Introduction: Portal Under the Stars Playthrough

Portal Under the Stars, Chapter 1

Portal Under the Stars, Chapter 2

Portal Under the Stars, Chapter 3

Portal Under the Stars, Chapter 4

Portal Under the Stars, Chapter 5

We did it! That was a thoroughly enjoyable experience on many levels. I loved getting to play a Dungeon Crawl Classics Funnel and fumble my way through the rules. I loved having a chance to try out solo-play as a different way into TTRPGs than my usual play groups. Finally, I loved getting a chance to tell a different kind of fantasy narrative, with a different kind of narrative process.

Before I turn to leveling up my four remaining PCs to Level 1, I thought I’d pause and reflect on this two-month experience of The Portal Under the Stars and then talk about what I see coming next.

Reflections on Dungeon Crawl Classics and the Level-0 Funnel

For over five years, my game of choice has been Pathfinder 2^nd Edition. I’ve played more hours of PF2E than all other game systems combined over that time, and it assuredly is now my second- or third-most played system ever behind Champions (4^th & 5^th Editions) and possibly Villains & Vigilantes (Revised Edition). I am currently in an online group that has been playing a longform PF2E campaign for going on two years, and we routinely take short breaks to rotate who sits in the GM seat. I have an obscene number of monthly Paizo subscriptions for PF2E and, as a result, a full bookshelf worth of material.

Now, after one solo play experience, I am dangerously close to switching my focus to Dungeon Crawl Classics. I’ve played more than a dozen other systems in the last five years, but nothing has captured my imagination and created giddiness like that first read-through of the DCC core rulebook. I can’t fully explain what hooked me so deeply, but I do think this 90-minute interview does an excellent job talking about some of the game’s most notable features and why its community is rabid. Whatever the reasons, though, I’m watching my podcast feed have steadily less Pathfinder content to make room for DCC and Old School Renaissance (OSR) shows. I’m joining DCC social media groups and online forums. I’m backing Goodman Games Kickstarter projects. I’m buying third party content. I’m even thinking of reading some of the Appendix N stories. I don’t know that I have completely dived off the cliff yet, but I’m certainly dangling over the DCC river by my fingertips, ready to be swept away.

The Dungeon Crawl Classics rules are easy to pick up for any d20 player, and yet provide a distinct play experience from modern D&D and Pathfinder. What’s amazing to me is what different kinds of stories you can tell, as well. Level-0 peasants can face world-saving decisions, travel through time or to other planets, and parley with deities. The word “gonzo” gets used a lot in relation to DCC, and I suppose inherent in that word is “hysterical, bonkers fun.” That last combat in my Portal Under the Stars game was W-I-L-D, and I found myself giggling like an idiot, alone, in front of my laptop.

So far, my only criticisms are twofold. First, while the core rulebook is gorgeous and a joy to read, it is not particularly easy to find the tables I need when I need them, and hoo nelly there are a lot of tables. Apparently this is a common enough complaint that Goodman Games released the Dungeon Crawl Classics Reference Booklet, a quick-hit guide of all the important tables in one brief pamphlet. I now own this handy little booklet, which should make future play sessions easier. Second, I’m completely spoiled by the excellent Foundry VTT automation for PF2E and find that I’m missing it in the DCC module. It was a genuine shock to me when I added scale mail to a character and it didn’t automatically change her Armor Class, for example. Doing things manually is a good way to learn the system, but I hope the DCC Foundry experience gets better over time. Still, all things considered, these are two minor complaints about a system for which I’ve done a thorough playest.

Well… maybe not a thorough playtest. I’m aware that right now I’ve played less than half of the DCC game. Lots and lots of people love their Funnels and want to talk about their Level 0 experiences. In fact, most of the StartPlaying games online are for Funnels. At this point, however, I have used only a fraction of the core rulebook’s content. What comes next is Level 1 characters who have unique classes, and then spellburn, mighty deeds, mercurial magic, spending Luck, patrons, turning unholy things, and endless spell tables will become part of my game. In short: I feel like the most fun parts of DCC are still on the horizon.

That said, what did I think of my first Funnel? As I outlined two months ago, I was sold on the idea of the Funnel after first reading it, and I absolutely love that DCC has part of its gameplay creating the origin stories for your adventuring party. As advertised, a) I would never have guessed after making a dozen peasants that Umur, Erin, Ethys, and Hilda would be the lone survivors and my first party of adventurers. The surprise of them is delightful, and I’m already imagining how their various classes might complement each other. Even more, b) the core rulebook is adamant that the Funnel creates connection with and attachment to individual characters, and that’s certainly true for me. I don’t think that I gave Ethys Haffoot or Hilda Breadon much thought after making them, for example. Who wants a halfling with 6 Agility or a character with an 18 Stamina (!!) but no other bonuses? Now, though, I can’t wait to level them up and explore them as characters. Hilda, in particular, has completely transformed in my mind, from a nameless meat shield to my first-ever, greed-filled Wizard. Can’t wait.

If I had it to do over again, I would have done my Funnel with 16 PCs instead of 12. The rulebook says that each player should make 3-4 Level 0 characters. So, for my solo play, I imagined 4 players making 3 PCs each. It felt like too few characters, and that last battle was on a knife’s edge from being a TPK. I would have ideally liked to have a couple more surviving villagers than I needed for a party, both to give me some choice about who to play but also to supply backup characters if one of my party members dies. Right now, I’m not entirely sure what I’ll do about adding PCs to the party. Hm. I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it, and it’s a testament to how much I believe in the Funnel that playing leveled characters without a Funnel already feels wrong (which, it occurs to me, is maybe why the online games are all Funnels). In any case, if I run a Funnel for my online group or do another solo play campaign, I’ll make sure we have 16+ PCs.

Which is all to say, two thumbs way up for DCC as a game and the Funnel to begin the experience.

Reflections on The Portal Under the Stars as a Funnel

I’m less positive about the starter Funnel in the core rulebook, The Portal Under the Stars. In fact, I’m unlikely to run it with friends. What I liked: First, as I’ve already said, that last battle was epic, memorable, fun, and everything I could have hoped for in an introduction to the kinds of stories you can tell in DCC. Second, it’s one of the only Funnels I’ve read (at this point a half dozen) that feels doable in a single session. Sailors on the Starless Sea, the most beloved Funnel for pretty much everyone, by contrast feels like a mini campaign in and of itself. I can’t imagine my play group doing Sailors in less than three sessions, whereas Portal seems like one, or at most two, solid sessions. Finally, I like both the setup (why villagers would put themselves in such dire danger seems to me a key part of any Funnel’s verisimilitude) and various plot hooks for future adventures that Portal offers. It’s easy to see Portal kicking off a longer campaign, which I suppose is exactly the hope for my play-through.

Why, then, am I critical? For me it comes down to two problems. The first and most damning issue is how trap-heavy Portal is. The first door is trapped. The room beyond that door is trapped. The room beyond that room is trapped, with probably the deadliest part of the whole complex. That’s three traps in a row that you cannot avoid, full stop. If you go the direct route and head north from there? Yep, another potential trap. Not only does the monotony of this repetition grate on me, but it doesn’t feel like a good way for me to learn DCC’s rules. Give me an early combat. Make me do a skill check. Force me to roll a weird-sided die. Give me an item that uses a random table. In short, showcase the system! I have a real worry that if I were to introduce DCC via Portal to my regular group—all of whom are twenty years younger than me and have only played modern games—at least a couple of them wouldn’t want to come back because they would falsely conclude that DCC is simply a GM “gotcha!” game.

My second problem with Portal as a Funnel is how relatively linear it is. For me, one of the best things about DCC as a system and the adventures that Goodman Games (and countless third parties thanks to their generous licensing) release, is that PCs can do and try anything. Not so much in Portal. There is only one way to enter the complex, and after that the route is a straight line. This linearity is part of what makes Portal a time-efficient Funnel, and like I said I’m a fan of its length. Yet I don’t imagine that many Portal games run all that differently from one another, which for me is another lost opportunity to have people fall in love with the game. I’m obviously a novice so may be wrong, but I bet the real differences in two separate Portal Under the Stars sessions are going to be how the dice rolled, not the choices the players made.

I’m wincing a little writing those paragraphs because I truly am becoming a huge Dungeon Crawl Classics enthusiast and evangelist. Despite that enthusiasm, The Portal Under the Stars isn’t the Funnel for me.

Reflections on Solo-Play

When I started my play experience in May, I had two books laying on the desk next to my laptop: The DCC core rulebook and the Mythic Game Master Emulator. I never cracked open the second book. I’m still a fan of the GM Emulator and plan to use it in future solo-play games with different systems, but I think it’s likely more vital with emergent narratives than with published adventures. Although there’s a section in Mythic for running it with published material, for my first Funnel all I needed was the core rulebook.

I mentioned it when writing my game logs, but the hardest thing for me to sort through as a solo player was traps, which may be another reason that Portal’s structure bothered me. If I as a DCC Judge (the game’s name for GM) know what the trap does and the implications for various ways to interact with it, how do I simulate a group of unknowing players/PCs who are seeing it for the first time? My answer was to roll Intelligence checks for my PCs, which worked reasonably well. But relying on Intelligence means that there’s a stat in my PCs that matters significantly more than others for their survival, which I don’t like. If anyone else is familiar with solo play, I’m all ears on ways to solve the “traps dilemma.”

Funnily enough, I’m listening to the second campaign of the Tale of the Manticore (an excellent OSR solo-play podcast that continues to inspire me), and as I was writing this post the party of adventurers hit a series of traps. I listened closely to how Jon, the creator, handled it. It seems to me like he just had them plunge forward, dealing with situations that would make for interesting and tense die rolls. Maybe the answer is to have a bit of a wink with my choices, allowing the PCs do what will lead to the most dramatic situations, but that somehow feels against the spirit of what I’m trying to simulate. Something to ponder.

What didn’t bother me, surprisingly, was the “solo” part. I am a social creature and get a lot of energy from my play groups, but I’m also an only child who grew up largely as a latchkey kid. I remember several Summers as a youth playing for hours with my action figures, or drawing, or reading comic books, or, yes, making up games that would allow me to roll dice (one memorable project was creating 128 American football teams for the 128 most populous cities in the US, complete with drawing their helmets, and then rolling dice to determine who would win a big single-elimination tournament between them… I’m such a nerd). There is a different flow to solo games than group games, and I don’t think the former fully substitutes for the latter. I imagine that I’ll always be either looking for ways to create a long-term in-person gaming group or working to maintain the one I have. But for times when I don’t have that regular group, or when I’m seeking additional games, I’m thrilled to continue plugging away at a solo game. For the first time, I have some hope that many of those game books on my shelf with get some use.

Reflections on Blending Fiction and TTRPGs

Besides being a tabletop role-player, I’m also a writing enthusiast (he says, writing on his years-long blog). Most recently, I’ve been working on a Pathfinder novella series, and even occasionally write web fiction for Paizo (including a story published this week!). I have over a dozen unfinished novels on my laptop, and some of my fondest social memories are from writer’s groups I’ve joined. I’ve recently felt paradoxically like I’m a) in an excellent writing groove, pumping out a lot of pages every week without fail, and b) a bit rudderless, losing enthusiasm for my novellas and yet unsure what to do next.

This solo-play experience has invigorated me. Not only have I enjoyed playing DCC, I’m excited by the idea of writing up my solo-play experiences as hybrid fiction/game logs. In some ways, these blog posts provide a purpose to my solo games that otherwise would only live within my mind. In fact, I’ve found that a virtuous cycle is building from this project, where writing up the sessions makes me want to play again, which in turn makes me want to keep telling the story. Right now, I’m finding myself annoyed by other responsibilities because they are keeping me from pursuing the next idea for this experiment. I’m sure this current surge is temporary, but it’s been a welcome influx of passion into an otherwise routine schedule.

And speaking of next ideas…

What’s Next?

My maiden foray into solo-play and DCC has spawned two projects which I’ll be doing in parallel. The first and most obvious next step is to keep playing. I’ll now turn to leveling up my four surviving PCs to Level 1 characters and writing up how and why I’ve made those class choices. I’m envisioning either one short blog post per character or perhaps two PCs per post (who am I kidding? given my enthusiasm, it will take four posts). Once that’s done, I’ll launch them into their first Level 1 adventure and follow roughly the same process and format I used for Portal Under the Stars. I’m thinking either The People of the Pit or Doom of the Savage Kings. I’ll read through both and decide after the PC level-ups.

My second project is to revisit my Portal Under the Stars narrative and retool it as pure fiction. I wrote each installment not knowing what was going to happen or where I should focus the story, because I couldn’t predict what characters or details would become important. Now I know. For me it’s an interesting writing challenge to completely revise the story now that I have perfect insight into the dice rolls and events, being able to foreshadow, curate, focus, and generally tell a more coherent and cohesive tale. For example, there is no reason to make the town councilwoman Leda the POV character now that I know she’s going to die. Do I switch to a pure third person voice or do I pick a different POV character (probably Erin)? These are the kinds of questions I’ll tackle, and what should emerge is something that stands on its own as a short story, with a clear beginning, middle, and end. My sense is that this second endeavor is going to be significantly more time consuming, but I’ll post the final story when I think it’s ready.

Whew, that’s a lot of reflections! As I’ve said repeatedly, I’m stoked to keep going down this DCC exploration and to continue this story. Now that I’ve broken the seal on solo gaming, I can imagine all sorts of other projects when I lose enthusiasm for my misfit party of adventurers from Graymoor (or, you know, they all die horribly). Until then, feel free to comment below or email me at jaycms@yahoo.com.

Enthusiastically yours,

-jms

DCC Character Level 1: Umur Pearlhammer