A Crawl of One's One - Part 1 (Dungeon Crawler Carl RPG)

 

Full disclosure: I have been a paid contractor for Renegade Game studios, the publisher of the Dungeon Crawler Carl Roleplaying Game in the past and hope to do more contract work for them in the future. You can find my full list of RPG credits here.

I started to listen to the Dungeon Crawler Carl audiobooks at the end of 2025 at the suggestion of a friend... I'd heard a little about litrpg, and I had thought that it wouldn't be for me, much like I'd tried getting into several popular actual play series for RPGs and always bounced off of them—I enjoy running and playing RPGs much, much more than I like to watch or listen to other people play them and I figured that the Carl books would hit that same mental wall for me. I was wrong and I quickly burned through the first seven books and then listened to them a second time before the eighth, A Parade of Horribles, came out in May 2026, and at the time that I'm writing this, I'm on my third series listen... It's become a comfort read/listen, I won't try to defend it as high art, but it is fantastic for what it is and much more impressive than I expected as well as being surprisingly resonant. 

But this isn't a book review post, the rest of this post is going to be the start of a series covering my thoughts on prepping a Dungeon Crawler Carl Campaign. There will be major spoilers throughout, so this is your final warning. If you haven't read the books, give 'em a try. If you're not vibing with them when you get halfway through the first book, then you probably won't and as a former lit major who read many, many books I didn't like in college, unless you need to finish a book to pass a class or you're getting paid to or something, there's no reason to suffer when you could be doing other things. All to say, if you haven't read at least the first three books, Dungeon Crawler Carl, Carl's Doomsday Scenario and The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook, you should go do that or be prepared to have major plot points of the series spoiled. 

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Also, before you click away or click down to continue reading, consider checking out my new blog page where I'll be listing upcoming events, like a chance to play in a Dungeon Crawler Carl RPG introductory one-shot or board game nights. 

Antagonist Relations - Upcoming Events.

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