Alternate Occupations (2012)

From the Introduction:

One of the more innovative or at least more interesting rules in Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classics is the ‘funnel.’ The funnel is when players take a band of commoners (0-level characters) and run them through the gauntlet of a full adventure. Players then pick through their surviving commoners and choose the character for further adventuring. One way to look at the funnel is to imagine players starting out as the angry mob seen in old horror films – the band of commoners armed with torches and pitchforks that storm the evil overlord’s castle. The funnel answers what happens to those commoners when they breach the gates; it also asks what happens afterwards. Do the survivors go back to their hovels to continue a life of ignominious drudgery, or does their brush with death and horror awaken their courage and a sudden desire for adventure?

So why create a supplement for the funnel? While the Occupation Table in DCC provides a number of interesting occupations, there is always room for more variety. When my players roll on the table, they want to generate a large number of different and interesting occupations. Also, while our players don’t necessarily mind randomly determining their occupation, some of them grumble about randomly being elves, dwarves, or halflings. Others question why their cheesemonger will become a wizard or their squire a rogue.

With these issues in mind, I created several Occupation Tables that players use when starting a funnel. The first is the Default Table that lists all of the occupations from Dungeon Crawl Classics plus new occupations as well as the associated race. Like the original Occupation Table, this table randomly determines both a character’s starting occupation and race. I strongly encourage the use of this table. For groups that want a more focused funnel, I also created separate tables based on Race and Class.

Also included in Alternate Occupations is a limited list of occupation definitions. This list provides a brief description of certain occupations whose true function may not be obvious or well known to both the players and the judge; for example, I had no clue what a beadle was!