Two themes of Goodman Games for just about forever have been “cross-genre” and “dungeon crawling.” One product that brought both together was Brendan LaSalle’s Xcrawl. Brendan’s first published credit with Goodman Games was DCC #10: The Sunless Garden, which happened while Brendan was also publishing Xcrawl through Pandahead Publishing. A few years later, Goodman Games wound up publishing Xcrawl. Let's start with Jeremy Mohler's amazing cover to Necromerica, the first Xcrawl release from Goodman Games:

As Stu tells it:

Welcome to Necromerica 4702 (2006) was the first adventure Goodman Games published for Brendan LaSalle’s Xcrawl, a game set in the far future, where life is cheap and dungeoncrawling is big business for livestream broadcasters—a prescient cross between The Running Man, Smash TV, reality TV, professional wrestling and Critical Roll, built with the d20 System. The parody of Joe’s usual DCC introduction goes a long way for establishing the tone:

“Remember the good old days, when orcs were just orcs, dungeons were just dungeons, and bone-sucking pit slime did 1d6 damage, just like everything else in your campaign world? Well, those days are good and gone, sucker. Xcrawl is a world of sell-out superstar adventurers, corporate-sponsored action and live-on-pay-per-view mayhem. Enter at your own risk because if you die...YOU DIE!”

In other words, a perfect fit for Goodman Games, where high-stakes action increasingly made a spectacular character death a reward rather than a punishment. LaSalle had been publishing Xcrawl through Pandahead Productions, the company founded by Brett Brooks (now also Goodman Games’ marketing manager) and his wife Allyson. Joe had met them at an Alliance Distribution open house early on in Goodman Games’ existence, and then crossed paths in Atlanta several times, which led to Brendan writing some DCC adventures. In 2004, he revised Xcrawl from being a d20 sourcebook into full-fledged ruleset compatible with 3.5, but the book faced headwinds in the wake of the d20 bust, resulting in a two-year lull for the game. Joe had aways been interested in Xcrawl and, in light of Brendan’s good experiences publishing DCC adventures, the pair made a deal to publish new Xcrawl material through Goodman Games in exchange for a royalty. The game’s mix of over-the-top reality TV-style challenges, dark humor and gleeful violence made it a natural for convention tournaments.

Those early Xcrawl releases from Goodman Games were so much fun. Eventually we would go on to publish the Pathfinder edition of Xcrawl, and later the Xcrawl Classics rules set. Look at this picture from Gen Con 2014, where Brendan fell in love with the printed edition of Maximum Xcrawl. We received the advance copies of the pathfinder edition of Xcrawl and unboxed them immediately on the streets of Indianapolis. Brendan stares lovingly at his creation:

Here are a few images from the early Goodman Games releases of Xcrawl. Between the interiors by Brad McDevitt and Cliff Kurowski, and Jeremy Mohler’s covers, these turned out great.

Such great illustrations! Tell us which is your favorite in the comments. And tell us about your experiences with Xcrawl over the years!