What Are LitRPGs Anyway? How I Learned To Love Dungeon Crawler Carl

Who is Carl, and why is he crawling in the dungeon? If you’re unaware of the phenomenon of LitRPGs, the concept of Dungeon Crawler Carl might not only seem like a mouthful (try saying it five times) but also a bit confusing. Which fictional world is this? Are these books based on games? Is this a kind of fanfic?

Yes and no. Enter LitRPGs, the subgenre of literature focusing on normal humans who are dropped suddenly into strange situations with role-playing game mechanics. Reading a LitRPG is like reading a hypothetical transcript of an actual Dungeons & Dragons game. Sure, the chance may be taken out of it, but in its place are expertly crafted story arcs, boss battles, and character development. At first, they seemed like a novelty, but now this genre is breaking into the mainstream — and it’s not showing any signs of slowing down.

I first heard of LitRPGs when I interviewed actor Felicia Day about the topic back in 2023. “Picture a protagonist, which you could project into going through either an apocalyptic world of Earth or a fantasy world,” she said of the genre. “And basically, as you do things, you level up, and you’re taking that journey of getting more powerful and fighting bad guys with the main character.” Suddenly, I realized what this was like: isekai.

Now, “isekai” is something you either know nothing about or everything about. Literally translated, it means “different world” or “other world,” which is a pretty apt description. Isekai stories involve an everyday character who finds themselves suddenly transported into a strange realm that they have to figure out on the fly. It’s a very common anime genre: a character passes away (colloquially referred to as “being hit by a truck”) and is reincarnated in another world. You can usually find isekai stories with titles like That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation, or Re: Zero - Starting Life In Another World.

It’s a unique term across Japanese media, but it’s not unique to that culture. To a certain extent, The Chronicles of Narnia is an isekai. So is A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Even Outlander has elements of isekai. So, in a sense, LitRPG is the latest version of this concept.

In preparation for that Felicia Day interview, I thumbed through Dungeon Crawler Carl and He Who Fights With Monsters, two of the most popular LitRPGs of the time. I only had time to fully read one, so I picked He Who Fights With Monsters, a very classic isekai-style story where an Australian office manager is dropped into a fantasy world because of a ritual gone wrong. I thought it was fine, but nothing much more than the gimmick.

In the years since, I found my mind often wandering back to the genre. There are LitRPGs about farming, coffee shops, and apocalypses — everything under the sun. Had I written off the genre too quickly? When I spoke to Day, she suggested Dungeon Crawler Carl would be the perfect entry point, so I bought it on Kindle and started reading in earnest this time.

I loved it.

I don’t know what it was about it this time, but the story of Carl, a Seattle-based electrician who finds himself one of the few survivors of an alien-led apocalypse along with his ex-girlfriend’s cat, Princess Donut, suddenly became one of the most gripping stories I had ever read. I remembered something Day said about these books being like reality TV, and that’s especially true of DCC, which stages a whole dungeon-crawling tournament as part of an intergalactic game show, complete with Carl and Donut appearing on alien talk shows.

The series, written by Matt Dinniman, honestly has more in common with The Hunger Games than any other LitRPG: players in the galactic reality show are given loot boxes, sponsors, and have to think about how to make their fights more interesting to viewers. Carl even (inadvertently) coins a catchphrase: “Goddammit, Donut!”

As I kept reading book after book (there are currently eight books in the series), I noticed something interesting: I started to become better at video games. As I watched Carl and Donut navigate their way through in-world puzzles, skill trees, items, and builds, I became more aware of how those game mechanics worked in real-world games. As someone who is all left thumbs when it comes to games, this is tantamount to a miracle.

Dungeon Crawler Carl will soon become a series on Peacock, with Seth MacFarlane among its executive producers and Shadow and Bone’s Eric Heisserer and Thor: Ragnarok’s Chris Yost serving as co-showrunners. At San Diego Comic-Con, it was announced that audiobook narrator Jeff Hays will reprise the role of Princess Donut and provide the voice for the series as well, a choice that was met with jubilation from the fandom.

In 2023, these stories were a niche community. In 2026, they’re starting to become more mainstream, and in a few years, when this series finally premieres, it could become the next big thing. Thirty years ago, a film franchise based on comic books seemed like a wild idea, but then we got the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Five years ago, a video game prestige TV show seemed impossible, but then we got The Last of Us.

A movie version of a book utilizing role-playing game mechanics may sound like a pop-culture mishmash, but that’s exactly what fans are hungry for. If you can open your mind to the possibilities, it very well could become the new frontier for fantasy across all media.