I was looking at DCC's modules and they look amazing. It's fun to play them in DCC, but they're so evocative and fantastical that it feels like a waste to just leave them for only one game.

How well would they work used as a general scenario for 5th edition? The DC's wouldn't be the same, but the general idea, the encounters, etc., would be inspired from it.

Would they still be fun without DCC's rule system? Or is it DCC itself that makes them worth playing? After all, 5th edition won't be lethal like DCC is.

I also responded to this on the Goodman forum. I think that the key is not to let the players think that modules are "supposed" to be balanced so that they can win. 3E and beyond tried to introduce challenge ratings and such so that a GM could calculate "fair" encounters. Old school D&D didn't make that claim and DCC doesn't either.

I think that the DCC RPG modules (#67+) are among the most creative and innovative out there, since they avoid common monsters and bring in cool ideas and such. But they are not designed to be "balanced" with character levels, so enjoy them as such.

So... yes, they can be great for 5E as long as the players understand what you are doing to them.

Well, I never run "balanced" anything, so that's fine. I always run sandboxy stuff where anyone can challenge whatever they want, at their own risk.

I think DCC modules are supposed to have Tomb of Horrors style "arbitrary deaths for no reason" style dungeons though that don't necessarily mesh well with D&D where you have to put a lot more work into making characters than just rolling them up though.

I don't know that if characterize DCC RPG adventures as "arbitrary death" scenarios (at least, not after the level 0 funnels). More like "don't do anything stupid or you'll die".

OTOH DCC RPG also has the "roll over the body" rule that lets dead PCs have a chance to survive with a permanent injury or stat loss. It wouldn't be hard to incorporate that into 5e, I think (not harder than converting monsters at least)

At the Total Confusion convention I was just at I tried an introductory Dungeon Crawl Classics adventure from a GM who loved the system (he wrote the scenario.) Everyone made 3 level 0 characters and away we went. It was fun, I could see playing it again in the future. Wasn't too different from standard D&D, just some extra randomness at character creation concerning starting profession and equipment. I have no idea what would be different at 3rd or 4th level for example.

I think most DCC stuff could be fairly easily modded to run with any other OSR game.

The DCC modules are fantastic! I collect them religiously.  They're short, to the point containing everything you need and nothing you don't.  The economy of words makes GMing them much easier. The artistic 3d maps help too.  The concepts and hooks, by and large, are surprisingly original.  Despite the title, these aren't standard dungeon crawls. The one thing some people might criticize is that they are short.

They have DCC stats of course, but these are easily converted to your favorite system.

The trick to conversion, I think, is just to substitute stats from whatever game you are using.  Don't worry about the fiddly bits, focus on the adventures and how they would work in your system of choice.

For example, I recently ran Doom of the Savage Kings and Beyond the Black Gate together as a WFRP 2e short campaign, set in Kislev, using Realm of the Ice Queen as a setting guide. No problem.

If you're not comfortable with conversion at all, Goodman's 5e adventures are good too.  There not quite as creative and instantly usable as the DCC line but they still read easier and play better than most stuff on the market.

Yeah, even a more out-there OSR game like DCC is very easy to use with anything else.