100% Brendan

100% Brendan

Joseph Goodman nailed it one day when we were on the phone. I had asked him if I could refer Dungeon Crawl Classics and Xcrawl as “sister games,” going by the fact that they were both a part of the Goodman Games stable. Among other things they shared real point-of-view, I said. In other words, they weren’t generic fantasy campaigns that acted as a blank canvas for the GM – they were written with a story framework in mind.

He agreed. “Dungeon Crawl Classics is 100% Joseph, and Xcrawl is 100% Brendan.”

Guilty as charged. Xcrawl grew out of my home campaign, and it was a game that I really tailored to my playing style.

The one aspect of Xcrawl that really streamlines a fantasy gaming session is the professional adventurer factor. I love that in Xcrawl, characters have a built-in motivation for why they do what they do. Why do a bunch of folks go to the dungeon and risk life and limb for treasure and glory? Its their job!

And in my mind, rather than take away this adds to the role playing possibilities. When you create your character, you still have a full range of possible choices, and more of them make sense. In standard fantasy, characters decide to become adventurers for a lot of fairly lofty, or traumatic reasons – they want revenge on the creatures that killed their families, they want to redeem themselves in the eyes of the village elders who cast them out, they want to bring honor to their deity, they are on a quest for this that or the other . . .

All worthy motivations. But In Xcrawl you can have one of those . . . or you could just really need the money to help pay for your kid’s private school. Or you might be willing to do absolutely anything to become famous and show your high school guidance councilor that he was wrong about you. Or you might be a pro athlete who blew his knee out too badly to continue playing football, but you can get by as long as you only ever run to charge an enemy. The adventurer as real person factor is high in Xcrawl, and that appeals to me deeply.

Ever read Elmore Leonard? Brilliant crime fiction writer. He is the author of one of my favorite quotes about writing: “My most important piece of advice to all you would-be writers: when you write, try to leave out all the parts readers skip.”  Hear, hear.

In my mind, Xcrawl lets me skip lots of the parts of the FRPG experience that I always just wanted to fast forward over in my home games. Things like identifying magic items, or figuring out how to get inconvenient treasure back to town. That kind of thing is so important to a standard fantasy adventure, and it forces your players to be creative and manage their resources carefully, but the actual time spent doing it? Way better spent on danger, in my opinion.

Xcrawl Traditions

Trigger Warning: Deep Geekery, Alcohol, Facial Tattoos, Bruce Campbell.  

I have been running Xcrawl for more than ten years now, and there are a few traditions that have manifested themselves over time. Sharing!

What Actor?

“Pick which actor is playing your character in the movie they make of your Xcrawl adventure”. If we have gamed at a convention you have more than likely heard me say a version of that sentence.

I have always done this in convention games, and it’s a fun shortcut to roleplaying and a great visual tool. I’ve been doing it for years, and it’s a good fast way to get convention players into a character quickly. It’s always fun and its quick.

Also, I truly believe Xcrawl would make a great movie, and having payers pick actors for their characters becomes pure imagination fodder for those long trips home from Indianapolis, or Butler PA, or Las Vegas. I have played various versions of the Xcrawl movie in my head umpteenth times, and I always wind up using actors my con player’s have come up with.

The actor thing grew out of my very early White Wolf experience.  In my game, I started giving out Freebie Points to players who brought in a write-up of their character’s background, or a picture. I actually have a binder among my gaming treasures with page after page of pics of all the characters and NPCs from my old game. In the beginning people would cut pictures of models from fashion magazines – you would be amazed at how many perfect vampires they feature in the Italian edition of Vogue. Eventually, my buddy Paul declared that his vampire was the actual Hong Kong action star Sammo Hung. Having actually seen one of my character’s visualizations in a fight definitely changed the movie that went on in my head while we played.   

Some Xcrawl Actor Trivia                            

Most Frequent Xcrawl Actor? Samuel L. Jackson by a mile. His only even sort of close runner up is Bruce Campbell. 

Actor Most Killed In Xcrawl: Scanning through my notes right now, I am fairly sure it’s Christian Bale (three deaths minimum). There might be one more, or it might be Christian Slater. Or Christina Applegate. I really need to work on my penmanship.

Actors I Can Not Believe Have Never Come Up In One of My Con Games: The Rock, Ice Cube, Sigourney Weaver, Bruce Lee, Carrie-Ann Moss, Val Kilmer, Eliza Dushku, Russell Crowe, Summer Glau, or Lee Marvin.

Actors I would cast in My version of the Xcrawl movie, given an unlimited budget and a time machine: See above.

My favorites: Someone at GenCon played a gnome bard they called Summer Night, a disco singer played by Donna Summer. That just made me happy.

My buddy Tom Tullis played his character as the Dungeon Bastard one year. That was super fun.

And In a game I didn’t actually play in: my friend Jason played the crocodile hunter as a ranger. “Crike!”

Easter Egg: Somewhere in one entry in this production diary is the name of a celebrity actor (Hint: I am terrible at giving hints). If we game at a con and you tell me that actor is playing your character in the crawl they make of the movie I throw you a Power Up.

No Show = Radical Character Change

One of my favorite Xcrawl traditions is utterly changing someone’s character in when they don’t show up.

Take my buddy’s Jeremy’s half-orc barbarian.  One night he can’t make it to the table, but my friend Dave is in town for the weekend and wants to play. Dave plays the barbarian, and does a great job raging and charging and screaming about he would kill a hundred goblins to honor his sponsors, as Exofah intended. But they finish a level while he is there, and one of the prizes they took home was a certificate for 5K GP worth of free tattoo work from someplace local. We had had a few beers and the game was getting goofy, and in the middle of this Dave declares that between dungeon levels he takes the gift certificate and goes and gets all of that work done on himself, featuring a scary full face Orcish tribal tat. Then he has the cleric hit him with a cure spell, so it instantly heals and looks good on camera. Give it up for Jeremy, who laughed off his characters radically altered look.

And again: During my playtest for the Emperor’s Cup my buddy Dan (whose frequent absences garnered him the nickname “No Show”), missed a night. He had been playing the amazing Cherry Bomb, a female human two-weapon fighter. Cherry Bomb was a total badass, just a tornado of blades with and massive full around attack, partially based on using her short sword of speed in her off hand. Anyway, one night Dan couldn’t show up, so we were team running Cherry Bomb. Duane Waldrop was in that game, and his wife, Micki, dropped by the house for a while. I told her to run Cherry Bomb for a round so we could put her in the playtest credits. She obliged, and in that one round she rolled a 1 and lost that fancy short sword of speed to the devourer, which ate it right up. Dan is a good sport in general, and he took the news in stride, but when our next fight came up and he saw how it affected his damage potential, he winced a bit.

Micki Fun Fact: I eventually married Micki’s cousin, a fellow gamer and geek who just might be the nation’s leading authority on Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan fic.

No-Show Dan missed another session of that playtest, and our buddy Terry stopped in and played his character. It was the beginning of level two, and right after the start-of-play buzzer, Terry addressed the group as Cherry Bomb: “I just want you all to know that I have decided not to hide it any longer: my trainer Mindy and I have embraced the love that dare not speak its name.” A guest player had outed an Xcrawl character in the level two green room of the Emperor’s Cup.

When we told Dan, he laughed about it but said that the rest of the team had to go with Cherry when she went to tell her parents.

This happens again and again. On nights when a player couldn’t make a game I have seen people call up their beef jerky sponsor and told them they were going vegan, characters intentionally wrecking prize cars, giving all their treasure and prizes away to charity, declaring their love for the DJ . . . I could go on and on.

If anything like this ever happens in your game I would LOVE to hear about it. Also, this should just be for fun – don’t actually ruin someone’s character or keep them from having a good time.  

Music

Xcrawl is all about the music, and always has been.

When I first started running Xcrawl, I would load my 5 CD changer and put it on random. Wow, that sentence sounds so old fashioned in 2014 it should come with a high wheeler and a derby hat.

Back then my go to 5 CD mix choice was:

Onyx, Bacdafucup

Fat Man and Team Fat, 7/11

the Judgment Night soundtrack

Red Hot Chili Peppers, Uplift Mojo Party Plan

EPMD, Strictly Business 

The Fat Man and Team Fat is a group that does video game music that a buddy of mine at my old job turned me on to. They have this one amazing song, Mister Death that became the official song of the original Memphis Crawl.

When I really started getting into running Xcrawl, I picked up a couple of the Jock Jams compellations to use for background music. Those are fun . . . for a while.  Listening to Tag Team do Whoomp! (There it Is) more than about twice in a single calendar year is enough to make you want to throw your stereo out the window. 

I will say that the Jock Jams records defiantly put you in the sports mindset.

I’m into all sorts of music personally – I love hip-hop and rock, soul and R&B, punk, hardcore, and country. I am an unrepentant disco fan. I love funk, and sincerely wish there were more funk bands. I went through a huge metal period in my teens, and I still really love all those bands.

Xcrawl has whatever soundtrack you want it to have, and whatever music you choose for the background I hope it becomes as big a part of your game as it did in mine.

This Is Where I Say

Thank you.

I have so many people I want to thank but I will start with my parents, who always accepted and unconditionally supported their crazy kids. What can I say? I have said it before, I will say it again: every World’s Greatest Mom and Dad mug belongs to y’all, take them freely.

My wife, who has unconditionally accepted me since the day we met, and fell in love with me over dice and a GM screen.

My sister, Xcrawl’s biggest non-gamer fan, whose enthusiastic support makes me feel like I live in a world without boundaries.

Brett and Alyson Brooks, who believed in Xcrawl from the beginning, who made Xcrawl so so much better than its original conception, and who gave me my start in this business.

Joseph Goodman, who gave Xcrawl a wonderful home at Goodman Games, and who continues to be a professional and personal inspiration, and has saved me from literal homelessness one more than one occasion.

Duane Waldrop, my evil other half and constant source of inspiration, and the most grounding, anti-bullshit friend a gent could ever ask for. Duane and Micki raised me as a hobby, and I hope they like I how I turned out.

(True story, Duane was my manager at this warehouse in Athens. I asked Duane for a day off at one point to help me hit a deadline for one of the Xcrawl dungeon manuscripts. He said that he needed me that day, so instead of letting me bang out he wrote a couple of rooms for me to help me get caught up. Your boss ever do that?)

All the artists, writers, editors, and developers who have worked on Xcrawl over the years, and who helped give the game its feel and flavor, and who made the world of Xcrawl come to life in a way I never could alone.

My tiny legion of playtesters, who tuned up every idea I gave them until it stopped spewing black smoke.

The folks at my day job who have let me take off scads of time this year to do conventions, and really to all my understanding bosses over the years. I’m thinking of Susan Powell, Kat from Tiffany’s Tea Room, and again Duane Waldrop.

The fans most of all  – everyone who supported the kickstater, everyone who wanted to but couldn’t, the people who have been with me since day one, and the new folks just signing up.

Thank you, thank you, thank you all!

 

Thanks for reading. Thanks for gaming. See you at the convention!