Dungeon Crawl Classics Revisited

My first experience of DCC was at a convention, back when they still happened face to face, and it wasn't great.  While my normal convention experience ranges from good to great, this was merely OK.  I can think of three factors that contributed to that:

• The GM planned for 4-6 players and only two of us signed up.
• I'm quiet, the GM was a little hard of hearing, and the room was loud due to a group coming in to play video games so we struggled to communicate.
• I'd never heard of a funnel before so had no idea what was going on with these multiple character sheets or how any of it was supposed to work.

So I figured I owed DCC a second shot, and when a friend offered a one-shot of Creep, Skrag, Creep! I decided to give it a go.  This time I knew what a funnel was, we had the four players the GM had planned for, and...well, we had some internet problems so maybe the sound wasn't all it could have been, but at least we could all hear each other.

The adventure itself is a fun horror-themed scenario, which I suspect takes some inspiration from the Alien franchise.  One of my peasants was dead within five minutes.  Another followed shortly afterwards.  Since one thing I did like about the previous DCC game was the big red stamp the GM used on dead characters, I decided to improvise with MS Paint:

Going in knowing what a funnel was certainly improved the experience, and I was impressed by how the GM handled the fact that there were quite a lot of PCs in play, even after the initial massacre.  There's definitely fun to be found in attempting to guide your team of hapless potato farmers through a situation they're entirely unequipped to deal with, and a feeling of victory when any of them make it out alive.

That said, I doubt I'll sign up for many more funnels.  They're good for an occasional bit of fun, but not really what I'm looking for most of the time when playing an RPG.  I wonder what the game looks like once you're playing a character with levels rather than a random peasant though.  I've seen the core book and it's enormous - there has to be a lot more in there than what I've seen so far.

It looks like I'm going to have to revisit DCC at least once more to really get a feel for what it's like.  There's a massive DCC Humble Bundle currently available though, with a bunch of level 1 and higher adventures, so maybe I'll get the chance.