Goodman Games has announced that they will be releasing a Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game (DCC RPG) to take players back to the ‘glory days of fantasy’ with modern rules.

Designed and written by Joseph Goodman with additional writing by Harley Stroh, DCC RPG will be an OGL game that ‘cross-breeds Appendix N with a streamlined version of 3E’ to create a modern system that is grounded in the origins of sword and sorcery.

In the first Designer’s diary, it is established that the game will not be heading towards becoming a retro-clone but a re-imagining of how Gygax and Arneson would have developed D&D if they had access to the OGL.

Among the highlight features of the rules that were revealed in the diary are;

  • Races as classes.
  • Using a Vancian magic but not in the D&D sense and does require the memorization of spells.
  • It does away with attack of opportunity, prestige classes, feats and skill points.
  • It does not require miniatures and a combat grid.
  • Six ability scores with one called Luck.
  • Primarily uses the conventional dices (d4, d6, d8, d10, d12 & d20) but also uses all the Zocchi dices (including the d5, d7 and d24).

Core rules will be released for free for an open playtest in mid 2011 and the game itself is scheduled to release in November 2011 at $34.99 which is also available for pre-order.

Goodman Games has released more than 50 of the highly acclaimed Dungeon Crawl Classics modules since 2003 and were among the first publishers that spurred the Old School Renaissance.