While Matt Dinniman didn’t invent the genre, the explosive popularity of Dungeon Crawler Carl pushed LitRPGs from a niche interest to mainstream literary obsession. Thanks to Carl and Princess Donut, thousands of readers are discovering the joy of diving into wild, tongue-in-cheek stories that weave videogame and RPG mechanics into ambitious fantasy and sci-fi adventures.

While Dungeon Crawler Carl may be the gateway into the rich world of LitRPGs, it’s far from the only series out there. There are dozens of LitRPGs, both written before and since, that put their own spin on the format to create reading experiences just as page-turning as Carl and Donut’s descent through the World Dungeon. Fans still waiting for Book 9 after finishing A Parade of Horribles are in luck, because there are plenty of great LitRPG books to read after Dungeon Crawler Carl.

The Unorthodox Farming Series By Benjamin Kerei (2021-2022)

Benjamin Kerei’s Unorthodox Farming series takes the familiar isekai anime setup of a character transported to another world and uses it to create one of the strangest, but also most satisfying, LitRPGs out there. In book 1, Oh, Great! I Was Reincarnated as a Farmer, Arnold Parker dies during a botched resurrection and wakes up in another world expecting, at the very least, an opportunity to become a powerful wizard. Instead, he is reincarnated as a farmer. This is a world away from Carl’s life as a dungeon crawler, but it works just as well.

Just like Matt Dinniman with Dungeon Crawler Carl, Benjamin Kerei uses LitRPG mechanics to create laugh-out-loud comedy that never sacrifices the underlying fantasy adventure. Arnold has to manipulate a rigid class system, develop his farm, and navigate increasingly dangerous situations. However, the story embraces base-building and gradual progression rather than simply throwing him into endless combat. The result is a warmer, more relaxed LitRPG, but one that’s just as gripping as Dungeon Crawler Carl.

The Defiance Of The Fall Series By JF Brink (2021-2026)

A 16-book LitRPG series that’s still ongoing, Defiance of the Fall begins when Zac finds himself stranded in the wilderness after Earth is suddenly incorporated into a vast multiverse governed by an impersonal System. Monsters, demons, and alien civilizations emerge, turning his quest to find his family into a brutal survival mission. Every book that will appeal to fans of Dungeon Crawler Carl has something unique to offer, and with Defiance of the Fall the big attraction is undoubtedly its scale.

Author JF Brink (who also writes under the name The First Defier) combines apocalyptic survival with LitRPG progression and Daoist concepts throughout Defiance of the Fall, giving Zac an enormous universe in which every new level opens up another layer of power and danger. The tone is more serious than Dinniman’s, but the addictive progression loop will ensure fans of Dungeon Crawler Carl feel right at home. What’s more, Zac’s increasingly unconventional path brings the same satisfaction as Carl’s journey, since both series focus on protagonists who know survival and exploiting the mechanics of their new realities go hand-in-hand.

The Everybody Loves Large Chests Series By Neven Iliev (2017-2025)

Neven Iliev’s Everybody Loves Large Chests might be one of the strangest LitRPGs to read after Dungeon Crawler Carl, which is precisely why it works. The series, which starts with 2017’s Morningwood, follows Boxxy, a sentient mimic who begins life as a treasure chest before developing into an increasingly powerful and thoroughly amoral monster. The central twist that the protagonist is not a reluctant hero trying to survive a deadly game works incredibly well. Boxxy is a monster actively enjoying being a monster, and the results are hilarious.

Just like Carl and Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk in Dungeon Crawler Carl, Boxxy’s growth is tracked through familiar LitRPG systems, but Iliev uses those mechanics to explore what happens when a character has almost no conventional moral framework. That makes the series especially appealing to fans of Carl’s more chaotic moments, as Boxxy’s increasingly ridiculous adventures provide the same combination of brutality and comedy. It is darker, raunchier, and considerably more irreverent, but its willingness to turn LitRPG conventions upside down makes it an excellent Dungeon Crawler Carl follow-up.

The Full Murderhobo Trilogy By Dakota Krout (2020-2023)

The Full Murderhobo trilogy is definitely one of the grittier LitRPGs out there, but it still has a lot about it fans of Dungeon Crawler Carl are bound to fall in love with. The story kicks off by introducing readers to Luke, an apprentice leather worker whose ordinary life is destroyed when his home, the Hollow Kingdom, is invaded by the multi-planar forces of the Dynasty of Dogs. After being pulled through a portal without a proper class trainer, he realizes that surviving means abandoning the morality of a traditional fantasy hero.

The title of the Full Murderhobo trilogy gives away the tone immediately. From the outset of book 1, Something, Luke approaches progression with a straightforward philosophy: become stronger, fight increasingly dangerous enemies, and worry about ethics later. While this could lead to an incredibly dark story, Dakota Krout takes a comedic approach to LitRPG progression just like Matt Dinniman. It’s a more traditional fantasy adventure than Dungeon Crawler Carl, but the combination of absurd power growth, dark humor, and a protagonist who solves problems through increasingly extreme methods gives it a similar appeal.

The Apocalypse Parenting Series By Erin Ampersand (2022-2026)

Apocalypse Parenting places LitRPG mechanics inside one of the most nail-biting survival scenarios imaginable: raising children during an alien-controlled apocalypse. When book 1, Time to Play, begins, protagonist Meghan Moretti is initially concerned with ordinary family problems. However, this immediately changes when Earth is forced into a brutal intergalactic competition. Soon, monsters are appearing, the world’s infrastructure has been destroyed, and Meghan discovers that her children will have to participate in the deadly game as well.

The family survival premise gives the Apocalypse Parenting series a distinctive spin on the LitRPG setup that Dungeon Crawler Carl made a genre staple. Instead of treating progression as an individual power fantasy, author Erin Ampersand makes parenting, preparation, and community-building crucial survival skills. Meghan’s priorities are fundamentally different from those of a conventional LitRPG protagonist like Carl, but the series still delivers monsters, skills, quests, and increasingly dangerous challenges. It’s more family-focused than Dinniman’s series, but it understands the same balance between comedy and consequences that made Dungeon Crawler Carl such a hit.

The Vainqueur the Dragon Series By Maxime Durand (2019-2022)

Maxime Durand’s Vainqueur the Dragon series begins with 2019’s Vainqueur the Dragon and concludes with book 4, 2022’s The Last Adventure. The fact that it’s a complete story with a digestible length already makes it worth noting in the LitRPG world, where many series can go on for over a dozen books, but that’s not the core of the appeal. The key draw is that, rather than a human, the story follows a dragon. Protagonist Vainqueur Knightsbane spends his days sleeping on his hoard, kidnapping princesses, and terrorizing adventurers until his would-be thief minion, Victor, introduces him to classes, levels, and quests.

This setup is where the Vaunqueur the Dragon novels set themselves apart from the many Dungeon Crawler Carl-like series out there. Rather than using the LitRPG system as a mechanism for a Carl-like underdog to become powerful, Durand uses it to give an already-powerful monster new ambitions. Vainqueur becomes obsessed with discovering profitable ways to exploit adventuring mechanics, while Victor has to keep the resulting disasters under control. The result is a compact, irreverent adventure that never needs to take the standard hero’s journey seriously.

The Primal Hunter Series By Zogarth (2022-2026)

The Primal Hunter series takes place across 16 novels so far, with more on the way. While its pacing is slower and the humor less absurd than Dungeon Crawler Carl can be, it’s still inarguably a perfect follow-up read for anyone introduced to the world of LitRPGs through Matt Dinniman’s series that wants to dig deeper. The story of Primal Hunter focuses on Jake, an ordinary office worker who finds himself trapped in a world governed by a mysterious System after Earth is introduced to a massive multiverse.

What begins as an apocalypse rapidly becomes an opportunity for Jake to develop his skills, professions, and increasingly formidable abilities. For readers whose favorite part of Dungeon Crawler Carl is watching Carl master the rules of his new world this is where Zogarth’s Primal Hunter series truly shines, as it leans even harder into its LitRPG mechanics. It may lack Dinniman’s constant satire, but its enormous scope and obsessive attention to progression make it an easy recommendation for anyone who enjoys watching numbers turn into increasingly ridiculous abilities.

The He Who Fights With Monsters Series By Travis Deverell (2021-2026)

Travis Deverell, writing as Shirtaloon, begins He Who Fights With Monsters by sending Australian office worker Jason Asano from Earth to the fantasy world of Pallimustus. Across the 12 novels in the series so far, Jason becomes entangled with adventurers and increasingly dangerous supernatural conflicts while developing a distinctive set of powers. It’s a similar LitRPG setup to Dungeon Crawler Carl, but He Who Fights With Monsters definitely has its own distinct identity (helped by the fact that the prose styles of Dinniman and Deverell are markedly different).

Jason’s personality is arguably the biggest reason Dungeon Crawler Carl fans should put this series near the top of their reading list. He is sarcastic, stubborn, and frequently more interested in making a point than taking the sensible route through a problem. A lot of the humor in Dungeon Crawler Carl comes from Carl himself, and Deverell’s He Who Fights With Monsters takes this to the next level with a protagonist who, somehow, has an even bigger problem with authority.

The Discount Dan’s Backroom Bargains Series By James A. Hunter (2025-2026)

While relatively new and having only three novels so far, Discount Dan’s Backroom Bargains is already considered by many to be the closest LitRPG out there to Dungeon Crawler Carl (as evidenced by the fact that Matt Dinniman has given it an endorsement). Dan accidentally passes through a wall and finds himself stranded in the Backrooms, the bizarre multiversal junkyard that began life as an internet creepypasta and has since evolved into its own A24 movie and various videogames. It may be a completely different setting from the dungeon that was once Earth that Carl must navigate, but this change of location is why the Discount Dan novels stand apart.

James A. Hunter perfectly harnesses the LitRPG format to change the rules from one situation to the next as Dan navigates ever deeper through the Backrooms. This chapter-by-chapter variety is incredibly addictive, and fans of Dungeon Crawler Carl are all but guaranteed to fall in love with it. The humor of both series go hand-in-hand too, as the Discount Dan novels also lean heavily into the satirical humor that made Carl’s journey such a hit. For readers looking for a LitRPG series that delivers non-stop Dinniman-like chaos, Discount Dan is an easy choice for what to read next.

Publisher(s)

Penguin Random House

Publication Date

September 21, 2020

Number of Pages

444

ISBN#

979-8688591507

Author(s)

Matt Dinniman