Five Dollar Funnel!!!

Creating your character

Players will receive 4 pre-made level zero characters at the start of the session. If you would like to know more about this process check out the Dungeon Crawl Classics Core Rulebook or The DCC RPG Quick Start Rules.

Preparing for the session

Players should have Roll20 website account, a Discord Profile, and an open mind. The table is a welcoming environment to all adventurers regardless of class, race, gender identity or creed any player bringing real world bigotry or hate to the table will be met with permanent expulsion to the plane of eternal banishment. You will need to join the game on Roll20 as well as the Discord Server. These will be provided to you prior to game start. You will be expected to provide the open mind.

What Judge Zella brings to the table

Dungeon Crawl Classics ain't no joke! The dice land where they land and we play that out. The "Rules" of DCC are there, but they are vague in places and rife with contradictions. The SKILLS chapter is a single page but the DCC skill system is one of greatest of all time. The story telling experience is shared equally between the Players, GameMaster, and Dice. Most systems are easily categorized with the classic Gameplay, Simulation, and Storytelling paradigm but there is, dear reader, a fourth element needed to fully quantify and categorize an RPG and that is where DCC excels above nearly all others, Hackability. This extends from the table to behind the screen as well, I have written custom campaigns over a couple hours that my groups played for months. I have taken convention groups that teleported themselves out of the per-written area with an ease that I can't really imagine from many other RPGs and that's why I love it so much. You will experience this at the table as the turns sail by without much need for long periods of adjudication. DCC is made for RULINGS over rules. Rule of COOL prevails in wild worlds beyond imagination. In a funnel YOU ARE GOING TO DIE at least once unless you are playing very conservatively and if you are you aren't really playing. Get in there and make some mistakes, don't worry about what's on your sheet too much, just worry about how you might handle any given situation. There will be puzzles, combat, traps, and more to explore so don't be shy. I like Tabletop Audio, I've liked it since a friend introduced it to me way back when it first launched, I've since used it a great many times. I will be using it again for this adventure, I will provide a link if needed, or I may use the built-in Roll20 functionality to make it easy. I have a lot of experience with public speaking, acting, and public performance in general. I may do a voice, but I try to favor inflection over accent when I do. Unless I am doing an extenuation on the Southern / Eastern United States / Familial Irish-British elements that already make up my own voice for a character and I try to stay away from caricature or over exaggeration unless I'm doing a little kid's voice or the voice of a creature that normally would not speak.

Homebrew rules

Fleeting Luck is a supplementary dice boosting currency that appears when someone rolls a 20 and goes away when someone rolls a 1. It is also used like inspiration to reward good humor, role-play, ideas, and as a sort of visual metaphor for the current state of play for the characters.

How Judge Zella creates a safe table

I use a mixture of the Luxton Technique and a Session 0 briefing including a generally wide net of content warnings, I include this not because I plan to include all these elements in the game, but because I am such a free-form Game Master and Dungeon Crawl Classics is such a free-form game I want to foster a pre-game discussion and an environment wherein I and the other players understand when the game might be breaching uncomfortable territory. The Luxton Technique approaches triggers from the viewpoint that when someone is triggered they are having a traumatic experience and that that experience can itself can be harmful and re-enforce the trigger or can allow for healing and re-contextualization of the trigger. The luxton technique seeks for the latter by giving the affected player fiat power over how the content is handled. This is expressed as a want or need. I am going to include roughly how this works as written in the original blog post that spawned it in 2017~ * An honest discussion of potential traumatic triggers prior to play, in a supportive environment, with the understanding that there is no possible way to identify or discuss every conceivable trigger or trauma, and with no social pressure to disclose particulars of individual trauma. * When, in play, a player encounters triggering material, they can, if they choose, talk about that to the other players. When they do this, the other players listen. * As part of talking about it — and possibly the only thing that they need say — the player is given absolute fiat power over that material, expressed as a want or a need. For instance “I’d like to play [character name] for this scene” or “I need this to have a happy ending” or “I want this character to not be hurt right now” or “I need this character to not get away with this” or “By the end of play, this should not be a secret” or “I need to stop play and get a drink of water” or “I don’t have a specific request, I just wanted you to know.” * A player does not need to use their traumatic experience to justify any requests or demands. We just do it. * A player does not need to be the one to speak first. We keep an eye on each other and we are watchful for people who seem withdrawn or unfocused or upset. If we are worried about someone, we ask. * We play towards accommodating that player’s requests. At the end of the session we cover what everyone's favorite part of the session was, award an MVP, and discuss anything we thing could have been handled better.