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

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

 

[dbm]

The card game is a v2.0 of Unstoppable, which is a card crafting game.

 

[ffanxii4ever]

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.

 

[Vael]

I've really enjoyed the books, eagerly awaiting the next one. I'm impressed how much this has taken off, but I'm still unsure if I'm in for the TTRPG

 

[R_J_K75]

I played the GI Joe RPG from Renegade Games. It had little support with new products maybe once or twice a year. Now it seems like they aren't supporting it anymore. The rules were pretty poorly written and organized. The system felt half complete and the GM had to improvise a lot and make rulings on the fly. I'd be leery to invest in another game developed by them, but that's just based on my previous experience with the one game. So, who knows if things will be different for this one.

 

[Piperken]

Was going to mention a possibility as to why interest is high for this, is that this crowd funder is drawing in the board game crowd as well (where a much bigger pool of potential backers exist)?

 

[mamba]

Was going to mention a possibility as to why interest is high for this, is that this crowd funder is drawing in the board game crowd as well (where a much bigger pool of potential backers exist)?

the TTRPG (16k) has about twice the backers of the card game

 

[Parmandur]

the TTRPG (16k) has about twice the backers of the card game

Probably not hurting the total to combine them, though.

The biggest amount of interest is that the Books are very popular, and people want that absurdist style to play at the table.

 

[ffanxii4ever]

Probably not hurting the total to combine them, though.

The biggest amount of interest is that the Books are very popular, and people want that absurdist style to play at the table.

Exactly. People have been asking about this on and off for a while.

Plus (like Cosmere), you are also getting people that are backing it because they like the property and want to support it, or get all the official art, that sort of thing. Never discount the impact of appealing to whales.