The Misadventures of Hareng Rouge

The power curve in Dungeon Crawl Classics is not driven solely by levels and class mechanics. It also includes equipment.

Some of this equipment is mundane adventuring gear purchased with treasure and retained because experience demonstrates its usefulness. Some of it is magical: strange weapons, protective armour, cursed artefacts, and specialist tools. These items become most valuable when they align with both a character’s mechanical profile, their adventuring role, and the player’s concept of operations.

Our party’s lawful cleric, for example, does not need the +1 longsword of lawful dragon hunting that curses its wielder with vampiric greed and an insatiable thirst for wealth. We do, however, desperately need a really good shield for the dwarf.

My thief has retained four daggers that curse anyone wounded by them to eventually walk into the sea. At present they are merely situationally useful. Later they may prove decisive. Alternatively, we may trade them for equipment better suited to our current ecological needs.

As the party survives, it accumulates equipment. That equipment is sorted into categories:

immediately useful,

potentially useful,

or valuable in trade.

Over time, individual characters become increasingly specialised through the acquisition of adaptive gear. The dwarf fighter will eventually acquire armour that improves durability. My thief will learn to combine poison with backstabs. Our cleric may acquire talismans of healing or divine protection.

Equipment alters survival probabilities directly. Better gear improves present effectiveness while simultaneously increasing the likelihood of surviving long enough to progress further along the power curve.

In this sense, treasure distribution becomes a form of adaptive pressure.

Who gets the gear? That is also an evolutionary question.

Who receives magical armour?
Who receives healing resources?
Who inherits the dead wizard’s staff?
Who receives the single potion before the descent into the lower crypts?

Survival determines access to equipment, but equipment also determines future survival.

There are some stark choices here.

Equipment reinforces success. Equipment compensates for maladaptation.

The mediocre dwarf tank becomes viable with a suit of magical armour, a tub-thumping shield, regular healing support and tactical consumables. Gear may allow them to self-service some of these needs. Gear held by other members of the party may synergise with the dwarf tank to improve their individual adaptation to the campaign ecology and our collective survival.

Poor base stats are not necessarily fatal if the ecology supplies compensatory adaptation.

If the dwarf demonstrates persistence and adaption to the table they may be rewarded with items that improve their individual adaptation to the campaign ecology.

Equipment represents environmental adaptation, niche specialisation and a long-term social investment in the character. The +1 shield does not go to the weak, the doomed or the comic relief.

Survivors accumulate better armour, weapons, consumable, retainers and networks.

Characters must earn their pick of the gear. Players must earn their pick of the gear.

 The best equipment, or the equipment most fitted to the ecology of the adventure, goes to whoever the party subconsciously thinks is worth reinforcing. Or, whoever the party subconsciously wants to hear more from.

In Part III I will look at the role of evolution in party ecology.