In August 2022 we presented the all-new DCC Chaos Rising Bundle with recent modules and sourcebooks for the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG from Goodman Games, alongside a revival of the April 2021 Dungeon Crawl Classics Essentials with the core rulebook and useful play aids.
After establishing the Dungeon Crawl Classics brand with five dozen old-school D&D 3.x modules published under the d20 license (2005-2011) – we gathered all of these in our Fifty-Dungeon Megabundle this past May – Joseph Goodman introduced his own standalone DCC RPG in 2011. Since then the game has steadily gained ground, strengthened by stalwart Goodman designers like Michael Curtis and Harley Stroh as well as TSR-era artists like Erol Otus, Jeff Easley, and Jeff Dee. DCC‘s third-party support is also vigorous; hundreds of small publishers have embraced one of the gaming field’s most supportive licenses. A high-power October 2015 Kickstarter campaign for the corebook’s fourth printing raised US$215K from 2,259 backers.
Not exactly a retro-clone but suffused with old-timey brio, DCC RPG glories in its own loopy and lurid, giddy and gaudy aesthetic. Its inspiration — the most colorful sources in Gary Gygax’s “Appendix N: Inspiration and Education Reading” in the original AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide — shows in DCC RPG module titles like The Sinister Sutures of the Semptress, The Corpse That Love Built, The Accursed Heart of the World Ender, The Croaking Fane, The Dread God Al-Khazadar, and Creep, Skrag, Creep! In all these heady adventures it’s easy to stay focused on DCC RPG‘s goal: “Adventure as 1974 intended you to.”
DCC ESSENTIALS [from April 2021]
This revived Dungeon Crawl Classics Essentials offer, streamlined to a single tier from its original starter-and-bonus lineup, once again presented the comprehensive 506-page DCC RPG rulebook and introductory modules for an unbeatable bargain price. There were four titles in this offer’s DCC Essentials Collection (retail value $52) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks, including the DCC RPG rulebook, the Gen Con tournament module The Black Heart of Thakulon the Undying, and the popular 0-level “funnel” adventure Sailors on the Starless Sea, as well as the DCC Judge’s Screen.
DCC CHAOS RISING [all-new]
This Chaos Rising offer added recent DCC RPG modules for character levels 1-6, plus the 2021 Empire of the East licensed campaign sourcebook based on the post-apocalyptic fantasy novels in the Earth’s End sequence by author Fred Saberhagen. There were five titles in this offer’s Low-Level Collection (retail value $50) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks, including Accursed Heart of the World Ender, Well of the Worm, Inn At Five Points, Blood for the Serpent King, and Dread on Demon Crown Hill.
This offer’s Higher-Level Collection added six more titles worth an additional $85, including the adventure collection Chaos Rising, the Empire of the East sourcebook, and four modules for levels 4-6:Dread God Al-Khazadar, Journey to the Center of Aereth, Lost City of Barako, and Lairs of Lost Agharta.
Ten percent of each payment (after gateway fees) for these two DCC RPG offers went to the charity designated by publisher Joseph Goodman, the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank. For more than 30 years the SF-Marin Food Bank has worked to end hunger in the San Francisco Bay Area, where one in four neighbors is at risk of hunger.
