XCrawl Campaign Setting

[RTGoodman]

My roommate and DM recently picked up some stuff for a new(?) campaign setting-ish system called XCrawl. Basically, it's D&D in the modern world, and adventuring has basically become a professional sport akin to football or American Gladiators. The PCs become a sort of sports team that competes in crawls in different cities around the North American Empire (New York, Detroit, and others are covered in the various published adventures). Religion uses the Roman pantheon, and basically anything in D&D exists in XCrawl, plus it adds in new stuff like the Knowledge (Astrology) skill and a new Finishing Move mechanic.

Has anyone else ever heard of this setting (or whatever you'd call it)? It seems interesting, and we're starting a game of it tomorrow (running through the 1st level adventure), but I'm not sure how I feel about it yet. It seem interesting and is a pretty good system for a college gaming group (since people that don't come to the meeting just weren't able to join the team at that match), but it seems almost silly to me.

I tried to find some information online, but I can't seem to find much information. The Goodman Games website has some stuff about it, but the actual XCrawl website doesn't have much helpful information at all.


Suggestions? Questions? Comments? Wild screams of protest?

[Matthew]

Heh. Yeah, I have this. I found it to be an amusing concept, especially in combination with Urban Arcana, but I haven't had the chance to play it yet.

[Grug]

Sounds like a purified form of what DnD is about: Dungeons crawling for fame and profit. Should be fun to design your own crawls as well.

[RTGoodman]

Well, we played our first session of the "Battle of Brooklyn" adventure tonight (though we only got through the first two rooms), and here's some more info.

Apparently, the Xcrawl designers want the PCs to be WAY over WBL. After two encounters (two goblins, and then 3 orcs), we've already got a +1 longsword, a wand of magic missile (7 charges, maybe?), wand of cure light wounds (7 charges), a cloak of resistance +1, several potions of CLW, masterwork lockpicking tools, and maybe a couple other things. (Of course, I didn't check to make sure whether this is all supposed to go to us, or if it was actually a treasure table and the DM didn't realize it, so I'll have to check that later.)

The actual game dungeon seems, so far, to be sort of hokey - really, it seems more like "Legends of the Hidden Temple" than D&D, complete with Temple Guards that you aren't supposed to attack and some sort of scroll portions you're supposed to find before you leave the dungeon.

The first actual "encounter" in the adventure is a rope swing over some mud (no penalty for falling), running through tires, running through sparring dummies (non-lethal damage for people with low AC), and stuff like that, while goblins shoot tennis balls at you. Every single encounter (mostly skill-based, though I had to use a scroll and hit a target with a ray spell) seems really easy and nearly foolproof (unless we just got lucky).

The writing also seems kinda bad. Like, one of the NPCs is names, and I kid you not, Seymour Blood.

I think we're only playing every other week, so I don't know how soon I'll figure out if the first session was just bad, or if it's something inherently bad about the setting and adventures themselves.

[huttj509]

I either have the book here somewhere, my brother has it, or it was one of my friends who picked it up.

We never actually played, but I had a blast reading through it. You get use out of perform checks (pumping up the crowd), you take on WWF-style personas (everyone loves to hate the 'heel').

Not all the action has to happen in the crawl. The XCrawl is big gambling business, and at some point someone might come by to make one of the PCs an offer he can't refuse. Or perhaps something goes bad, and now they need to escape through the city, remembering they're not exactly allowed to kill people willy nilly out here, and they don't have a safety net.

Anybody who's a member of that small persistent "one g-d cult" (kinda hard for the Christians to say the pagan gods are false when their clerics can manifest divine power, and the elves joined the fight, not much liking that they apparently were myths and legends to be forgotten) can expect some rulings going against them.

You can play XCrawl on multiple levels, starting in the plain old "here's the crawl, good luck" is a good start, but remember how people will react to new superstars coming up.

Oh, and it's not just one team vs. a dungeon, it's multiple teams (one at a time), trying to a) make it through, and b) be the fastest of the teams who make it through. And the monsters can be quite motivated, as they might win their freedom if they down an adventurer.

Edit: When crawlers start out they're basically in the little league. Blunted weapons, simple traps and challenges, that's par for the course at the start. Maybe the "monster" at the end is an old retired crawler, with some padded weapons and instructions to not go too tough on the newbies.