#Booking crawler

[strange-house-art]

Age of Rot is a haunting exploration of forgotten stories, doomed kingdoms, and the struggle of surviving in a world of rot and decay. Through fragmented tales, cryptic dialogues, and hidden truths you'll be able to navigate the delicate balance between the rot curse and your own fading humanity.

Disclaimer: This game doesn't exist.

[joehills]

Summer Reading Recommendation: Dungeon Crawler Carl books 1-7

Three trusted friends each recommended Matt Dinniman’s Dungeon Crawler Carl series of novels to me, but the series stayed toward the back of my queue for almost a year because I found the name of its emergent genre, “LitRPG” unappealing to the point of avoidance. I started the first book about a month ago, loved it, and read the following six immediately. I refuse to recommend you a LitRPG series, because I don’t want this at the back of your queue when it belongs at the front.

After reading the first few chapters of book one, in which Seattleite shipyard worker Carl and his ex-girlfriend’s award-winning cat are drawn into an alien-built underground dungeon where video game rules are enforced, I realized the book is basically structured as a written Let’s Play for a non-existent video game. I counter-propose the term “Lit’s Play” and I will strongly recommend you Matt Dinniman’s Dungeon Crawler Carl series of Lit’s Play novels.

The Dungeon Crawler Carl novels are full of well-grounded human characters coerced, tricked, or forced into comedically ludicrous scenarios with all sorts of bonkers aliens and dungeon NPCs. These situations are structured to condemn systemic exploitation in a way that feels to me like they could have been imagined by Kurt Vonnegut if he were young enough to have grown up reading Douglas Adams and playing D&D. The dialogue is snappy too, and if you enjoy books-on-tape, the narration and voice-work for the characters by Jeff Hayes is masterwork-quality.

If you’re dubious about whether this series is for you, here’s a few points I’ve noted that might encourage you to read it:

The first couple books introduce basic abilities, spells, and game mechanics that the characters try to find ways to exploit. Malicious compliance is king. As the series progresses, the equipment and abilities the characters gain access to and their interactions with other players compound to create new exploits that are increasingly wild and frustrating to their enemies—and delightful to readers like myself!

By book three, The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook, it’s also obvious that Matt Dinniman isn’t only a gaming nerd. He wanted to do a lot of research on trains, track gauges, subways, and other railroad technology, and shares his passion that subject in all sorts of fun ways in the Iron Tangle level of the dungeon. It makes me smile when folks are excited about their interests and Dinniman’s definitely add to the fun!

By book four, The Gate of The Feral Gods, it became clear to me that the series is heading toward Game of Thrones levels of complexity in terms of competing factions with internal strife squabbling about the problems they are most familiar to distract themselves from the shadows of emergent threats they deem impossible. Dinneman does a great job of grounding the external galactic intrigue to in-dungeon events, which keeps its presentation as goofy as everything else. If you appreciated how Bojack Horseman used animal puns to facilitate its unbearable dive into the crushing horrors of addiction and depression, you’ll love how Dungeon Crawler Carl cranks everything familiar and bizarre about game logic up to 11 in order to showcase the depravity of exploitative systems of government and commerce.

I won’t say much about the later novels, except that they rewardingly build on the groundwork of the first few books and escalate everything in ways that made me cackle throughout. After finishing book seven, I immediately restarted the first book, and I’m enjoying it thoroughly.

Strongly recommend.

[nex-kyit]

Finished reading Dungeon Crawler Carl. Man.....

Bonus Donut sketch below + some rambling that I don't think is worth its own post.

Finally, after all this time my years and years of drawing warrior cats is finally coming into use. Hm, I'm still not sure how I feel about Donut in the first piece, was looking at the wiki and it turns out shes black, orange AND white. Ah well, not used to drawing Persians, but I'm statisfied with this as my first attempt. Hardest part is getting the expression. When making WC art, I tend to anthropomorphise the face for expressions, but I tried to go a bit more realistic here. Not sure if it worked well here or not. As for Carl... yes I know he's missing a tatoo or two. I'm on Donut's side here, he has way too many.

[nymph1e]

If you like:

Found family forged in fire

Cats

NBC Hannibal (you'll get it later)

Male main characters who go against the tough guy emotionless stereotypes

Cartoonish gore

Rule of cool applied liberally

Crying (you'll be the one crying)

Some of the best damned fights and confrontations you have ever come across

Edge of your seat action where you have no idea what's going to happen next

Faith in humanity amongst the darkest of situations

Death games

Extremely well written female characters

Fantastic worldbuilding

The tag "crack treated seriously" on Ao3

Rpgs

AIs deteriorating into insanity

Dinosaurs with feathers (and feather boas)

Feet (??)

Then I am BEGGING you on my hands and knees to read Dungeon Crawler Carl. The audiobooks are phenomenal, the series is completely available on kingle unlimited and the first episode of the audio drama is free on Soundbooth Theatre. Literally one of the best series is have read in YEARS.

[eraelias]

Ai, breathy: new achievement 😩💦

Carl:

[gffa]

Me, finishing up Dungeon Crawler Carl book #2, desperately trying to convince all my followers to read it with me, barely being held back by the restraining glass wall:

Me: COME ON OVER, YOU'LL ENJOY IT, JUST GIVE IT A LITTLE TRY, JUST TEN CHAPTERS OR SO TO GET INTO THE RHYTHM OF IT, OR JUST LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT IT-- Me, now pulling out the big guns of proselytizing this series: Hey, did you know THIS THING is literally a main character in the books??

Me: I'm not kidding! She gets almost as much screentime as the narrator himself! HE WOULD DIE FOR THIS BEAUTIFUL PRINCESS. Me: The books are very normal and funny and will only make you laugh and not want to cry about how fucked up capitalism can be and not make you want to start a revolution against shitty corporations who only pretend to care about you, but really will just profit off your impending death like fucking ghouls. Me: It's a very fun time. Come read DUNGEON CRAWLER CARL with me. Don't pay attention to the genre, just trust me and give it a little try, I'm very normal about it, there's a PERSIAN TORTIE CAT IN IT that will SHOOT MAGIC MISSILES FROM HER EYES and her name is PRINCESS DONUT THE QUEEN ANNE CHONK. Me: Also she eventually gets a pet dinosaur that chomps the heads off things. WITH PRETTY BLUE FEATHERS. Me: And that's not even the weirdest thing that happens in the books. It's genuinely great.

[bookaddict24-7]

I keep hearing such great things about this series. Is it on your TBR?

[iconsortwithdemons83]

[ardentlyalien]

Dungeon Crawler Carl Tattoo Flash

[applesandbannas747]

Nobody:

Carl: so this is my cat. We have matching nipple rings and ass tattoos.

[briabooknerd]

[cairfrey]

“I don’t like puking. I don’t want to puke!”

I laughed. “Really? I seem to recall you had a thing for vomiting on my pillow.”

“That was different. I did that on purpose.”

“I knew it! I fucking knew it.”

-Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 1: Dungeon Crawler Carl, Matt Dinniman

[the-rebel-spy-art]

(dungeon crawler carl book 7)

this is how that scene went right

[madebytaylorursula]

A custom order I just finished! I had no idea how popular this book was until I posted about it in my TikTok 😂😂

My Etsy and insta/tiktok is also @madebytaylorursula

[blazecrow]

Picked up the audio and been listening to it non stop since January. I recommend people read Dungeon Crawler Carl going in blind