Dungeon Crawler Carl is breaking crowdfunder records

Launched just this week, funded its $250K goal in under a minute, and currently sitting at nearly $5.5M with a month left to go, Dungeon Crawler Carl is already the third biggest TTRPG crowdfunder in history, with a strong chance of climbing to the #1 position.

Based on Matt Dinniman's novel series, which features the titular hero Carl and a cat which belonged to his ex-girlfriend, forced to compete in an intergalactic Running Man-style reality show centered round a deadly dungeon crawl. The World Dungeon is a massive megadungeon created by an alien corporation, and livestreamed across the universe. The players take on the role of crawlers, tasked with surviving the dungeon.

The crowdfunder by Renegade Game Studios includes not just the Dungeon Crawler Carl TTRPG, but also a deck-building card game, and more merchandise than you can shake a stick at--dice, bags, screens, miniatures, trays, playmats, stickers, journals, cards, and more.

The campaign also includes a 'season pass' which gets you digital content throughout the year.

The current leader in the Million Dollar Crowdfunder Club is 2024's Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere RPG, which came in at $14.4M, followed by 2021's Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game, which made $9.3M. Dungeon Crawler Carl currently sits in 3rd place with $5.4M and climbing.

The TTRPG is a d20 'skill-based TTRPG' and features 30+ playable races, backgrounds, and a 'massive class roster'. It has five stats--the D&D stats, but with Wisdom removed. Skills are divided into attack, spell, utility, and passive skills. A skill check is--as you'd expect-- a d20 plus modifiers compared to a target number. As part of the megadungeon's conceit, the actual floor number of the dungeon (in the novels that goes from 1-18) is added to the target number, meaning all tasks are more difficult the further you progress. One feature of DCC is that GMs do not make skill checks; only the players do.

Speaking of 'DCC", many are abbreviating this to the 'DCC' RPG, which is bound to create confusion with Goodman Games' existing Dungeon Crawl Classics, which uses the same abbreviation.

Update—Renegade has reached out to clarify that they do not intend to use the abbreviation ‘DCC’ and instead recommend that people use “CarlRPG’.

Dungeon Crawler Carl is on Backerkit right now, and ends on May 15th.

 

[Mannahnin]

PvP is integral to the books. I wonder how it is incorporated into the game.

huh, yeah. From what they have mentioned of combat (just a tiny bit in the video), that would be tricky since by default it goes NPCs Declare Actions > PCs Declare Actions > Simultaneous Resolution. So PvP would need to modify that.

I've just finally succumbed to reading the first book, and just based on that I would think they'd treat the PvP from the books much the way AD&D treated NPC adventuring parties.

They're ostensibly from the same background and using the same rules as the PCs, in terms of being classed Crawlers, but they're still NPCs from the perspective of the tabletop RPG rules.

 

[Mannahnin]

I think the challenging thing about running a DCC based RPG would be that there is an in-game GM who is adversarial to the in-game players. Having a non-adversarial relationship between the actual GM and players could become tricky because of that.

The most positive way of thinking about the set-up is comparing it to those old-school tournament modules like Temple of Elemental Evil and so on.

Yeah, maintaining the right level of Kayfabe antagonism while the GM roleplays as the in-game antagonists while maintaining a real-life cooperative relationship is always a thing.

Also brings to mind when Wandering DMs did their competitive tournament D&D show The Big Bad, and they specifically split DMing duties- Paul playing the neutral Referee roll, running and adjudicating the game, while Dan took the Big Bad role, running the villains and monsters and hamming up the antagonism, taunting, etc.

 

[Umbran]

Oh, for one, didn't intend to say they were comparably evil.

So, to pull this back around, though, that was my point.

I said that I while I love the books, I don't know that I'd want to play it as a game. I was given a comparison to Aliens. I'm saying that how much more willfully evil and cruel the DCC setting is is a large part of my problem for play. I'm not sure I want to present that world as a GM, nor do I think I want to try to roleplay through that suffering as a player.

That doesn't have to hold for anyone else. I'm just speaking for my table.

 

[Belen]

So, to pull this back around, though, that was my point.

I said that I while I love the books, I don't know that I'd want to play it as a game. I was given a comparison to Aliens. I'm saying that how much more willfully evil and cruel the DCC setting is is a large part of my problem for play. I'm not sure I want to present that world as a GM, nor do I think I want to try to roleplay through that suffering as a player.

That doesn't have to hold for anyone else. I'm just speaking for my table.

We must have stayed at the same Holiday Inn Express last night.

I have run bleak worlds like Midnight but always with the idea that players can change the outcome.

 

[saviirkad]

So, to pull this back around, though, that was my point.

I said that I while I love the books, I don't know that I'd want to play it as a game. I was given a comparison to Aliens. I'm saying that how much more willfully evil and cruel the DCC setting is is a large part of my problem for play. I'm not sure I want to present that world as a GM, nor do I think I want to try to roleplay through that suffering as a player.

That doesn't have to hold for anyone else. I'm just speaking for my table.

Sounds like my responses were taken as a dispute of your original point? If so, my apologies. You were speaking for yourself and your table, I was speaking of myself and mine. The Alien example was just an illustration of my take, not a dispute of yours.

 

[dbm]

PSA - the campaign is into the last three days and there will be no late pledges. So if you are planning to back, make sure you hit the deadline.

 

[Lazybones]

I love the books, and am even more impressed that Dinniman self-published them before they took off and he got a publisher. I've been finishing up a reread before picking up book 8, and based on the gushing I keep seeing about the audiobooks I may have to try that format as well at some point.

Most of my players in my various D&D games have read the books, and we've talked about the pending game in our groups. Looking at the Backerkit page for the game, it looks like the designers get the vibe of the books. It seems like it's ideal for people who basically want to replay scenes from the books (the mini sets, for example, focus on the existing cast of characters). I suppose I'm curious about how deep the game will be beyond that, and whether it can sustain a long-term campaign in the setting.

 

[Lazybones]

The Dungeon Dudes posted a sponsored preview of the basic rules today. They generally seemed to like it, but said that for folks who haven't read the books, "it probably isn't for you."