Goodman Games

Just read the press release...... Wow! Some questions:

-is thisthe end of generic DCCs?!

-is this a compilation of the old adventures? like monsters and stuff?

-what other goodness can we look forward to?

Thank you for your time!

"Roll to save. You Die!"

Save,

Let me just take a moment to point out that you have one of the coolest aliases ever.

“Is this the end to generic adventures?”
DCC World was designed with the express intent of being a “classic” world, detailed enough to sink your teeth into, but with enough freedom to allow for expansion in your home game, and for the dozens and dozens of DCCs to come.

Future DCCs will be no less or more detailed than the ones you already love --- essentially, if you've ever played a DCC, you've already played in DCC World.

So to answer your first question, world generic DCCs have NOT come to an end. Peeking at the projects that Goodman Games has lined up (but not yet announced) I can say the DCC series is only getting started. The world isn’t finished, not by a long shot. Even with four maps, two adventures, and over 190+(?) pages of material, this is only an introduction to the world, a gazetteer.

A BIG gazeteer, to be sure, but only the start.

Working on DCC World was a huge project and an enormous honor. The chance to write campaign settings come along once in a lifetime, and the chance to write one with a readymade canon like the DCC series might never come along again. I worked alongside Jeff LaSala (The Adventure Begins) and Mike Ferguson (Curse of the Emerald Cobra, The Adventure Begins, and a host of other upcoming releases).

As authors, we had to juggle a number of priorities, but first and foremost the setting hinges on adventure. Everywhere you might go (and I mean everywhere) there are ruins to be explored, dungeons to clear, treasure hordes to uncover, and excitement to be had. This is a setting that needs heroes to conquer its vast wild lands, defeat wicked villains, and save threatened kingdoms. At every step we asked ourselves what we could do to make certain the PCs are the focus of the world.

Secondly was consistency with previously published adventures. If you’ve read about a god in a DCC, it shows up in the DCC World, only now it is part of a pantheon. The Emerald Cobra mentions the “Criestine Empire.” The boxed set explains what the empire is, its history, its notable figures, villains and heroes. And most importantly (to us GMs) what dramatic adventures might befall the PCs while they are there.


“Is this a compilation of old monsters?”
We didn’t duplicate any old material. There is a good portion of the boxed set devoted to monsters for your game, but they are all new. What this means is that you don’t need any of the DCCs to use the campaign setting, but if there is a lead in a DCC, we tracked it down and wrote about it. (All our material might not all make the final cut, given limits on word counts, but that’s what sourcebooks are for.)

It is a big, rich world, primed and ready for adventure. I can say that it will be the setting for my home campaign for years to come.

“Goodness to Come?”
Golly --- where to begin? A rough list of things to expect:

• -Spells, Magic items, Culture-specific masterwork items;
  -More adventure hooks than you can shake a GM screen at. Every location was written with adventure in mind;
  -A world that is vast, sweeping and mythic in scope, and that needs to be explored;
  -Gods, gods, gods.
  -Rogues gallery/Hall of Heroes (NPCs ... you decide whether or not to kill them )
  -A history spanning several eras, answering "where the heck did all these ruins come from?!"
  -Two, all new DCCs, one for 0-level characters, the second for character levels 4-6. You can begin a new campaign right out of the box;
  -Some dwarf named Prester "Trapmaster" Ungart ...

I'm rolly, rolly exicted for this! The curse of the emerald cobra hints at a culture of snakemen...... do they appear in the setting?

I worked alongside Jeff LaSalla (The Adventure Begins) a

And I will happily say it's an honor working with Mr. Harley Stroh. A good old friend of mine, even if he can't spell my last name right.

The curse of the emerald cobra hints at a culture of snakemen...... do they appear in the setting?

Absolutely! There is a kingdom (a wanna-be empire, as I like to think of it) of yuan-ti. The yuan-ti featured in Mike Ferguson's Emerald Cobra—a very influential DCC for my side of the project!—were merely exiles from the main yuan-ti nation. Further to the south.

Most settings are pseudo-european. What does the political makeup meso-america DCC World look like?

Can you give us some hints of the rulers/major personalities? My players love dungeon crawls but what would be most useful for my game is what the world is like once there isn't rock and earth over their heads. politics, politics, poilitics!

What does the political makeup meso-america DCC World look like?

I'm not going to give any real specifics right now, but I'll definitely say this: There IS quite a political Mesoamerican flair in one region of the world. The Xulmec city-states mentioned in both Bloody Jack's Gold and Curse of the Emerald Cobra have been fleshed out, and draw on inspiration from the Aztec, Maya, and Inca civilizations. They have their kings, priest, and gods, and have not fallen under the boot of the DCC world's version of the conquistadors. Plenty of PC opportunity in that region!

Casting my vote that I'm excited for a cohesive, unified world, but that must have been challenging to weave together. I mean, most the DCCs were one shots, with no thought given towards the greater whole.

Sounds like a Dungeon Master's Dream/Nightmare.

Heh. This was one of the things we ran into early on.

Some writer -who will remain nameless- decided to place his adventure in the "Great Swamp."

Sure. Good idea at the time. Not so good when it comes time to draw up the map.

"Great swamp? Place it next to the Great Desert. It will be the Great Land."



//H

You nailed it, Warduke.

It's tough work, but also great fun to research and fill in the gaps for. Most of the tying together was handled by Harley Stroh—especially the geography. Mike Ferguson and I got to play around mostly on the fringes of the Euro-centric DCCs. We've got some of the more exotic realms covered, while Harley offers up the unabashedly awsome core of the Known Lands.

Yes...Harley the Great.

Sure.... a guy goes off, has a kid, disappears for a few months, and what happens? Bang! I come online to see what's new and suddenly the world has formed from the misty void!

As of 30 DCCs ( ? give or take a half dozen ? ) it still amazes me to the sheer number of fans this series has hard-fought and won. A tear comes to my eye when I look over threads like this, reading while the words of JG still echo in my mind's cavern.

Kudos to Harley, Mike, and Jeff S for undertaking such a daunting and grandios project. I can't wait to see the fruits of everyone's labors.

Well ... it has never been lost on me that Idylls is what got this whole thing rolling. Imagine if that hadn't been such a huge success. *shudders*

It isn’t hyperbole to say that I owe my entire d20 “career” to Jeffrey Quinn and Joseph Goodman. To have your blessing, Black Knight, on the Known World projects (and especially Revenge) is huge. Idylls, the Complete Guide to Drow, and Mysteries of the Drow are consistently GGames’ bestsellers on RPGnow (and all the other venues, I assume).

Heh. Can you tell I’m a fan? Can’t wait to read what the fervered mind of Quinn comes up with next.

I, for one, certainly miss the old school settings. Faerun is great, if you want to play second fiddle to the Big Guys (or else plan on rolling up an epic level character), Eberron is cool for a certain pulp feel .... but where's the classic setting? Where's my swords and sorcery? You know:

Knights in armor, dragons, missions for the crown, hordes of darkness that need to be staved off (on a weekly basis if need be ). Rogues stealing gems from ancient idols, clerics casting down fiends, paladins turning back hordes of devils.

... all the old AD&D art.

By the way, IMHO, any swamp with a tomb is a great swamp.

Harley Stroh wrote:Heh. This was one of the things we ran into early on.

Some writer -who will remain nameless- decided to place his adventure in the "Great Swamp."

Sure. Good idea at the time. Not so good when it comes time to draw up the map.

"Great swamp? Place it next to the Great Desert. It will be the Great Land."



//H

When I first read about the Great Swamp in this 'nameless' writer's DCC, I thought the name was fantastic. It made me realize that I had grown up but a stone's throw away from the site of an epic adventure ...

http://www.fws.gov/northeast/greatswamp/

Mike_Ferguson wrote:When I first read about the Great Swamp in this 'nameless' writer's DCC, I thought the name was fantastic. It made me realize that I had grown up but a stone's throw away from the site of an epic adventure ...

http://www.fws.gov/northeast/greatswamp/

*LAUGH* That's awesome.

//H

You know, sometimes the best names are the simple ones. I think folks get so rapped up in coming up with an unsual or unheard of name for fantasy geography they forget about history.

Mankind has often been very practical with the names they give geography.

Just a few examples:

The Dead Sea
The Black Forest
New York City
Kansas City
and The Bad Lands.

The Great Swamp worked for me. Gygax had the "Vast Swamp" I like 'em both. Both describe what the swamp is better than some fancy-sounding name would.

Now the problem arises with the fact that the "nameless writer" has plagurized the name from you childhood in a shameless attempt to increase sales of DCC#17. Oh, the shame of it all!

Mankind has often been very practical with the names they give geography.

Mankind, yes. How about intelligent snake-bodied creatures?

I think we've got a few practical names thrown in for good measure.

Jeff, I'll be interested in seeing how the naming went. My guess you chose to use MesoAmerican wording for the snake people since such is the flavor of the Curse of the Emerald Cobra.

Quite! Some of those names are a mouthful, although I tried to make the more commonly used one more pronouncable. Most of the words are inspired or derived [or in some cases, directly culled] from Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. Much like in Emerald Cobra.

Jeff did a fantastic job building from (and beneath, and under and over) the work begun in the Emerald Cobra. So often the exotic regions of a eurocentric world feel like they were just tacked on, but since we had the Emerald Cobra from the start, the setting is integral to the rest of the world. It bridges over into Bloody Jack's Gold and so on.

(One of the cool/humbling parts of the project was being taught how to pronouce "Xulmec." I didn't dare to delve any deeper than that, but I bet Jeff could give a seminar.)

Speaking as a fanboy and not as an author, I'm dying to see the full color wall maps. I grew up with Greyhawk on my wall, and come August I'll have the Known World to match!

Harley Stroh wrote:... full color wall maps. I grew up with Greyhawk on my wall, and come August I'll have the Known World to match!

Yes, please! The maps in the Wilderlands boxed set are black and white, making it nearly impossible to tell terrain types apart. Color please!

And grids!

And cool map legends!

Shul-mek

This sounds really interesting. Aside from monsters, spells, and magic items will there be any other crunchy bits like retro variant classes? (I've been dying for a more thieving Thief.)

...

Yellow Lantern,

Cool name, btw. Back in the day we had a monk in our home game named Yellow Beetle. Don’t know how that guy survived, but he always did.

Re: Retro Classes.

When it came time to assign topics, we explicitly stayed away from new classes/prestige classes in the Gaz (though both might be included in future releases). There’s a lot of custom classes out there (more thieving thieves, more woodsie rangers,etc.), and some of them are really well written. Chances are most GMs have already written what they need for their home campaigns.

There was some sentiment for including classes, but for this first installment, we had just too much world material to include; even with some drastic cuts we ended up being 20,000 words over the initial word count. If we do end up compiling prestige classes, they’ll be specific to the setting in style and tone, so your thief might be in there somewhere.

By the way, Monte Cook has posted some excellent design PrC discussions on his website, that make great reading for anyone who is out to alter or create their own classes.

http://www.montecook.com/arch_dmonly10.html

http://www.montecook.com/arch_dmonly10.html