Goodman Games

WOW!

So last night I ran my first game of DCC. I had 7 players total, one of which was my 10yr old daughter. She held her own as the others were all guys between 35-40yrs old.

I ran Sailors on the Starless Sea. Overall everyone enjoyed the quick creation of their randomly generated Zero level peasants. Battles went pretty well, I had each player use his 3pc's as a fighting unit. I used Group initiative which was modified by the Agility mod. of the group chosen "leader" of the PC's. I also broke the group up into 3 smaller groups: Lead / Middle / Rear ranks. I allowed 2 Players in each the Lead and Rear ranks and the other 3 were in the middle rank. As play progressed a player could swap position with another player in Ranking. When battle broke out the "Leader" in the Lead rank would roll Initiative for the group. This represented them shouting commands and encouraging his fellow villagers. I would roll Init. for the bad guys. When it was the good guys turn anyone firing missiles from any Rank would roll dice and damage, then the Lead Rank melee attacks followed by Middle rank melee and lastly Rear rank melee. This helped keep everyone together and moving, it worked pretty good and nobody complained. It also made the fumbles more explainable; Dodger fumbled and smacked into Alexander etc.

Luck was used, and everyone caught on to that quickly and liked it.

I screwed up when a Beastman took a PC to 0hp and told the Player that if another of his Pc's tried to help the one at zero on their next turn with a DC 15 luck roll, the dying PC would have 1hp. I realize now that I should have had them die at zero hp and let them try to "Recover the Body" after the fight. Because of this I did not have as many deaths from melee as I should have I think.

Other than that, I think I handled everything well. And they are all very interested in leveling up now.

Going forward I think Magic is going to be the next big hurdle for everyone.

Deleted the duplicate post/thread for you.

This (nearly) happens to me a lot for 0-level adventures. I messed it up once and have been paranoid about messing it up again, but so far I think I've caught myself after that one time. Actually, my players now help me with this, since I keep wanting to default to "save the character" mode.

No biggie, really, but it does go agains the spirit of the zeroes. And the nice thing is one we all survive the funnel the DM can go back to his usual style, whatever it may be.

Nice write-up! Sounds like you used several good strategies for handling the larger number of characters. I tend to do the group initiative thing as well. I need to get getter at using "ranks" for positioning. I feel like when the bad guys attack it is a little too random as to who actually gets attacked sometimes. Dividing into ranks would help with that. I have seen it used by another judge, I just forget to do it myself!

I don't use the 'recover the body' mechanic for 0-levels. Should I be? I think I took the reading from the rules "A 0-level character that reaches 0 hit points is irrevocably killed" and applies that to Recovering the Body as well.

I think that recover the body doesn't apply to zero-levels.

I also think it only applies when there was nobody around to have a chance to heal the character when he fell. For example if a thief sneaked ahead and fell, when his party reaches him and turns him over I'd use the 'recover the body' rule. But if he falls in the middle of a battle with the group around him, then it's their job to heal him while they have the chance. If they don't, I'd not use 'recover the body' rule.

Thanks for the write up, interesting!

Yeah, the "rank" thing worked out great. When enemies attacked I just assigned them to a Player and if a hit was scored we rolled a D3 to see which zero level took the hit. I also let the player allow his zero's to choose to take they hit if he wanted.

I'm realizing now that the "recover the body" should only come into play when Level1 is reached.

Yeah, the "rank" thing worked out great. When enemies attacked I just assigned them to a Player and if a hit was scored we rolled a D3 to see which zero level took the hit. I also let the player allow his zero's to choose to take they hit if he wanted.

I meant, I let the player have his zero's cover for each other. Oh looks like Jed the farmer takes the hit! But wait I'll have slink the sheep herder jump in the way to cover for Jed!! Ok

Yes Thoom, I now agree heartily with the use of that rule as you state. I'm actually writing notes in the margin of my DCC rule book.