I picked up this behemoth of a D&D retroclone (this is a thing) called Dungeon Crawl Classics, and it looks awesome! Fuck a D&D, we gotta play this!

It's kind of like Basic D&D + 1st ed AD&D + the smarter design choices of 3rd ed, and then is totally its own thing. Character creation seems pretty great. Each player makes a few 0-level characters with 3d6 for stats (in order), 1d4 hit points, and a random background (which gives you a weapon and a trade good, like a chicken or a pushcart). Everybody runs all their characters at once through a meatgrinder of an adventure. (So there are like 12-15 characters in the adventure.) If any of your characters survive, then you get to promote one to first level and actually give it a class. Huzzah!

The classes on their face are like Basic, where your class choices are Fighter-Mage-Thief-Priest-Elf-Dwarf-Halfling, and fairly static advancement, but they are very interestingly designed and all they all have some really unique mechanic that makes them look really fun to play.

Magic is sort of crazy, with all these interesting variants and effects that can arise from a single spell, and it's not especially safe to use (like corruptive magic in the warhammer games).
Priests have a lot of flexibility to cast multiple spells, but the more they cast, the more they risk getting their gods angry.
Thieves (and halflings) have this luck mechanic they can play with where they have a big pool of modifiers they can spend on their die rolls each day. And halflings even serve as a good luck charm to their whole party and can spend those modifiers on other party members. Finally, a reason to want a halfling around!
One of the things I'm most impressed by is that fighters (and dwarves) get a very freeform combat mechanic called the "deed die." This is a die they roll alongside their d20 that adds to their attack roll. The neat part is before any attack they can declare they're attempting some kind of feat, like, "I'm going to ram the guy behind me in the gut with my elbow, then throw him over the balcony." If the attack hits AND the deed die comes up a 3 or better, then the feat succeeds. So it gets rid of the need for a long list of combat maneuvers and modifiers, and also rewards creativity in fighter players, which is kinda cool.

And the writing and art in the book are very cool and evocative. The art tends towards the simple and old-school, but it's fun and goofy.

Anyway sorry to go on and on, but it just looks like a really fun time. I love old-school D&D/AD&D and this looks like it celebrates it, while also moving on and providing a lot of cool new stuff for it. Maybe we can set up a session some Saturday after the wedding?

(Or perhaps, during the reception?)