Jay Little on Xcrawl

Hey Gang,

I asked Jay Little, amazingly prolific game designer and author of 2007's Xcrawl: Phoenix Crawl, to write a little bit about how he and Xcrawl found each other. Like the blazing talent he is he got something back to me almost overnight. 

Sean Nokes, Jay Little, and a Man Called Adrian, GenCon 2006

Take it away Jay!

I first met Brendan LaSalle at GenCon nearly a decade ago, when I was writing Dungeons & Dragons adventures for Goodman Games. Brendan introduced me to this cool new idea he had for a pay-per-view dungeon crawling game. His eyes really lit up as he told me about Xcrawl, and I could tell he invested a lot of energy to the setting.

It was a no brainer for me. Quasi-fantasy with a technological twist. A new sort of Colosseum for Xcrawl’s new wave of gladiator. It had a sort of Running Man, Death Race, or Hunger Games vibe. I picked up the Xcrawl core book and some adventures, and dove in. The more I read, the more I enjoyed the setting.

For several years during the D&D 3rd Edition heydays, Goodman Games ran an annual Dungeon Crawl Classics tournament, treating players to an old school Dungeons & Dragons styled experience. The tournament was always wildly successful, attracting dozens of players each year. Each team was scored based on certain goals, how far into the adventure they got, and were penalized for things like character deaths. I loved writing for those tournaments, but what and how to score wasn’t always apparent.

For Xcrawl, though, the tournament format was a perfect fit. In 2007 I wrote the PhoenixCrawl tournament module, the first Xcrawl tournament Goodman Games ran at GenCon. It was one of the most satisfying adventures I’ve ever worked on. Instead of worrying about how one encounter transitioned into the next, or why these creatures would be found in this cave, or finding ways to incentivize the players to be more proactive with their characters — I could just focus on making cool individual encounters.

Each room was its own unique opportunity for a challenging, interesting, novel encounter. Each its own independent unit connected by commercial breaks, sponsorships, replays and the sorts of things that really created a sense of this massive dungeon crawling enterprise with which these characters were now involved. 

And the NPCs could be as unique and varied as you wanted. Crazy sports celebrities, shifty event promoters, player agents, corporate sponsors, or aging athletes trying to end their careers with a bang.

Tournament wise, the Xcrawl setting was great. There was so much freedom in creating goals, defining scoring opportunities, and ensuring players across multiple teams were encountering the same challenges. 

Plus, the idea of scoring and being judged for your performance was already built into the setting. And the players loved it.

I ran a bunch of tables of PhoenixCrawl at GenCon that year, and it was great just how those teams got into the spirit of things. Players developed catch phrases or signature moves for their athlete characters, pimped their corporate sponsors, showed off to the crowd — and because of the nature of Xcrawl, an extreme competitive sporting event, they took more risks and really played to win.

It’s an exciting way to roleplay. The great thing about Xcrawl is that it combines several real world experiences — sports, competition, sponsorship, corporate greed — with familiar fantasy trappings — spells, monsters, magic items, loot. This combination makes it really accessible to both novice and veteran role-players, and also makes GMing a real blast. I'm really excited for the new edition, and can't wait to see what lies waiting for players now.