BookSeries· 2020· Fantasy

Dungeon Crawler Carl

by Matt Dinniman

Dungeon Crawler Carl: it draws on 2 recorded sources.

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What influenced Dungeon Crawler Carl

The works this one is recorded as drawing on.

DnD, D&D

Tabletop RPG · 1974

InfluenceHIGH

The whole LitRPG form is D&D's grandchild and Dinniman's novel does not disguise it. Character sheets, levels, loot tables and a dungeon that goes down in floors are printed on the page as mechanics rather than described as magic. What Carl adds is the joke underneath: the dungeon is a televised game show, so the rules exist because somebody is watching, which is the one thing a tabletop session never has to explain.

The Running Man

Book · 1982

InfluenceMEDIUM
  • Deadly entertainment: Like The Running Man, Dungeon Crawler Carl turns survival and death into televised entertainment for a massive audience.
  • Anti-establishment protagonist: Ben Richards and Carl are rebellious, angry survivors who refuse to cooperate with the systems controlling them.
  • Corporate/media satire: Both criticize commercialized violence, ratings, sponsorships, and audiences consuming suffering as entertainment.
  • DCC expands the concept: Dinniman combines the Running Man-style death game with dungeon crawling, RPG/MMORPG mechanics, monsters, loot, and absurd comedy.

About the work

Dungeon Crawler Carl

This is a series.

A man. His ex-girlfriend's cat. A sadistic game show unlike anything in the universe: a dungeon crawl where survival depends on killing your prey in the most entertaining way possible. In a flash, every human-erected construction on Earth—from Buckingham Palace to the tiniest of sheds—collapses in a heap, sinking into the ground. The buildings and all the people inside have all been atomized and transformed into the dungeon: an 18-level labyrinth filled with traps, monsters, and loot. A dungeon so enormous, it circles the entire globe. Only a few dare venture inside. But once you're in, you can't get out. And what's worse, each level has a time limit. You have but days to find a staircase to the next level down, or it's game over. In this game, it's not about your strength or your dexterity. It's about your followers, your views. Your clout. It's about building an audience and killing those goblins with style. You can't just survive here. You gotta survive big.

Everything in Dungeon Crawler Carl