This oughta be quick.
The Game: Dungeon Crawl Classics
The Publisher: Goodman Games
Degree of Familiarity: Not much. I ran a couple of games of Basic D&D back in the day
Books Required: About 1% of the core
I think it's safe to say that this is 100% not my style of RPG. With that said, if it were a true board game, I'd be all about it. And that's really what it should be - a game with dry-erase character cards where you can generate a new character(s) quickly, a bunch of minis of monsters and some random tables to generate a dungeon. Maybe with fancy new technology, a companion app to do the hard work of "GM" since it's really just about throwing monsters at you.
I don't have any particular problem with this style of play, I just don't find it interesting and I really don't like how pleased with itself the book is. It spends too much time saying "no, really, play our way, you might like it, we know most other games want you to have a concept for your character, but you should actually just make four generic characters and see which one survives the 'funnel' of character creation!"
And like, sure, I get it. It can be fun to roll dice and see how shit falls. I just think about some friends of mine who can't get into board games with complex rules because there's so much setup involved. Maybe quick chargen and straight into combat, even if all your characters die, would be OK? I dunno. I guess I just want a little more "role" in my role-playing.
So anyway, chargen is mostly random, done in order and without a lot of wiggle room, so at least it's quick.
Ability scores! Roll 3d6 each, in order, which gives me:
Strength 9
Agility 10
Stamina 9
Personality 9
Luck 12
Intelligence 11
Hmm. Looking spell-castery, but of course that's not a decision I get to make. Anyway, I now have to make a roll on the Luck chart, using a d30 (roll eyes). I get an 11, which gives me: Fox's cunning! My lucky roll is to find/disable traps. Well, that's not totally useless.
Saving throws all start +0, so that's easy. I speak Common, and since my Int modifier is 0, I don't have any others.
I get 1d4 Hit Points (1...lol gonna die), 5d12 copper (34), one random piece of equipment (hand-sized mirror), and a random occupation (hunter, which means I get a short bow and a deer pelt). I get to pick an alignment; I'll take chaotic, why not.
So my guy's name is Akitus. He's a hunter, wrapped in his best deer pelt, and figures that if he can shoot a deer and eat for a week he should be able to shoot some...cave deer or whatever they have in dungeons and get rich quick! He is 100% not getting out of his first dungeon.
