Books and Literature

LitRPG is hot. Why fans can't get enough of books like 'Dungeon Crawler Carl'

USA TODAY

May 9, 2026Updated May 17, 2026, 6:29 p.m. ET

Alien invasions. Heart boxers. Tiara-toting show cats. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, welcome to your newest obsession: “Dungeon Crawler Carl.” The fervor around the series has taken hold of the book world and doesn’t seem to be letting up any time soon.

Last month, Colorado Avalanche goalie Scott Wedgewood requested a themed game night celebrating the books by Matt Dinniman. At BookCon, readers begged and pleaded to make it off the standby line into a panel featuring Dinniman and the series’ audiobook narrator, Jeff Hays. Here at USA TODAY, where the book has become a mainstay on our Best-selling Booklist, we have a slew of passionate fans on staff. One even has a Princess Donut tattoo, an ode to Dinniman’s feline diva character.

As the new "Dungeon Crawler Carl" book, "A Parade of Horribles", publishes next week, the highly addictive, hilarious series continues to draw in new fans. Here's how it's sparking wider interest in the Literary Role-Playing Game (LitRPG) genre as a whole.

What is LitRPG?

LitRPG combines sci-fi and fantasy storytelling with video game mechanics like stats and quest logs. In “Dungeon Crawler Carl,” a man and his ex-girlfriend’s cat survive an alien invasion and must now participate in a video game-like dungeon reality television show with intergalactic viewership.

Many LitRPG readers grew up gaming or playing tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons. Brandon Dwane, a 28-year-old reader from Massachusetts, has always been a gamer but never considered himself a reader. That changed when he started reading LitRPG.

“It’s just like basically reading a video game or reading a tabletop story,” Dwane says. He’s been devouring the genre since, recommending new reads on his TikTok account.

Like a video game, characters in LitRPG novels are leveling up along the way, complete with stats. The main character gets stronger as they progress. They develop new skills. This, to Dwane, is the most enticing part of the genre. He considers himself a “dopamine junkie.”

“The biggest thing for me is obviously a good story, but my main focus and my main favorite thing about the subgenre is just the stat progression, the quick and aggressive stat progression,” Dwane says. “I would consider myself almost a junkie for it. It's probably not a great connotation to have or a great way to explain it, but it's the truth.”

System apocalypse, dungeon core and subgenres galore

LitRPG has international roots, according to Rhea Lyons, the director of content acquisition at Audible. Lyons, a reader of LitRPG herself, first heard about the series when she was working as a literary scout, identifying foreign books to translate and publish in English.

“It started as web novels coming out of China, Russia and Korea and western LitRPG writers would basically pass around bootleg translations,” Lyons says. “Today, even, there’s different sites that you can go to and get bootleg translations of stuff coming out of Pan-Asia. The [western] LitRPG writers use that to figure out what the hot tropes are going to be.”

It’s something different for everyone. LitRPG falls under the broader “parent genre” of progression fantasy, a subgenre of fantasy that focuses on the protagonist’s increased power throughout a story. There are many types of LitRPG. There’s system apocalypse, like “Dungeon Crawler Carl,” where a game-like "system" of somekind is thrust upon the world. In Isekai or portal LitRPG, players are transported into a game scenario like “Jumanji.” In dungeon core, a magical entity is in charge of running a dungeon.

Some readers – often gamers – love numbers. Others just want a fast-paced story. Lyons describes it like peanut butter: on one end of the spectrum is “crunchy”; numbers-heavy books with a fanbase who won’t hesitate to fact-check the writer on their math. On the other end is “creamy,” or books more focused on storytelling. “Dungeon Crawler Carl” is somewhere in the middle, Lyons says, with great progression but also a sweet found family story at the center.

Why ‘Dungeon Crawler Carl’ is widening the LitRPG spotlight

Matt Dinniman attends Audible's celebration of the “Dungeon Crawler Carl” fandom at San Diego Comic-Con on July 26, 2025.

It makes sense that LitRPG would be so enticing to gamers and tabletop players, but I know many hardcore fans who do not fit into that demographic. What is it about LitRPG and “Dungeon Crawler Carl” that is attracting readers far and wide?

Dwane thinks it’s because they make for the perfect escapist reads in dark times. He started reading them during the early pandemic days, and finally found something that made it feel like “time was just whizzing by” while on lockdown.

BookTok also may be helping. Unlike other genres, advertisements don’t really work for LitRPG, Dinniman says. He knows this from his self-publishing days. You’d have better luck on Reddit or Facebook.

“This community has always been word of mouth. You can spend literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising and it's not going to be worth one penny compared to someone going on one of those groups and [saying], ‘I just read this. This is really good,’” Dinniman says. “These readers, they're very voracious and they're very opinionated and they're very loud about what they like.”

Just take the fervor for a “Dungeon Crawler Carl” tabletop game. A current BackerKit campaign to raise funds for the game aimed to secure $250,000. It’s nearly reached $10 million.

“Dungeon Crawler Carl,” specifically, attracts readers because of its humor. There’s also a community aspect – like many LitRPG authors, Dinniman started publishing the series as a web novel, chapter by chapter. He lets Patreon subscribers vote on plot elements like they're the alien audience in his books.

“You can’t say enough about it. It is so unique in the genre and I can’t not recommend it to people … but I almost feel guilty doing so when they read in the beginning, because it’s almost like if you read it, there’s nothing else like it,” Dwane says.

Lyons agrees: “I also personally think that ‘Dungeon Crawler Carl’ weirdly ticks all of these boxes of content. It’s about found family. It feels so complicated and highfalutin with all of these things that we’re talking about with LitRPG and international subgenres or whatever. And it really just boils down to this incredible bond of family between this man and his ex-girlfriend’s cat and it’s simple and universal at its heart.”

The audiobook of “Dungeon Crawler Carl,” narrated by Hays, is another selling point. Fans praise his voice acting, and love the range of distinct voices he creates for the eclectic cast of characters. The series has clocked over 140 million listening hours on Audible.

LitRPG “overindexes in audio greatly,” Lyons says, crediting the fast-paced, satisfying nature. She knows, anecdotally, that many of Dinniman’s longtime listeners are long-haul truck drivers who need to pay attention for long stretches of road time.

Jeff Hays (L), pictured here with Matt Dinniman, brings the full cast of "Dungeon Crawler Carl" to life in an immersive, unputdownable audiobook.

Best LitRPG books to read first

Convinced yet? Here are our recommendations for LitRPG and progression fantasy books, sourced from readers, authors and publishers steeped in the genre:

“It still lives and breathes in the self-publishing world and don't just go for the popular ones,” Dinniman says, his advice for genre newbies. “I would find out where the people gather and talk because there are so many gems out there."

Clare Mulroy is USA TODAY’s Books Reporter, where she covers buzzy releases, chats with authors and dives into the culture of reading. Find her on Instagram, subscribe to our weekly Books newsletter or tell her what you’re reading at [email protected].

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