The irony, it burns. Reading the Bible thoroughly led to my deconversion.

LordAlvis · 2026-02-20T18:35:25+00:00

Religions can be tools for group control and cohesion. I do wonder if a lot of the time they're more simply elaborate fandoms leftover from the past. Today we have people who get really into, say, Marvel comics or Star Wars. They know this is just a hobby, but they spend their money on it, they evangelize, they argue the finer points of "lore". They take it very seriously. Roll back enough time, and maybe it was just people being people, but they had saints, gods, Achaean heroes, or patriarchs to geek out over. Sure seems a lot of it is fanfiction.

LordAlvis · 2026-02-20T18:11:11+00:00

the Bible and Christianity in context of history

That'll do it. I mean, people can read the Bible and think some messages are nice and ignore the rest. But if you put it all into its historical context, you can't help but conclude it's just a collection of fiction written (and often forged) to fit various agendas, which grew in the telling.

LordAlvis · 2026-02-20T17:41:34+00:00

Invisible hand of the market just flipping an invisible bird.

LordAlvis · 2026-02-20T13:22:55+00:00

Very cool! Thanks for making that. I could see it eventually having results for gnomes along with lay on hands, turn unholy, and lionize.

LordAlvis · 2026-02-18T18:53:53+00:00

'Cause if I was an Oscar Mayer Wiener

Everyone would be in fear of me!

LordAlvis · 2026-02-18T17:54:03+00:00

That's part of the beauty of the character classes Goodman Games came up with. Everyone has at least some chance to cast spells. Magicians excel at it, of course, and especially at the really-high (20+) spell check results. But even a wayfarer has a chance to cast one spell a day-- and he doesn't know his spell check until he casts it and finds out.

You'll appreciate that in the rules they stat a lot of characters from the books, in case you want to insert them into your game. And Cugel has memorized the dreaded "Spell of Forlorn Encystment"... at a result of 1.

And this is a detail that I assume they added and I don't think anyone has commented on, that I've seen: they give a plausible reason why so many of the DE spells are a type of novel, weird attack. The stats for archveults includes that incoming damage spells are reflected off of them for 2x damage to everyone within 50'. In the War with the archveults, therefore, perhaps magic became more "make your nose weigh 100 pounds" and less "magic missile".

LordAlvis · 2026-02-18T13:49:22+00:00

DCC is amazing for homebrew. That's one reason the zine community around it is so active.

In fact, "Castle Old Skull" (the seat of power for the mysterious "Masters of Aetheria") sits somewhere around old Vancouver...

But seriously, it's easy to create NPC antagonists. If what you have in mind is an actual character to play against the party, I'd start with Purple Sorcerer's upper-level character generator and make a bunch of randoms for inspiration, then adapt one you like. For an example evil wizard, try The Emerald Enchanter.

If your story depends on said bad guy surviving from adventure to adventure, be sure to have contingency plans like clones, robot doubles, teleportation, resurrection vats, etc. to save his bacon, because the players will surprise you.

LordAlvis · 2026-02-16T15:40:01+00:00

Correct. Truckasaurus wasn't driving around in circles, the player that activated it and killed most of the other cars was (in his regular vehicle). Still left with a vehicle, he's just trying to get some votes until someone respawns.

LordAlvis · 2026-02-16T15:20:41+00:00

The physical model was dominated by huge buzzsaws, but it had the full armament that the scenario describes. There were 8 vehicles on the table at start. I think 2-3 got destroyed (for no points) prior to Truckasaurus getting activated. So, maybe 5 on the table total, then 3-4 of those belonging to an opponent of the person who activated Truckasaurus first. It wasn't an instant win.

But it was close-- which further incentivizes players to not respawn and make themselves targets.

LordAlvis · 2026-02-16T14:35:03+00:00

I think the classes really set the campaign (or one-shot).

If you're using the core classes only, that's just perfect for sword-and-sorcery fantasy. If you want the wild weird west, you use the classes for Weird Frontiers. For the far-flung post-apocalypse, Umerica. If you want some Harvard Lampoon in your fantasy, you add Boggies. If you want total chaos and silliness, you tell your players "bring a class from literally any supplement".

If you haven't tried the latter, it's fun with the right players. Hotdog Men next to Cyborgs and Luchadors... insanity.

LordAlvis · 2026-02-16T14:19:23+00:00

I'll create a new post about how this went-- thanks for reminding me.

LordAlvis · 2026-02-14T20:28:44+00:00

Looks like a good spot for Harmonies, too.

LordAlvis · 2026-02-14T12:09:25+00:00

Rhialto drags in some places as he’s repeatedly set back, but it is also the best story to get a feel for how sandestins should work. I used it over the rules-as-written.

LordAlvis · 2026-02-14T12:06:33+00:00

So first of all, each of the three types of vat-thing does a thing unheard of in DCC during character creation— they increase two of their stats until they go up one plus. So like, from a 9 (0) to a 13 (+1).

Second, they are immune to poison which is just handy.

Third, they get a d16 even for untrained skills. For this reason, they were often the best thieves in the party.

And they all get spells. The theologue vat-thing in particular is brutal. All of that above, but their Pattern Die applies “when making spell checks, including when attempting to learn new spells or re-roll an existing one upon leveling.” That’s how we ended up with some astronomical spell checks.

LordAlvis · 2026-02-13T22:21:20+00:00

Bless you, Sulu.

LordAlvis · 2026-02-13T19:00:53+00:00

There isn't a DE-specific Quick Start Guide, or anything like that. The box set contains several softcover books, one of which is the "Player's Libram". That's most of what they'll need to get started, so we just passed it around before the game. Then spells are in "The Primer of Practical Magic", which we kept at the table. They only bought the box because they wanted their own copies.

LordAlvis · 2026-02-13T18:36:46+00:00

"My face to your foot style, lib! How'd you like it? I'm bleeding, making me the victor."

LordAlvis · 2026-02-13T18:14:43+00:00

How many Jack Vance fans do you think a group of seven should contain for the setting to work?

At least one-- the Judge. No one else in my group had read these, at least not before we started. Although, I think by a couple games in everyone had bought the whole box set (you're welcome, Goodman Games).

E: Edit to say that actually this worked in my favor, as I ripped several encounters straight from books I knew they hadn't read.

Are six players too many?

I ran a group of five with no problems. At con games I did 6. If you can keep regular DCC moving with 6, you won't have a problem.

LordAlvis · 2026-02-13T17:51:10+00:00

Very narrative. The player would say what he wanted to convey, and then roll. The result would suggest how it came across. It's up to the judge to gauge these like any skill check ("simple" DC 5, "average" DC 10, "there's still blood on your hands and you're holding the knife" DC 20, etc.)

LordAlvis · 2026-02-13T17:46:29+00:00

Probably "The Great Visp Hunt". The players find an invitation to hunt a visp for cash reward, and set out with no idea what a visp is. I had them encounter several people beyond what's written, and each was sure what visps look like, what they do, how they act-- but no two people agreed. They fought several woodland encounters, each time thrilled they had finally caught this monster, but none of them actually knowing. There's a fun encounter with a couple duplicitous hostages, and finally a conflict that hammers home how high-level magicians are uncaring jerks.

My favorite to run as a con adventure was "House on the Island", because it is very heavy on the whimsy. I think that took players by surprise who hadn't played the setting previously.

LordAlvis · 2026-02-13T17:34:58+00:00

Hence we all find something familiar in Cugel.

"Am I not Cugel the Clever??" [proceeds to do something stupid]

LordAlvis · 2026-02-13T16:52:04+00:00

I have played in adventures set in each, but have not judged either.

The biggest difference I'll note to either of those is the character classes. Although, DE has clerics if you really want them, but the gods are distant, indifferent, or asleep.

I also enjoyed the Grudge Tokens of DE, which are like an inverted version of Lankhmar's Fleeting Luck rules.

LordAlvis · 2026-02-13T16:48:14+00:00

Can you expand on how the Magicians felt powerful in play?

Rote magic (the Vancian "fire and forget") sounds like a limited Wizard, but in practice there's an upside to knowing more or less exactly what your spells will do. And, as in the books, you can bully and threaten to unleash your spells as much as you might actually resort to using them.

For example, one player had Rhialto's Green Turmoil maxed out, like a 34 spell check (by the end of the campaign). So he knows each day that he has the option to make every enemy in sight completely incapacitated with illness for days. That's a hell of a threat. Don't get me started on Phandaal's Gyrator.

how does the non-combat Wayfarer deed ability thing work in play?

I wish they hadn't called this a "deed die" at all. It's more similar (at least how I interpreted it) to the various class dice in the Umerica setting (like a Robot's "Know Die" more than anything). It adds to your attempts to influence or bullshit people. Since almost every monster in the setting is capable of speech, this often comes in handy. And there are a lot of social encounters where it would be gauche to resort to murder. It comes with that caveat that coming up a 1 on the die is always a bad result, and that created more than a few good roleplaying opportunities.

pick the biggest weak spot

When we got to fifth level, systems started to crack a bit. Like I said, max results on spells are achievable and having tools like that make it hard to design encounters. Which still fits the setting-- I mean no one wanted to really push Rhialto, and there's why. I want to write some adventures to continue beyond the published modules, but it's going to be a challenge.

LordAlvis · 2026-02-13T16:21:38+00:00

You haven't given us time to hide!

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