Level 1: Umur Pearlhammer

Level 1: Ethys Haffoot

Level 1: Erin Wywood

It’s time for the fourth and final member of our surviving Funnel party for my Dungeon Crawl Classics storytelling (the other three are linked above). If you’ve been reading along to this point, there is absolutely no surprise what class I’m choosing for Graymoor’s village baker, Hilda Breadon. Yep, she’s the Wizard. On paper, Ethys or Erin look like better fits, but the story with Hilda as the Wizard makes too much sense to ignore.

Here was Hilda’s Level-0 character sheet:

Hilda Breadon. Level 0 Baker. STR 9, AGL 11, STA 18, PER 9, INT 11, LCK 11. Init +0; Atk rolling pin +0 melee (1d4); AC 10; HP 7; MV 30′; Act 1d20; SV Fort +3, Ref +0, Will +0; LNG Common; AL Lawful; Equipment: chain, flour, 26cp.

Hilda was my first and only 18 on any single ability score. She is as tough as they come, with a +3 Stamina and whopping 7 hit points. Unfortunately, everything else about her is utterly average. Until the very end of her adventures, she wielded a rolling pin for goodness’ sake! Once I’d started playing and writing Portal, you may notice that I gave Hilda almost no airtime in the narrative until the end.

One I realized she may very well survive to be Level 1, I assumed her toughness would translate into a mediocre Warrior. But then her greedy nature started to emerge from the story, and I became more and more comfortable with Hilda as a Wizard. As I heard in an interview with one of the DCC designers, Wizards are the junkies in the game, interested in acquiring power at the expense of themselves and those around them. That fit my understanding of Hilda perfectly. Then the party found a magic orb, which was my excuse for granting her spells and a patron.

As I’ve said before, many people believe the bonkers magic system is the best thing about DCC, and Wizard spellcasting is really what they’re talking about. There’s a lot to cover, so let’s dive right in…

Hit Points: As the Wizards of almost any old school game, Hilda only gets d4 hit points per level. Thankfully, she has a good base, will min out at half, and will get that sweet +3 bonus. The roll is… 4! Ha! Hilda will start her adventures as the hardiest mage in the land, flexing with 14 hit points, the most of any party member!

Magic: Alright, here is what we came to see. Magic in DCC is unpredictable, dangerous, and inhuman… great powers granted from otherworldly patrons that, over time, fundamentally transform the caster. At first level, Hilda will have learned 4 spells from the whisperings of her patron through the mysterious orb. As with Erin, she will need to make a spell check to cast these spells, which will be d20 + 1 (her level). Here are the spells she received, rolled randomly on a table from the core rulebook:

Spell 1: Read Magic, which is boring but makes sense as a first step towards being a Wizard, especially for a villager who may not have even been able to read at all. I suspect this was her first spell. Next we roll on the very-fun Mercurial Magic table to see how this spell expresses itself. The idea here is that spells vary based on several factors, including how it was gained, who’s casting it, etc. For Read Magic, Hilda will transform into a man for 1 hour after casting the spell (unless she fails to cast it, in which case it will last a full day). Ha! That will be interesting.

Spell 2: Feather Fall, which allows her (or someone of her choosing) to avoid falling damage. Unfortunately, the spell is also a vermin attractor, bringing a cloud of bothersome insects at Hilda for 1d4 rounds after she’s completed the spell, biting and distracting her during that time. Ouch.

Spell 3: Patron Bond, which is amazing. It takes a full week to cast, but doing so puts her in direct contact with her patron (which we’ll get to below), forming a permanent pact with it. This is not a spell to cast lightly but is just filled to the brim with story consequences. Even cooler, after casting it the Mercurial Magic table tells me that she gains a psychic focus, clearing her mind and granting her a +4 bonus to 1d4 spell checks afterwards (it’s technically 1d4 rounds by the table, but that makes less sense for a casting time of 1 week). This overall spell result makes me giddily happy.

Spell 4: Chill Touch, which allows Hilda to give a necromantic touch of the dead, damaging opponents. And… on my goodness… I rolled a 01 on percentile dice for Mercurial Magic, which means every time she casts it, someone she knows dies! Holy crap. That is horrifying all around, and I suspect she won’t immediately figure out this cost until later.

What an interesting assortment of spells and side effects. There’s a little utility, a little offense (at great cost), and Patron Bond for pure craziness. Hilda is going to be fascinating.

Supernatural Patron: Who is speaking to Hilda through the veil of the magical crystal orb, granting her these dread powers? The core rulebook provides a handful of detailed options, and not surprisingly the DCC community has increased the list exponentially (check out here and here and here for great free resources). I’m going to rely on this delightful book, because there is a Patron there that fits The Portal Under the Stars, perfectly: Ptah-Ungurath, Opener of the Way. I won’t say much about him now, but I will say that he is terrifying, cosmically vast, and someone that Hilda should want to avoid. But it’s the key to her powers, and she wants more power, so we’ll explore that conundrum as the adventures unfold. I may tweak the “insects” effect on Feather Fall above with this Patron in mind, keeping the effect but changing how it manifests. Anyway, when her Level 1 adventure kicks off, she will not know the name of her Patron, much less his ineffable nature. Will she have cast Patron Bond yet when the adventure kicks off? This is something I’ll ponder.

Other Abilities: As a Wizard, Hilda can’t really wear armor, so yay for piles of hit points. There are circumstances under which she could obtain a familiar and learn extra languages, but those haven’t happened yet. Finally, she gets a +1 to her Reflex and Will saves, which means she’ll have bonuses to all three.

Title: None of the suggested titles for Wizards work for the image I have of Hilda in my mind. She is not part of an order and is not self-taught, nor does she even understand schools or types of magic. Instead, it is the simple act of spending time with an orb that gives her access to speak with an otherworldly entity that is the reason for any magic she possesses. She’s a vessel, not a scholar, akin to a Sorcerer, Warlock, or Witch in D&D/Pathfinder terms more than a Wizard. The portal she entered to get this orb opened under the light of the Empty Star, so I think this will be Hilda’s inspiration. As she embraces this new path before her, she’ll stop referring to her family name (yes, a baker named Breadon maybe was a little too spot on, but I do crack myself up) and instead call herself Hilda of the Empty Star. This title fits the Patron perfectly, so Ptah-Ungurath will be pleased.

Here she is, in all her soon-to-be-corrupted glory:

My choices over these four level-ups will drive any min-max power-gamers insane. I made a dwarf with bonuses only in non-combat stats my frontline fighter. The closest thing to a thief has 6 Agility, and my cleric is the only PC with a negative Personality modifier. To top it all off, I took the only character of the four without an Intelligence bonus and made her my mage. Do I want them all to die or fail miserably? On the contrary, I am pulling for my party of four, desperately hoping they survive their first big adventure. But you don’t play DCC to win, you play to tell a great story. These four PCs, I am confident, have terrific stories on the horizon (assuming they don’t die horribly in the first encounter). I can’t wait to get started!

But first, a look at Hilda’s early corrup–, er transformation…

Hilda closed the shutters of her home with practiced ease. She’d already given her unbought items to Redor from the Beggar’s Alehouse, cleaned her kitchen, and prepped ingredients for tomorrow. Thanks to farmer Beeford, she still had an abundance of peaches, so tomorrow she’d decided to bake peach cobblers in addition to her usual items. Hilda knew several people who would be delighted.

She wiped her hands on her stained apron before removing it. Hilda wrinkled her nose. There was washing to do, but not tonight. She’d do it tomorrow. Tossing the apron aside, she turned to her bedroom with anticipation in her tired eyes.

Without cleaning face or hands from the day, Hilda removed her clothes and donned her nightgown. Everything she’d done today had been rote, like an ox pulling its cart. She baked her wares, smiled when it was required, made small talk with her neighbors and patrons, and performed her necessary chores. To anyone paying close attention, however, the shadows beneath her eyes had grown darker each day, a yawn always barely contained behind her lips. She’d lost weight, too, giving more unsold items to the Alehouse and rarely eating them. If anyone had noticed, none had brought it to her attention. They must have thought she was still recovering from her ordeal from the night in the portal. They could not be more mistaken.

Hilda sat cross-legged on her bed and carefully uncovered the item beneath her blankets. Shimmering light filled the room. There, in the center of her mattress, sat a crystal orb the size of a small watermelon, its pale light casting dancing shadows around the room. Her eyes sparkled at seeing it, the smile on her face genuine and wide for the first time today.

“Hello,” she whispered, caressing the orb lovingly. “Will you visit me tonight, then?”

She did not know how long she stared at its depths, yearning and wishing it to change. It had been days since the last visitation. And ho! Was that a flicker of blue amidst the white tonight? Hilda rubbed her eyes and then the orb, looking again. Yes, most assuredly a small square of blue, and growing. Her smile widened.

With an almost sensual sigh, Hilda waited. Soon the orb’s light was a pale blue, like the portal beneath the Empty Star into which she and the others had entered. Embracing the sensation, she felt herself pulled into a great vastness within the small sphere, beyond anything her mind could grasp. Hilda Breadon had never left the outskirts of the village of Graymoor, never considered that her home sat on a continent of land, surrounded by vast oceans upon a wider world. How, then, could she hope to comprehend an entire universe, full of countless planets living and dead, floating within a sea of stars and empty void? Her utter insignificance, her soul infinitely less meaningful than a mote of dust landing upon the Teawood River… Hilda had no words nor frame of reference as she lost herself to the orb’s cosmic scope. But lose herself she did, for hours on end, until the dead of night. Something unlocked within Hilda on these nights, though she could not explain to herself how or what.

Hilda stared vacantly at the blue orb, all sense of individuality gone, as she had done a handful of nights in the past two months. Tonight, however, was the first that a figure moved into view. A slender, hairless man, his body not so much black as the absence of anything, stared back at her from the orb’s interior. For long moments he considered her, as Hilda sat on her bed, staring, drooling, moaning, and expelling her bowels without care.

Then he spoke, and Hilda Breadon’s unprepared mind shattered into fragments as numerous as stars in the sky.

Introduction: Doom of the Savage Kings playthrough

Level 1: Umur Pearlhammer

Level 1: Ethys Haffoot

We’re back with the level-up for character #3 of my four-PC party of adventurers (links to the previous two above). Today I dip my toe into the exciting world of spellcasters in Dungeon Crawl Classics. When I read and listen to DCC testimonials, the magic system is one the absolute favorite things that people cite, which is good since the spellcasting section dominates real estate in the core rulebook, accounting for two-thirds of the page count.

The real gem of spellcasting craziness is the Wizard, and my sense is that every DCC party everywhere has a Wizard for the sheer, hair-raising joy that class can create. Indeed, looking at Erin Wywood’s Level-0 character sheet, she is a prime candidate to be the party’s Wizard thanks to her high Intelligence score:

Erin Wywood. Level 0 Minstrel. STR 13, AGL 11, STA 13, PER 8, INT 14, LCK 10. Init +0; Atk dagger +1 melee (1d4+1); AC 10; HP 5; MV 30′; Act 1d20; SV Fort +1, Ref +0, Will -1; LNG Common, Halfling; AL Lawful; Equipment: holy symbol, ukelele, 32cp.

When it came to Umur and Ethys, I either completely ignored their starting equipment or actively erased it from the fiction (see Umur’s lantern or Ethys’ 10’ pole). Neither Level 1 character sheet kept a single item from their starting gear. Yet with Erin, her equipment defined the character for me. She is the village’s only minstrel, and I randomly rolled a holy symbol for her. Combining these items with her low Personality, I decided that she was a devoutly, righteously religious evangelist… annoyingly so. As a result, by Chapter 5 of the Portal story, I pretty much knew that Erin would be the party’s Cleric. 

Let’s pull out the core rulebook and see what being a Cleric entails.

Hit Points: Clerics receive d8 hit points each level, right between a Dwarf and a Halfling. I’m sticking with my minimum each level at half this amount in case I roll low… which I do! I roll a 2, so that becomes 4 hp, plus 1 for her Stamina modifier, added to her original 5. Erin will start Level 1 with 10 hit points.

Deity: Clerics are “militant servants of a god,” so the first task with a Cleric is to choose what divine entity Erin worships. The list of deities in the core rulebook is pretty sparse, but thankfully there are plenty of lists like this one, this one, and this one with tons of information on possible gods. I’m particularly grateful for the Knights of the North, which has detailed write-ups on deities for their campaign world. Indeed, when I stumbled upon their description for Shul, god of the moon, I immediately attached Erin to it. Perhaps it was beginning the entry with a song (which Erin sang in the final installment of Portal), or perhaps it was due to Portal Under the Stars’ celestial themes, but once I envisioned her holy symbol to be a silver, crescent moon on a silver chain, I couldn’t get the image out of my head. As a worshipper of Shul, Erin keeps her dagger as her primary weapon (which we’ll now say is curved like a crescent) and gains several other benefits which I’ll outline below. She can also wear the scale male she obtained from Portal, but she will meticulously paint it white before wearing it again.

Idol Magic: Erin can call upon the favor of Shul to perform miracles. Casting spells involves making a spell check, which will add her level (+1) but be hampered by her Personality (-1). I actually love the story here: If Erin can learn to lighten up and connect with her fellow mortals, her god will show her more favor. Can she figure it out? I suppose we’ll see.

At first level, Erin gains access to 4 Level 1 spells, which I’ll determine randomly by rolling a d12 on the Cleric table in the core rulebook, adding Sleep as a twelfth option thanks to the Shul write-up above. Here are the blessings she initially receives:

Spell 1: Paralysis, which makes sense for a god devoted in part to sleep and dreams.

Spell 2: Second Sight, which is a kind of augury and works for any god.

Spell 3: Holy Sanctuary, a nice way to keep our fragile party safe.

Spell 4: Resist Cold or Heat, which is self-explanatory.

I like it! I’m a little bummed to miss Sleep since it felt like a special, god-specific option, but I can’t argue with the ways in which Erin can initially express Shul’s favor. It’s easy to picture clutch casting for each of those spells, and fun to envision how her divine magic will visually express itself.

Cleric spellcasting is involved, and I won’t get into the details until it’s time for her to cast something in her adventures. Suffice it to say, when that time comes, I’ll talk a lot about spell checks, disapproval, sacrifices, and alignment.

Lay on Hands: One of the primary benefits of clerics in any system is their ability to heal, and DCC is no exception. A special kind of magic for Clerics, still made via a spell check, involves healing one hit die (or more!), plus things like broken limbs, poison, and disease. Again, I’ll get into the mechanics as it happens, but an interesting feature of DCC’s system is that alignment matters for her healing; it will be easier to heal Lawful characters (like Umur and Ethys) than characters of other alignments.

Other Abilities: As a Cleric, Erin can Turn Unholy, which is a way of wielding her holy symbol to affect abominations, devils, demons, and the like. Because she worships Shul, Erin gains 15’ of Darkvision (which as far as I can tell, is the same as Infravision). In extreme circumstances, she can implore Shul for Divine Aid, which is more direct intervention from her god that can do spectacular things at the cost of future disapproval. Finally, her Fortitude and Will saves go up by +1 each. The Knights of the North write-up also describes some flavorful points about her relationship to gold and how her healing expresses itself, which I’ll add to the fiction.

Title: This one is easy. Although the village of Graymoor is too small to have a dedicated church of Shul, the suggested title for Lawful Clerics is Acolyte, which fits Erin perfectly. She absolutely sees herself as an Acolyte of Shul.

Add all those bells and whistles together, and here is Erin Wywood’s Level 1 character sheet:

Looking at her sheet, it occurs to me that Erin would have made an excellent Warrior given her Strength and Stamina bonuses, which is something I hadn’t even considered when leveling her up. With those bonuses and armor, though, it’s fun to think of her more in the mold of “war priest” than “cloistered cleric” (to use PF2E terms), able and willing to engage in melee combat in the name of her holy purpose. Perhaps eventually she will need to get a heftier weapon than a dagger. All in all, I’m happy with Erin’s direction and I hope that Shul can keep her alive to see future level-ups. I’ll be looking for excuses to test her devotion and faith, with implications to that Personality score.

At the end of each of these posts, I’ve done a quick peek into the character’s inner journey from the Portal story to being ready for a Level 1 adventure. Let’s check in on our new Acolyte of Shul…

Erin Wywood looked up, annoyance on her young, freckled face, when someone knocked at the door.

“Granddaughter?” a muffled voice carried from beyond the door. “Your parents have called me to speak with you, child. They are… concerned.”

Erin blew a curl of hair from her face and stood, groaning. How long had she been crouched there? Her back and legs protested that it had been far too long. She blinked and looked out of her small window. Was it night already? Erin rubbed at her eyes and stretched before opening the bedroom door a crack.

There was Councilman Wywood, grampa, looking down on her with a furious scowl. He no longer had hair atop his head, but the sides were white and long and stuck out everywhere. His white eyebrows were similarly untamed and exaggerated his disapproving stare.

“What are you doing in there?” he scoffed, already disapproving.

Erin returned the look, unblinking. “Praying,” she said simply, and moved to close the door.

“Now listen here!” he protested. “You cannot spend every hour in your room, child! You’ve had a fright, we all understand, but it’s done. Now is the time to be with family.”

She shut the door firmly. “It’s been over a month!” he shouted, muffled, through the wood. “And why is there paint on your face!? Erin? Erin!”

Fingers slid the lock shut as he continued to sputter beyond. Unperturbed, she returned to her work.

Spread out across the floor were segments of armor—cloth garments with many small, individual scales laced together to look like a fish or reptile—plus paint pots, water, rags, and brushes. Most of the armor was the same white as the paint and brushes, but a few pieces were an ominous, matte black. Erin sat cross-legged and selected one of these ebony items, a pauldron meant to cover a warrior’s shoulder.

Deftly, she snatched a brush lying on a cloth rag and dipped it into the paint pot near her knee. Beyond her door, she could dimly hear grampa yelling at her parents.

“The moon is barren,” she hummed in a low, clear voice. “The moon is old.” Unerringly, the brush moved across the armor, turning it white.

Erin did not realize that it was fully dark in her room now, and her eyes shone with a pale, luminous glow as she worked.

DCC Character Level 1: Hilda Breadon

NOTE: This entry continues the character level-up posts and follows Umur Pearlhammer. Best to start with that one if you haven’t read it yet. 

I started my character level-ups with the most obvious class decision, making Umur a Dwarf. But ho, you may have said at the time, is Ethys Haffoot not also a demihuman? Isn’t the choice for her just as obvious?

Not for me. One of the funny quirks of my original dozen Level-0 characters was that I rolled two halfling mariners, and both had ultra-low Agility scores. I felt quite proud of myself when I decided to explain that statistical improbability by making them a brother-sister duo with a familial trait of a club foot (my son was born with club feet, which is probably why it occurred to me). I thought for sure that both would die during the Funnel, if I’m honest, and am surprised that little Ethys and her 2 hp made it to Level 1.

Halflings in DCC are Bilbo Baggins-type characters who move stealthily and are preternaturally lucky. Ethys, however, has a 6 Agility and no Luck bonus. It’s one thing to make Umur a melee fighter when he has no bonuses to his most important Attributes, but do I really want to make a Halfling who is bad at her chosen class? As a result, when I first finished Portal Under the Stars, I was planning for Ethys to be the party’s Wizard, especially since I couldn’t initially picture any of the other PCs as Wizards (and there’s no point playing DCC without one, given how fun arcane magic is).

As I consume various DCC podcasts and forums, many people speak enthusiastically about Halflings and how much their Luck abilities help a party. Eventually I decided, okay… Erin or Hilda could be the Wizard, but no one can be a Halfling except Ethys.

Here is Ethys’ Level 0 character sheet:

Ethys Haffoot. Level 0 Halfling Mariner. STR 11, AGL 6, STA 12, PER 9, INT 15, LCK 12. Init -1; Atk knife +0 melee (1d4); AC 10; HP 2; MV 20′; Act 1d20; SV Fort +0, Ref -1, Will +0; LNG Common, Halfling, Elven; AL Lawful; Equipment: 10′ pole, sailcloth, 36cp. Infravision.

In my Portal playthrough, I basically forgot her 10’ pole (which is ridiculous to think of a halfling dragging through a dungeon anyway). She grabbed one of the four spears from the first room and, like her three companions, had a good amount of wealth after her adventure to allow me to handwave whatever starting equipment she has at Level 1.

Let’s crack open the core rulebook and see what happens when Ethys Haffoot becomes my first Halfling character…

Hit Points: Halflings are not a hardy bunch and only receive a d6 of hit points each level. As a reminder, I min out at half, so let’s roll… 4! Great. Adding that to her 2 original hp, and Ethys starts at 6 hit point.

Two-Weapon Fighting: Halflings fight with two weapons, and check this out from the book: “Normally, two-weapon fighting depends on the character’s Agility to be effective. A halfling is always considered to have a minimum Agility of 16 when fighting with two weapons. This means they roll at -1 die for their first attack and second.” Cool! So her measly 6 Agility doesn’t hamper her as badly as I feared, though this benefit only applies to two-weapon fighting (any ranged attacks, for example, will still use her crappy Agility). She’ll roll a d16 for both attacks, critically hitting on a 16 with either. In addition, she’ll only fumble when rolling a 1 on both attacks, which is great.

Good Luck Charm: Something I haven’t explored yet is spending Luck. Any character can burn Luck to give a one-time bonus to a roll, but the Luck score is “permanently” (meaning, very difficult to recover) reduced when doing so. Not so for a Halfling, who recovers 1 (her level) lost Luck each night. Moreover, a Halfling doubles the Luck bonus, so spending 1 Luck grants a +2 to a roll, and Ethys will be able to expend Luck to help an ally, not just herself, something exclusive to Halflings. From everything I’ve listened to and read, these benefits are the primary reasons to be excited about this class. I’m sold!

Weapons and Armor: Ethys won’t keep any of her original equipment, instead trading or storing it to make room for more suitable adventuring gear. When it’s time to go out in the scary world beyond Graymoor, she will have two short swords (one of which is Mythey’s), a sling, and leather armor. This last one was a tough call, because padded armor would prevent any additional penalties to things like scaling walls or moving silently. Because of her low Agility, though, I think Ethys is better off eschewing this slight downside for more protection (as it is, she’ll only have an 11 AC). As a bonus: Kinda pirate-y for my ex-mariner!

Other Abilities: Like her dwarven companion, Ethys will have Infravision and be slower than humans. Unlike Umur, her small size will allow her access to spaces other races can’t go, and she gets a whopping +3 to Sneak and Hide checks (which, because of her Agility & Armor penalties, nets out at a +1). She receives a bonus language, and rolling on a table gets me Kobold, which will be something I have to figure out how to explain. Finally, all her saves go up by 1.

Title: Halfling titles in the core rulebook are simple and without a lot of options. It suggests Wanderer for Level 1. I originally thought that Ethys would follow the same logic as I used with Umur, taking the honorific that folks in Graymoor would give her naturally. In my mind, then, I was going to call her Mariner or Skipper. The more I sat with it, though, the more I liked Wanderer, and I think Ethys may even adopt it as part of her name, calling herself Haffoot the Wanderer once she leaves town.

Like Umur, I’ll leave the other equipment until she knows what adventure she’s undertaking. For now, then, here is Ethys’ character sheet:

I have a sinking (ha! mariner joke) feeling that Ethys will be the first to die from this party. She fights with two weapons up close but only has 6 hit points and an 11 AC, and can’t often escape by sneaking or hiding? Sounds like a bad recipe. Maybe I’m underestimating her lucky halfling nature, though. She’s got a good head on her shoulders, so here’s hoping that Ethys keeps her cool in the dangerous wilds.

Let’s dip into a quick look at Ethys post-Portal…

By dawn’s light, Ethys Haffoot walked to the small, rickety plank that Graymoor called a dock. Her right foot curved like a crescent moon and caused her to swing her hip, a distinct and uneven gait characteristic of her entire family. Not that Ethys had any family left, really. She sighed at the thought.

Her little skiff sat gently bobbing in the Teawood River, empty. In days gone by, her brother Giliam would already be there, tying down their gear to the flat bottom, making as much room as possible for the crates of tea leaves that they’d pick up from Teatown far upriver. She knew well that everyone considered Ethys the brains of their hauling business, but Giliam had been the heart of it, always awake before the sun and working until he collapsed at night. The vivid image of her brother’s face, covered in sweat and smiling, caused her to stagger and stop a moment. For the thousandth time in the past month, an unexpected sob tore at her throat and vanished as quickly as it had arrived. She wiped her eye of the single tear that gathered there.

“I– I can’t do this,” she growled to herself. “Dammit all but I can’t.”

Thanks to the portal beneath the Empty Star, Ethys did not need the coins from hauling tea. Her handful of glowing jewels would get her anything the village could offer, never mind the goodwill of grateful and pitying neighbors who were all too eager to provide her free food, drink, and shelter, the only price another story from that fateful night.

Even if she’d wanted to continue her excursions, though, she could not have done the job alone. She needed Giliam, or someone else who could provide his small stature, tireless labor, and good humor. Ethys could almost—almost—imagine posting something in Teatown and finding a halfling who might have interest in experiencing the human world downriver. Every time she thought of it, though, a deep wave of fatigue filled her body, sometimes so strong that she would yawn and find a place to nap. No, there was no joy in continuing the life she had led here. Her normal life had died with Giliam, by fire from the outstretched finger of an alien warlord.

What, then, was her life? She couldn’t stay in Graymoor, but the thought of returning to Teatown to live out the small life it offered, with halflings who’d never been beyond the town’s borders, made her want to scream. Neither place held her future, whatever new life lay beyond Giliam’s death.

Ethys wiped away a second tear and straightened the bandana on her brow. For perhaps the twentieth time since returning to Graymoor, she had approached her skiff and failed to make it aboard. Yet this time, at least, she had made a decision. No more hauling for her. She would find someone to buy the boat, or perhaps even give it away. Then she would set about leaving Graymoor, to where she did not yet know. Perhaps Umur could teach her to competently use a blade before she left. Yes.

Nodding once, she turned her back on Graymoor’s dock. With a small spark of intention sitting atop the dry kindling of despair, she sought out the dwarf’s stone home.

DCC Character Level 1: Erin Wywood

NOTE: If this is your first time reading a Dungeon Crawl Classics post of mine, turn right around and go here to start the journey. If you’re well versed in my Portal Under the Stars play-through and finished up my reflections on Level 0, welcome!

Today it’s time to level up some PCs! Woo! I’m going to start with the most obvious class choice, which is taking our dwarven stonemason peasant Umur Pearlhammer and making him… a Level 1… wait for it… Dwarf! I know, I know: Shocking. DCC provides “race as class” options for characters, so this is sort of a no-brainer. While Umur could have become a Cleric or Thief or whatever, the most obvious choice is Dwarf. In addition, rolling a demihuman Level 0 character is rare, and having one survive to Level 1 is even rarer, so it’s a missed opportunity if I don’t embrace Umur as a Dwarf.

A warning: These character level-up posts are going to be mechanics and game-terms heavy, but I’ll add a fiction blurb at the end to give them some soul.

Let’s remind ourselves of Umur’s Level 0 character sheet:

Umur Pearlhammer. Level 0 Dwarven Stonesmith. STR 9, AGL 9, STA 9, PER 14, INT 13, LCK 9. Init +0; Atk hammer +0 melee (1d3); AC 10; HP 3; MV 20′; Act 1d20; SV Fort +0, Ref +0, Will +1; LNG Common, Dwarven, Giantish; AL Lawful; Equipment: fine stone, lantern, 26cp. Infravision.

While playing Portal, I ignored him having a lantern (in favor of magical stones and orbs for everyone), and he was able to obtain scale mail, Mythey’s shortsword, and Leda’s longsword, plus a fair amount of wealth. I’m going to start the Level 1 adventure as happening some time (maybe a year? a season? not sure yet) after the events of Portal, so I don’t need to be constrained by his current weapon and armor choices. Still, it’s good to remember where he started.

Let’s go through the Dwarf section in the core rulebook and see what choices I need to make.

Hit points: Dwarves get a d10 of hit points each level. It may not be a purist approach, but I want my PCs to min out at half of their possible hit points each level, something that Tale of the Manticore does that I like. Let’s roll… 7! That’s terrific. Adding his original 3 hp, that makes his new hit point total 10.

Mighty Deed of Arms: Like Warriors, the Dwarf class expresses their martial prowess by adding a die (for Level 1, a d3) to all attack and damage rolls. Umur can declare a “Mighty Deed” when he attacks each turn, which is a combat maneuver that can do special effects like knock a foe down, blind them, disarm them, or really any cool effect that seems to fit the situation. If his “deed die,” the aforementioned d3, rolls a “3” that turn, he gets to perform his Deed. Think of Mighty Deeds as the Warrior and Dwarf equivalent of spellcasting, replacing feat trees and such to accomplish almost anything the player can imagine. It’s one of the coolest innovations of DCC relative to melee classes in other systems and looks to make playing a martial class super fun. I’ll say a lot more about Mighty Deeds if and when Umur finds himself in combat.

Weapons and Armor: I’m not going to overthink the time in Graymoor that Umur spends after his foray into the magical portal that fateful night. He will have modified the black scale mail to suit his frame. He will keep Leda’s ancestral longsword and wield it sentimentally. As a career stonemason he will have a hammer (using stats for mace) on his belt. And, finally, the Dwarf class seems to want me to use a shield, so he’ll have one of those. With his shield, Umur gets an automatic second attack, using a d14 (yay for new DCC dice!) instead of the usual d20 to roll attacks, and he gets to add his deed die (d3) to this attack just like his first one. The shield does 1d3 damage currently, which isn’t much but then again, it’s a free second attack. With any of these weapons, if Umur scores a critical hit on a roll of natural 20, he will roll 1d10 on Crit Table III, which basically means he will do cooler things than the average adventurer when he crits.

Other Abilities: As a Dwarf, he still has Infravision to see in the dark, and now Umur gains some new racial abilities: First, when he’s underground, Umur receives a +1 (his level) bonus to detect traps, secret doors, slanting passages, shifting walls, etc. Second, he can smell gold and gems within 100’ for large concentrations (40’ for smaller concentrations), which is just fun. Third, he would be able to add his Luck bonus to a single weapon, although he sadly doesn’t have a Luck bonus. Finally, his saves all increase by +1.

Title: Finally, one of the things I like about level advancement in DCC is the old-school way of paying attention to titles and honorifics. It’s something I do as a GM in my PF2E games, ensuring that every so often a PC gains a distinctive title. The core rulebook’s suggestion for a Lawful Dwarf in terms of title is “Agent,” which assumes that the PC is from a dwarven nation. Umur hailed from a dwarven settlement at some point in his life, but I’ve established that he is one of Graymoor’s oldest living residents, which means his title is bestowed upon him by human locals. What could that title be, given his relative celebrity in Graymoor? Hm. Well, something I established in the fiction is that people call him “master stonemason” or “Master Pearlhammer.” I think he came to them as a master craftsman, and now that he’s a local hero the village residents are more often using it as a title. For now, I’ll say he’s officially a Master. This title may feel a little high falootin’ for a Level 1 character, but DCC puts a lot more oomph into each level than most d20 games. To put it in perspective, in Pathfinder PCs can reach level 20. In DCC, the top level is pretty much 6, which is just as rarified air as PF2E’s 20^th level.

I’ll leave any other equipment blank until Umur knows what sort of adventure he’s undertaking. For now, here is how his sheet looks:

Stepping back, Master Umur Pearlhammer has become the melee, sword-and-board fighter of the party. I’m choosing to keep him melee only, as it doesn’t make sense to me yet that he would equip himself for ranged combat (if he survives a fight where he needs a ranged weapon, that will be the catalyst). He only has 10 hit points and doesn’t really have the stats for a melee fighter, since his only ability bonuses are in Personality and Intelligence, but that’s the fun of Dungeon Crawl Classics – there’s no real opportunity to optimize or game the system. I’ve rationalized his stats by deciding that Umur was a capable fighter long ago in his younger years. Now his bones are creaky and old, and he’s nowhere near as spry as he used to be (in fact, he’s slow as molasses when wearing his armor). He’s retained his wit and charm, though, and he’s hoping that those might help keep him alive when his sword arm fails him.

That’s my new Dwarf! Now some fiction to help deepen his character and bridge to the next adventure…

Fire crackled and Umur Pearlhammer regarded it silently, unblinking. His dwelling differed from most Graymoor residences, with its stone construction, arched doorways, large entry hall, and sizeable hearth. To Umur, the house reminded him nostalgically of his youth spent below the earth. Never mind the cramped bedroom and kitchen, or the lack of windows that made it seem more cave than house. The space suited him.

It had been a week since Old Bert’s blasted portal, with its treasure and mysteries and death everywhere. Each day since, late in the afternoon he’d gruffly fled the constant chatter, the mourning and marveling, the requests to tell the “story of that night” for the hundredth time. Insistently alone, he would quest about the Graymoor outskirts for dry wood. By nightfall he would begin the fire, larger and hotter than necessary for the season. Then Umur would spend the long, dark hours watching the flames in contemplation, orange light dancing across his grim, sweating face.

Arrayed across the floor between the hearth and his feet were several items that he had not touched in a week. A full suit of ebon mail lay in pieces, its scales matte and unlike anything he’d seen forged below ground or above. The helmet looked to Umur like the top half of a charred demon’s skull, a single piece of black metal with horns curving from either side and a fluted nose guard. Scattered amidst the armor were jewels, gleaming white in the firelight. And there, nearest Umur’s touch, the cruciform hilt and pommel of the Allford family’s ancestral sword, the blade sheathed in a worn, leather-strapped scabbard. Leda had no living family to whom he could return the weapon. It was his now, everyone insisted, like the other items splayed out before him.

Anyone looking at the white-haired, gnarled dwarf would conclude that he was grieving Leda and the others in his own way. No doubt that’s what his neighbors believed, and why they gave him unmolested privacy each night and greeted him so tenderly the next morning when he emerged from his stony refuge.

They could not know that in truth a war was being waged within Umur Pealhammer’s heart. On one side of the war were awful memories, memories of chopping the softened heads from clay warriors in desperation, of friends’ death rattles as they choked on their own blood, of the ripe smell of fear all around him, and of the sharp pain as a black spear protruded from his shoulder. These memories, all recent, mixed with older ones, of men with the heads of beasts dying on the ends of dwarven halberds, of cleaving a tentacle the color of a bruise with his axe as it squeezed the breath from him, and of the awful, keening screams of his family as they burned from magical fire.

Warring with these memories within Umur’s heart were visions, and the unrelenting pull of his calloused hand towards the hilt of Leda’s sword. He saw himself caked in iron and gore as he drove Leda’s blade through the last, vanquished beast man. He heard his own voice, raw with passion, singing a dwarven battle hymn as he mowed the forces of Chaos down before a castle wall. He smelled gold and ale in staggering amounts as his allies deafened him with their cheers. And the vision he returned to again and again, like a thread weaving together the tapestry, was of returning to Arenor, the Republic of the Sapphire Throne, to restore his family’s name.

So it raged, the war between traumatic, painful memories of what had been, and bold, glorious visions of what could be. Umur had thought the war over, that he had long settled on his path. He had been content, in a way, hadn’t he? And then came that blasted portal, stirring every dream he’d thought forgotten. Blast Old Bert and blast himself for joining Leda’s flight of fancy. Surely he was too old now to wield a sword, wasn’t he? Except that he’d survived the portal, and the others credited him for his clear head and leadership, saying that he was a key reason any of them had lived. Perhaps, then, he wasn’t too old for those visions to become real. Perhaps.

Umur watched the flames dance in his eyes. His face was as impassive as stone, his eyes unwavering.

It was his hand that betrayed him, clenching and unclenching, eventually reaching for the sword.

DCC Character Level 1: Ethys Haffoot

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