In October 2023 we presented the all-new DCC Funnels Bundle featuring zero-level fantasy campaign starter adventures for Dungeon Crawl Classics, the Goodman Games FRPG of gold and glory won by sorcery and sword. In a “funnel” adventure, your players send a dozen-plus hapless normal, un-heroic characters into a deadly environment where they rapidly die horrible and/or hilarious deaths. The resourceful survivors get promoted to 1st level, choose a character class, and become new PCs in a DCC RPG campaign. This all-new offer, with zero-level modules from both Goodman Games and many third-party publishers, showed why funnel adventures are a much-loved hallmark of Dungeon Crawl Classics.
In the way Classic Traveller characters can die even before starting play, the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG sends new PCs through a baptism of fire – more accurately, of a dozen near-fatal scrapes. In DCC RPG it’s easy to create a 0-level normal: 1d4 hp, no character class, etc. Every player creates two to four of these unheralded nebbishes – field hands, assistant blacksmiths, sculleries, apprentice bookbinders – the term of use among DCC fans is “gong farmer.” Armed with rakes and buckets, this gaggle heads into the funnel adventure and ohhh, the body count grows fast. When players see their characters are vulnerable and fragile, they play experimentally and try unusual tactics. A well-designed funnel gives the scrubs a spectrum of choices appropriate to one or another character class, so they can discover their predilections. (There’s a metagame of sorts, as you maneuver your less-desirable PCs to shield your preferred PC from tragic demise – but ask any experienced DCC RPG player how that works out.) Surviving PCs get an automatic backstory and identity.
DCC‘s third-party support is vigorous; hundreds of small publishers have adopted one of the gaming field’s most supportive licenses. Embracing the funnel, the indie designers in this new DCC Funnels Bundle produced scenarios set in windswept mountain passes, ruined castles, the jungle of Erset La Tari, the Crypts of Eternity beneath the wicked city-state of Hazruun the Vile, and a tesseract prison for insane chaos gods. Sounds dangerous? You have no idea.
[Note: These modules require the Goodman Games Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG rulebook. (Bane of the Ancients is for Goodman’s Mutant Crawl Classics RPG.)]
There were six titles in our Starter Collection (retail value $40) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks, including Goodman’s recent DCC RPG module #101, Veiled Vaults of the Onyx Queen, along with Attack of the Frawgs (Thick Skull Adventures), The Curse of Cragbridge (Mystic Bull Games), Fire in the Mountain (Purple Duck Games), The Peasants’ Fell Bargain (Gaming Honors), and Sword in the Jungle Deep (The Keep Studios).
Those who paid more than the threshold (average) price also got our entire Bonus Collection with five more modules worth an additional $50, including another recent Goodman Games funnel, #103: Bloom of the Blood Garden, as well as The Bane of the Ancients (Gaming Honors), Death Slaves of Eternity (Purple Duck), The Exodus of Wolfbane (Gaming Honors), and Prison of the Mad Gods (Hectic Electron).
Ten percent of each payment (after gateway fees) for this DCC offer went to the charity designated by DCC RPG designer 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.
