You should read (or listen) to Dungeon Crawler Carl

[Stalker0]

TLDR: If you haven't read Dungeon Crawler Carl..... read Dungeon Crawler Carl! (and actually even better....listen to the audiobook).

I recently completed book 7 of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, and it has very quickly become one of my favorite fantasy/sci-fi series. And so here are some reasons you should check it out and get into it.

1) First book is basically a dnd adventure dungeon, fantasy monsters, races, spells, levels. Its what drew me in, it has all the tropes to make a good dnd player go "me likey".

2) But very quickly the series moves from just a zany adventure series into an intense heart felt narrative. You feel the pain of the characters, you feel the stakes, even though the characters at first seem a bit zany, you quickly come to love them.

3) The story does a wonderful job of peeling back the larger narrative. The main character (Carl) knows basically nothing about what is going on when the series starts. But slowly he is made aware of a much larger universe, and you get glimpses into the wider narrative in wonderful bits and pieces, just enough to keep you salivating as to what is really going on out there.

4) The story contains a wonderful mix of insightful competent villains, and mustache twirling idiot villains. There is a fun mix of villains in the series, and while some are just dumb as bricks, only able to do what they do because of the power they wield. And others are highly intelligent and pull off some moves that make you go "holy crap, nice play".

5) This book series basically redefines the "twist". The plot of this series will zig and zag on you so quickly it will make your head spin....and it completely works. So many twists feel "contrived", just to fit the narrative, but in the world of the dungeon there are so many entities pulling at the strings, they sometimes clash in ways that take the narrative in a completely 180 from what you expected....and it works. One of the biggest joys in the series is that you will surprised over and over again.

6) The audiobooks are solid gold. 95% of the voices are done by Jeff Hayes, and he's a master. Seriously some of the female voices I could not believe were him until I looked it up. While reading the series is good, the audiobooks just take it up a notch.

7) Matt Dinniman (the author) is an Anti-Martin. We are 7 books in, and Dinniman keeps cranking them out, with the current book just released a few months ago, and the next one due early next year. This is an author that has my trust he will actually finish his series.



So yeah, I cordially invite you all to join the Crawler Club (or the Princess Posse for those in the know).

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Dungeon Crawler Carl is excellent, I read it after I caught up in The Wandering Inn (which is absolutely incredible, and also very TTRPG, set in a more traditional fantasy setting), Princess Donut really steals the show.

 

[Reynard]

Counterpoint: LitRPG is the worst genre.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Counterpoint: LitRPG is the worst genre.

hard disagree, country is the worst genre.

 

[Reynard]

hard disagree, country is the worst genre.

Compromise with a tie?

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Compromise with a tie?

Heh, gotta be honest, I really love LITRPG-- I didn't think I would and there's a lot of it that's decidedly amateurish (in the sense that places like Royal Road are similar to fanfic sites to begin with) but The Wandering Inn, Dungeon Crawler Carl, and some of the higher quality litrpg anime won me over completely-- its every bit as good as other fantasy when done well.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

I've heard nothing but good things from those who've listened to the audiobooks. I've never listened to an audiobook so maybe I should just read it.

PS: what's LitRPG?

 

[MarkB]

I've listened to the first book and was entertained, but not entirely convinced. The very artificial nature of the competition makes it tough to feel like the stakes are real.

Currently I'm working my way through the Cradle series. I may go back to DCC afterwards.

PS: what's LitRPG?

Pretty much what it says on the tin - literature whose setting features explicit RPG elements like levels and classes.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

I've heard nothing but good things from those who've listened to the audiobooks. I've never listened to an audiobook so maybe I should just read it.

PS: what's LitRPG?

LITRPG is a genre of fantasy inspired by games and their rules, their universe generally includes a 'canon' rules system, although how that happens and how fundamental to reality that actually is differs between stories. The game rules do things like give the characters Skills, Feats, and Spells that give them an essentially magical ability to do things they didn't know how to do, but again, it varies a bit.

• In Dungeon Crawler Carl, there's a specific set of circumstances that see's the characters enter a system of classes and levels, and the source is abundantly clear.
• In the Wandering Inn, people level right as they fall asleep and it's accompanied by their own voice in monotone telling them what they gained based on their life experiences and what's important to them and the internal minutiae of some mysterious system, it's the whole world and basically no one questions it although some people have recorded and analyzed what the system does and passed that knowledge down.
• There are also worlds where the rules are canonized as a way to talk about more organic things, like the amount of magic you have and such. My Pathfinder setting works like this-- level refers to an 'aura level' that are just the thresholds where your growth is noticeable, and ranks of spells correspond to how much magic (which can indeed be measured in units) is flowing through the caster at the instant of casting, and [Double Slice] the feat is recognized as a specific magical signature associated with some techniques, even HP corresponds to the physics of how the magical world works (it's the reason you don't suffer the effects of individual wounds because it diffuses damage across a magical network that permeates your body until your body collapses all at once, just like 0 hp and death saves would imply.)
• Sometimes, it's just a bit, like Order of the Stick.

 

[Clint_L]

I quite enjoy the DCC books - they are basically popcorn entertainment. If you're looking for nuance, this is not the series for you, but if you are looking for plot-driven adventure that is both high stakes and kind of wacky, then it's just gonna be a good time. That said, I do think the cast of characters was getting out of hand, so I am glad that the most recent book took steps towards trimming that back. It's best when it stays focused on Carl and Princess Doughnut (she's a talking cat).

All the game elements work for me, but I could see them being a turn-off for muggles.