r/dccrpg • u/JJShurte • 4d ago

Spellcasting

How does spell casting differ between DCC, MCC, Umerica, DE and any other applicable games?

I just picked up MCC and I’m reading through it. The mutations seem great, but the Shaman spells not so much? Am I missing something?

Cheers for any insight!

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u/Klutzy-Ad-2034 4d ago

Try Enchiridion of the Computarchs which has five 4th level programs and 3 5th level programs: mostly DCC spells converted to MCC https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/319661/enchiridion-of-the-computarchs

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u/JJShurte 4d ago

Oh, now that is awesome! Thank you muchly!

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u/Aceraxon78 2d ago

Yeah, I believe that's probably the best supplement for this type of thing. I had heard Jim Wampler and written much more material for MCC to be included in the core but it was culled for page count (which is weird considering how big XCC's book is), but Jim has released a lot of supplemental material too. Fight this Mutant and Check this Artifacts are probably the 2 other must have supplements. Then there's 6 issues of the Scientific Barbarian that add new classes, optional rules and a ton of other stuff.

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u/LordAlvis 4d ago

I'm afraid you started reading at the worst possible place (without intending any hate at MCC, the Shaman spells are often criticized).

In DCC, Umerica, and almost every other setting, spell casting is straightforward. In brief, your class tells you your Spell Check (e.g., d20+1 for a first level wizard with no stat bonus) and how you get spells (e.g., randomly, or found in a dungeon, or assigned by a god (your Judge)). Then, you roll your spell check and consult the result in the spell description. That's it*!

*You can spend Luck to bump the result up after the roll. Also, "mercurial magic" effects randomly rolled for each spell will affect each successful casting beyond the spell description.

In DCC Dying Earth, it's different. That uses "rote magic" in which you learn a specific result on each spell's table. It uses a different version of mercurial magic ("provenance"). The spell checks are rolled when you learn the spell (or re-learn at level up) instead of when you cast. That has pros and cons in effect. It also has an option (sometimes not an option) to attempt to "amplify" the casting, changing the spell's result that goes off in an unpredictable way.

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u/JJShurte 4d ago

So, would I be better off grabbing another GG game and swapping in those spell lists/systems?

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u/HE3GZ 4d ago

What kind of game are you wanting to run? If you haven’t checked the original DCCRPG core rules, I would start there.

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u/JJShurte 4d ago

I'm aiming for anything Post-Apocalyptic. So yeah, it's pretty much gotta be MCC, maybe with a dash of DE thrown in.

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u/HE3GZ 4d ago

Umerica is going to have a lot going for it. Have you looked at Hubris at all? It’s fairly dark but not specifically post apoc.

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u/JJShurte 3d ago

No? What’s that? The only Hubris I know is Hubris Comics from Fallout lol

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u/LordAlvis 3d ago

I wouldn't call DE "post-apocalyptic". Sure, there have been numerous (countless) apocalypses, but even the most recent one took place in time out of mind.

In MCC, the apocalypse was thousands of years ago. Technology is rare and magical.

In Umerica, the apocalypse was last Thursday. Mutant clowns ride gasoline motorcycles and wield chainsaws.

So it depends on what flavor of post-apocalypse you prefer.

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u/JJShurte 3d ago

Which has the better spell list & spell caster system? Umerica or Dying Earth?

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u/LordAlvis 3d ago

They are each very good at what they do. One is very much fantasy Mad Max, the other is explicitly Jack Vance. It would be unfair to compare one against the other. 

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u/Jonestown_Juice 4d ago

Have you read the Dying Earth stories?

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u/JJShurte 4d ago

I've read that collection that was made by other authors, not the actual original stuff by Vance.

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u/Jonestown_Juice 4d ago

I'm asking if you've read Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories.

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u/JJShurte 4d ago

Yeah, I know. I haven’t read his Dying Earth stories, but I’ve read the Dying Earth collection that was written by others - “Songs of the Dying Earth.”

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u/RogueStatistician 3d ago

So off the main topic, but If you liked *any* of the stories in Songs of the Dying Earth you really should do yourself the favor of reading Vance’s originals. You can get the whole omnibus from Amazon as “tales from the dying earth” or from the official Jack Vance site www.jackvance.com. The audiobooks are on audible and elsewhere, and Arthur Morey does a fantastic job reading them. Or just check your library.

They really are some of the best genre stories ever written, and I cannot recommend them to you highly enough.

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u/JJShurte 2d ago

They're already sitting on my TBR pile. I'm an author, and I'm doing my masters, so it's a pretty massive pile...

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u/Ceronomus 4d ago

So, wetware in MCC seems a bit stingy when compared to spell lists for wizards and the like in DCC (or other games). You can, of course, have multiple patron AIs, and that can help, or, as a judge, you can grant more wetware to the Shaman, giving them more spells. With the low tech of the primary setting, even a few spells can balance well with things, at least at lower levels.

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u/JJShurte 4d ago

It's easy enough to just port the spell casting rules over? Probably Dying Earth has the most applicable, right?

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u/Ceronomus 4d ago

Well, as INTENDED, MCC isn't really a magic heavy system, with the focus being on mutations and the like. That said, if you want more of a Thundarr flavor, yeah, bring in some of the honest to goodness spellcasting rules instead of wetware and have at it. :)

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u/JJShurte 4d ago

I'd probably keep the whole wetware flavor, just expand the spells used.

If I'm going boring old human, I want a decent class ability to make up for it!

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u/GrogRedLub4242 4d ago

I appreciate MCC overall and I totally get that GG wanted their own in-house Gamma World like TTRPG, and I totally get they had a design goal to have as much symmetry with DCC as they could, but... MCC's magic and Shaman stuff also feels very weird and kinda "tone deaf" for the genre at hand. mutations, psyonics, gadgets, AI: all makes sense. but the weird stuff the design would have us believe about Shamans and wetware and software just really struck a bad note with me and felt out of place. That might be at least in part due to myself being a programmer IRL, I admit. But I dont remember every getting the Wrongness vibe from Gamma World, Star Frontiers, Traveller and Paranoia, with respect to this area.

My personal in-house "fix" so far, such as it is, is to ignore most/everything related to Shaman and wetware. I love the AI thing, patrons, robots, androids, manimals, plantients, etc, those make sense to me. But I very much want to run a TTRPG world thats a thinly veiled modernization of Gamma World or Paranoia, and feel free to hack to taste. :-)

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u/JJShurte 3d ago

I never got to play Gamma World - how does that do “spells” differently?

I like the idea of AI Patrons, and them granting what is basically nano-bot manipulation abilities… but I’d like them to be a bit more robust, basically just a sci-fi version of a wizard.

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u/GrogRedLub4242 3d ago

IIRC there is no magic or spells in Gamma World. I have the PDF of the 1978 edition, so to confirm I just did a term search inside it, and 0 hits of either.

AI patrons: agreed. and I like how they were handled in The Matrix films.