NGL, I always am sceptical of reddit pages (Rpghorrorstories being a place like that), so this video was a breath of fresh air. It is always a bit frustrating when I see reddit pages talking about how bad the player or gm is. I genuinely wonder if some of these stories are made up or true! But like you said, they can be biased too.

I want more of Wasabi´s social advise corner.

My general rule is the party needs a good reason to stay together in the long term. You can play things out with pvp or whatever but that's just really beating around the bush: the "problem" is in RPGs we accept and trust player characters faster than we normally would NPCs or people in real life because otherwise the game would be boring. A lot of times toxic players will abuse this by doing something terrible and saying "it's what my character would do". This doesn't seem to be what happened here though. It's probably what their characters would have really done. The problem is the new players didn't create a character compatible with the existing party. If this happened I would just tell the new players that they need to make characters that would mesh with the existing PCs. Of course, if everyone loves pvp go for it. But lots of people don't.

I can´t believe this is a reddit drama channel now.

Seem like everyone was a bit at fault and badly communicated, but I think the GM could have worked with the new players to better align their characters with the goals of the legacy players and not require them to hire the new PC. That part is weird. Like give them some background goals that align or use NPC patrons who hire them to help the legacy PCs. But maybe the GM was blindsided and was not expecting the new PC to ask the legacy PCs for payments.

At the minimum you should explain to new players what the tone of the campaign is thus far and ask that they build a character that can engage in that. I know some players bring the character they made at home with fantasies about where and how they will develop over time only for it come in contrast with the campaign as it is and where the other players are. It's fine to have a character idea coming in to a new campaign but you need to read the room so to speak and make adjustments if you want to have a cohesive group. Also, talk about what you're trying to accomplish. You don't have surprise everyone at the table every time because you want to appear mysterious. Maybe in this example the assassin was attempting to get the players to make a promise for the future as a way to getting them in her pocket with an IOU. Maybe the veteran player was trying to get across the idea that this group isn't to be trifled with. But instead both players' attempt at RP was met with hostility and the DM didn't even attempt to de-escalate and just picked a side. If the RP is getting heated and you worry it'll spill over in to IRL just call a time out and determine the goals of each side. Could be there's just a failure in communication and one side thinks the other side is saying something different. As DMs, we are not kings of the table. Sure, we have the final say in things but they're always with the considerations of the table. We're players in a specific role as arbitrators presenting the story. You don't have the right to just drop the ban hammer on another player because your pissed with them. That's incredibly rude and patronizing. It's not your table, it's not your game. It's out table and our game, comrade. You're part of the group, not the one in charge.

Will you review Goodman-Games and Eric Bloat's "Evolved" powered by DCC? It comes out October 2024

In defense about the virgin queen. I think honestly it would probably take a lot more to stay a Virgin. In the medieval times it wasn't all that easy. If anything she probably broke a lot of rules to be that way and had to have a will stronger then any noble to stay that way.

To be fair, 5e is in fact trash of the lowest form.

Molly’s voice is just wonderful.

Torn between WWN and Forbidden Lands. I want to run one of them soon. WWN appeals to me because it’s OSR-adjacent, and won’t require learning a new set of rules.

More "advanced" DCC content, please. I really enjoy your channel and like your deep thinking on the topics at hand. I'd love to see more DCC content on converting modules (converting a Trilemma adventure might be a good example). Most of what I see out there is just about running the more gonzo DCC modules. It would be nice to see how one would go about converting and running a more "traditional" RPG adventure or module.

You smack talked Crypt so hard, said you were going to be mean, didn't recommend most people get the module, then slapped it with a D+ when you were hyping it for F tier. Love this tier list though, giving me good suggestions of adventures to add to my possible campaigns.

We play so infrequently (like max 6 times a year) so we are doing shorter stuff by default. You can also have short stories AND bring in characters from previous stories. So if you really want to develop and level up a character - that is possible.

Such a fun watch! Thanks for putting this together! Can I ask what you use to create the screen? Is it Twitch or a combination of things?

I'm hoping to do either Shadowdark or DCC Lankhmar for my kids soon.

Where did you find the rules for healing that you use?

Once your child adopts a TTRPG they can never know love again.

Yeah, I play DCC with my kids and have adopted the Shadowdark turn ordering to help make sure I get something from everyone. Also, with respect to the "evil" stuff, from my experience girls can hang there in general. When my oldest was 7 all she really played with were dolls and animals, doing the stereotypical girl stuff. But one day she asked to play with my Warhammer 40k army, which were Orks. I said sure and she took the biggest one, and had him start shooting and impaling all the other ones, then putting them in one of my battlewagons. I asked her what he was doing and she said "collecting dead people". Alrighty then.

Super cool channel. I have just subscribed. Why the name Wasabi? You are located in Japan by chancee?

My friends and I have been messing with a short campaign using the weird wizard playtest. if it makes you feel any better, priests do get quite a bit stronger later on and fit quite well into a hybrid caster/fighter role. My priest is probably one of my favorite characters I've ever played. Mages get WAY stronger but also get almost no health or defense as they level, making them extremely fragile glass cannons. if your mage doesn't have at least one other party member looking out for their welfare somehow they're going to go down real quick.

Agreed on mechanics, story layout and everything you said. Excellent video. I subscribed.

Well done!! I'm one of the player's on the Dungeon Musings channel and always appreciate your letting us know when you have a stream. We haven't played DCC on the channel, but I'm a huge fan and have most of the official DCC products plus many of the 3rd-party ones. This is a great video for giving folks a quick overview about what makes the game fun and easier than they might think. Kudos!

Interesting, it sounds a lot mechanically like Cthulhu Dark by Graham Walmsey.

Thanks so much for this, I'm circling running a regular game soon and getting this advice really helps bolster my confidence!

I dont necessarily think you are wrong about the virgin queen trope. On the other hand, Queen Elizabeth the 1st was considered to be a great monarch, and yet she never married and likely died a virgin. So...

When I ran this module, my group gathered around the closed sarcophagus to collectively beat the strength DC to reveal the wraith. The wraith won the initiative with its cursed sword. Its first strike was enough to kill a player, giving the sword an extra attack. The die was vengeful, & the the players were cut down all around the sarcophagus till none were left. The remaining survivors fled down the hallway & eventually defeating the wraith to attain its sword. Creeping down the hall, an enemy surprise attacked the players as they were huddled together killing one of them. Next to attack was the one with the wraith sword. He cut down the enemy with one hit, which the sword required an extra attack as the player was huddled with his friends. He had to swing again, cutting down & killing two of his comrades. It was a rough night, full of sorrow & tears. It was fkn EPIC! The 4 survivors are awaiting their level 1 adventure.

17:40 when you started talking about the Virgin Queen, I totally vibed with. I read through the scenario (3 times now not including the video) and I always wondered why they needed to mention that. I might just change it a bit to remove that extra purity nonsense. And happy for the shout out. Greatly appreciated. I plan to run The Veiled Vaults of the Onyx Queen soon actually so this came out at the right time. I do wish their was monster variety as you mentioned. I might ask the dcc reddit or discord for advice there too!

I pretty much agree with all of your takes, besides the lethality of the adventure, although two of the players were being very haphazard. I actually felt like it was fair, not too deadly, not a cake walk. I had 5 players with 3 characters each and I want to say about 8 or 9 died. One player lost all of his characters and then 2 replacements. Other than that, I totally agree about the puzzles. The only one that took them a while was the paintings on the walls, and I want to say the answer was book, so they had to touch the book in one of the paintings. Overall most of the combat was dealt with relatively easily, the hardest fight was the boss. They dealt with Yoros pretty easily, but the mobs from the tomb area just before the boss split the party, and they took a while figuring out they had to destroy the braziers. All-in-all everyone had a really good time. Like your group mine only had a single lawful character left by the time they found the shield and magical weapon (sword?). That character ended up sacrificing themself during the boss fight, so the group came away with almost zero treasure.

Oh cool! I ran this adventure and really liked it, excited to see what your opinion is.

I mean, you mentioned it so you knew someone was going to comment... 😂 Classic adventure and fantasy stories have female characters who are paragons of purity, beauty, kindness etc because these are common feminine virtues held by most cultures, and definitely be western European derived cultures to be aspirational. I rarely hear people complain that male characters are expected to be brave, selfless, skillful and protective, which are traditional masculine virtues in the same vein. These archetypes exist in many cultures because they are useful virtues to aim towards for a multitude of reasons, sometimes social and sometimes biological. The BBEG queen and her pact with an infernal being in exchange for unnatural life is a counterpoint for the purity of the entombed queen. That whatever dark being she has her pact with is thirsting for her soul, and that he will inevitably have it, could be read as an illustration of the end of such impurity. In any case, good review, and I'll definitely pick this one up!

You know I LOVE DCC- layouts are absolute trash though

I just ran this recently and the module felt deadly enough to us. I suppose like you said, DCC can be swingy like that. 4 players, killed half of them overall even with the replacements and in the final fight the players began to seriously vocalize the fear of a TPK. They were really sweatin bullets lol. Parsing 700 words to find info for how to run a room is def annoying, the DCC module tax. I enjoyed the funnel over all, I think it's solid and worth running.

Running OSR adventures with the superior layout, but using DCC rules feels like the best of both worlds. Thank you so much for these recaps / DCC adventure reports!

Question for you, I agree with what you're saying about some of the DCC adventure layouts, but they are still some of the slimmest adventures I have found in any system. Do you have some favorites (adventures) that are even more concise or lack a bunch of flowery / superfluous text?

"All pure and shit" has to be my favorite quote from this.

Looking forward to when you put out 'Hot 'n Heavy Halls of the Slut Lords' But for real, less puritanical ideas of virtue in fantasy are long overdue.

Love your Lankhmar stuff! I've been converting DCC Lankhmar into 5e instead of trying to get my mostly casual crew into a new system... However!: What would you think of: Portal under the stars funnel into > masks heist "meet" with whatever PCs survive?

I feel like it would be cool to play this in the Darkest Dungeon universe.

This is probably my favorite RPG for the speed and diversity allowed to players and GMs alike. My first campaign was with 2 players, and was happening between sessions of another game with serious scheduling issues. We ran the Dark Deeds in Last Hope module as the intro, which I highly recommend for new players and GMs alike, and it ended badly due to player action and inaction. From there they brought the survivors to a new town (and lost most of them to a giant pig attack) and spent their novice levels making a name for themselves. Another group of refugees arrived after and the town was a bit over filled with people, but the refugee mayor offered the players work in retrieving his signet ring from the old town, leading to the players favorite quest. They got 1 horse and were chased by wolves most of the way there. The horse was killed shortly before arrival by a dire wolf, which then chased them into town and trapped them in a house, mocking them and toying with them before setting it on fire and forcing them out. They had to run through the abandoned streets in the dark with a torch to fight off that one and another that was hanging out in the town, which they did through some pretty excellent innate synergy between rogues and priests. Surviving the fight, they decided to book it through the mansion, get the ring, and get it. Mansion is of course haunted, with the shadows attacking them and the rogue getting a mark of darkness and taking a quirk to have fear of the dark. Through a combination of candles, torches, and ripping off every window curtain they could, they made their way through the mansion wounded but alive and acquired the ring, a pistol, and a randomly generated magic item (a drum that could vanish and reappear with a word), and began the nerve wracking trip home on foot, hiding from wolves and beastmen alike. This was all session 4.

I’ve used a lot of the things in this book over the years

So is it as combat focused as D&D? How does it handle social interactions?

Been running a “serious” (non-gonzo) campaign on the official Goodman Twitch stream for a few years now (with occasional pauses). The system works really well for pretty much any style. Ours is a science-fantasy lost colony campaign about future humanity stuck on a medieval-magical frontier world. It’s called Pretenders to the Throne.