GMBC ep11 - Dungeon Crawler Carl: Where Dark Comedy Meets Role-Playing Chaos
Speaker A
00:00:10.480 - 00:01:07.320
Welcome to the Game Masters Book club where great fiction becomes your next great role playing experience. The Apocalypse Will be Televised. Dungeon Crawler Carl is a science fiction fantasy in the lit RPG genre.
Marshall Smith, Eric Drix and George Krupsky are back to escort quest us through the darkly comical fantasy trope filled, stick it to the powerful story and help earn some new achievements in our tabletop games. Okay, crawlers, let's get into the conversation.
Okay, we're gonna have our game masters introduce themselves to you, but we're also gonna have them in honor of Dungeon crawler Carl, tell us about what is the strangest item they have ever given out or were given during a tabletop rpg. So I think we're gonna start with Eric this time. So Eric, please introduce yourself and the strangest item that you've ever received in a ttrpg.
Speaker B
00:01:07.800 - 00:02:00.300
Oh, too many strange items. My name is Eric. I'm a game master from the Philadelphia area. Played a variety of games over the years, loves books and I'm just excited to be here.
The item that I recall was we got this amazing. It was in an older edition of D and D where you could use a SAP to not knock people out.
So we had a plus three SAP of Thundering, which meant randomly we could sneak behind people, knock them out, but every now and then it would emit this thunderous noise of 300ft of noise, alerting pretty much every guard in the area that we just, you know, something was going on here, which was really the opposite of the intention of the item. But it just became sort of a funny sort of like, oh, this is a great SAP, but oh, we don't want to use it.
Speaker A
00:02:00.460 - 00:02:06.460
It's going to do the job. But yeah, that is definitely an odd one. Marshall, would you like to go next?
Speaker B
00:02:07.340 - 00:02:07.740
Sure.
Speaker C
00:02:08.140 - 00:03:24.430
So my name is Marshall Smith. I've been gaming for several decades now. Since I was a wee lad.
I've had some professional publications out there in 7th Sea and Warlords of the Accord Lands and Spycraft Edge of Midnight. So those are my credentials.
My wacky magic item is actually in the game that I am currently playing in which my dm, Reese Ozby, as just a wacky one time thing, gave me a little magic item which are a set of vambraces that are intended to be a child's toy. And I made up that when my character was a kid he was obsessed with this hero named Jace the Walker.
And these vambraces were made as sort of a tie in product to this hero. And anytime you said One of the hero's catchphrases, it would emit these red sparks and just make this da, da, da, da.
And theoretically it's supposed to give you advantage on intimidation checks. I've never actually used it for that, but it has become such a key magic item for our entire group. It is just the most popular magic item.
Speaker B
00:03:25.070 - 00:03:25.710
That's fun.
Speaker A
00:03:25.950 - 00:03:31.310
That is totally cool. George, go ahead, tell us. Tell the people about your magic.
Speaker D
00:03:32.350 - 00:04:18.720
Well, I'm George Krupsky and like these other guys, I've been role playing almost since there were role playing games. And probably about 75, 80% of my time has been as a game master. I'm going to talk a little, not about the strangest, but about one of the strangers.
Stupidest things I ever saw given out. When I was in high school, I joined a game, I think there were six player characters.
We were playing first edition D and D. Within those six player characters, there were five players had either a staff of power or a staff of the magi, which likes. Yeah, actually four because one person had two. He had one for each hand. You know, if one of those things cracks, it's a problem. And they all cracked.
I was the only player to survive.
Speaker A
00:04:19.520 - 00:04:22.320
Wow. Wow. Oh my goodness.
Speaker D
00:04:22.800 - 00:04:47.540
Yeah, we. We had a. We were all hyped up for this, what we thought was going to be big fight. And the fight was resolved almost immediately.
So there was all this tension and the players just started fighting, like arguing with one another. And it escalated and as soon as I saw it coming, I'm like, I leave. I vacate the vicinity and blam. Yep.
Speaker A
00:04:47.940 - 00:05:54.640
Oh my goodness. All right, well, my name is Eric Jackson and I'm the host.
And I also have been playing role playing games for forever and I have a habit of handing out bizarre items. I will choose one of my more recent ones. We had a halfling paladin who got a set of plate mail, which is of course every paladin's dream.
And it had the ability to cast bears endurance, which allowed them to do all of these wonderful, like strength based things. And it even caused fear so you could stand up and roar. And what made this hilarious was that it shrank to the character size.
And our paladin was a halfling. So this tiny little thing would growl and create what we called bearer as opposed to terror, as she screamed into combat as a halfling in plate mail.
That is the first and most oddest thing that I've given out in a while, so I'm going to go with that.
Speaker B
00:05:54.720 - 00:05:55.200
Nice.
Speaker A
00:05:55.680 - 00:07:17.980
Let me Talk about the book then. Now that everybody knows who everybody is, the apocalypse will be televised.
Dungeon Crawler Carl is a science fiction fantasy book in the lit RPG genre which combines traditional storytelling with game like elements.
In an essential part of the story, Carl and his ex girlfriend show cat Princess Donut survive the initial arrival of aliens known as the Borant Corporation and enter a dungeon like game show, the winner of which receives control of the remaining resources on planet earth.
But this 18 level dungeon is a killer filled with traps, puzzles and monsters, but also filled with loot, magic items and the ability to level up and take on better stats, skills and gain magical spells and powers. There's also an audience as Dungeon Crawler World is the biggest reality show across the galaxy.
Now Carl and Princess Donut, who gets magically transformed into a human level intelligent talking cat, have to figure out how to survive with enough style to keep the universe happy and sending them loot so they even have a shot at surviving. Darkly comical Dungeon Crawler Carl is an exciting romp and a comforting stick it to the powerful.
Even as I'm trapped in this hellscape story that is unsurprising resonant with me here in 2025. Anyone have anything to add?
Speaker B
00:07:17.980 - 00:07:34.900
I think that was a great recap. I think there's a lot of great themes in this book.
You know, things like discussion of loss, survival, found family identity, humanity, and just like you said, that whole notion of how do you sort of reclaim power when you feel powerless.
Speaker C
00:07:34.980 - 00:07:57.010
Yeah, that, that sums it up really well. The tone of the book is interesting in that it is definitely a comedy.
There is no question that is a comedy, but it does dive into some darker and more serious moments, sometimes unexpectedly so. It was a surprisingly mature book for being such a goofy comedy.
Speaker A
00:07:57.090 - 00:08:07.690
I will agree that that was one of my greatest concerns about the book. Having read a description of it, I had thought it was just going to be here we are, murder, hobos, blah.
Speaker D
00:08:07.690 - 00:08:08.530
Blah blah blah blah.
Speaker A
00:08:08.530 - 00:08:13.550
And it turned out to be pretty deep. Jord, you have to add to our story analysis.
Speaker D
00:08:13.870 - 00:08:23.390
No, your summary is a pretty good one. I read the rest of the books, but obviously this just scratches the surface of what I think is supposed to be what an eight book series? 10 book.
Speaker A
00:08:23.550 - 00:08:53.789
In an interview on the Before We Go blog, Dinnaman stated that he planned for the series to span 10 books, but quote, nothing is set in stone. End quote. Well, George, why don't you talk to us about how you might take this lit RPG masterpiece. Can we call it that? It's quite Good.
Why don't you tell us about how you think you might be able to run a dungeon crawl for another group of dungeon crawler Carls?
Speaker D
00:08:53.869 - 00:08:55.349
Mechanically speaking, you mean?
Speaker A
00:08:55.349 - 00:08:56.589
Yes, mechanically speaking.
Speaker D
00:08:56.589 - 00:09:50.510
As I said last time, I tend to go old school. So I was thinking something like Paranoia has the right tone. You'd have to fiddle with the mechanics a bit. I was thinking about this.
In Paranoia you have a series of clones. I would probably convert that mechanic to like plot armor or something like that.
Because obviously as a game master, you want your players, you want to challenge them, but you also want them to get far. You know, if they die too quick, that's no fun.
I think that the AI certainly it's got a lot of people that it can kill, but as I would have to assume that as favorites are picked, it wants those people to last for a little while. I know one of the later editions of Paranoia has something called Perk, where if you do something crazy, you get a bonus.
I think it's almost like D and D inspiration, but that could easily tie in with the likes of followers that the dungeon crawlers get, or just the.
Speaker A
00:09:50.510 - 00:09:52.030
Fetishes of the AI.
Speaker D
00:09:52.590 - 00:10:52.190
Yes, yes, that's almost the GM telling you, hey, here's how you're going to get those points from me. Lean into it.
The other system I was thinking of was the, I believe, seventh edition, the most recent edition of Gamma World, which mechanically I've never played it, but I've read it and it ties in with fourth edition D and D, which is the most button mashing of the D and D editions, which I think ties in with some of the vibe of Dungeon Crawler call. But more importantly, there's decks of collectible decks of cards for treasures and mutations that can be handed out under certain circumstances.
And I would envision that if I were running this.
Yeah, everyone's going to have their character sheets, but I'm going to be throwing treasure out, probably in the form of cards that people can collect and shuffle around and use.
So if I were going to run it, I would have to craft a system, but it would most likely be some version of Paranoia with elements of most recent Gamma World thrown in.
Speaker A
00:10:52.190 - 00:10:57.390
That is insanely creative. That's fantastic. Go ahead, Marshall, why don't you take on the challenge next?
Speaker C
00:10:57.550 - 00:11:45.110
Okay. Immediately when I first started reading the book, my mind went to xcrawl Classics by Goodman Games, which I've only ever played as a con one shot.
I've never tried to play a campaign with it. It is a fun, hysterical game. It was Originally written for D20.
Goodman also puts out the DCC Dungeon Crawl Classics, so they've ported over to that and A Pathfinder. But Extrawl Classics is about going through and solving a dungeon for a television audience.
It is a little more WWE slash Running man than it is the kind of thing that Carl is going through, but it's mostly just changing tone. I don't think you would have to change any of the mechanics to do Dungeon Caller Carl.
Speaker A
00:11:45.110 - 00:11:49.110
It's already even dcc. Eric, what do you got for us?
Speaker B
00:11:49.430 - 00:12:43.540
Oh, I bounced this one around and I eventually just settled with just straight up D and D. But admittedly I would modify some things, you know, I would do starting everyone off at level 0 and slow, build their skills and attributes even further to get to that first level. Introduce a new attribute called popularity, where then you can have that value going up and down.
Maybe use some optional rules like the spell point system, add an extra more odd skills if I felt they were needed. And as far as achievements, which is a big part of the game, that could be experience points, items.
It could even be in 5th edition they had a system called Charms which were these like one time little bonuses that could be thrown out and provided to players and I'd make it lethal. But yeah, Dungeons and dragons or whichever 5th edition 2024 I think would play nice.
Speaker A
00:12:44.260 - 00:15:12.310
No, I think it absolutely would. I'm gonna agree with everyone, but for George, I'm going to say new achievement Combo Master.
I didn't have anything that touched on Gamma World or Paranoia, but I really liked the idea, idea of the paranoia setting that feels very much like Dungeon Crawler Carl. Match that to the OP Gamma World powers and you've got a fantastic combo.
But my initial thought was the same as Marshall, that Dungeon Crawl Classics, which is part of the old school Roleplay OSR by Goodman Games, that was the first thing and it was because of the level 0 part of that and its general lethality in what they call the shooting. I've played this a couple of times, both as a Dungeon Crawl classic and as a Mutant Crawl classic, which is basically their take on Gamma Worlds.
So the Dungeon Crawl Classic and the Mutant Crawl Classic both have this beginning of the game where you start with three zero level characters and you move through the game with this principle of lethality is how they refer to it, which is these characters are not going to survive and you've probably got three more sitting in a stack next to you. They're randomly generated, they've got a random skill, a random item and basically almost random stats.
And as you make it through the first one, if you make it through with a character or more, you get to pick one of them and then continue to play that as a first level character. So that felt very, very much like the first book of Dungeon Crawler Carl.
Moving forward, I would probably go with Pathfinder over Dungeons and Dragons, Eric. Not because I think that the mechanics are exceedingly different, but I think there's more fiddly bits.
I feel like Carl is very much more about the fiddly bits and it also has more stacking of bonuses, whereas 5e certainly is more about the advantage, which is designed to be good for new players. And that's not bad. But Pathfinder is definitely about how can I stack this stat with this stat and this feat and this character class.
And they definitely also one step further. Pathfinder has a slew of character classes and races, which definitely feels much more like book two.
And I know we're jumping a little ahead here, but book two of Dungeon Crawler Carl.
Speaker B
00:15:12.310 - 00:15:27.630
Yeah, I definitely can agree with that.
I think there was when I was thinking of D and D, it's the do we go with a more simpler system to represent sort of the broadness of it, or do you go with something that has more of those crunchy bits that as a GM and player, you could sort of turn those keys?
Speaker A
00:15:27.870 - 00:16:17.750
And also to address what you said about having a popularity stat, the Dungeon Crawl classic has a stat called Luck, which you can spend to make things happen. I think you could easily adapt that luck stat to a popularity stat. The game is designed for you to spend that luck down and then slowly get it back.
But you could then have your audience feed you more luck or popularity in that case. So that could be another interesting way to represent the Dungeon Crawler world.
Marshall, would you be so kind as to tell us now that we've explored the mechanics of of the LitRPG Dungeon crawler Carl world, what things would you like to take and just drop right into your campaign from Carl and Donuts Adventures?
Speaker C
00:16:18.070 - 00:16:57.520
So there were a lot of things, but the thing top of my list is patron gift. Just the idea that you are constantly sucking up to people who are watching you.
And every once in a while, if you really need it, hopefully somebody will just give you a gift and get you out of the situation.
You know, obviously it feels a lot like warlock powers in D and D or a lot of other wacky things, but it can take such a much more concrete form here that I would love to find A way to incorporate it into some of my games.
Speaker A
00:16:57.680 - 00:17:07.019
I agree. That is totally a interesting way to run a game and have an outside actor move the characters in certain directions.
George, would you like to go next?
Speaker D
00:17:07.499 - 00:18:14.210
Well, I mean, I feel like, and I mean, I suspect that this is a feature of the lit RPG genre. I feel like so much of the mechanics are integrated with the story that it would be hard to.
For me, it would be hard to steal without stealing for something very similar. And a lot of what I run is not that similar. So, I mean, what I really liked was the moral dilemmas.
You know, the dungeon's super lethal, but I feel like Carl and Donut mechanically had a pretty easy time of it for a lot of the book. It's when they're saddled with moral dilemmas, to me, is when it gets most interesting. So I guess I'd say that's what I'd steal.
I do like the accomplishments, but it just seems exhausting. In one of my games, I had a equivalent of D and D inspiration.
I had a stack of like two dozen cards that I printed out, but they were all just random basic bonuses, like a bonus to defense, bonus to attack. And if someone did something great, they get a random card that they could use. But the idea of the accomplishments, I love it in theory.
It hurts my head in practice.
Speaker A
00:18:14.530 - 00:19:35.290
I agree. I do love it in theory as well. And I think it would take a inspirational level on my part.
This is actually the thing I was going to talk about, which is the new achievements mostly. So just so I could say new achievement in the middle of a game, I think that's really all I want out of it.
But if I couldn't just say new achievement, I agree with you in that I really like the moral dilemmas that they have and in particular the idea that the characters are escorting or trying to save lots of people who are not adventurers or aren't as skilled adventurers as they are.
The idea that they belong to a community or that there are people who can't just take a punch or are willing to die for all the things they're doing, because that really keeps it from being as much like a video game and more like a role play where characters have to think about what they're doing instead of, as you mentioned before, George, basically button mashing their way through a combat or through a plot. Since they have to take care of these other people, that makes them more real and makes the story more real.
And I think that's a great thing that Carl's book does, even above and beyond the cool magic items and the new achievements and the foot fetish AI which I also really want to add in just for kicks.
Speaker D
00:19:35.850 - 00:19:38.010
Not. He's not in the game that you're playing.
Speaker A
00:19:38.970 - 00:19:40.970
Okay? Not in any game that you guys are playing.
Speaker D
00:19:42.330 - 00:19:44.970
I'm playing a monk, so I don't want that.
Speaker A
00:19:45.130 - 00:19:55.770
That's true. You are playing a monk in my current game. Now I'm gonna have to put that in there. Oh, you are getting the magical pedicure kit, my friend.
That is happening, Eric.
Speaker B
00:19:55.770 - 00:20:00.970
Yeah. First off, Eric, I can't believe you use that pun for just for kicks when talking about the feet fetish thing.
Speaker A
00:20:01.600 - 00:20:03.120
Oh, I didn't even catch.
Speaker B
00:20:03.600 - 00:21:14.810
Oh, man. But yeah, all of that moral dilemma, all that. What I wanted to borrow was that whole concept of the dungeon is the campaign world for the most part.
Whether it's abomination vaults, you have your little town you keep going back to, or Drakenheim you have Emberwood Village where you keep going back to as a home base. It's the concept of everything is in this dungeon. The dungeon is sort of this campaign world. You're going to meet innocent people, guilty people.
You're going to have inns and save rooms, shops, whole territories ruled in their own politics inside the dungeon that the players will have to navigate I think is just tremendous. And really, the idea that there was no line separating the dungeon at some point from the campaign world just blew my mind.
I was like, wait a minute, I can do that. I don't have to have a safe base like all these other printed modules and have like, oh, wait, here's your nice friendly village now.
Going back into the dungeon. No, I can have it all in one. Holy cow. This is great. So I would totally borrow that.
Speaker A
00:21:14.810 - 00:21:27.850
I agree that the. The idea that the whole world is there and that it's televised. Right? Like that idea. Oh, and that they have a PR person. Right?
Didn't you said something about that earlier?
Speaker B
00:21:28.010 - 00:22:27.110
Absolutely. I've been having like a manager PR person trainer at the lower levels as an NPC to help guide them through the changes.
Especially if you have players using a new system, it would play well into that because then the person could really be teaching them the new system. You could really leverage that character and NPC in a lot of different ways.
Oh, and just for fun, I pulled them and might get hate on this, but I pulled up my AI and I said, in the spirit of dungeon Delver, Carl, generate a list of 100 achievements for level 0 to 3 and it spat them out for all these different terrains and areas.
And I was like, everything from achievement fall inspector, fall into a pit, trap, and live achievement ceiling fan, get hit by something falling from above. Just the list went on and on. And I was like, oh, my God, this is great.
Speaker D
00:22:27.590 - 00:22:38.270
I was almost gonna joke that you would need like an improv comedian with you if you're running this game. I guess we all have an improv comedian now, don't we?
Speaker B
00:22:38.270 - 00:22:38.710
Yes.
Speaker D
00:22:38.790 - 00:22:42.550
And let's all take a moment to say, thank you, AI, we love you.
Speaker A
00:22:43.750 - 00:22:48.550
Yes. Please, please don't kill us later. We're talking about you in the greatest way possible.
Speaker D
00:22:48.630 - 00:23:07.510
Yes, I will.
I will note that I read that Matt Dyneman, his notes were so extensive and I'm guessing that the accomplishments were a large part of it, that they melted down his computer and he had to switch to a new computer and new note taking software. So even with AI, there might be living.
Speaker B
00:23:07.510 - 00:23:07.790
Right?
Speaker D
00:23:07.790 - 00:23:11.290
Yeah, but no, that. That would be a great way to do it.
Speaker A
00:23:11.610 - 00:23:33.130
Before we jump into the book part of this, I want to talk a little bit about the lit RPG thing. And first, kudos to Marshall, who first suggested it to this. I found out something really interesting about lit RPGs.
Does anyone here know who the quote unquote official first lit RPG book is?
Speaker C
00:23:34.170 - 00:23:34.570
No.
Speaker D
00:23:34.890 - 00:23:37.290
I feel like there's a trick here. I don't know.
Speaker A
00:23:37.990 - 00:24:40.490
Well, there's kind of a trick in that. One of the first things that I looked up was, okay, well, where did this start?
Well, apparently it first started with a book called Quag Keep by Andre Norton. And just to remind everybody, that's Andre Alice Norton, just to be clear.
And I did a little digging on Alice here, and it turns out that back when D and D was first starting to take off, there was this group of fantasy writers called the Swordsmen and Sorcerers Guild of America, or Spirit Saga. And Alice, Andre Norton was one of the first eight founding members, and she was the only female in the group.
And she wrote Quag Keep after Gary Gygax invited her to come play D and D with him.
And then after playing the game, she wrote Quag Keep, which has a lot of the lit RPG elements, talks about leveling up and hit points and things like that. So I just wanted to pass that on. I need you guys to know it like, it was very important to me.
Speaker B
00:24:40.490 - 00:24:41.610
I think that's cool.
Speaker A
00:24:41.850 - 00:26:31.840
Okay, so the books that I would recommend for this are Delicious in Dungeon by Ryoko Kyoi. K U I. This is a Netflix Special that's currently out, but it's also a fabulous manga.
Really has that feeling of the dungeon crawler Carl utilizing every part of the of the monster. They do it more with alchemy and obviously delicious in dungeon does it with delicious meals.
But I felt like that had a real strong dungeon crawler Carl feel. Next is Kings of the Wild. Wild spelled with a Y by Nicholas Eames.
That's E A M E S and Nicholas wrote this book about a bunch of old adventurers who go out for one last time in order to save their kids because of reasons it doesn't matter.
The whole thing is about old guys or old dungeon pals who to get the band back together, they literally called the group that they're in the band and there are other bands out there, but it's all traditional dungeon crawl kind of things. And last but not least, to get the disturbing awareness that you are in a game. In a game that people are watching you play.
Though not throughout the universe. I would recommend the NPC series by Drew Hayes.
Not a mainstream publish, but really a great series that talks about NPCs in a Dungeons and Dragons like game where the NPCs figure out that they're in a game and they start working against the people who are in their game. Very much like Carl is going against the Borat Corporation. So those are my three main media recommendations. Marshall, what would you recommend?
Speaker C
00:26:32.080 - 00:28:13.170
So I'm a big fan of the lit RPG genre.
I can recommend a whole bunch, but I'm going to keep it down to my favorite, which is he who Fights with Monsters by Travis Devereaux, better known as Shurtaloon. At this point it is up to 12 books. It's a fantastic series about a guy from our world who ends up in a fantasy world.
What is most interesting to me about this book is that he put a lot of thought into how having actual adventurers with actual known levels and powers would shape the rest of the world. How they fit into society, how they are controlled in order to stop them from just running amok, et cetera. It's just a really fabulous series.
I also wanted to call out how to Defeat a demon king in 10 easy steps by Andrew Rowe. It's a little more mainstream. I think you can actually still find it in Barnes and Noble.
It is definitely not set in Legend of Zelda, but it pretty much is. And it's similar to the NPCs book that you mentioned. It is all about one particular girl who lives in the video game.
She is an npc and she says why do we have to keep waiting for a new hero to appear once a generation and defeat the Demon King when he keeps killing people and raising our crops and everything? I'm going to be the hero this time and I've got a plan and it's 10 easy step plan though some of the steps are harder than others. It's a great read.
Speaker A
00:28:13.490 - 00:28:15.250
Fantastic. That's so exciting.
Speaker D
00:28:15.570 - 00:28:16.050
Yay.
Speaker A
00:28:16.130 - 00:28:17.890
More lit RPG for everyone.
Speaker D
00:28:18.460 - 00:29:09.880
George My first recommendation is a bit different than Dungeon Crawler co, but I think there's a lot of similar elements.
The Dream park series by Niven and Barnes from the early 80s sort of early virtual reality larping game series of books set in a larping game where there's both the element of an audience, there's the element of a sort of quasi corrupt corporation behind things and also the wink wink nudge nudge of I know what my stats are and I'm going to manipulate how I do things because of that. But if I'm talking about what did the book most remind me of, it is to me it is the average of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Ready Player one.
Or maybe just the American version of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where the world is ending and everything is weird, but because it's American, it's all just violence.
Speaker A
00:29:10.360 - 00:29:18.860
Oh, sad but true. I know you mentioned it when we were doing the pregame and that still hits a little too hard. Eric, you want to take us out on a high note?
Speaker B
00:29:19.100 - 00:30:36.880
Oh, I'm going right on a low note. No kidding? Me? No.
So Dungeon Devil Carl I've read a lot of similar stories and themes, but I've never actually this was my first introduction to actually lit RPG with the whole knowing stat, calling out stats and attribute scores and things like that.
So when I was thinking about this I was hitting it and I went right to manga anime because the story's a little bit of a combination of an isekai story as well as sort of dystopian science fiction.
So the first couple manga anime I started thinking of was Sword Art Online by Reiki Kawahara where you have this whole like emergence into a game and that's popular one that I and one I loved.
And then there's a lesser known one called Grimgar Ashes and Illusions where people from the normal world get whisked off to a fantasy world and they have to sort of pick their way, get their classes, figure out how they're going to do form groups to Adventure. And that was by I think AO Jumanji.
The Last Influence, which this just reminded the humor of it, which was noted was actually a video game I was going to lean into called Enter the Gungeon where you're playing a character and there's all these sort of nods to all these other science fiction and stories mixed in there. So there's a lot of comedy amongst the action.
Speaker A
00:30:36.880 - 00:31:32.960
There we go. Knew it was going to be uplifting. We got it. Okay, time for plugs, gentlemen.
Things that you want to say, projects that you want to promote, other such things. What can you tell people that they need to know?
I'm going to lead off and say I think everybody should read all of these books and should be listening to them because the reader is fantastic. However, the main reason why I want to recommend listening is that. And I was just checking the Wikipedia on this.
In book six, Patrick Warburton makes a guest appearance as an npc. So if you haven't listened to book six, it's coming. So that was my one plug for the book series as a whole.
And Jeff Hayes is the narrator and he does a fantastic job. He is just amazing at it. Huge thanks to him for making this a really fun journey. Go ahead, Eric and give us your plug.
Speaker B
00:31:32.960 - 00:32:12.070
My plug. Just timing of it all.
I just wanted to call attention to A group called tabletopgamers.org and gamers is spelled G A Y M E R S. Tabletop Gamers is a non profit org. They want to promote diversity, equity, inclusion and visibility recognition of LGBTQ community through tabletop gaming.
In fact, you can find them at all different, whether it's Gen Con or anything else. They make appearances there. They have booths there. My neck of the woods. There'll be pax in the fall. Yeah. So tabletopgamers.org Nice.
Speaker A
00:32:12.310 - 00:32:20.550
We had Boston Gamers at the Rising Phoenix convention as well and I think they are a subsidiary of that group and they are amazing. They're amazing folks.
Speaker B
00:32:21.030 - 00:32:21.750
Absolutely.
Speaker A
00:32:21.910 - 00:32:22.470
George.
Speaker D
00:32:22.550 - 00:33:03.160
I'll pitch for my friend Will Padilla. He's got a 80s themed podcast. 1980s.
Now he actually just did a book extracting some of the true crime and true crime is using that term loosely stories into. I think it's 10 or 12 stories called Totally Bogus but True Tales from the 1980s available on Amazon. I actually wrote two of them for him.
I just did another one that I think, well, this probably be in the past by the time this episode's edited, but I think it's going to be at Southern Fried Gaming Expo. In late June doing a puzzle. Related Talent so not role playing but a skill gaming if you will. Related script that I gave him the draft for.
So there you go.
Speaker A
00:33:04.040 - 00:34:21.970
And that's our discussion of Dungeon Crawler Car by Matt Denneman. You can find a complete transcript of today's discussion as well as links to all of our podcasts@k-square productions.com GMBC.
You can learn about upcoming episodes on our social media, on bluesky@gmbookclub, bluesky social, on Facebook @gamemastersbook club, and on Instagram @gamemastersbookclub. You've been listening to the Game Masters Book Club brought to you by me, Eric Jackson and K Square Productions.
Thanks again to our God tier Game Masters Eric Trix, George Krubsky and Marshall Smith for their knowledge, comments and laughter. You are awesome. Look for them to return when the book club reads Sentenced to War by J. Ann Chaney, Our first military sci fi novel.
Continued praise and thanks to John Corbett for the podcast artwork and Otis Galloway for our music. Tune in to our next episode when Ian Eller, Alex Jackal and Sean Murphy explore espionage, psychics and vampires in Brian Lumley's necroscope.
Later, gamers and to paraphrase the great Terry Pratchett, always try to be the place where the falling angel meets the rising apart.