I’ve been seeing a lot of weird sci-fi zines and modules coming out for DCC these days.
Is there something about the mechanics that lend themselves to the more techy stuff (I’ve seen some cyberpunk supplements as well) or is the aesthetic and people playing it that just get inspired to hack stuff for it?
I guess what I mean is: what about the system lends itself more to these kinds of adventures, if anything?
I don’t know much about the system, but one thing I have learned from doing Fear of a Black Dragon is that a major theme in the OSR is pushing back on the default, Tolkien-esque fantasy setting. A lot of the modules we cover, particularly those from Hydra Cooperative, have a weird/science fantasy flavor to them. Lots of four-armed white apes and such.
Like Jason said, the OSR trends weird. DCC in particular has, at least since Goodman launched its custom rule set (I’m not sure about its 3E material) really leaned into the swords and sorcery/weird fantasy side of things. DCC also happens to be possibly the most popular OSR game out there (it’s hard to measure), so it makes sense that there would be an abundance of cool, weird stuff for it.
As for the cyberpunk supplements and stuff, I don’t think there’s anything the core DCC mechanics that make it more suitable for technical stuff, but the post apocalyptic stuff they’ve released (The Umerican Survival Guide, Mutant Crawl Classics) might help with that (and of course sci-fi adventures like Frozen in Time and Purple Planet).
I think the fact that Goodman has always been about the wonder and strangeness of experiencing OD&D back in 1974. I mean they brought in all the “funky” dice because people these days are comfortable with the standard D&D dice… Even the art is pretty consistently 70’s (look at those bellbottoms):
Their Appendix N dedication also means they lean heavily into science fantasy and sword & planet stuff.
Continuing the trend is how much the DCC community has gotten into zines. Some of the earliest content for OD&D was in fan made zines… With DCC people are doing really fantastic stuff in zine format like Crawl, Crawling Under A Broken Moon (Which is where all the Umerican Survival Guide stuff came from (note: not published by Goodman)), Crawljammer (for running Spelljammer type stuff in DCC), and the entirely community-sources Gongfarmer’s Almanac. (Full disclosure, I have done editing for the latter.)
The funny part for me personally is that I just adore the content and the fact that it exists. (I’ve played like two sessions of DCC - the system isn’t really my jam - though tons of stuff in it makes me smile.) Mostly because it is so weird but somehow makes some strange coherent sense?
