These days, a franchise no longer stays neatly in its box. A novel published online on a forum becomes a book, an audio series, a board game, then a big-budget TV show, sometimes in barely two or three years.
If one work embodies that wild acceleration, it's Dungeon Crawler Carl (DCC) by Matt Dinniman.
1. What is it about?
Picture the scene: it's a freezing night, you're outside in your underwear wearing flamingo slippers, chasing Princess Donut, your ex-girlfriend's award-winning (and unbearably haughty) Persian cat.
That's the exact moment an alien corporation picks to raze every piece of infrastructure on Earth and compress humanity into an 18-level underground dungeon.
The concept? Our planet has become the set of a gory, sadistic reality show broadcast across the galaxy.
- An unlikely duo: Carl (a pragmatic guy with no trousers) and Princess Donut (who gains the ability to talk, cast spells and demand a crown) descend into the dungeon to survive.
- Pure RPG rules: stats, loot chests, level-ups and an artificial intelligence that runs the dungeon in an increasingly obsessive and unpredictable way.
- The audience is king: staying alive takes more than being strong. You have to please billions of galactic viewers and land sponsors.
Beneath the dark humour and absurd situations, the story hides a genuine attack on the system, permanent tactical tension, and characters you get attached to very quickly.
2. A supersonic multi-media expansion
Launched in 2020 by Matt Dinniman on the amateur publishing site Royal Road, the saga has followed a wild trajectory: webnovel ➔ print edition ➔ HD audio series ➔ webcomic ➔ board game ➔ TV series.
- The audio experience (the real trigger): the version performed by Jeff Hays feels more like an audio blockbuster than a simple reading. That format is what made the community explode.
- The webcomic: a webtoon adaptation, also released as a printed graphic novel by Vault Comics.
- The board game: a card and strategy game (Dungeon Crawler Carl: Unstoppable) funded at record speed on Kickstarter by Renegade Game Studios.
- The TV series: Universal and Seth MacFarlane's production company (Family Guy, Ted) picked up the rights to adapt the universe for Peacock, with the writer of Thor: Ragnarok at the helm.
3. Why such a fast success?
The Dungeon Crawler Carl phenomenon rests on three pillars that are highly representative of today's pop culture.
- A genre built for gaming (LitRPG): by directly integrating video game and tabletop RPG mechanics (character sheets, bosses, loot), the move to a board game or video game becomes smooth and natural.
- The direct-to-community model: published chapter by chapter online, the story welded together a community of fans long before a major publisher came knocking.
- An instantly visual pitch: "a guy in his underwear and a cat in a tiara in a space Hunger Games". The image is so striking that it grabs attention instantly, whatever the medium.
4. Other franchises following the same path
DCC is far from an isolated case. Other universes born in web or independent niches are taking over all our screens and shelves.
Solo Leveling: it started as a Korean webnovel, became a viral webtoon, then a phenomenon anime, a video game (Arise) and soon a live-action drama.
- Critical Role (Vox Machina): originally just a tabletop RPG session streamed on Twitch, now an empire with its animated series on Prime Video, comics, board games and official rulebooks.
- Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint: born as a webnovel before exploding as a webtoon, this universe is now landing as a live-action blockbuster and an animated series.
- Slay the Spire: the independent card game successfully adapted into a co-operative board game, and soon an animated series.
Why Gemster is your best ally in this transmedia mess
When a licence spreads across 7 books, 1 webtoon, 1 audiobook, 1 board game and 1 TV series, keeping track quickly becomes a headache.
"I read volume 3, but where is the series up to?" "Does season 1 also adapt the webcomic?"
That's exactly why we built Gemster: to give you one place to follow your overall progress across all your favourite media - movies, series, books, manga and games.
So what about you: which franchise are you most looking forward to seeing land on a new medium?