Until quite recently, I had forgotten how much I enjoy reading a good adventure novel. I used to devour books of all shapes and sizes, from pulp fantasy to heady cyberpunk to cosmic horror, but lately I haven’t found anything that sparked my interest. Thankfully, Matt Dinniman’s Dungeon Crawler Carl series has reawakened my literary appetite, despite some considerable flaws.

For those who are unfamiliar, Dungeon Crawler Carl is basically Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy meets The Hunger Games. Present-day Earth has been taken over by an intergalactic corporation and turned into a planet-sized, real-life video game dungeon. A Coast Guard veteran named Carl, along with his cat, Princess Donut, and the few million survivors of the conquest are all forced to participate in a Running Man-style televised death game where they make their way through the dungeon’s eighteen levels. Along the way, the dungeon crawlers fight monsters, gain loot, and level up as if they were in a video game.

Dungeon Crawler Carl has become the poster child for the burgeoning “LitRPG” movement, a literary genre that uses video game and tabletop RPG mechanics as diegetic elements within the narrative. It’s an interesting concept, and one that seems tailor-made for someone like me, who loves both genre fiction and role-playing games. But no matter how entertaining the story may be, I simply cannot get on board with the RPG elements in these books. I think they are fundamentally incompatible with the medium.

See, video games and tabletop RPGs are both interactive forms of storytelling, which means that they need to account for a wide variety of player actions to keep the story going in a way that is both believable and fulfilling. To achieve this, they use abstract concepts like HP, experience points, and skill levels to provide feedback to the player and establish rules for how the player can interact with the story.

Taking these abstractions out of an interactive medium and plopping them into a purely narrative one makes no sense. At best, it adds nothing to the narrative, and at worst it actively detracts from it by grinding things to a halt. Imagine watching John Wick, but there’s a score counter in the corner of the screen, and every 10,000 points Wick stops whatever he’s doing and spends 5 minutes debating over which gun he should upgrade. That’s what LitRPGs are doing.

At the end of the day, this all comes back to the golden rule of storytelling: show, don’t tell. Who wants to read something like, “the hero’s health went into the red, which activated his Second Wind ability and doubled his strength and movement speed”? I don’t want to hear about what game mechanics allowed him to do it. I don’t need numbers to tell me how hurt he is or how dire the situation is. Show me that second wind! I want to see the hero fall to one knee, nearly beaten, and put his last drops of strength into a desperate final attack!

Look, I’m not saying that Dungeon Crawler Carl is a bad series by any stretch of the imagination. If anything, it’s a testament to Dinniman’s skills as a writer that I’m still enjoying the series despite its insistence on caring about numbers going up. And don’t get me wrong, when I’m playing an RPG, I love watching my numbers go up. All I’m saying is that just because two things are enjoyable, it doesn’t mean they go well together. I like seafood and I like donuts, but I wouldn’t want to eat a donut full of tuna.

What do you think? Am I just a cranky old man that can’t get with the times? Are there other LitRPGs that will definitely change my mind? Sound off in the comments below or head on over to our Discord and give us a piece of your mind!

Featured Image: Renegade Game Studios

Boss Rush Podcast – A Podcast about Video Games

The Boss Rush Podcast – A Podcast about Video Games – is the flagship show of the Boss Rush Network and Boss Rush Media. Each week, hosts⁠ Corey Dirrig and LeRon Dawkins⁠ are joined by friends, fellow creators, indie developers, and industry veterans to discuss the latest in the world of video games, including news, rumors, new releases, and what they’ve been playing. They also answer listener questions, debate important industry topics and Boss Rush Banter discussion points, and feature a rotating weekly segment. New episodes post every Monday.

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