UVG: My Stack

I ran an Ultra Violet Grasslands campaign in 2021. Here are some of the systems and house-rules I used.

Dungeon Crawl Classics

It’s great. We like this game. It worked for our game. We started off with level one characters. This wasn’t intended to be as high-lethality or dungeon-focussed as the typical DCC game. The UVG Visions of Death table as well as the HP/stat healing rules improved survivability compared to DCC.

We did ignore the weapon/armor restrictions. The UVG rayguns didn’t really fit into all that, and making them accessible to the whole party was a bit of an equalizer in terms of damage output.

Mutant Crawl Classics

Radiation plays an important role in the world of MCC, so you might think that there would be rules for it. The heading for “Radburn” under Mutations mentions Fortitude saves being thrown for radiation damage. Probably some creatures and powers deal radiation damage. But there’s no guidance for radiation hazards in the environment - how much damage they should deal or what saves.

We had a Mutant in our party for most of the game. The class seems pretty strong. Many encounters were resolved by one use of a power, or by stun-locking enemies with repeated applications of Mental Blast.
The DCs to save against powers were so high that creatures with twice as many HD as the Mutant couldn’t succeed on any result. If I were to run a game with an MCC Mutant again, I’d consider setting the saves equal to 10 + total casting modifier.

Artifact Checks are reasonably good. The table results were fun. But it most of the time it worked better to just expermient with things and see what they do.

Hubris

Didn’t end up using much out of this one. Some of the loot tables. The Metalphage was a good match for vomish corruption.

Overall, this book seemed like an odd grab-bag of stuff. Maybe the setting ties it together well, but I skipped those sections.

The Class Alphabet for DCC

A bunch of really cool and weird classes. Liked this quite a bit.

Umerica Unnatural

I knew UVG needed some psychic powers. UX02 Mind Games looked like a good option for this, but then I found Umerica Unnatural. This book expands on the psychic rules from Mind Games, and includes some post-apocalyptic flavor. Umerica doesn’t fit UVG as well as MCC does, but some of that is usable. We didn’t end up using any of the classes or rules from this book, but it was a nice option.

House Rules

The Alexandrian’s Market Research

I agree with the problem this is trying to solve. Players being penalized for rolling too well doesn’t feel right. However, either due to some good rolls, a perhaps too-generous initial loan, or just how the math works, the party was wealthy beyond measure by the time they were halfway across the grasslands. Possible solutions: tone down the modifiers from say 2x, 3x, 4x, to around 1.1x, 1.2x, 1.3x don’t give such a big initial loan give weight to money?

Experience

In addition to the usual DCC experience (surviving dangerous encounters) I included the following sources of Exp:

• Gain 1-2 Exp when you experience something new, i.e. local delicacy, cultural event, novel psychedelic

  This was claimed a few times. It worked out all right.

• Gain 1-2 Exp when you experiment with strange materials or forces, i.e. ancient talismans, plutonium, vomes

  This was claimed a few times as well. I think it helped, though in some cases the players would have experimented anyways.

• Gain 1 Exp for exploring a new location, i.e. weird cave, ancient obelisk, cool bar

  This was a mainstay source of experience. On the one hand, it incentivizes travelling on to new locations. On the other, it disincentivizes returning to old locations. On the whole, a positive.

• Gain 1+ Exp when you waste money in a useless or extravagant fashion, i.e. carousing, charity, academic research

  This was used a few times. Gold for XP is an important notion in OSR style play. I’ve long been fond of the wrinkle that you might award XP for spending gold, rather than simply acquiring it. Especially when spending it on intangible or wasteful things. I like that notion better than adventurers sitting on piles of gold.

UVG doesn’t have as many carousing tables as I would like, so I had some generic ones. Furthermore, there were too many negative side effects on the tables. That might have been why this option wasn’t taken more.

Later in the campaign, I expanded this rule. The carousing costs in UVG are 1d6 (exploding) x $X00 (based on location). I gave the option of more time-efficient, capital-intensive carousing where they could add additional dice to that cost for another XP per die. Each die added would be one step up the DCC die-chain. So, they could spend (d6 + d8 + d10) x $X00 for a night of carousing worth 3 XP. This worked okay.

Furthermore, all Exp gained is multiplied by the map page of the location it was gained at. x2 for the second page, x3 for the third page, etc… For locations appearing on multiple pages, use the lower number.

DCC has scaling XP where each level takes longer to reach. I like scaling XP for games where parties will have characters of different levels. It helps new characters catch up. Our campaign didn’t have this (new characters started at the same XP as the party), so it just felt boring to know that higher levels were less attainable. This scaling factor rewarded the drive westward, and helped keep higher levels in reach.

Levelling

In addition to everything else character get when they level up, they also gained a chance to increase ability scores in the style of Black Hack. This goes somewhat against the ethos of DCC, but I think it had its benefits. When characters actually had ability scores high enough to give modifiers, the stat damage from Misfortune results had more of an impact.

Resting

Any stat can be recovered by resting, except Luck which is recovered by the usual DCC means. Once per day, the party can Eat Lunch to recover HP by consuming one sack of supplies.

This rate of stat recovery felt right with DCC + the stat damage from UVG Misfortunes, etc… Fatigue from the UVG book would have been too punishing for certain classes, so we didn’t use that. I don’t think we ever had to Eat Lunch. Most site explorations were completed in a short time frame and the party was back on the road again.

Encumbrance

UVG lets players carry all their usual equipment (estimated at 1 sack) with no encumbrance, and be encumbered at 2 sacks. We decided to add a little optional granularity. Players can carry up to STR stone un-encumbered, or 2 sacks encumbered.

This worked well. I would use it in most games, going forward. Don’t need to itemize everything characters are carrying, but can’t forget about the weight/bulk of provisions and loot.

Class List

Here’s the complete list of classes I made available for players, along with the books they came from:

• Cleric - DCC
• Thief - DCC
• Warrior - DCC
• Wizard - DCC
• Dwarf - DCC
• Halfling - DCC
• Sentinel - MCC
• Shaman - MCC
• Healer - MCC
• Rover - MCC
• Mutant - MCC
• Manimal - MCC
• Plantient - MCC
• Alchemist - Hubris
• Blood Witch - Hubris
• Druid - Hubris
• Shadowdancer - Hubris
• Ekrask (Lizardman) - Hubris
• Half-Demon - Hubris
• Murder Machine - Hubris
• Mutant - Hubris
• Black Cat - Class Alphabet
• Cyber Zombie - Class Alphabet
• Drug User - Class Alphabet
• Flesh-Forged - Class Alphabet
• Goblin Gang - Class Alphabet
• Hellfont - Class Alphabet
• Intelligent Weapon - Class Alphabet
• Jockey - Class Alphabet
• Puppet Master - Class Alphabet
• Quantum Wanderer - Class Alphabet
• Ro-Bard - Class Alphabet
• Ubiquarian - Class Alphabet
• Zealot - Class Alphabet
• Wasteland Psion - Umerica Unnatural
• Psi Mutant - Umerica Unnatural
• Psylatan - Umerica Unnatural
• Beastkin - Umerica Unnatural
• Berserker - Gong Farmer’s Almanac
• Pirate - Gong Farmer’s Almanac
• Quantum Traveler - Gong Farmer’s Almanac
• Sage - Gong Farmer’s Almanac
• Scout - Gong Farmer’s Almanac
• Anti-Cleric - Gong Farmer’s Almanac
• Fater - Gong Farmer’s Almanac
• Human - Gong Farmer’s Almanac