Writing a critical look at something free might see redundant to some. Everyone can check it out as they please so why should someone try to analyse something like the Gongfarmer's Almanac?
The 2018 GFA is packed full with amazing, community created content for DCC RPG and every player and judge will find something interesting in there. Many people committed hours upon hours of amazing work to get this thing done and the labor and love involved in this project is hard to grasp for someone not involved in the making of the GFA. And while the GFA gets regularly praised it never get's a critical look. There is much to dig through and Ravencrowking regularly provides a great content overview. What you don't find there is critique for the writers to improve even further. So this is why i am about to dive into the 2018 GFA, starting off with "Issue 1 - New Class explosion" and want to give it a curious examination.
The Gongfarmer's Almanac is a free FanZine for DCC RPG. It is made by a big community with lots of authors, artists, editors and layout masterminds involved. This years Zine is divided into 7 Issues, with six of them providing approximately 60 pages of new content each and the seventh being the famed "Master Zine Index", providing a conclusive list of which fan creations can be found in which FanZine.The First Issue is called "New Class Explosion" and contains many new classes, which I will now examine closer.
Bias warning. I wrote a class for this Issue. I won't discuss it in this post, but yeah... i'm involved.
A quick rundown of DCC class design
Classes are a core Concept of DCC. And whilst nearly every character can be realized with the 4 core classes (and 3 races) provided in the DCC RPG Book, there are still many concepts which thrive with their own rules. A Interesting DCC class should have a nice core mechanic and should with increasing levels, only increase in quality of their abilities not quantity (except for known spells). Also every class interacts with Luck in some way. This at least is how the Core classes are designed and it works incredibly well. I will thereby look for a discernible core mechanic in each class and how their abilities scale with level.
The quality of the class is highly dependent on how intuitive and versatile the class's mechanics are. While not every class should be able to solve every problem (quite the opposite is true), mechanics should always serve more than one purpose. The Deed die is a great example of a versatile mechanic, as it lets you execute nearly any combat maneuver you can think of and increases your combat prowess in general. The limits of this ability are often the limits of the players imagination.
Magic wielding classes are quite different. Since magic is a core mechanic in itself the class should give a theme or a special twist to the magic wielder. But let's not dive into that and get started.
Let's begin our curious look
Bardic Rocker by Jason Morgan.
Illustration wise we are off to a great start. The mix of a classic fantasy tavern with an excitingly metal flying V e-guitar and a quite metal looking bard let's you immediately know whats up with this class. The introductory text paints the same picture. It's a bard with a sub tone of heavy metal and hard rock. Mechanics wise this is a bard. There is not much more to say about it.
The class table is fine. Using Crit Table III makes him martial and
bad ass, when crits occur and a decent attack bonus, associated with a d8 HD
causes him to be the man every rocker wants to be and stand his ground in most combat situations. I don't get why he has flat (thief) skill bonuses that don't increase with level. They just seem tagged on and for me, personally, work as a dnd Bard, but not as a crom-damned DCC Hard rock god. We don't pick locks. We kick doors in. Spellcasting is decent and relies on the disapproval mechanic, but with song requests added to it. Thematically nice but there are no real consequences except for those at judge's discretion.
There are many nice touches, like Spells working with luck as your main attribute and the iconic bardic performance working with a performance die, but in the end this is just one of many Bards, who has a Hard Rock theme associated with it. Don't get me wrong. I like it. The theme is fun, with a great selection of 80s rock artists referenced, but there are many DCC Bards out there and this one does not stand out. It is incredibly competent and the writing is evocative and top notch, but for my personal taste the Rock Theme is only suited to more light hearted rounds.
If you want a fun bard with some nice mechanics and a hard rock theme this class is for you. If you were looking for a completely new take on the bard as a class, then this might disappoint you.
Berserker by José Luiz Tzi.
I can't say how much i love the cover illustration. There are no words to describe it. The intro text offers a lot of backgrounds for such a character and paint a nice contrast to the fighter. While the fighter class allows for chaotic and wild characters, the deed die mechanic is a mechanic of calculated intend and this class is quite different.
Thankfully, unlike so many other attempts at a competent martial class, this class did not get a deed die tagged on to make him competent. The Berserker is different. There are many barabarian classes out there but this one is by far my favorite of the bunch. There are two savage mechanics at the core of the character. Cleave and Frustration. As long as the Berserker kills his target in combat he can continue attacking targets. This is brutal. The berserker can tear through weak foes completly lost in blood and rage. It's a great core mechanic. You could over think it but mostly squishing weaklings will be the way to go.
Frustration is the other core mechanic. Everytime the Berserk misses he becomes more and more frustrated and gets a extra die (d3 and increasing) to his attacks and damage, until he hits. This is close to the deed die mechanic but it just suits the class incredibly. You want to attack and nothing else. If you hit, you wreak havoc, if you miss... you will hit sooner. In addition savage instincts help the character build anger and frustration by experiencing triggers like fighting weaklings. This mechanic is nice in concept but i don't like the execution. It's not bad, but not as stellar as everything else. The list of triggers increases with level and get's harder to keep track of. This is either challenging for the Berserker or for the judge.
All in all this might be my favorite class from this years GFA and my favorite barbarian in DCC. The class has flaws but they are minor and nitpicky.
Faerie Class by James A. Pozenel, Jr.
Not only offering a new class, but also a new race, this article is just packed full of stuff. It originally appeared in Angels, Daemons & Beings Between, Vol. 2: Elfland Edition. Since i don't own this book i can't say if it was reworked or revised since it's first appearance.
The Cover Illustration paints a malevolent picture of faeris, with a grim looking faery wielding a sharp and pointy knife. The introductory text is long and offers a detail of the faery race along with their two factions. The seelie and unseelie court. This, combined with the half letter sized format, makes for a not so easy to digest introduction, but the information in there is worth a lot. It's well written and well spaced out, but the level of detail might be too much for someone giving this a first read.
Faeries are fragile, low damage dealing, spell slinging, sneaky beasts. And they excell at this. Their abilities are quite befitting for the small folk, although they play it safe for the most part. They have their own spell list and can turn into a normal sized humanoid for a while to compensate for their martial flaws. Their most unique ability is the ability of flight, which not only makes them quite fast and mobile, but also predestined for exploring those nasty shafts in the ceiling. Their stealth abilities help to further this. Faeries have unique optical features, dependent on the court they align with, but those sadly have no impact on their abilities. One missed opportunity is their use of the luck attribute. It is simply added to their AC and Ref save. I was hoping for something more mythical, unpredictable and weird for those.
Then there are the other additions. Amazing new spells for faeries, faerie occupations, known languages and a new deed to use against fairies. This is just amazing and just fills in all the blanks for this class to be the most complete of them all. Making new DCC races is not as easy as making a new class, but James pulled it off.
Whether you like this class or not depends on your enjoyment of fairies in general. I am not a huge fan of faeris and while i can see how well those core concepts were executed here, but this is no highlight for me. Its competent and well put together, but i think it could have gone weirder in some places.
Goat'O'War by Randy Andrews
Goats have been getting a good bit of love within the Gongfarmers Almanac. With two goat classes within the last few years, the aspiring bringers of chaos have more options than elves at their disposal.
It's a goat illustration... and a quite goat one. There is a disturbing lack of intro text, which is quite sad. The introduction only outlines how to become a Goat'O'War and adds no flavor to that. But then again... it's a goat. What did you expect? This class is not meant to be taken serious but can do wonders if it is. Goats speak abyssal, naturally, and have the innate ability to headbutt the living shit out of everyone crossing their way. They can climb and bite but fail to offer anything else.
While this class could have been a nice, fun class, it has shaved of too many words. Natural weapons, secondary attacks and the use of the deed die are all hidden within the "weapon training" section of the class and while i guess it's not the case, it is never explicitly stated that they can't perform mighty deeds of arms. But that's just one of the many problems with recycling the deed die to attack. Also some things get flat bonuses at levels, for example the charge bonus turning into a +2 at level 5. I strongly dislike this because it's a missed opportunity. One could have done more with the charge and the flat bonus increase is hidden within the text and not represented in the table.
This class has fun aspects, but i prefer the Doom Goat from a few years ago over it, as is relies on fun, new mechanics instead of putting a warrior on four legs. It's quite goat, but i hoped for more.
Gongfarmer by Reece Carter
The Gongfarmer is a class now. You now have the ability to be a travelling night soil digger, solving problems with your own might, skill and the feces of others. The illustration is funny, as it perfectly depicts what the class does. This one is not meant to hang out with the cool guys. The gongfarmer is lacking an intro text and delivers all its "charm" through it's mechanics.
The gongfarmer is not a good class. Not if good means well balanced and heroic. It's just the natural extension of the gongfarmer concept. He is not good at fighting, but can deploy some quite shitty (pun intended) tactics to deliver tons of damage to a single foe. He is not likely to ever puke or feel ill. He does that for a living. He regenerates luck. But far to few. Only a legendary gongfarmer (if something like this exists) will ever run around with a comfortable luck stat. That's it for this class. And it's fine. It's really fine the way it is.
This one is hard to judge. It's a gongfarmer for crom's sake. He is not meant to be competent or fun to be. He is the butt of many jokes and a quite shitty companion. But he could be far, far worse. And i'd love to see him once thrown into a normal, regular group of DCC typical cutpurses.
So far and till next time.
I will spare you from the wall of text associated with me going through all the classes. I'll simply outsource the remaining ones into the next blog post. Stay tuned and feel free to discuss my curious look. It's just a opinion and observation from a biased standpoint.
