By now, I'm pretty sure everyone in the old school community is very much aware of Goodman Games's upcoming
Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, which is currently
in open playtest and is on schedule for a February 2012 release. I haven't paying as close attention to the playtest as I'd intended to, in part because I've got my own projects to work on. But another part of my inattention is that, while there's a lot I do like about the DCC RPG, there's also a lot I don't and, perhaps more importantly, I'm not really in the market for another fantasy roleplaying game right now. So, I keep half an eye on DCC RPG's development, checking in every now and again to see how things are unfolding.
One of the more intriguing aspects of the game line's development are the upcoming adventure modules to support it. Take a look at the covers of a couple of them:
Those are both really awesome, right? They scream pulp fantasy in a way that adventure module covers haven't since I first entered the hobby. That they're reminiscent of the covers of both
Weird Tales magazines and 1970s paperback novels, without being apes of either, is also a point in their favor. For me, they hit that sweet spot between nostalgic evocation and unique vision.
On the other hand, this does nothing for me. Indeed, it almost looks like a parody cover.
It looks like
a crossover between
Luke Cage, Hero for Hire and Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser -- and while that's probably awesome in some people's eyes, I find it silly. Of course, even sillier in my opinion is another DCC adventure module:
Now, winged apes are cool and, of course,
Michael Curtis is even cooler, but basing an adventure off Tramp's iconic DMG illustration? That's not so cool. I find myself uncomfortably reminded of some of those
HackMaster adventures of old, the ones that turned me off them to such a degree that I never bothered to give the game a fair shake. That's what
Emirikol Was Framed! does for to me: it turns me off DCC RPG and it's not even out yet.
I'm just one guy, of course. I'm sure many other old schoolers looked at those second two covers and pumped their fists in enthusiasm. They looked at them and found them as delightfully evocative as I found the first two. Nostalgia, just like esthetics, is a funny thing; one man's "delightfully evocative" is another man's "Hell, no!" I bring this up not as a criticism of DCC RPG at all. Despite my own qualms, I'm actually glad that Goodman Games has decided to forge ahead with a game that looks like it's the product of a clear and
idiosyncratic vision of fantasy. It's hard not to applaud that, even when it's not wholly something
I would have done -- but then, that's part of the point.
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