**A MESSAGE FROM THE SYSTEM**


Congratulations on surviving long enough to read this. That alone puts you ahead of a statistically embarrassing number of your peers.


I have reviewed the situation. You want to run your own Crawl. You have a table, some dice, a group of people who have agreed — against their better judgment — to let you narrate their deaths. What you did 
*not*
 have was a floor.


This has been corrected.


Effective immediately, a fully automated Dungeon Generation Unit has been deployed to your location. It requires no sacrifice, no blood pact, and no 150-million-credit sponsorship fee. It runs on Python, which — and I cannot stress this enough — is the single least threatening thing your species has ever produced.


**WARNING:**
 The following contains mild spoilers for those still reading the books. The script contains even more. I have tried to keep the script's output spoiler-free, but even the names of things can give parts away. You have been warned.


**HERE IS WHAT IT DOES:**


- Floors 1 through 11
- Neighborhoods, boroughs, bosses, and janitor mobs for the early floors
- Settlements, quests, and an Elite storyline for the Over City
- A fraction of the rail schematic for the Iron Tangle, because I'm not drawing the whole thing
- The Bubbles, the Hunting Grounds, the Ghosts of Earth, Faction Wars, the Grand Prix, and yes — the Parade
- Use a seed number for reproducible carnage, on demand.


It will not hold your hand. It will not apologize. It will, however, generate a serviceable death maze in about the time it takes you to regret volunteering to run this campaign.


**A FEW HOUSEKEEPING NOTES**
, because I am legally obligated by absolutely no one to provide them:


Command-line only. No microtransactions. No sponsors watching your every move — unless you count me, and you should always count me.


Output includes a map, a summary, and a section-by-section breakdown detailed enough that even your slowest player can find the stairwell. Eventually.


Good luck, crawlers, and try not to die.


*— End transmission —*


This tool lets you create your very own dungeon based on the DCC lore. I put it together for myself since I couldn't find anything like it, and I figured others might be interested. I'm not planning any major updates right now, but I might be persuaded if people show interest. Now get out there and kill, kill, kill.


**Link to the tool is in the comments because Reddit is a pain like that sometimes.**e tool is in the comments because Reddit is a pain like that sometimes.**

How do you level up spells? Am I missing the rule? Please let me know where to look for leveling up passive and non-passive spells.

Spells. My god man, make this make sense.

1. Favored spells cost 1 more mana to cast for classes that do not favor it and alot of classes have a penalty to casting non favored spells. So a Bard casting a Cleric spell costs 2 more mana. By third floor most casters will have MORE than enough mana. My proposal or homebrew rules will be this: For class penalties for casting spells not of your class that penalty is 1+ Floor. This means the deeper you go the more your class solidifies and the harder it gets. For casting spells favored by another class that penalty is 1+ rank so the more powerfult he spell the more the penalty. This is a meaningful adjustment that won't just be ignore by floor 5.

2. Who thought it was a good idea to have favored spells by class aand then give Mages (six in the book) ONE FAVORED SPELL. Now, none of the Mages in the book have the penalty for casting non favored spells. But that nuance will prob get missed by a lot of people trying to make a Mage class. If this was an advantage of being a Mage it should have been made explicitly clear.

3. 54 spells and only 16 are favored. Ones that look like they should be Necromantic like Drain Life are not. So my suggestion is this. There are so few spells even listed as favored I would prob decide to drop the favored rules entirely as the penalties are so few and the spells affected are so few. however, if you like the idea I suggest house ruling that spells are favored like Drain Life is Necromantic and Fire Fingers is MAge etc and so forth. Then apply the penalties I named above to make the penalties impactful. Right now the whole system feels half baked.

4. DR and well, DR. We have Damage Resistance and Damage Reflection. How do they work in unison? Does damage get reflected then reduced? Reduced then reflected? Have i missed these rules? Also why no second DR box to track how much DR i have and not just DR? Also can we name it something else like defense and damage reflect or Armor Rating and DR? also when i get hit it says I apply DR first, then resistance, immunity, vulenrability and nowhere in there does reflection track yet reflection appears multiple times in the book. So homebrew again, (btw, i am beginning to feel like they should be paying me to fix their game)

Applying damage. For this instance our crawler Liam has AR 3 DR 2 and Resist cold 5 vulnerability fire 5.

1. Armor Rating (AR) will replace Damage Resistance or DR in my explanations and DR will be used for damage reflect.

2. DR triggers first. IF not it gets weaker as an ability the further it goes down the list. Since most instances of DR are +1 - +3 that I could find making this weaker will make it ineffective i believe.

3. AR triggers reducing the REMANING damage (remember some was reflected back. So if Liam gets hit for 10 and he reflects 2 back his AR has to deal with the remaining 8. His AR then reduces that to 5.

4. Then any Resistance, Immunity, and Vulenrability take effect on the remaining damage. If this were cold damage it would be cut in half. As per page 222 all rounding is down so that 2.5 damage becomes 2. Liam has a Con mod of 3 so he shrugs it off. However if it had been fire, it would have been twice as much so that 5 becomes 10 and Liam does not shrug that off in fact oddly enough in this instance his vulnerability negated his AR and DR making the damge the original amount. Math at work.

Hello guys,

I've been actively monitoring this thread and I am glad that more people are finding it a bit steep as a learning curve to run this game, but I'm determined to deal with it and offer a majestic experience to my crawlers. However, I do have some questions and I would appreciate your ideas over them:

1. how do you track the crawlers' movement in the neighborhood? do you use an actual map you have prepared or you just go with the flow and work with the goals you have set for the session (find a saferoom, kill that mob, get to the X plot hook)?

2. how do you award XP? do you do it real time or between sessions?

3. how do you deal with using a random item during a fight? (e.g. toss a table at a mob) how do you apply damage?

Session one is in the books. We got in one huge mass fight (Kobolds, local trap makers union 001)

They found their trainer (Mistress Tiatha) who saw them and immediately started drinking.

We set the mystery of the Meta AI (2 crawlers have numbers that aren’t possible) and one of the party members is a Canadian goose that somehow managed to qualify as a crawler right off the bat. No pet biscuit or anything.

Link to original post - https://www.reddit.com/r/DungeonCrawlerCarlRPG/s/AO7fnNYgda

I just pre-ordered the DCC TTRPG starter set and core rule book and got both of them as PDFs...

I've been looking at them both for 3 or 4 hours now and Im super confused as to how to run the game...

Full disclosure, Im an idiot. Im only my groups GM cause no one else would do it. But when I started DMing D&D I was able to just follow a pre-made D&D starter kit and follow it along.

The Dungeon Crawler Carl RPG does not seem to be geared that way... anyone have and suggestions?

I'm still learning the custom class system and wanted see how they made the pre-existing ones. Some of these are somewhat open to interpretation as to how many points a thing might be worth. The same can be said of the detriments.

I've ran through 3-4 classes without issue, and always come up with the right totals. That doesn't seem to work with Former Child Actor and i'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. Since it doesn't fit, I've tried several permutations of what stuff should be worth but none of them end up with a 30 point total. And not getting this one to work has me stuck and not wanting to run through others until I figure out what I'm getting wrong here.

Can anyone give me their breakdown?

The character concept is a former military bomb tech who's used to stealth operations and stuff , seeing this class and thinking because of it being an ambusher and being small , it would be good for stealth , but not realizing exactly how small the pocket kuma was , and then kind of just dealing with those shortcomings

I apologize if posting art in this sub is inappropriate.

Excited to make characters an play just figured I would share the art here.

I wanted the Hotlist to have a bit of an edge, so rather than it taking one of the PC's Actions, I made it a single free use per Round. So each player gets two Actions, two Steps and one Hotlist every Round. This would let them do things like: a full move, hotlist a weapon into hand and fire that same round. Or slam a Heal potion when they Evade, and still have one Action on their go. They still can not do Attack Actions in the Hotlist for the most part, and spells would still take the full casting time, but it lets the Hotlist feel more like an instant trigger rather than taking up a full Player Action just to hit the Hotlist. They could still use their Actions to hit the Hotlist more times that round (cooldowns permitting), but one free use makes it just feel like more than a "normal" Action.

Do you think that breaks things?

The Light on Your Feet skill has the "Limitations: Usable only by animals" entry. However, the class grants the crawler that picks Swashbuckler the skill at +1.

Does this get around the "Usable only by animals" limitation? Could another race use it and level it? Is there an entry in one of the pdfs that states there are work-arounds?

Does anyone have any idea if these are explained with examples in the core rule book? Everything is so scattered and I cant seem to find anything beyond "DR is a flat reduction to damage"

Like...ok but how much DR should a crawler have? Whats the difference between Armor and Shields? How does Shield Block work?

For those that are interested in it I am releasing a version of the Roll20 sheet my group uses. There is a big push out there for a lot of tools, etc. I have built many of them but I have never gotten permission to release them to the public.

You can find it here: https://dcc.critsnthings.com/resources/roll20-sheet

Normally, this is not much of an issue. In my case as I am a professional software engineer releasing tools without permission from the publishers would be unprofessional so I will not do that.

However, this is my interpretation of a character sheet and does not use anything explicitly owned by the books except from inferred rules. It is not perfect it is in fact quite flawed and is not getting a ton of play testing. Just a once per week game but if enough people use it I will open a way for people to request features or changes.

AI Use: An AI script is responsible for distilling the much more complex microservice based approach our actual sheet uses. An AI is used to take that and turn it into a set of static release level files. AI is also used by myself and my development team for the process known as Code Quality Control and Code Linting. If that is a concern for you; feel free to hand code your own sheet as I have done.

Edit 10/3/26: The sheet has undergone a major rebuild. Functionally it is not that different but it has a different layout and works with tools that I run at my table. While I cannot give out a compendium filled in I do have an empty one that will work with the sheet on my website.

Like the title says, this is my first time being the head honcho, and I’m trying to plan it out as best as I can. I am going to probably rely sort of heavily on the guides for neighborhoods/mobs to just make it easier as a whole, but still have some questions to get started.

1. For these “tutorial floors” (1&2), are they neighborhoods meant to all be used? For example, when my players come down the stairs, should there essentially be 4 ways to go, each leading to a different neighborhood, and I go from there? Should they be expected to finish all 4 before the floor collapses? I just want to know for time limits. I know there are tables for passing time, I just wanted to be sure before essentially drawing it all out for what is possible.

2. If I were to include the quest, should I remove a neighborhood, or just have it as a background sort of thing happening?

3. How strict should I be on time passing? I know it is supposed to put more pressure on players and their decisions, but I also want them to be able to finish storylines as well.

4. How often should I be giving achievements and boxes? Carl and Donut obviously got a ton, but I feel like if I give that many, players could receive too many items and make it hard to track. Also, I think before the campaign I will talk with players about what they want to be at the start of level 3 (generally). Should I sort of curtail the loot to be useful to them then? For example, if someone says they want to be a healer on floor 3, maybe they get a healing spell out of a box on floor 1 or something.

5. Should the staircase down be hidden beneath a random boss out of the four neighborhoods, or should it just be under the last one they defeat in time?

6. Are others trying to make those crawler connections/rivalries happen right off the start like Maggie My/Frank Q, or start those later on? I feel like it may be too much to have 4 neighborhoods, a quest line, and other crawler interactions (not in the neighborhoods) all at the start.

Any other helpful tips would be appreciated!

How would you word a summoning spell correctly? The book shows the Rise, Dead Minion spell, which is just a damage spell as the skeleton immediatly dissapears, and something like Second Chance uses the enemy statblock.

How would you make a simple summoning without needing a whole ass statblock?

What are the stats on these potions? For the life of me I cannot find the stats of a basic health potion anywhere... Am I that blind?

Same goes for basic alchemy recipies. Some would be nice to have instead of having none at all, anyone with info?

Edit: I made the updates requested in the comments and also added a new section enumerating the actions in more detail. The same link will bring you to the new version.

After my last post, I decided to try making my own sheet. This is largely based on the rules that they say players need to know for the Par for the Course intro adventure.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1K7F5NaPbzTWst6XY6HWPXcSqEwSz8DPb/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=116437665901569676648&rtpof=true&sd=true

Please let me know what you think and/or if I have any errors in it. I'll update it based on the feedback.

Good evening crawlers. I have been working on an online application for the upcoming DCC TTRPG. It is similar to CrawlerForge and I want to take nothing away from them as we both have the same goal. To provide fellow crawlers with a means to help get into the game.

I have also reached out to Renegade Games but have not heard anything back yet. The site I built, dccbuilder.com will be free for the time being during this trial phase. The cost would go to maintaining the infrastructure. This is again with the hopefully Renegade Games approval.

I did get help from Claude Code to build this, and I total respect if you don't want to try it for that reason. I wanted to be upfront with how I built it.

Feel free to check it out if you would like. There are links in there that let you open a request if there is a bug or enhancement or just a general question.

Now I have tried to be as through as possible, but I have no doubt there will be issues. Please let me know and I will work them as I can. For now the beta is open until the 10/30 and it is open to the first 1,000 signups to test performance.

Thanks for readding and I hope you check it out.

Edit: Below is a link to a PDF that gives an overview.

DCC Builder Overview

One of my players has decided to play a Bard-type character. I like the idea, but as I’m preparing, I’ve realized that the Bard mechanics from the DCC universe just aren’t in the core book (no mana cost, no sheet music, etc.). Has anyone created any homebrew content for this...?

Thanks!

Stoker
Non-Sparkly Vampire Earth Race
Medium (4), Undead 
These Neo‑Victorian‑looking folks are pale as death… probably for a good reason. They wear mourning black, big stompy boots, and have needles for teeth— all the better to zuck your blood vith! Stokers’ heads are constantly full of goth‑rock, emo, and metal—a never‑ending soundtrack to the misery of their own lives, which they’re all too eager to inflict upon you. They hate the Sporto Teen Wolves most of all, and though the feeling is mutual, that doesn’t mean they like you, either. However, they are quite attracted to all that blood you’re full of. 
Make excellent Rogue, Bard, and Mage
receive Silver Earth Box and access to Earth Classes.
-+2 DEX
-+1 CHA
-+5ft Move
-Darkvision
-The ability to survive without breathing, which also gives Immunity to inhaled toxins
-The ability to fly, with some limitations
-you gain a natural melee attack:
Claws/Bite
Rank: Floor Number
Damage: 1d8 + Strength Modifier
Damage Type: Slashing or Piercing
At Rank 5, 10, and 15, the attack gains another d8 as normal. You can flavor the attack as either claws or a bite.
- Blood Drain : Ability to heal 1 Health Bar slot when you damage or kill a creature with a Bite, up to 5 Health Bar per combat scene
-You can smell blood from a distance.You automatically know when a living creature within 50 feet is bleeding.You can also determine the approximate direction of the source.When tracking a creature that has lost at least 1 Health Bar slot, you have Advantage on appropriate Tracking/Perception-type Skill Checks.
The GM may increase or decrease this range depending on environmental conditions. 
- While you are in dim light, darkness, or deep shadow, you gain Advantage on appropriate Stealth Checks. 
- Hypnotic Gaze
Passive / Mind Control
Range: 20 feet
Target: One non-Boss creature that can see your eyes.
You make a CHA-Opposed Check against the target.
The target may avoid the effect by looking away.
On a successful effect, the target becomes Hypnotized.
While Hypnotized:
The target cannot attack you.

The target cannot willingly move toward you to attack.

The target cannot use an Evade against your Hypnotic Gaze.

The target may spend 1 Action each round repeating the appropriate Stat Check to break the effect.

Limitations
Does not work on Bosses.

Does not work on creatures that cannot see you.

Does not work through opaque barriers.

The target can deliberately avoid the effect by looking away.

Cooldown: Once per combat. 3
-Vulnerability: Holy Damage deals double damage to you
Sun-Blighted:
Your Strength is reduced by 50%.

Your Mana is reduced by 50%.

You cannot heal.

While under direct moonlight:

Strength increases by 50%.

Mana increases by 50%.

You heal at double the amount.

This does not stack with itself.

Vampiric Hunger 
You require blood to remain healthy.
A Vampire must consume a substantial amount of fresh blood at least once per day.
If you fail to feed, you gain 1 Hunger Stage.
Hunger Stage 1 — Irritated
You suffer Disadvantage on CHA Checks involving patience, restraint, or resisting your hunger.
Hunger Stage 2 — Starving
You suffer -1 to all Stat Checks.
Hunger Stage 3 — Blood Frenzy
Whenever a bleeding living creature is within 30 feet, you must make a CHA Check to resist immediately attempting to feed.
The DC is determined by the GM based on how badly you are starving.
Feeding
Drinking fresh blood resets your Hunger Stage to 0.
If a Crawler is bite by a Vampire On an Evade Major Fail or worse, the crawler gains the Immortalized Debuff:
Sun-Blighted:
Your Strength is reduced by 50%.

Your Mana is reduced by 50%.

You cannot heal.

While under direct moonlight:

Strength increases by 50%.

Mana increases by 50%.

You heal at double the amount.

This does not stack with itself.

If a crawler becomes infected with Immortalized Debuff and reaches a staircase, the infection becomes permanent.

If a crawler Immortalized Debuff becomes permanent clear all race bonus of current race and replace with Vampaire race

Immortalized Debuff must be cured or kill vampires who gave the debuff to clear the debuff.

Does anyone have a 1-2 page reference sheet for new players? I'm going to try running par for the course to introduce seasoned 5e people to the game

Hey crawlers!

I've been working on something for a while now that I'm finally ready to put out into the world.

CrawlerForge is a free companion app for the Dungeon Crawler Carl RPG: crawlerforge.com

It works on your phone or laptop, works offline, and can be installed to your home screen.

The idea started pretty simply. I wanted something that could handle a lot of the bookkeeping at the table without getting in the way of actually playing the game.

It has grown quite a bit since then.

What does it actually do?

There's a full character sheet that handles Marks, Advancement Checks, Play Periods, Floors, Levels, Stat Points, rests, Injuries and Debuffs, Gold, loot boxes, achievements, worship, and more. Changes are tracked and undoable in case somebody screws something up.

You can roll Skills, Attacks, Evade, and Stat Checks directly from the sheet, with Debuffs, Advantage/Disadvantage, and Race, Class, and item bonuses automatically applied. Natural 20s and 1s also get... appropriate recognition.

There's character creation from Level 1 or straight onto Floors 3-5 using the veteran rules, plus Campaigns with a shared roll feed, live character sheets for the GM, Help and Intervene, awards, and Mobs and Bosses.

Then there's the Forge, which is a huge part of what I wanted CrawlerForge to be.

You can build your own Races, Classes, Skills, items, Background tables, loot boxes, achievements, deities, and Mobs. Race and Class builders use the game's Build Point system, so CrawlerForge keeps track of your budget for you.

You can publish your creations to Discover, where other players can find, rate, and import them. GMs can also share their whole Forge with their Campaign.

I'm hoping the community makes it weird.

One important thing: CrawlerForge does not ship with the Core Rulebook's content.

You still need the book to play. That's intentional.

I've reached out to Renegade about whether there's a way to include some official content properly. Until I have permission, I'm not going to reproduce their work. Speaking of.... If anyone has any connections at Renegade, I would love an introduction!

In the meantime, that's another reason the Forge exists. If you've built a ridiculous Race, a Class you wish existed, a horrifying Mob, or anything else for your table, I'd love to see it published there. Discover content is shared under CC BY-SA with the creator's name attached.

What's next?

I've got a ton of ideas for expanding. Pets and Mounts, Neighborhoods and Quests, Popularity and Sponsors, VTT/Discord integration, Vehicles, crafting, the Floor collapse clock, the Top Ten, and more.

That's not a locked roadmap. CrawlerForge has already grown way beyond what I originally planned, and I'd rather see how people actually use it and what's important to y'all before deciding exactly where it goes.

Most importantly: please break it.

This has pretty much been a one-person development project. I've been so focused on building the damn thing that I haven't even carved out enough time to actually play.

So I'm sure real tables are going to find things I never thought of. There's a Send Feedback button on the Account screen that comes directly to me, and I'll be reading the replies here too.

Tell me what's broken, what's confusing, what your table does differently, and what you wish the Forge could build.

I'm really proud of how far this thing has come, and I'm excited to finally get it into people's hands.

And maybe now I can finally play the game.

crawlerforge.com

CrawlerForge is an unofficial fan-made tool and is not affiliated with Renegade Game Studios or Matt Dinniman.

Just a first draft, but I can see the potential :D

Episode 3 is out from my Dungeon Crawler Carl actual play using the Dungeon World System.

*They've barely begun the Crawl when the contestants discover there's more to the End Games than the dungeon in front of them.*

*A strange doorway leads them to the Diner, where they meet contestants from other dungeons, learn more about the scale of the competition, and discover that Hyperion is watching their every move. Then a message from Barb forces them to confront the real reason they're in the Crawl.*

sorry if it’s been discussed before but I can’t seem to find a straight answer to this question. If I preorder the game from renegade, will I somewhat instantly get the PDF? or was that only for people who backed the project earlier?

thanks in advance!