a D14 if you get a penalty rather than a penalty on the roll you drop on the dice chain. So there is a mechanical reason for it about the dice is when I first started playing it, just a certain thrill about. We've all got used to the D8, haven't we? I got used to a D7. No, rolling a D7 or a D24 was a bit like I used to feel when I was 12, rolling a D8. And I've played it with people who've never played it before and I've said that, right, you roll a D7. Oh, the D24. And they go, what? Say, what? What? And you say, oh, D24. D24. What's that? I've never. I've never encountered that. You go, oh, it's one of these. It recaptures the magic of rolling funny dice because we've all got used to it, haven't we? Yeah, it's not that funny anymore on the D20. D14 is like, oh, look, this is unusual, but it is a way of.

[Judge Blythey]

Getting you to sign up to the cults.

[Dirk the Dice]

It is worth getting sent to culture. Yeah, yeah.

[Judge Blythey]

What about a T shirt? Have you got a T shirt? Yeah, you have got a T shirt.

[Dirk the Dice]

Two, two, two T shirts.

[Judge Blythey]

Right. So there's hope for you yet because.

[Dirk the Dice]

It could be saved.

[Judge Blythey]

Because you haven't got a death stamp.

[Dirk the Dice]

I'm not gonna death stamp. But you know what? Only because I did try buying one and the only ones I could find. Quite expensive, but. Right. I think there are cheaper alternative. You can get them made can't you could just get someone to make you one thing.

[Judge Blythey]

See, what I'm worried about you as a judge is your level of impartiality. Haven't there.

[Dirk the Dice]

There isn't much.

[Judge Blythey]

There isn't much.

[Dirk the Dice]

No, there isn't much. Let's be honest. I do like it as a game. So I'll be up upfront about that.

[Judge Blythey]

Right.

[Dirk the Dice]

I like it.

[Judge Blythey]

Okay.

[Dirk the Dice]

So I'm not asked to think. Find something I don't like. Don't. The rules of the format. Yeah, I'd fire it up, but I. Yeah, we'll come on to that, baby.

[Judge Blythey]

So to remind you, because it has.

[Dirk the Dice]

Been a while since we've done one.

[Judge Blythey]

Of these segments, you need to pick three highlights. Ye one duff thing to talk about and we always end up on the duff one because, you know, we always like to end on the negative. Yeah. Why? You know, defy convention.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythey]

So what's your first highlight?

[Dirk the Dice]

I'm going to cheat a bit here. I'm going to say character classes. Okay. Even though within that there are a few highlights, but I can justify my decision.

[Judge Blythey]

That's perfect.

[Dirk the Dice]

All right.

[Judge Blythey]

The rules are here to be bent.

[Brendan LaSalle]

Go.

[Dirk the Dice]

Of course there are. There are rules.

[Judge Blythey]

There are rules. Rules as written.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah, rules. Rulings, not rules.

[Judge Blythey]

Exactly. So character classes is your first one. What's your second one?

[Dirk the Dice]

The spell tables.

[Judge Blythey]

Spell tables.

[Dirk the Dice]

Spell tables and magic. The third one, I think it's the funnel. It has to be the funnel, doesn't it?

[Judge Blythey]

Funnel. Which I was a very skeptical.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah, as was I. As was I.

[Judge Blythey]

You know, so we'll come on to that. We'll talk about the duff bit in a bit. So let's come on to character classes. What is it about character?

[Dirk the Dice]

I think what is about character does very, very, very well is it makes all the character classes interesting. As you know, whenever I play a D and D style game, I always want to be a magic user because it's the most interesting character class because we talked about this a lot. You can do stuff and the others always seem a bit boring. So, you know, I don't like clerics. They seem boring. Fighters seem boring. Thieves are all right, but, you know, can't do much.

[Judge Blythey]

So just remember. What are the character classes?

[Dirk the Dice]

The character. Well, it depends. The standard character classes are fighter, rogue, cleric, priest, sometimes called a priest, but it's cleric, wizard, magic user, and then there's elves, dwarves and halflings. So it does the carrick, the race as class thing, doesn't it? Yeah. Okay. And dwarves are a bit like essentially a bit Like a fighter. Halflings are a bit like a thief and arewolves are a bit like a fighting magic use. So yeah, yeah, they don't, they don't. They don't differ hugely from the four main character classes.

[Judge Blythey]

Right, so you're suggesting I put you judge bloody.

[Dirk the Dice]

You're suggesting on the judge after I'm in cross examine.

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah, well that's it. I have to. Because you're partiality explained.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah, I'll. I can explain you.

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah, but I'm gonna. You've already made an assertion that it makes them all interesting. So you're suggesting that clothes are interesting.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah, I am, I am. Quite an achievement.

[Judge Blythey]

Okay, so 10 years on you were found in DCC.

[Dirk the Dice]

I'd say clerics are far more interesting, better developed.

[Judge Blythey]

So what makes them interesting this game?

[Dirk the Dice]

What I think makes them interesting is there is a rule each, each character class. So let's put wizards aside because I think wizards are interesting anyway and they use the spell tables which we'll come on to. But let's talk about fighters, thieves, clerics.

[Judge Blythey]

Okay.

[Dirk the Dice]

All got the problems as far as I'm concerned in a game D and D styley game, right? So the fighter, one of the problems with the fighter is boring, right? Cause all you do in a standard D and D game generally is you, even if you've got a few special abilities, you hit things, you can soak up damage, you hit the monster, a monster hits you and eventually one of you falls over. That's been a fight. It's quite a dull thing being a fighter.

[Judge Blythey]

I think in early levels of something like 5th edition, it can be interesting.

[Dirk the Dice]

It's a little bit more interesting because.

[Judge Blythey]

You'Ve got the feats, haven't you that.

[Dirk the Dice]

You have, but they soon become insignificant.

[Judge Blythey]

Insignificant in the face of spells.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But what DCC does has a thing called the Mighty Deed dice. So at every level I think you start at D3, first level, then a D4, then a D2, then D5. So the dice chain thing and what you can do is when you attack, you roll your mighty D dice and you add that number to your attack roll and you add it to your damage. So you could just use it to boost your damage, which isn't that interesting. But what you can do is you can do stunts with it. So as a fighter you can kind of use your imagination a little bit and say anything from well I'm going to try and disarm them, try and knock them over, trip them up or anything through using your imagination. What environment you're in, there's a baron brawl, you'll throw some beer in the face or you're going to do knock them into the fireplace. All sorts of things that you can do. And what you do, you roll your might, you attack, roll your mighty deed dice. When you attack, if the deed dice is three or more, you achieve the stunt. Yeah. So it gives fighters this kind of ability to be imaginative. As a fighter you be imaginative, can't you? And go. Yeah, I'm in this environment, it's a fight in a tavern, it's a fight in a temple, it's a fight wherever it is. I'm gonna think about that environment and I'm gonna try and do some stumps to make this fight more interesting.

[Judge Blythey]

And what it does is it makes fights spectacular but not necessarily overly violent.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythey]

Now what I mean by that is I've talked recently on all of Rex's gaming vexes about fights and hit points and damage. And I do think in games we've got like a novelty bias. So if you ask somebody, a player or DTM to describe violence and it becomes kind of anatomical quite quickly, doesn't it?

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah, yeah.

[Judge Blythey]

You start having to describe how you've punctured a lung and you.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah, yeah.

[Judge Blythey]

All the descriptions and like critical tables, don't they? Because you've got this kind of not. You never have like mouth chafing, Gray's knee. But you're right. In DCC you can have spectacular combat, but you can turn somebody upside down in a barrel, can't you? So the legs.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah, that's it. Knock them into a barrel, they can't get out. Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna do that. And I roll me date D die. We got a three you gotta hit, so you've gotta hit them. But if, if you hit them and the D D says a three or more, you've achieved your stunt. Yeah, that's. I just think that's quite imaginative. Yes.

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah. And you get that swashbuckling feel of something that's exciting and thrilling, but not necessarily.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah, because. Because in those kind of games, in those kind of games you always get that problem of the fights from a fighter's perspective are very, very mechanical in that you roll to him. When people start saying in a game of old school essentials or something like that, oh, well, do that, it always becomes problematic because people go, oh, well, oh, I don't, I don't know. I'm. Yeah, maybe you can maybe do me a dex roll. Although, is that too easy? Am I just Making it too easy. Whereas in dcc, there is a. There is a mechanic for you that says, I want to pick up the.

[Judge Blythey]

Corbold and chuck him at his.

[Dirk the Dice]

The other. Yeah, yeah, right. Mighty D dies. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's the. The fight has made interesting. Thieves are interesting because they use luck in a different way. So again, one of the problems in all these kind of D and D games, when you play Thief, one of the criticisms is always they're a bit cramped, bit cramp. And when you have your moment where you want to hide in the shadows or climb a wall or pick a lock, you fail. Right?

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

Or in dcc, thieves have luck dice. So DCC uses a luck mechanic where you can spend points of luck to argument your role. So if you got your luck 10, you miss a roll by one, you can spend a point of luck to do it, that kind of thing. But what thieves do is when they spend a point of luck, they roll dice and add the dice. So I think a first level thief, it might be a D3 or a D4, then it goes up. So fifth level thief might be a D8. And when you spend a point of luck, you roll the dice and add the total of the dice to your luck roll. So it means they're quite powerful in terms of being able to manipulate their abilities. So even when you fail that hiding shadows, you can spend luck and instead of spending a point, you might roll a D6 and get five points of luck to add to the roll. So you can fail by quite a bit and as a thief, succeed, because you're a thief and you're supposed to be lucky and live on your wits. Played X Pro Classics with Brendan as GM at Expo and I played a rogue and thief, halfling, thief. It's the first time in all these years I played a thief and really felt I was like, could be the star of the game for a little bit. Climb the wall, hide in the shadows, use me luck. When I failed to achieve things and it felt like the game, like we said earlier, it's on the side of the players. And I said to Brett at one point, I think I went exploring the dungeon on my own, climbing along the ceiling. And when I failed, I think a few luck rolls and managed to do it. And I said to him, I'm sorry, I said, am I ruining this by scouting ahead like this and using me look to keep going? And he went, no, no. He said, that's what you do. That's your job as a thief. That's what you should be doing. Yeah, that's the whole thing with that rule about the lock. And I thought, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That is it, you know, so you need.

[Judge Blythey]

There's a bit of that. That is a permissive GM that allows that to happen. But also the rules.

[Dirk the Dice]

The rules give you a chance to. Because loads of times in there, we've all played thieves in D and D and it's like random. Disarm the trap. Okay, 40% chance of disarming the trap. Oh, I've blown it. Okay, Right, try and pick that lock. Okay, Geralt, 35% chance of picking it up. Oh, I can't pick the lock. Sorry. It's slightly useless, aren't we? You can be useless, but with the luck mechanic in DCC, you could fail picking the lock by five. And if you look, dice is a DLC, roll a D8, get a six and go. There you go. Done it. So it gives you that ability to use you. Doesn't mean you won't fail, but it gives you an edge in terms of doing what you should be doing as a thief rather than not doing it, you know, like fail to pick the lock. All right, you'll have to kick the door in. I can't pick lock. I thought you were good at picking lock. Well, I am normally, but I keep failing. I love to kick the door in.

[Judge Blythey]

Again, some of the character classes, clerics, clerics.

[Dirk the Dice]

There again, clerics. One of the irritating things about the cleric is, I think, to be fair, some of the cleric spells in DCC are a bit better. They're a bit punchier and a bit more interesting. But put that aside for now. I think one of the things with the cleric is it has a disapproval rule in games like that, D and D targets where you play a cleric, everyone goes, oh, well, you know, you've got some spells and you've got. You've got your God, but just behave. Otherwise your God could take your spells away. No, he won't. That never happens, does it? That's rubbish. But in dcc, when you cast spell, you roll on the spell table. If you fail, your disapproval rating goes up. Every time you try and cast a spell, if the gods don't grant it, the gods are getting increasingly irritated with you for asking favors. And then eventually, if your disapproval rating goes too high and you roll too low, you end up losing your abilities for a bit or be punished in some way by the gods. And I think that's good because you're a priest.

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

What it does, it brings the whole idea that you are communing with some kind of higher being into the game on a constant basis, doesn't it?

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

I'm rolling to cast these spells every time I fail. I've not just failed, I've actually annoyed the gods for. Keep asking for favors and that could backfire on me at some point.

[Judge Blythey]

It feels much more like a Storm Bringer character as well, because it dispenses with alignment. He's not got good and evil. You just got lawful.

[Dirk the Dice]

And you got lawful, neutral and chaos. Yeah. Again, they're not necessarily evil. Yeah. Chaos isn't evil. It's just. Yeah. And it's very clear about that actually, isn't it? That. Yeah. You know, a chaotic character is. You can be chaotic and bad. You can be lawful and bad. But. Yeah. It doesn't necessarily follow that you're good or evil.

[Judge Blythey]

Yes.

[Dirk the Dice]

Because you're one alignment. Yeah.

[Judge Blythey]

So it does feel very more cocky in that.

[Dirk the Dice]

It doesn't. I think. I think that's possibly. That is. That's a good point, that. Because maybe that's why the clerics in DCC appeal, because they do feel like agents of law and chaos. Yes. And I think at certain points they are described in that way. So it does feel like Mark Moorcock and Melnabonian kind of thing.

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

And maybe that's why it appeals more, because it possibly makes more sense. I don't know. Yeah.

[Judge Blythey]

Am I right in thinking that you could do things like getting an imp to come and intervene? Can't you have a patron? Yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

You can have like patrons and things like that. And wizards can have patrons who can come and help you and. Yeah, things like that.

[Judge Blythey]

But they can get annoyed about it.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's. I did. I just think it does. It does interesting things with all character classes. None of the character classes are boring. And I often think in games where you have character classes, there are always. I always mean D and D games. But where you get playbooks and archetypes, you always get a few archetypes that are bit boring. We look at them and be saying, I don't know who to play that for. Yeah. But I think dcc, they're all equally interesting. Yeah.

[Judge Blythey]

I agree with you. I think it. The way that he presented it just reminds me that it is. I like it because it does one of those games. So one of those dungeon crawling games and fancy games with enough but not too much.

[Dirk the Dice]

So there's a.

[Judge Blythey]

There's a lot going on, but not too much going on. So it's all hands. You can handle it. You can handle it as a player and as a gm.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythey]

It can send you into some crazy places, but it's not anything that you can't deal with.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah, I'd agree. Yeah. Yeah. It's not. It's not that complicated, but it still generates interesting. It might generate complicated situations which are quite good fun, but the mechanics are not complicated. Yeah, yeah.

[Judge Blythey]

What's up next?

[Dirk the Dice]

Spell tables.

[Judge Blythey]

Spell tables.

[Dirk the Dice]

It's a kind of obvious choice. That's why it's kind of famous for really, isn't it?

[Judge Blythey]

It is, but I find the element of it a bit unwieldy, isn't it? When I've been. I think I mentioned when we talked about magic previously. So you need to convince me that this works, because what I. What I find is that it feels like a lot of bookkeeping as a. A wizard magic using you. You've got to have your spell book, you've got to have a copy of the rules.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythey]

And some of the descriptions of the rules, some of the description of the spell. So the headline may not actually describe what the effects are because it will depend on how you roll, how that effect actually comes into play.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah, I think. Yeah, that's true. I would say it's the most complicated character class in that when you cast a spell, I mean, clerics are the same, but I suppose it's a little bit different with a cleric. But the spells, when you cast a spell, there's a table, you roll a D20 and you add your level and you add your intelligence bonus or whatever, and it gives you result and you roll a one. Natural ones are like fumbles. Bad things happen. I think you get 12 or more, you get effects and how high you roll gives you a better effect. So you cast a fireball and you roll 12. It might just be a D6 damage. If you roll a 20, it might be 3 to 46. If you end up rolling a 26 or 27 because you've got extra bonuses, then you know you're gonna get 10d6 damage, that kind of thing.

[Judge Blythey]

So it's not just mechanical though, is it? So the description of the effect actually accelerates, doesn't it?

[Dirk the Dice]

Yes. It'll give you like a quite a detailed description of what. What happens. And I think with some spells you can pick, but it's only ones where it specifies. You can pick a lower effect, can't you? Yeah, but not all of them allow you to do that. So some of them, you might cast a spell and the effects are slightly more than you anticipated. Yeah. Whereas some of them will let you pick. I think that rope one you had, it does allow you to pick a lower effect. If you want something else, you can look at the lower effects and pick one of them instead.

[Judge Blythey]

And I think just to explain that rope spell, depending on where you landed on the table, it has a completely different manifestation of what it would do.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Judge Blythey]

And so if you're going into a situation wanting to climb somewhere, you may not necessarily get an effect.

[Dirk the Dice]

No. But you could pick, you could pick a lower effect that might allow you to climb.

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

I think some of the spells do that. Not all of them, but I think it has to be specifies, doesn't it?

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

Pick a lot of effect. And of course, the thing is, if you don't roll 12 or more, you. You lose for the dare. So if you roll good, you can keep a spell and keep going, but if you don't roll high enough, you can lose a spell and you can spend a look and you can. There's a thing called spell burn. Isn't the way you spell.

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah, Spell burn is what it's famous for, isn't it?

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah, yeah.

[Judge Blythey]

That's. When people talk about dcc, everybody has a story about Spellburn.

[Dirk the Dice]

Well, Spellburn's always a thing. I always wonder whether if you were doing a one shot, you should outlaw Spellburn, because one of the things with the one shot is the wizard always saves all his points. It's a convention game, basically. Spell burners. You can sacrifice points of strength, agility and constitution to add to your role. Yeah. And you think, well, it's the final roll of the game. Just go wallop. I'm going to spend. Put it all in eight strength, eight agility, eight constitution. Boom. Guided that in my very first game of dcc.

[Judge Blythey]

But isn't that the point, though? That's why it's designed for one shot. Play that when it comes to the point, that's when you want your wizard to use its nuclear web.

[Dirk the Dice]

Nuclear. Which is what I. I think the first time I played dcc, I played the wizard, the spell burn, I thought, and right at the end I did that. I think I spent like 20 points of spellburn because I thought, didn't you.

[Judge Blythey]

Didn'T you burn a hole to enter the center of the earth?

[Dirk the Dice]

But then again, I think you're right. That's the spirit of dcc, isn't it? Because it, I think what it tries to do. I suppose I can see why this is A part of the game that might not appeal to everybody, but I think, again, it's quite upfront about it. What it likes to do is create. It says magic is chaotic.

[Judge Blythey]

Yes.

[Dirk the Dice]

So I suppose what it's doing. It's odd in that you write the descriptions of each spell and what they do can be quite detailed and can be reminiscent of those AD&D spells that give you a. If this happens, then that for two rounds, then this, then that, and you go, for God's sake. But I suppose where it differs is it's almost saying this magical thing you're messing with is quite dangerous and volatile and things can go wrong and stuff can happen that might not be a bad thing. And that's kind of exemplified in the mercurial magic rules, isn't it? So it has a table of mercurial magic where you. Every time you get a spell, you roll on the table and it covers potential side effects. So, you know, there's things like when you cast a spell, your skin becomes transparent for two hours. Or there's one, I think, where you can change gender. Or one where rats come out of your sleep. Hoarder rats appears coming out of your sleeves and your trousers when you cast a spell.

[Judge Blythey]

I think for my rope spell, I needed to have somebody else in the system. I couldn't do it.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah. That's that. I like my one where they have the stipulations where you have to have certain. Yeah. To cast them.

[Judge Blythey]

And I always found that quite appealing.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythey]

I had to put, for example, pluck a piece of cotton off somebody.

[Dirk the Dice]

Off the victim. Yeah, yeah. To cast it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's funniest one, I think, on the mercurial magic, they give you roll one, you roll a D, roll a one. I'm sure it's one where it says someone, you know, dies when you cast this spell. Which is very funny. It's really funny, as you think what the player characters think.

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

Cast that. How would you work out who dies when you cast the spell?

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

But I think it's the spirit of the game and I can see why some people might not like that.

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

And I think it's something where you can't really play DCC in its traditional format without accepting that the magic system is this kind of slightly crazy system. If you don't like that, it's probably not for you.

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah. But I think that's where the war stories come from. So when people come away from the table, it's usually because of some spectacular spell.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythey]

That Is.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah. Some crazy side effect. Like there's one where every time you cast a spell there's a 1% chance a demon appears and abducts you. Yes. So you know, every time you cast it, you think eventually you might roll a one and be abducted. Yeah. There's some really good ones. There's one where you're transported to a different plane and you're replaced by a duplicate.

[Judge Blythey]

Yes.

[Dirk the Dice]

He's actually a different person. Funny. Yeah. But I can see if you don't like that kind of thing. Yeah, I suppose it reminds me in some ways a bit like paranoia. It's not like paranoia, but you know, like paranoia where paranoia is a particular type of game, but if you don't like that kind of game, you won't like paranoia.

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

And DCCs like that. The magic system is the way it is. If you don't like that kind of thing, but you won't like it, or.

[Judge Blythey]

If you do like it, if you.

[Dirk the Dice]

Do like it, you become a zealot, you'll love it and you become a cult member like me.

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah, but without a death stamp.

[Dirk the Dice]

Without a death stamp yet. Yet.

[Judge Blythey]

Okay. And the first thing is the funnel.

[Dirk the Dice]

Further is the funnel, isn't it?

[Judge Blythey]

Now this is the thing that created white noise in my head when people talked about.

[Dirk the Dice]

Well, I agree, I think. I agree. I was the same. There was a bit, like I said earlier. I think it was the thing of, oh, I don't like this idea. So I play like four or five characters and oh, they just cannon fodder. They just get killed, do they? All right. Oh, that's no fun for me, is it? They just get killed. Why would I care?

[Judge Blythey]

So these are zero level characters.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah, you roll a zero level character up, there is no character class and they have a D4 hit points plus any constitution bonus. So they could have five if they're really lucky. But yeah. And they like have a occupation, don't they? Like farmer or pig farmer or moneylender or gong farmer. Yeah, they might have a bit of a car. I gave them a pig farm. They might have a pig. A chicken farm. They might have a chicken or chicken and a shovel. They don't even have weapons, do they? They have like grave diggers spade that does a D6 damage if it hits someone with it, that kind of thing. And. And the scenarios generally are things like, you're a load of villagers, you've got to go down a hole in the ground to save your village. So you're just ordinary people. Like I was Reading. There's one I was reading recently where you were all press ganged into the army. So you're just all like ordinary people put in this situation and you play an adventure out. There's a high risk. A lot of them die. Cause they do whatever's left. You can then choose one to become a first level character. And often the adventures have bits in it where. And we've played a few like this, haven't we? Where there are events and incidents and magic items and things that make you think, oh, this guy's found a magic sword and a magic shield and he's just slaughtered a monster. He's definitely fighting material, isn't he? That's what I'm gonna. I'm making him a fighter.

[Judge Blythey]

Or if you get one that finds a book.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah, yeah, that kind of thing.

[Judge Blythey]

Oh, they're gonna be a magic user.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah. And I suppose what it is is a lot of games have like life path creation things, don't they? Runequestos, travel and does. It's quite a few that do that. I suppose what DCC does is it. It plays out the life path thing, doesn't it?

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

So you play it out through a funnel and by the end of it, if they're still alive, you then have a sense of, oh, they're gonna become this or that.

[Judge Blythey]

And I've gone from hating the concept of it to loving it for that reason. Because you are creating a backstory and because you're facing adversity, because you haven't got many hit points and that you've use your intuition in these adventures to survive. You get close to them and the fact that they've got a pig becomes very important.

[Dirk the Dice]

It does. It does pig upset when the pig dies? Yeah, yeah. No, it's true. I remember speaking to Pookie at Expo about that and I think it was before I played. I think I played dcc. I think it was the first time I'd played it, but it wasn't a funnel. And I remember speaking to Pookie at the bar and I said, I enjoyed it. I really enjoyed it. I said, I'm still not convinced by the funnel. I've not done a funnel. I said, I'm not sure about that. And he said that. He said, I know he's really good. Because what you'll find is you'll get attached to these characters. And even though they are a grave digger with a shovel and one hit point and the statistics are all rubbish, if they survive, you'll feel attached to them because they've survived, you know. And that happened. I played it. A couple of friends of mine and his son played it. And at the end of the funnel his son had two characters left. One was quite good, one was a bit rubbish. And he chose to play the rubbish one because he'd become more attached to him. He said he was like the rubbish one had become the hero of the adventure. And he said, no, I'm gonna keep playing this guy because he's.

[Judge Blythey]

He's great.

[Dirk the Dice]

I like him. And I think we played, we played a dying Earth one and Debbie played. Debbie's character was the only one who survived. And he had one hit point. He'd had one hit point for the whole game. So at the beginning of it he was the one people thought, well he's Disney one hit. But he managed to. He'd never been hit and managed to survive it. And there's a sense of like real kind of joy waiting. Great. You know, they survived and so did his pig. Brilliant.

[Judge Blythey]

And because it's one of those games that generates stories at the table.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythey]

You carry that story into the next.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah, of course you do.

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythey]

When they become promoted to first level.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythey]

You know, they remember that time when. Yeah. I went down with the villagers and I was the only one that came out.

[Dirk the Dice]

The only that came out alive.

[Judge Blythey]

Is everybody suspicious about it?

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah. Yeah. What happened to the others? Yeah. To his magic sword covered in blood. The villagers, what happened to them? Yeah. Man clutching his magic sword and a pig. He's dead. But I do think it's a great bit of the game, you know, once you get your head around it. Like I said, like we said. Coming back to that, on the face of it, it just seems like some kind of kick for a GM to just kill everyone. Haha. You're all rubbish. You're all gonna die. But they don't all die. And it is more player friendly than you imagine. As a guest. Yeah.

[Judge Blythey]

And as I mentioned, with all lines of Rex's gaming vexes, he's talking about transferable mechanics. You feel like this is something that you could transfer into other games to have a set of.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythey]

Under resourced low level characters. Put them into a situation. From this you'll pick the one that.

[Dirk the Dice]

You want to take. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely. Yeah, yeah.

[Judge Blythey]

So what's the thing you got to decide what is the thing that is. Is a bum. Not.

[Dirk the Dice]

It's difficult really, isn't it? Because I like it. I don't know if that's come across. So I come across that I quite like it.

[Judge Blythey]

It has come across. Yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah. I suppose like you say, you could argue the magic system is a bum note if you don't like that kind of thing. I think that's. As I say, I think there's a little bit of a. A Marmite element to the magic system because of that chaos. It. It deliberately creates chaos and, and it deliberately.

[Judge Blythey]

I'm going to suggest one and it's related.

[Dirk the Dice]

I have got one. One thing that's a bit duff, but it's a very minor thing. Okay. It can never find quite work out how monsters do fumbles because there's fumble tables in it. Critical tables. Yeah, they've got critical tables for different types of monsters.

[Judge Blythey]

And that was going to be my suggestion that the varying critical tables, you know, we said that there's enough. Too much. I think when it gets to critical tables, that's the point where it gets a bit too much because there's like a.

[Dirk the Dice]

It's a key moment. Yeah.

[Judge Blythey]

And there's a bit of a delay while you work out. Right. What's the next thing? Because I've got to look through these various critical tables to determine which one's relevant to this situation.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah, yeah, that's true. And I think as well, I suppose there is a. There's a rule about armor and fumble. So the heavier your arm, the worse your fumble would be, I suppose begs the question is that. Is that really the case? Is that really care. It's just gonna get heavy armor on. It's gonna be worse.

[Judge Blythey]

I like the idea of monsters having different. Different fumbles depending on the type of monster that they are and different criticals. I like the idea of different classes having access to different tables depending on what they've got or what level they're at. But in application I just find it cumbersome because.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah. Sometimes looking. Looking for that. Yeah. Humble table.

[Judge Blythey]

When you. When you've got xcore classics, like the game that we played at Expo, when it's moving at a pace and everything's pacing and it's a moment. Let me just have a look here.

[Dirk the Dice]

You can get though. You can get. Of course you can. I'm not saying I've got one, I've got two. He can get a little reference pamphlet with all the tables in because it's a lot quicker. Obviously when you've. When you've done your first blood sacrifice to the cult, get them for free. So I've got to make a donation to temple and get a second one, but that does speed it up. The DCC reference book. It's like a little A5 pamphlet that just says all the tables in.

[Judge Blythey]

So what you're saying to me, in order to get one of those, in order to appreciate the game further, I need to become a full initiator, full initiative.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Thanks for that. Blank. Introduce to the high Priest Trevini Ailey. Cheers, Blythe. Goodbye, Open Box.

[Judge Blythey]

Okay, welcome to the zoom of role playing. Rambling to Open Box, the part of the show where we look backwards to look forwards. Our play in the past informs our play today. This time I'm joined by games designer, sometime pawnbroker and games master at large, Brendan lasalle. Hello there, Brendan.

[Brendan LaSalle]

Hello. Thank you so much for having me on.

[Judge Blythey]

I've been looking forward to this.

[Brendan LaSalle]

You know, I don't get very many opportunities to talk about my former pawn shop career on podcasts, so I'm just, you know, I'm happy to. Any questions you have, I'm ready to.

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah, I'm looking forward. I've got a whole series of questions about that.

[Brendan LaSalle]

Outstanding.

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah. And where you were beaming in from, Brendan, where do you live?

[Brendan LaSalle]

So I am beaming in from Kennesaw, Georgia, which is about an hour north of Atlanta, which is in the American Southeast, where the, where the last stop you hit before you get to Florida, if you're heading south.

[Judge Blythey]

And have you always lived there? Is that where you were brought up?

[Brendan LaSalle]

No, it sure isn't. I was actually born in New York and I lived. I grew up on Long island and then my family, we moved around a lot until my family settled in Georgia and then I had one of those careers where I would leave and come back and leave and come back and leave and come back. So I've lived in Georgia, I don't know, 20 years, non consecutive. It's probably the longest I've ever lived anywhere in my life at the moment.

[Judge Blythey]

Ben, you have to excuse me because it's really hot in the uk. I'm not telling you if I pass out. That's the reason why us Northern Europeans can't cope with the heat. You've recently been to the UK, haven't you? You've been GMing over here?

[Brendan LaSalle]

Yeah, I came over for the UK Games Expo. It's. I've come over, you know, we all missed the lockdown years, but I think I've come over every year other than since, I guess, 2018, I think. That's right. Yeah. I love the Expo. It's a such a fantastic show. I always have a wonderful time there.

[Judge Blythey]

I get the sense that you, you are always playing. Is that, is that the case?

[Brendan LaSalle]

Like running games? Yeah, absolutely. I, my whole, you know, when I come into a convention, I really try to do as, absolutely as many shows, as many events, as many games I can possibly, you know, cram in, you know, without, you know, giving myself a, you know, big, massive collapse or anything like that. Especially the Expo where I only get over, you know, you know, I mean, I don't get over that part of the world very often, so I try to run absolutely as many games as I can.

[Judge Blythey]

Are you always on the move then? Is that, is that part of.

[Brendan LaSalle]

Yeah, that's a big part of what I do for Goodman games. Yeah, I, I, I do a lot of conventions, a lot of convention appearances, but I also do a lot of trade shows where we go. And I wrote very, you know, I spent a lot of my time running demos for real retailers and, you know, working like that. Um, so, yeah, I'm on the road a lot. I'm on the road a lot. Like, I think this year I think I'm doing like 25 weekends, you know, or weeks, depending on where I'm at.

[Judge Blythey]

My goodness.

[Brendan LaSalle]

I know, right?

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah, you're the Springsteen of GMs.

[Brendan LaSalle]

Tell everyone you see. I do. Although as one of nature's dungeon masters slash GMs, I definitely was born to run.

[Judge Blythey]

So on your travels, do you see different play styles? Do people play differently in different locations?

[Brendan LaSalle]

That's interesting. No, I wouldn't say that there are like a regional playstyle. I would say there are some age related play styles. There's a way that the, you know, I do, there's a couple of the conventions that I do that skew particularly young and you see a much, you know, different play style. Although I wonder if we weren't to go back and look at ourselves at that age, it wouldn't be the same. You know, wild and outlandish and absolutely, you know, banking on the rule of cool to keep us alive, you know?

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And just talk about your origins. So you came from New York. Is that where you started to play back in the day?

[Brendan LaSalle]

Yeah, I surely did. Oh, actually, no, that's not true. I was living in New York, but in 1977, we, my family and I, took a trip to California to visit with some friends of theirs who were on sabbatical over in, in California for a year. Their son, who was about my age, had just like started playing Dungeons and Dragons. So when I got there, you know, he's like, you gotta play this game with me, you're gonna love this. So it was an absolutely brilliant introduction to it. But it was also 27 year olds trying to make sense out of the blue. Holmes edition rules. So, you know, as you can imagine, we, we didn't go by the book very much. We had a fantastic time and I walked away with the spell of that game like wrapped around my head and you know, it was just, you know, just I got the bug, I got the bug at a very early age.

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah. And have you continued playing?

[Brendan LaSalle]

I've never gone more than about six months without playing and I was looking for a group that whole time, you know what I mean? Like, it was never, I, I never took a big gap off from, from role playing. I changed systems many times and you know, had different phases where I did things. When I went off to college, I didn't have a lot of room in my stuff. So I brought the only game that took in only one book, which was Villains and Vigilantes. So I pretty much like my freshman and sophomore year, that was the only thing I really ran at all was vnv. So you know, it's, you know, it's so, it's interesting. I, you know, there's a whole group of people who attended Loyola and whose first role playing game was DMV with me. So. Which is funny to think about. But yeah, I've never taken, I've never taken much longer. Six months maybe is the longest. You know, like, you know, my sophomore year when, you know, I, I didn't.

[Judge Blythey]

Do too much then, but that's interesting to hear then. So I'm curious to understand how Villains and Vigilantes has informed your game style and how you play. You know, playing with superheroes is a particular genre, isn't it?

[Brendan LaSalle]

No one's ever asked me that before. That's so cool. So, yeah, so, you know, so Villains Vigilantes was actually the first game I ever GM'd. So when I was a kid, like I said, I learned out in California with my friend. When I came back, I discovered that there were kids in my boy scout troupe who played D and D. So I played with them and I was one of the younger players, if not the youngest at almost every table. So I was never a gm. I would show up with my character and I'd play. But I discovered we went to Waterloo Hobbies one day and we saw Villains of the Jilani's and it was like, let me get this straight. There's a role playing game where we can play superhero? I was like, you know, I was going to lose my mind. That was actually the first game I ever ran. So I taught myself enough of it to run. And looking back now I didn't. There were some things I didn't understand, so I just glossed over and didn't. Like they did in Dungeons and Dragons, kind of a lot of things actually. But I'll tell you what, it really did make me think of the game as like infinitely customizable and very much a kit bashing kind of a thing. There are several rules and powers that you can get in villains and vigilantes that are like mutant power where you can have a discussion with your GM of a power that you want your, an individual weird superpower that you would like your character to have. So, you know, I remember somebody at my table had a bag that had infinite space inside they could like pull like, you know, pool shoes out of and things like that, you know what I mean? Like that kind of thing. So I think I've always sort of like, I don't know, you know, I both think of ways to make existing systems very like really customize existing systems very hard. And I also, I don't know, it kind of like, you know, when you do superhero battles, they are gloriously unpredictable with, you know, larger than life action. You know, people get punched over buildings and you know, and you know, turned, turned in glass or whatever in the middle of the fight. So I definitely, I don't know, maybe that was the beginning of my kind of love of the spectacular set piece style of battle, which is definitely part of my modern design, you know. Style.

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah, definitely. And I also, I think with those type of games you had the level of competence that some as a player, which you didn't necessarily get. And I think some of the OSR stuff kind of leans into the thing that, you know, you might be dead at the roll of a dice, but yeah, yeah, having competent characters, you've got a chance to play the game, haven't you?

[Brendan LaSalle]

Very true, yeah, very true. Yeah, I hadn't thought about that. But yeah, you know, certainly killed my share of OSR characters, you know, so the individualantes was really like, it really didn't get killed very much in, in vnv, but you definitely had to be on your toes because you never knew what you were up against. You know, there was no, you know, going around the corner, oh, here's a troll. We know to use fire or acid instead. It's like, oh, here's a guy in a helmet with a cape. What can he do you know?

[Dirk the Dice]

So, yeah.

[Judge Blythey]

So our podcast has been about rediscovering vintage games in our, you know, middle age years. And I've always resisted Dungeon Crawl Classics, where everybody said I'd love it. And for some reason, and I don't know what I put it down to, I think it's because if people are into dcc, they're zealots for it, aren't they? They get converted and they want you to. Want you to play. So I think me being a contrarian instantly starts to turn against just that.

[Brendan LaSalle]

You know, I get it, I get it, but.

[Judge Blythey]

And the other thing is, is that people say it's osr, but having played it now, it's not OSR at all, is it? It's his own thing, isn't it?

[Brendan LaSalle]

It is, yeah. We get lumped in with OSR games because we definitely have an old school look and feel and sensibility. But the true OSR games all go back to one version of Dungeons and Dragons and do a version of that rule set, cleaned up and house ruled and changed up. You know, it's usually very specific. DCC has way too many novel rules and systems for it to truly be considered osr. I mean, we have old school art, we definitely have an old school aesthetic. But if you have to put a label on Dungeon Crawl classics, I always say it's weird fantasy.

[Judge Blythey]

There'll be people who are listening to this who haven't played. So give the pitch for DCC and what makes it distinctive.

[Brendan LaSalle]

I feel like Dungeon Crawl Classics creates much more of a rollercoaster experience at the table. It's higher highs and lower lows throughout. We love crits and we love fumbles. We love the chaos of the game. So we have several systems that will allow you to do unpredictable things at the table. You've got like mighty deed of arms that will allow you to really use your. Rather just I make an attack, I do some hit points, points damage. You know, you might be like, all right, I'm going to go in and I'll try to stab this monster through the foot so he can't run off. I'll try to, you know, cut one of his ears off. I'll, you know, like in, you know, systems to kind of like allow that to happen. Magic is very chaotic in Dungeon Crawl Classic. So the part of the DCC ethos is that, you know, magic is this uncontrollable force that like, mortals can learn to wield it, but never to actually master it. It's unmasterable by its very Nature. So we have a die roll that goes along with casting spells and you can cast a spell that has an average amount of power. You can fail, you can fumble a spell and lose control of the energies and you know, have a misfire or gain a corruption that your wizard then has forever. But we also have the ability to roll like to, you know, roll high, do well and go above and beyond and have these, the absolutely game changing spell results that you couldn't have predicted. But you know, if it hadn't come up on the dice, you know, I feel like it's the, the Dungeon Crawl Classics, I think better than any, any fantasy system I've played. Dungeon Crawl Classics makes, you know, is the system most likely to have you walk away from the table with an amazing story of, you know, what happened that you just can't wait to share with other gamers. Something really unique. You know, it's just built into the, to the DNA of the games and the rule setting that there's just going to be unpredictability is always going to be a part of it. You know, there's no monster that's out of reach. There's no player that's out of reach. No matter what level they hit, you know, there's always, you know, you know, you just, you can't guess at what's necessarily going to happen. It's the most unpredictable game system I've ever played that doesn't feel just like, you know, a grab bag of chaos.

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah, I think that's a really good point because I think it's a game that loves its players, isn't it? And I think that's why people do feel kind of zealotry for it. Because when you've played it, you've had an experience.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythey]

Oh yeah.

[Brendan LaSalle]

And you can't wait to meet the guy and go, oh my gosh, our wizard botched a spell and we all shrunk down to six inches and we had to finish the dungeon the size of action figures. You know what I mean? That's happened. I've heard that story, you know, it's, it is amazing like that. I also think that part of the, part of the thing about DCC is, and this is just from doing it for a long time, my theory is that Dungeon Crawl Classics, the rule set, it self selects for the best players, you know, they are. There's a kind of, I think about the character funnel, you know, and the, you know, the. So if you're not familiar with Dungeon Crawl Classics, we begin the game with a character Funnel. So if we were going to sit down to a new game, you and I wouldn't just create a bunch of new first level characters who would already have skills and talents and abilities, but albeit at a low level. We would each create three or four zero level characters, just, you know, peasants and, you know, people who aren't particularly competent adventurers. And then we would each run all of those characters through a character funnel adventure which would have, you know, a horrific style adventure that would just have huge casualties. And whoever survived out of that, that would become your character. You know, I've seen again and again that if you talk to a room of gamers and you say, hey, I've got this, you know, wacky game. I want to play with you guys, but we're gonna make a bunch of zero level characters who really can't do much anything. And you're gonna go up against monsters and demigods and possibly go to other planes. It's gonna be a meat grinder. But whoever lives, they're gonna level up and you'll have this random cool character that is crazy experience. You know, the kind of player who's like, oh my gosh, that sounds amazing. I can't wait to do that. You know what I mean? Those are people who are really down to have fun at the table and who are just going to allow the game to be the game. And that's very liberating as a GM and as a player, I think just to sort of like, you know, give yourself over to the wildness and have fun with it.

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah, I definitely think that that funnel does that because as I say, I entered into my first game as a bit of a skeptic and it was the funnel that actually did it for me. Because what you're actually seeing is you are creating a backstory, aren't you? And, oh yeah, even, even if you're trying to stop yourself, you fall in love with the four characters that you've got. And they've all got characters and there's like an emergent story and an emergent. Once you get to that first level, you feel like, you know, these, these characters.

[Brendan LaSalle]

Yeah, no, absolutely. And they, you know, they've. They've been through the trenches together. They've done something absolutely amazing, you know, which I love.

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah, yeah. It's good to see it at the table. I mean, I have got a question about, you know, how much delight do you take in using a death stamp? That's one of the listeners.

[Brendan LaSalle]

I love it and I love, I love getting a picture of the table afterwards with all of these character sheets with like three or four stamps on them each. Like, that's just like, that was a day, you know what I mean? You know, like a whole lot of red on the table. That's a good day right there. You know.

[Judge Blythey]

The other thing that strikes me about DCC is the inventiveness of the scenarios, the adventures that have been produced for it. And it really lends from appendix N and it, yes, it's self referential and there's a few callbacks to jokes within the hobby.

[Brendan LaSalle]

Oh, yeah, absolutely. You know, oh, it's the best. You know, I've designed, I've designed for Pathfinder, I've designed for Dungeons and Dragons and for Call of Cthulhu. And DCC is absolutely the most fun system to design in. You know, I mean, one of the, you know, key principles of it is that monsters just break the rules. You know, they don't, they don't advance and do things at the same level as the characters. They have their own different set of abilities. So you can be, you know, you can kind of infuse your monsters with a lot of personality and a lot of unique things without thinking, well, how does this fit into one of the extant monster templates? You know what I mean? You know that from a design standpoint, that makes it fantastic. Then the designing a funnel, like designing a funnel is an addiction, you know what I mean? When you set up a bunch of characters and you're like, all right, I need a mantra, you know what I mean? To, to a, to a zero level character, you know, a direwolf may as well be, you know, Al Bear or, you know, Godzilla, for God's sakes, because it's just, you know what I mean? That's how, that's your chances. So it lets you sort of throw a lot of design principles out the window. So you can have zero level adventures where your characters meet demons or dragons or go to other planes of existences. You know, throw them in situations that they're absolutely not ready for yet. And then, you know, just watch them have to get clever and lucky and brave in order to get through it. That's a compelling story to me that I want to watch again and again and again. And high level design is just the same. You know, you really can, you know, the, the world that is created by the, the parameters of the rule system is really interesting to me. One where magic is always wild, where gods get angry with their clerics and they, you know, are dealing with them directly and Will, you know, punish them for things that the clerics themselves don't even understand. Because you're dealing with these, you know, infinite beings who exist on an entirely different plane than yourselves. You know, I love that from a design standpoint, it never stops being a lot of fun.

[Judge Blythey]

And you can get it in different flavors. And we have been playing a campaign of in Lank Marty's.

[Brendan LaSalle]

Oh, lovely.

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah. The way that you pitched it, it sounds like it's meant for like one shot play and you know, conventions really suit it. But also what we found with Lenkmar is that there's lots of elements to build a campaign, isn't there? So there's a lot of downtime activity that you can build up as well.

[Brendan LaSalle]

Absolutely, yeah. Lankmar especially. But frankly, I feel the same way about regular Dungeon Crawl classics as well. You know, I run multiple long campaigns that are a lot of fun. They, they get weird, you know, and that's the. They get much weirder than your average D and D campaign. And you can't, you know, by the end of it, everyone's a mutant. Everyone's got. Owes a God a favor, has an enemy of a, of a patriot or something like that. You know what I mean? They, you know, people have had these, you know, experiences and found these items that have just changed them forever. But, you know, I think it, what I think it does is it does short style play particularly well because of the nature of the rules. You know, you have a much better chance of having a really interesting arc over a four hour convention, you know, session, say, for example, you know, but, but I think campaign play. I mean, I've run, like I said, I've run multiple. We have the Blades gets bandwidth campaign we ran for our streaming show. You can watch all that on YouTube with my old bad microphone. Sorry, folks, but like that's a great. I mean, as far as the campaign goes, that was really interesting. They went to some places, you know, I really, you know, but I think it does, I think it's very good for short term play. And you know, it's the kind of thing where the. You can have these brilliant outcomes that feel like the end of a novel at a four hour session.

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah. And some of the scenarios for Lankmar are really, as I said, really inventive. Really good ideas within the game.

[Dirk the Dice]

Good.

[Judge Blythey]

And I said there's different settings. We've also played in Dying Earth.

[Brendan LaSalle]

Oh, nice.

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah, so that's, that's been good. So how important is it? Because Goodman Games has really let into the Appendix end.

[Brendan LaSalle]

Yes.

[Judge Blythey]

It doesn't it. Yeah.

[Brendan LaSalle]

That is a big part of our aesthetic is going through taking the best bits of what is there to glean from all of the appendix and works and authors, and then, you know. You know, running it through our own personal, strange filters and creating cool adventures out of that. You know, I'm. You know, I'm still. You know, I don't know. I. Yeah, I feel like the. The Lankmar books are really were what D and D looked like to me. So to me, I. You know, DCC feels more like I always hoped Dungeons and Dragons would as a player. You know what I mean? I don't know. It feels more like, you know, actually running, you know, bachelor playing through these worlds that were created by appendix and authors.

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah. And I think it really helps you to lean into the idea of Lankmar being a den of iniquity, you know, and weirdness and strangeness, and it really. The rule set really helps to support that. I mean. I mean, you could even have a pawn brokerage, couldn't you, in Lankmar, that.

[Brendan LaSalle]

It would be the most common thing in the world. One of the things about Lankmar is that it, in my mind, it, like I'm trying to say it can feel like a real crime city, you know? And you'll have these weird moments. I got to run one of my very favorites not too long ago, Acting up in Lankmar. And my. My players are like, I'm gonna. They're outside of this theater. They're like, I'm gonna look around and see if there's any criminals that are out here, people watching us or anything like that. And he rolled a natural one on his. On his check. And I say, oh, yeah, there's a guy over there at the corner of the theater. He looks real shifty. And the guy walks up and he's like, hey, so what are you doing here? And the guy's like, all right. He opens up his. His coat, and he has all of these. He's a scalper. He has all these tickets to the theater that night. He's like, I got mezzanine. I got balcony. I got this. It was like, this is the kind of thing it would never occur to me to do in a standard fantasy thing, but, like, absolutely, there would be ticket scalpers, like, just working it in Lankmar. You know, when you have that level, like, the. The. The haves and the have nots. Oh, man, the have nots would be doing anything they could to get a little bit of that have money, you.

[Judge Blythey]

Know, and talk about a universe with the haves and have nots. Let's talk about X Crawl and X Crawl Classic. I got a game with our mutual friend Jules Haley at XCools. Yeah.

[Brendan LaSalle]

Oh, boy. Hello, Jules. Hello, Sue.

[Judge Blythey]

And yeah, it was a crazy game, but it really introduced the setting for us. So just again, just give us a pitch for X Crawl.

[Brendan LaSalle]

Sure. So X Crawl is as if your standard fantasy world has grown up, evolved and become our modern, media saturated world. It's definitely a two tiered society. And now the wealthy and the elite have created a contest called xcrawl, which is recreating the dungeon experiences of old by having DJs dungeon judges make artificial dungeons in arena settings that teams of adventurers go through as a competitive death sport. So it's got all of the elements that you would expect from regular dungeon, you know, Crawl. You've got to deal with monsters and traps and treasures and find secret doors and clues and puzzles and riddles and all that. But it all kind of has a flavor of like a lethal game show. And you're, you know, part of it is working the crowd and becoming famous and, you know, crossing over and, you know, getting your face on a cereal box or whatever happens to be, you know.

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah, yeah. And it's really good at creating that sense because you get a sense of the world beyond the spectacle through sponsorship deals that you'd strike up. Oh yeah, yeah. So I think we were some winter clothes manufacturers. I can't remember the name of them, but yeah, nice. I'll probably lose some points for not knowing the name of.

[Brendan LaSalle]

You should be wearing them right now, like in front of them, you know. Yeah. A big, A big part of extra all is like, you know, working, working those sponsorships, you know, and I've always been, it's always been fascinating to me to think of like, you know, when a, when a death fort first arrived on the scene, everyone would be like shying away from it. But eventually someone's like, look, if we put, you know, you know, you know, we put them in our T shirts, our sales are going to go up a thousand percent over the next month or so. So, you know, the, the idea that this is a contest where the athletes can absolutely and do absolutely die night after night, and yet still we're going to use it to sell car insurance and washing powder and whatnot.

[Dirk the Dice]

So yeah, pretty grim.

[Judge Blythey]

And the, what it allows is a dungeon without necessarily any logic. So each room is like a setup of. Now get out of that. Isn't it?

[Brendan LaSalle]

Yeah, it absolutely is. You know, in the, you know, the old days, there was a lot of stress on dungeon ecology. The ecology of the dungeon and how does this thing live here? Where does it eat? You know, and, you know, DCC or. Excuse me, X Crawl is really based on my playstyle and, you know, the first thing I love to abandon is that kind of thing, you know what I mean? And so when you come across a bunch of laser penguins who are all on scooters in a room, why are they there? Some producer thought it would be a good idea. He pitched it, they made it work on paper, they did some rehearsals. It worked. And now you gotta fight laser penguins, you know, or whatever it happens to be, you know. So, yeah, so, I mean, that's. To me, that's a big part of it, where you can create, as a designer, you can create these kind of like grand strategic challenges that you would never. Would make no sense to encounter in the real, you know, any kind of a dungeon setting. You know, one of the earliest X Crawl dungeons, it has got a water elemental that's just full of piranha, you know, which I just could. You know what I mean? Like, I was like, well, of course you would do that. You know what I mean? If you could, you know, you. For, you know, you know, how do we spice this elemental? It's very boring, you know what I'm saying?

[Judge Blythey]

So, yeah, and I didn't realize, Brendan, that it's got a bit of a storage history, hasn't it? X Core. Because I thought it has been in previous versions, hasn't it?

[Brendan LaSalle]

Yes, it absolutely has. So the first iteration of X Crawl, which was X Crawl Adventures in the Extreme Dungeon Crawl League, came out through Panda head games in 2002. And then once they got out of the D20 publishing business, eventually it got. After a few years of me just driving, going around every convention where I could and playing as many games in front of many people as I could, I eventually it moved on and got licensed by Goodman Games. Then there was a. So there was. The original version was for the 3.0 Dungeons & Dragons rules, and then the second published version was for Pathfinder that came out, that was Maximum X Crawl, which I think came out in 2014. And the latest. The latest iteration is of course, for the Dungeon Crawl Classics rules. And it's frankly the best one by a mile, by two miles.

[Judge Blythey]

And what I think it does very well is it acts as a satire, doesn't it, of American life. Yeah, that's kind of bold.

[Brendan LaSalle]

I hope so. Yeah. American life, celebrity culture, you know, sports culture, and definitely capitalism, you know what I mean? And what it's like to live in an actual two tiered society with this gulf between the haves and the have nots. Yeah, I, it definitely, you know, it comes from a place of satire, definitely. But like, to me it's, you know, it's always both a satire, but it's also like a very serious dungeon challenge where you get better, you know what I mean? You can't just go in there, tee hee. I'm gonna have some fun and make some jokes. You'll get eaten. You know what I mean? Like, you all gotta come correct as a crawler, you know, so.

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah, that's very true, isn't it? Because you could see this as a bit of a comedy game, but I didn't have that sense when I was playing it. I felt like the players had to step up and think ingeniously about what to do. And there were comic moments that emerged from it, but it wasn't necessarily full on.

[Brendan LaSalle]

Yeah, exactly. That's really what I wanted to go for. Where it's like this setting is absolutely absurd in a lot of ways. The idea that this world exists, that they spend so much money and resources and things to create these horrific challenges and that, you know, and that, yeah, that, that sponsors paid to have these monster killing, you know, you know, adventurers who more often than not die in the arena, you know, go out there and you know, wear their patches and try to, you know, advertise their product. You know, I mean, it is, it. Hopefully at the same time, it is both absurd and a very deadly, deadly serious dungeon experience.

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah. Because I was surprised that it had such a long history because I felt like it was tapping into the zeitgeist. Now, the idea of. Because they're doing a remake of the Running man, aren't they? And the squid game and all those things that have become very popular. But it was way before that, wasn't it?

[Brendan LaSalle]

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. 2002. I'm actually, I think I'm even pre Battle Royale, if I'm correct. You know what? Let me. Nope. I just missed Battle Royale, which was 2000, but I hadn't seen it, I swear to God. No, the, the big. For me, the, the, the big influences for me. I mean, there was the book the Running man and then the movie the Running man too. But also there was a couple of specific episodes. There's that one episode of Star Trek, Bread and Circuses where they have to fight on the televised, you know, arena, that's a direct thing. The video game Smash TV was a direct influence. You know, the idea of these guys are running around and you know, smashing up other people and like, you know, winning microwave bonuses like, like, you know, the, the absurdity of that. The Gladiators show, which, you know, we had, you know, you had Gladiators, we had American Gladiators. That was a huge primary influence. You know, I told the story before where I saw that on, I saw advertisements for that and I was so excited about American Gladiators. I was like, you know, I, I never made time for tv but I was like glued to my set, that thing. And after 10 minutes I realized this was just like a fun, for fun sporting competition that looked like a gladiator. Like no one was really going to get beaten up. I really know in my, in my, you know, childish brain I thought, oh, we're going to see some. It wasn't even like that. So I had to make my own.

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah, and it's definitely a playstyle, isn't it? Because it does lend itself to the spectacular and those V and V adventures that you. Oh yeah, you had all set pieces, you know. Yeah, absolutely. And we're about to run a mass participation game, a season of gladiator combat, you know, like a Roman gladiator. What do you think it is about that kind of setting that lends itself to role playing games?

[Brendan LaSalle]

Well, I think that combat as a performance is always going to be a really interesting thing that you can mine, you know. But you know, the, from a lot of things like especially lethal combat, you know, I mean boxing is one thing I can see you can have a career with the pro boxer and all this, you know, but like if you're, you know, like a career as an X crawler, you're there, you're there having to perform for people who are going to cheer just as loudly if you live or die, you know. And what that does to psychologically I think is a really interesting thing to explore, you know, what that means to an individual character, you know. And also again, the gladiator, you know, the arena thing gives it the same kind of lack of constraint for the ecology that the XPR thing does, which is, you know, they put you in the arena. Today you're fighting gladiators, tomorrow might be lions, next day we might flood the whole place and put boats in there, you know what I mean? Like the idea that the point isn't death, the point is spectacle and that gives you a lot of leeway to create interesting structures inside of each individual room where, you know, it's not just about I gotta get past these guards and get over here and steal this thing. It's like I got a showboat. I gotta make it look good. I gotta go through this thing that is designed to make me look good or bad, depending on how I play it. You know, to me, that's a very interesting, you know, again, motor play and I think speaks a lot to. Directly or indirectly to the, to the. The psychology of the participants and, and the viewers, frankly. You know, I mean, you know, world with a death board, a world of gladiator combat. That's horrendous to think about, you know. Yeah, but. But also, what would it be like? I mean, you know, if there was. If we lived in that world, I would be terrified all the time for all of the athletes I cared about, but I would tune in. You know what I mean?

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah. I recently watched the Spartacus series again on dvd. Don't judge me. There's quite a lot of nudity in that. But. Yeah, and what that plays into is the idea of that there's a lot of political maneuverings of the people in the balconies watching it. I think that's an interesting dimension to it as well.

[Brendan LaSalle]

Like Drew, like gambling and whatnot or.

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah, gambling and using gladiators as getting positions of influence within the senate and war by proxy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's all that element of it as well, isn't there? That's.

[Brendan LaSalle]

Oh, yeah, I. I think X Crawl can have a bit of that. You know, I think that especially in a game where people become like, you know, you know, think about how actual celebrities skew things. You know, if the right celebrity backs the right cause, that cause is going to get pushed through whatever, you know, I mean, you know, you know, if it's at the right time, you know.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah.

[Brendan LaSalle]

So I mean, I could definitely see, you know, your, your, you know, high level, very famous, well heeled, ex crawl participants, you know, so all of a sudden it's like they put their. Put their bag, you know, behind the literacy or, you know, whatever it happens to be, you know, wetlands preservation, you know, people are gonna queue right up and help them out. So it can definitely. That kind of influence can allow you to be very political. Very. I definitely see it.

[Judge Blythey]

Obviously you're continuing to design for xcore. What direction is it going to go into next?

[Brendan LaSalle]

Well, you know, I really want to. I'll tell you my goal for it. Okay. My goal for it would be to create a kind of like a worldwide organized play for it that would actually play, like the games themselves, where you would have, you know, GMs running teams through things with real specific rules parameters and equipment parameters. You know, I'd love to see, like the big board up there someplace, you know, in brackets, and everyone like, you know, working their way down from the bottom of the top, you know, but at the same time, I have a. I have a long. I have a campaign, you know, so like you said before, there's been several iterations since the very beginning. There's always been a stage two to the world of X Crawl that I've never been able to get to because I had to start over from scratch again. You know, it's still out there and I still want to tell that story, you know, and who knows? So maybe at some point I can, like I'd like to do, create a kind of a event that would be a kind of draw a line. Like, that was old X Crawl world. Old X world. This is new X World. And who knows, maybe I'll get the opportunity to do that in the coming years.

[Judge Blythey]

Thanks, Brenda, for spending this time with us. It's been really good.

[Brendan LaSalle]

You're very welcome. Thanks for having me on. And everybody, you know who's listening, thank you very much. And, you know, come, come check us out at goodman-games.com and see what all coolness we have in store for you. I'll get me caught.

[Judge Blythey]

We're wandering towards the door. I think that pigeon's fallen off now and we've still got our corpse. And we're not going to feel the benefit, even though it's like blistering heat out there. And we're just finishing off with our closing time chapter. What is your closing time chapter?

[Dirk the Dice]

Closing time chatter is confession of a confession. Yeah, okay, confession. But I'd still blame you, blame you for all these things. I did finally buy Dragon Bane.

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah, you say finally buy it.

[Dirk the Dice]

I bought it. Bought it. And you know what? It's really good. So you say finally.

[Judge Blythey]

But the last podcast, when we were talking about how it would be impossible, you said for me to fit dragon baby repertoire, so don't.

[Dirk the Dice]

Repertoire? Did I say repertoire? I don't think I said a repertoire. That's a very you word. Not. Not a me word. You have a repertoire or a repertoire.

[Judge Blythey]

I'm trying to fit. I'm trying to fit the word antediluvian.

[Dirk the Dice]

Right, okay.

[Judge Blythey]

Because I heard Mirinda Hyde use it in the rest is entertainment. Talking about Timothee Chalamet or something like that. But, you know. Anyway. Yeah. So you've added it to your repertoire. It's. It's in your arsenal. It's on your shelf.

[Dirk the Dice]

It's on my shelf.

[Judge Blythey]

And what's more, you playing it.

[Dirk the Dice]

I played it and I've run it and yeah, it's really good, isn't. Is good.

[Judge Blythey]

I knew you'd like it.

[Dirk the Dice]

I know. It is really good game, isn't it? It's such a. It's kind of really well designed. It has like echoes of. Of old school gaming but mixed with new school stuff. It's very slick, very well written. Rulebook as well, I think. Yeah. So I have played the sinking tower on the raspy Raven, the tournament module which I'm running. By the time this goes out, I might already run it, hopefully. And I've run a little bit as well for you overnight and a little bit for the good friends of Jackson Elias convention weekend with the good friends of Jackson. I ran some there. So I've run quite a bit of it because I got quite excited about is. Nice game. Very nice game. Yeah. Yeah. So I've got it. It's in my repertoire now.

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah. And can we look forward to some campaign play?

[Dirk the Dice]

I'd like to be good to, wouldn't it, you know.

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

I mean, I still stand by that frustration that I got it, I like it. But there is a slight frustration that you think, I'd like to run more of it, but when there's always that problem, isn't there?

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

But then again, I suppose I have to concede that your point where you might as well get it even if you don't run it immediately, you've got it, haven't you?

[Judge Blythey]

So, yeah, you're not to see these things as a bucket to be emptied. It's a river to swim along and you pick these things and when you're.

[Dirk the Dice]

Ready for them, when you're ready for.

[Judge Blythey]

Them and when they're ready for you.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yes.

[Judge Blythey]

Look at dcc.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah, it's true. It's true, isn't it? It was hanging around. It was hanging around in the background for a long time, wasn't it? And yeah, suddenly you kind of tune into it, think, oh, this is very good.

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah, it's what I need. What I need right now. My floors in time, checkers. I want to finish on the downer. I'm still in the thralls of GMITIs.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah. It's very unlike you. That's.

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

Oh, my kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah.

[Judge Blythey]

I'm not in the space to run games.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythey]

Help me by the. Why is this? What. What's it down to?

[Dirk the Dice]

I don't know. It's always difficult to resolve, isn't it? I've. I've been there. But I think it is just the old adage, shouldn't get up back on the horse. It's the only way you can really do it. Yeah. And hope. And hope that when you do. I suppose I've always been lucky that when I've had a bit of GMitis, I've got back on the horse and the games I've run have been okay and I've thought, oh, it's okay. I was just a bit of a blip. It's all right. I sometimes worry if I got back on the horse and fell off again immediately, what point would I think, oh, no.

[Brendan LaSalle]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythey]

And the way that it's manifesting is I'm really enjoying playing them. I'm in a number of different games and I'm probably playing more now than I ever done. Maybe that's it. That some of the space that was occupied when I would probably be doing some. I don't want to call it preparation, but sometimes just getting me brain round right, what am I running next? Has been taken up by playing. That might account for some of it. Some of it is because I've been doing different things and doing other things, but I am finding that I'm not getting the same pleasure out of running games and I just don't have the motivation to put myself forward. Because you're going mad for it. To use an oasis, that thread and.

[Brendan LaSalle]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythey]

You put anything that comes up at the moment.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah, I've run quite a bit. Yeah, I'm running quite a bit at the moment. Yeah. I suppose, though, yeah, that. That does come from buying. Buying Dragon bed. And I bought a mythic bastion land at Exports. Well, didn't I? And I suppose I took the view, well, I've got these games. Let's. Let's try and get them run. Let's. Let's run some. Let's put some forward and run it now rather than let it sit on my shelf. I suppose the opposite to what you've just said about being in the river. I've decided to empty the bucket. All right. Yeah. So I suppose I've done that.

[Judge Blythey]

I don't know whether I just accept that I'll just have a break for a bit. But, you know, I'm going to the counterintuitive thing of not jumping back into it, getting my car to have a break for a bit and then get back into it in September when it's.

[Dirk the Dice]

Old Bear, I think as well, sometimes it is about good and bad experiences. I recently had some quite good positive GMing experience. So a game at Expo around was good. The game around for Good Friends at the Good Friends convention, the Dragon Pain game was good. I enjoyed running it, you know, and I think you enjoy running things. You think, oh, this is okay, I like this, I'll do some. But if you. It's not necessarily a bad game, is it? I think if it's just a game you're uncertain of or something that you don't think runs quite as well as you thought, it can leave you feeling a little bit.

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

Deflated and a little bit. You know.

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah, that's what's happened to me. I've run a couple of games where I thought. Not that it went badly necessarily.

[Dirk the Dice]

No, no.

[Judge Blythey]

But it's that effort to pleasure ratio. I thought it required a lot of.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythey]

Get doing to do this. And yet when I've finished it, I ended up feeling a bit dissatisfied.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah. And I think, yeah. When you run games, they go one of three ways. So they'll either run like you imagined and you think, all right, that ran how I imagined it would run. And you never imagine it going badly because you think, well, I wouldn't be running it if I thought it would be rubbish. So that's that. Or they surprise you and go better than you saw. So you know, they're a bit above par where you think, oh, that's. I thought that'd be okay, but it was actually really good. Or you get the third option, which is it's not as good as you think. It's not bad. It's not a disaster, but it's just not. Not quite as good. It's not quite as good as I thought it would be. Didn't run quite as well as I thought it would run. And it leaves you feeling a bit. And I've been there. I've had games where we won't name names, but some. The odd convention game where I've come away thinking, that was. That was hard work. I'm glad that's over.

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

But it then leaves you with that problem of why am I doing this? You go, why was I doing that for four hours ago? I'm glad it's over. Yeah. You know, Was it me? You know? Yeah, yeah.

[Judge Blythey]

No, I'm sure I'll get through it. I've experienced it before and got to.

[Dirk the Dice]

The other side Yeah, I think everyone does. I think everyone has those moments where. Because it relies on so much, doesn't it? It's a social hobby. It relies on people. It relies on people understanding the scenario, people getting into it, enjoying it. Sometimes, if you feel people are not quite tuned in or whatever, it just sometimes leaves you feeling a bit nonplussed, I suppose. Yeah, well, it shade us all up, hasn't it?

[Judge Blythey]

I didn't even manage to get antediluvian into the center.

[Dirk the Dice]

Well, you mentioned the second time you mentioned it.

[Judge Blythey]

Yeah, but it's not the same. It's just not the same.

[Dirk the Dice]

You mean in context.

[Judge Blythey]

In context, yeah. I'm never going to get that gig as a Guardian columnist, am I?

[Dirk the Dice]

No. See you.

[Judge Blythey]

Bye there.

[Dirk the Dice]

Do you.

[Judge Blythey]

There isn't another bit. Thanks to Brendan. It was really good talking to him and feeling his enthusiasm for the game. Go on. You want to have a go at Xcore Classics? It's really good, fun, spectacular and creates humor around the table and encourages players to be really creative. At the time of releasing this, it's actually DCC day, a day where Goodman Games give people a chance to learn their games. 19 Jul 2025 I'll put a link in the show notes. I will keep this a short one just to say thanks to you for listening and the patrons who chip in a tip in the jar every month to keep this show on the road. I've recently released another exclusive podcast for patrons, Dirk's Dossier, where we talk a bit more about our gladiator plans and I'm mopon about my gmitis. There's going to be a second part to this episode released next month, but we're going to slip in an extra in between as on 7th August 2025. It will mark 10 years in your ear with this bobbins, but until then, adios amigos. Sam.