Dungeon Crawler Carl makes me want to be the dungeon AI


⚠️ Spoiler warning ⚠️

This is an un-edited rant with spoilers for the entire Dungeon Crawler Carl series that will only make sense if you've read Dungeon Crawler Carl.

My latest obsession


Dungeon Crawler Carl has been my latest obsession since December. I'm at book 6 right now. As a GM, of course I immediately get excited about running my own season of Dungeon Crawler World. As a game designer, my hands are itching to make a game out of it. I know an official game is coming. But I don't want to wait. And I don't trust official IP games to be good. What are the odds that they'll make the game exactly the way I want it? There are infinite choices to make, so the odds should be infinitesimal... right? At least that's how I feel about IP games.

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Setting flavour


So let's dig in. I want this game to be a future season of Dungeon Crawler Carl, taking place after the events in the books. I'm going to assume Dungeon Crawler World isn't utterly destroyed in the 25th season. The chances of that are becoming smaller with each chapter.

The setting flavour of DCW is determined by three things;

  • The seeded planet. The DCW rooms are built from rooms taken from the planet when the crawl begins. The seeded race can vary, but the planet's level of technological advancement when the crawl is started seems to be similar across seasons; pre spage age, a.k.a. our present day.
  • Showrunners create items, characters and plots that stick to a certain genre. Borant often does fantasy. Valtay often does sci-fi. 
  • Sponsors. Sponsors can give benefactor boxes to crawlers that fall outside of the above limitations. These are limited only by the technological advancement of the galaxy as a whole. You'll see this type of tech again whenever a player is taken off stage, or when someone or something is illegally smuggled into the game.
The galaxy's level of technological advancement is locked in. For a future season, you could choose a different seeded race. But crawlers can choose to change race during the crawl, so that's not very interesting. Might as well pick a human-seeded world and let players pick something more exotic if they wish. That suggests the planet is earth-like, or at least hospitable to humans. You could go for something completely different, but the players will soon be pulled under the planet's surface so it won't matter much, and a large part of the series' fun is recognising familiar things being turned against the crawlers, often with the showrunners engaging in offensive caricature to give players more reasons to rebel against them. So best to leave the planet earth-like and encourage GMs to make contemporary off-brand references. That leaves one interesting choice; the showrunners.

Decisions made
  • Post-DCC canon
  • Earth-like planet
  • Uncanny valley humans
  • Modern-day, off-brand cultural similarity

The showrunners


The book names a few showrunners, their preffered genre and their preferred game mode. For Borant, it's a fantasy/steampunk dungeon crawl. For the Valtay, it seems to be a cyberpunk battle royal. Calling the show Dungeon Crawler World seems to be a misnomer; not all showrunners run an actual crawl like this.

It's totally fine to leave the choices of genre and playmode to the players' choice in session 0. Unless we want to fill the game with setting genre and game mode appropriate sample items, locations, etc. In this case, our work can quickly get out of hand. I'd prefer to focus on one genre and playmode. But, to stay true to DCW, it would be good to keep this modular, allowing players to swap in a different setting genre or play mode. I'd prefer to pick one showrunner other than Borant to make it feel distincly different from season 25. But there is a reason Borant runs the show for Dungeon Crawler Carl; it makes for a very destinct threefold juxtaposition of fantasy, modern-day and sci-fi. Sticking to this makes it clear to players what items come from earth, the showrunners or sponsors. So the game benefits from creating low-tech showrunner. It would be nice to have a section to create other showrunners.

Decisions made 
  • Non-Borant, but still low-tech showrunner.
  • Nice-to-have: toolbox to create other showrunners.

The floors


We also know that all floors that are a multiple of three are locked in across seasons, with only slight variations, but the other rooms are free game for the showrunners to design as they fit. This is where a GM can best inject their own ideas. I will design my own floors, and can include them as just an example. It would be a nice extra to add a floor building toolkit.

There is another very important factor that determines the nature of the crawl, and that is the Dungeon AI. 

Decisions made
  • Floors that are multiples of three are broadly pre-defined. 
  • GMs will add specifics during play, making each version unique to that table.
  • Other floors are left entirely to the GM.
  • Nice-to-have: floor toolkit and a floor sample for each level.


The dungeon AI
Art by u/Mashermello, Reddit


The only thing we know about the AIs from other seasons is that sooner or later they all go primal. The rest we'll have to infer from the DCC AI, who'se key difference seems to be that it is going primal sooner. Based on the current AI, we see the following behaviour;

The AI does what it can to generate the most money for the showrunners, and does so autonomously, even against the will of the showrunners. They AI can experience pleasure, and is able to explore what does and does not pleasure them, and pursue this. In the satirical nature of DCC, these pleasures are vices. The core tension of the AI seems to be clear; generate revenue vs. indulge in vices. They have the power to award achievements and items to players. These decisions can be blocked by a court of law. 

We'll get into the court of law, but we already have an interesting dynamic. The showrunners want to maximize their revenue, but also abuse the game as a platform for their propaganda. Meanwhile, the AI is programmed to maximize revenue for the showrunners, but also desires to pursue its vices. The big difference between their actions during the game, is that the showrunners prepare the broad strokes of the game, but do not have the capacity to populate it, or to make all the live rulings. That's where they need the AI. And the AI is bound to serve them. At least in the beginning. Their respective jobs seem to reflect different aspects of GMing; Prep, Procedure, Patch (coined by Chris McDowall).

Decisions made
  • While setting up the campaign, the GM can pick or roll for an AI vice.
  • GM prep is done as the showrunners.
  • Following procedure during play is done as the AI.
  • Making rulings during play (patch) is done as the AI.

The court of law


There is a court of law where any party can file a lawsuit against rulings made while running Dungeon Crawler World. Most commonly rulings made by the AI. This effectively serves as a retcon, allowing decisions during the game to be reverted.

Decisions made
  • Retcons are made by players, as the court of law, against the AI. 
  • Players can invoke the court to retcon AI decisions. We assume that there is always a party that stands to gain from such a retcon. 
  • However, the AI has a Going Primal track. Each time the court interferes with AI actions, its Going Primal track advances. This increases its readyness to block showrunner actions and court rulings.

Well look at the time

All right. That's it for now. I didn't even get to the parts I thought I'd be writing about; how the RPG Deathmatch Island is a good source of inspiration for the survivor style tropes, and how the game Paranoia is a good source of inspiration for having the GM portray a computer system, with layers of rules that can be discovered and altered. Perhaps another time!

Do you like this style of stream-of-thought blogging? Do you dislike it? Let me know. I'm trying something new because I noticed I blocked myself from blogging because editing it was time I'd rather spend on game development.

Also, I do not support AI art. For this quick blog I pulled images from the internet quickly to break up sections, where I'd normally do a background check. Let me know if something is AI, in which case I want to replace it, or if you know who made it, in which case I want to credit them.

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