In this Series I will argue that evolutionary pressures exist in the game and table ecology of the table-top roleplaying game Dungeon Crawl Classics. Characters survive in Dungeon Crawl Classics because
their stats fit the environment,
the party invests resources in them,
their abilities fit the party,
players emotionally value them,
and prior survival grants compounding advantages.
There is a connection between mechanics, player psychology, emergent narrative and table sociology that is evolutionary in nature. Characters that are better adapted to the campaign ecology (BATCE) and persistent and adapted to the table (PAT) will survive and thrive. This is an ecological metaphor, not a moral argument.
This series is divided into five parts. Part I focuses on selection pressure, funnels, and post-funnel adventuring, with an emphasis on mechanical adaptation. Part II examines the role of equipment in the Dungeon Crawl Classics power curve and how adaptive pressure shapes its distribution. Part III looks at the adventuring party as an ecology in itself and how characters and players fit within that emerging ecosystem. Part IV considers narrative selection pressures and proposes that, through subtle applications of player care and attention, narratively interesting characters become persistent and adapted to the table. Part V will return to my current Dungeon Crawl Classics and Mutant Crawl Classics campaigns and make a longitudinal evaluation of this theory.
The thesis is simple: character death plus random roll ups produce characters that exhibit better adaptation to the campaign ecology and persistence and adaptation to the table. Better here does not mean morally superior. We’ll have none of you social Darwinism here matey. Nor does it mean optimised in the abstract. One of the joys of Dungeon Crawl Classics is that you have so little control over your character generation that all the YouTube videos on Character Builds won’t help you a jot. I am an unrepentant Neo-Darwinist in the Dawkins school. “Better” means that the character is more likely to survive, more likely to be useful, more likely to be fun. At the fundamental level of Part I if you randomly roll up a character with good stats it is more likely to survive. A character that is more likely to survive is more likely to level up. Levelling up moves the character along the power curve and improves their effectiveness and survivability in play.
Take two examples from my current campaign.
My character is a chaotic thief. He has +1 Strength, +1 Agility and 17 (+2) luck. The Dungeon Crawl Classics thief mechanics for luck make a high luck score mechanically gold. That character is combat effective and highly survivable because of the Luck score. Also highly useful to the party because of the mechanical use of Luck in thieves skills checks and rolling over the dead. We will return to rolling over the dead later in the series.
My thief is combat effective. Within their combat role that is. They are sneak alpha-striker not an attritional combatant. They have a better-than-average chance of landing a backstab. They have a better-than-average chance of winning a combat, quickly. Therefore, a better-than-average chance of surviving. He ise mechanically suited to his role in the party: navigating danger using skills and ending fights before they become attritional. At present this compensates somewhat for my own mechanical naivety as I learn the system.
The characters I had in the funnel with poor stats did not survive. Not partly this is because I was ruthlessly meta-gaming and threw the weak and consumptive gongfarmers in front of my Once and Future Prince of Thieves but also because having a 7 stamina and 1 hit point is extremely dead. The funnel is effectively a massively parallel search algorithm. Most characters are noise. A few are unexpectedly robust. Those characters survive, better. Not because they are optimised towards a specific build but because survival itself is the optimiser.
The randomness of Dungeon Crawl Classics character creation along with the randomness of the funnel broadens the search space. Mortality filters it.
Our party tank, a dwarf warrior, is less well suited to their roll. Their stamina is low, so their HP is below average and their strength is average. For a character whose roll is to trade blows with the opposition this matters. They are less well adapted to the campaign ecology (BATCE) and, mechanically at least, less likely to prove persistent and adapted to the table (PAT). Mechanically.
What do I mean by better adapted to the campaign ecology (BATCE) and persistent and adapted to the table (PAT)?
Better adapted to the campaign ecology means a character with the statistics, abilities, equipment, and mechanical features to perform their role effectively within the game environment in which they find themselves.
Persistent and adapted to the table means a character played with sufficient skill, affection, or social investment that they are likely to survive long enough to become better adapted to the campaign ecology.
At some point it is more likely than not that our dwarf warrior will die. They will be replaced with another character. If that character is better adapted to the campaign ecology i.e. a better tank, with high strength and stamina they are more likely to survive. Perhaps they will solve the “tank problem” in our party in a different way with overwhealming lethality that ends combat before attritional exchanges begin.
If I can keep my Lucky Thief alive for five more sessions he will level up, and become slightly more skilful, slightly more survivable, slightly more lethal and slightly more likely to survive the fifteen sessions needed to get to Level 3.
Dungeon Crawl Classics is a game of narrow margins. A character with 1 hit point will survive until struck exactly once. A character with 2 hit points may survive one additional blow. That may be enough for them to survive an entire combat, return to safety, recuperate and return, wiser and better equipped for survival.
Likewise, a trap can attrite a party’s pool of hit points harshly. Detecting it with +1 bonus, or disabling it with a +1 bonus means entering the next combat at full strength rather than half dead.
I observe that our party currently contains a mechanically maladapted organism. The tank lacks durability and lethality. Replacing them with a fitter organism would strengthen our party. Time, attrition and the vicissitudes of the dice may do this naturally, over time. Meanwhile the rest of us have to adapt to the situation we find ourselves in.
Two things are true. Napoleon preferred lucky generals and mechanical strength and the being better adapted to the campaign ecology (BATCE) that comes with it, is not the only component of being persistent and adapted to the table (PAT).
Nevertheless, character death creates selection pressure and base character statistics are important part of avoiding death. In the next part I’ll look at the evolutionary aspects of using equipment to compensate for or augment base mechanics.
In the next part I will examine the evolutionary role of equipment and how material adaptation compensates for, reinforces, or amplifies base mechanics.
The Misadventures of Hareng Rouge 
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