The tabletop spin-off of the Dungeon Crawler Carl novels has just become the biggest game crowdfunding campaign in BackerKit's history. Renegade Game Studios' campaign for the Dungeon Crawler Carl RPG has closed with $12,525,040 pledged by 52,390 backers.
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See how it worksIf you have not fallen down the Dungeon Crawler Carl rabbit hole yet, the books are a science-fantasy LitRPG series by Matt Dinniman. Carl and his ex-girlfriend's cat, Princess Donut, are among the few humans left alive after an alien corporation strips Earth for parts, and the survivors are forced into a brutal, televised dungeon crawl for an intergalactic audience. Dinniman started posting the story on Royal Road in 2019, Ace Books picked the series up in 2024, and its first seven books have sold more than six million copies between them.
The campaign funded two separate games. The Dungeon Crawler Carl RPG is a skill-based d20 roleplaying game set in the books' deadly World Dungeon, while Dungeon Crawler Carl: Unstoppable is a solo and co-operative card-crafting deck-builder for players who want the dungeon without assembling a full RPG group. That two-game split is part of why the campaign climbed so high. It was effectively two launches in one, with a hungry built-in audience of book readers waiting for an excuse to roll dice in Carl's world.
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Find events near youFinishing at $12.5 million makes the campaign the biggest tabletop crowdfunder BackerKit has hosted, and the third largest project on the platform in any category.
Backers now face the usual wait while Renegade Game Studios moves into production, but the result is a clear sign that the LitRPG boom has reached the games table. If the books have been sitting on your to-read pile, this might be the nudge to round up a group and find a game night near you.
