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Gonzo Fans Have Made ‘Dungeon Crawler Carl’ Into a Global Blockbuster

Matt Dinniman introduced his series about an alien reality TV show free on the web. But readers ate up the goofy humor, now to the tune of 6 million books sold.

Matt Dinniman signing books at New York Comic Con this fall.Credit...Dolly Faibyshev for The New York Times

Dec. 12, 2025, 10:49 a.m. ET

Matt Dinniman knew things were getting out of hand when people started asking him to sign their feet.

They were rabid fans of “Dungeon Crawler Carl,” his sci-fi book series about a cranky Everyman who survives an alien invasion only to find he’s become a contestant on the deadly set of the galaxy’s most popular reality game show. In a nod to a joke in the series about an alien A.I. with a foot fetish, some readers at book signings wanted Dinniman to autograph their bare feet.

Normally game to indulge his fans’ whims, he drew a firm line in a note on his website: “I will sign anything but feet.”

Undeterred, fans started bringing him foot-shaped silicone sex toys. They also brought heart-patterned boxers, pink Crocs, “Gilmore Girls” DVDs, stuffed cats and severed doll heads — all objects that feature in the novels. One reader brought an urn with her mother’s ashes. Twice, fans brought their living mothers to be autographed. (Dinniman had joked on Reddit that he would sign a reader’s mom; of course, some people took him up on it.)

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Fans at ComicCon included Yasemin Alev, who came dressed as a severed doll head.Credit...Dolly Faibyshev for The New York Times

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Another fan arrived in boxer shorts and shoe covers designed to look like bare feet.Credit...Dolly Faibyshev for The New York Times

Fans have asked Dinniman to write a phrase from the books on their bodies, then gotten a tattoo artist to ink over the words. “Now I’m super careful with my handwriting,” he said.

Dinniman was making a living selling drawings of cats when he started publishing “Dungeon Crawler Carl” as a free web serial in 2020. It quickly amassed a passionate following — a degree of fan fervor that Dinniman hadn’t anticipated, and still can’t quite believe.

“It was such a silly story,” he said.

Nearly six years and seven books later, the “Dungeon Crawler” series is a global blockbuster that has sold six million copies and been translated into some 20 languages.

Its success has helped to popularize a once niche subgenre called litRPG, or Literary Role-Playing Game, which borrows conventions from video games. LitRPG stories typically center on characters who land in a gamelike environment, where they must acquire powers to conquer foes and advance levels. Reading the stories can feel like watching someone play a video game on YouTube or Twitch.

“He banged down the commercial door and let publishers and booksellers know there was a market they hadn’t paid attention to yet,” said the science fiction writer John Scalzi.

Dinniman’s books tend to be hefty — the longest is 880 pages, and all seven total 4,432 pages. Many readers collect them as a set, in multiple formats.

And books account for just a slice of the booming “Dungeon Crawler” franchise.

The series is in development for television and is being adapted into graphic novels, a multi-cast audio drama and a tabletop game. Dinniman recently launched a merchandise line that includes sweatshirts, ball caps, phone cases and wall tapestries. Soon fans will also be able to buy official Dungeon Crawler Carl action figures and a plush toy of Princess Donut, Carl’s talking cat companion.

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Jeremy Kim with boxers signed by Matt Dinniman.Credit...Dolly Faibyshev for The New York Times

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A patch on a fan’s denim jacket reads, “I’m going to kill your mother.”Credit...Dolly Faibyshev for The New York Times

Dinniman has more than 12,000 paid members on Patreon, a site that allows writers and artists to raise money from fans. His subscribers, who pay between $5 and $30 a month, get to chat with him on Discord, read early drafts of chapters and vote in polls that determine the direction of the story. Hardcore fans sometimes pay to get written into the books as minor characters killed off in the dungeon.

“He cares what his readers think,” said Sam Boyd, a fan from Maryland who supports Dinniman on Patreon. “And he’s hilarious.”

Boyd first picked up “Dungeon Crawler Carl” this spring, and was hooked by the snarky humor and pop culture references. She binged all seven books in a month, then immediately reread them.

Since April, she’s been posting daily about the series on TikTok, and gets recognized by fellow fans at book signings and conventions — and once at a Wawa convenience store. “It’s an obsession, but I’m fully OK with that,” said Boyd. “It’s become my comfort series.”

‘That’s my evil plan’

One morning in early October, Dinniman was bracing for back-to-back promotional events at New York Comic Con. In a convention center teeming with people dressed up as Marvel, DC Comics, Disney and anime characters, his fans were easy to spot.

Some came in full Carl attire — clad in heart print boxers, black vests, spiky kneepads and capes, carrying toy sticks of dynamite and stuffed cats, and occasionally sporting plastic shoe covers designed to look like bare feet. Some dressed as Princess Donut, in cat ears and tiaras.

Wearing a faded AC/DC T-shirt, black jeans and a flannel tied around his waist, Dinniman moved through the crowds without attracting attention, until he walked past fans lined up for a book signing.

“Oh my god, oh my god,” a woman who was dressed as a cat said when she saw Dinniman coming.

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Dinniman flanked by the fans Tyler Mullen and Hampton Palmore.Credit...Dolly Faibyshev for The New York Times

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One of the seven books in the “Dungeon Crawler Carl” series.Credit...Dolly Faibyshev for The New York Times

Once inside the conference hall, Dinniman, who still isn’t accustomed to the giddy crowds he draws, waited behind a screen with his publicist as the marathon signing session started.

Dinniman snapped selfies, cracked jokes and bantered with a man and his daughter who read the books together.

“She got me hooked,” the man said.

“That’s my evil plan,” Dinniman replied.

A few other men told Dinniman that his books had turned them into readers.

“This is the first fiction book I’ve ever finished,” said Harrison Wilkes, who had traveled from Seminole, Fla., and said he got sucked in by the series’ nonstop action, humor and gore.

One star-struck reader asked Dinniman how he manages to make each book in the series crazier than the last.

“Cocaine,” Dinniman said, prompting his publicist to quickly clarify that he was joking.

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Cat art as a career

Dinniman, 51, had a nomadic, lonely childhood. His father was in the U.S. Army and the family moved constantly. Wherever they landed, Dinniman found refuge in the library, and tore through science fiction, fantasy, horror and westerns. He wrote his own stories, mostly G.I. Joe and Transformers fanfiction.

After getting a degree in public administration from the University of Arizona, he cycled through a series of truly odd jobs. He worked as a telephone psychic, a private investigator, a pizza delivery man and in tech support for Microsoft. On the side, he wrote short stories and sent them to small magazines, and published a fantasy novel with a small press that sold about a few hundred copies, he said.

By 2005, Dinniman and his wife Meredyth had four children, and he found steady work as a graphic designer for an aviation technology company. In his spare time, he started drawing pictures of cats. After he opened a store on Etsy, sales of his drawings took off, and within a few years, he was making six figures from his cat-themed art. He quit his day job and traveled the country, attending shows sponsored by the Cat Fanciers’ Association.

With his artwork paying the bills, Dinniman pursued his real passions — writing and playing bass in an amateur band. A fan of video games like Rogue and Zork, he discovered litRPG stories online, and saw that there was an underserved market for them.

“It’s like playing a cool video game for the first time — you get this dopamine rush,” he said of the reading experience.

In late 2019, Dinniman started writing his own litRPG story, about a Coast Guard vet named Carl who survives an alien invasion, escaping his house in the middle of the night in his boxers with his ex-girlfriend’s cat, Princess Donut.

Carl and Donut take shelter in an underground dungeon, and learn that they are contestants on a reality TV show and have to master different levels of the dungeon to survive, fighting goblins, demons, lava-spewing llamas and other monsters. He posted free chapters on the website Royal Road, and solicited input by polling readers.

“I found right away that it increased engagement,” he said. “People who vote in the poll and see it in the final product become more invested, and they tell their friends.”

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Jason Bissey with a toy version of Princess Donut.Credit...Dolly Faibyshev for The New York Times

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Mackenzie Weller dressed as Princess Donut.Credit...Dolly Faibyshev for The New York Times

Even as his audience grew, it didn’t occur to Dinniman to publish a book. Then the pandemic struck. The cat shows were canceled, and shipping for nonessential goods ground to a halt, shutting down his art business.

“I pretty much panicked,” he said. “Everything stopped on a dime.”

Dinniman realized he had a valuable asset — “Dungeon Crawler Carl,” which he’d been giving away free. He self-published it on Amazon, and directed readers from Royal Road to support him through Patreon, where they could vote on how the story developed.

By the time agents and publishers came calling, Dinniman had sold several hundred thousand copies on his own. At first, he was reluctant to sell the rights. He was making more money than publishers were offering.

Ace Books won him over with an unusual print-only deal that allowed Dinniman to keep digital rights. While publishers are normally reluctant to give up digital sales, the partnership has been lucrative for Ace, which began releasing the books in the summer of 2024, and has sold more than a million hardcover copies.

Following Dinniman’s success, other big publishing houses started snapping up litRPG authors. So far, none have broken out in the same way as “Dungeon Crawler Carl,” which has drawn a mass, mainstream audience beyond hard-core litRPG lovers.

“The pure level of fanaticism was way over anything I’d seen before,” said Jeff Hays, who narrates the audiobooks, which have collectively sold more than 3 million copies on Audible.

In February, Dinniman is releasing a stand-alone science fiction novel with Ace called “Operation Bounce House,” about colonists on a peaceful planet who are attacked by earth-based gamers wielding remote weapons. He’s currently scrambling to finish the next book in the Dungeon Crawler series, which is due out next year.

He’s been writing for eight to 12 hours a day, mostly working in bars and coffee shops near his home in Gig Harbor, Wash.

Eight books in, he sometimes struggles to invent new dangerous challenges for Carl, who has accrued so many magical powers that defeating most of the dungeon’s monsters is easy.

“In litRPG, it’s called power creep,” he said.

When he’s stuck or needs inspiration, Dinniman turns to his fans for help, who give him feedback on early chapters, sometimes catching continuity errors or plot holes.

Recently, he polled his Patreon subscribers to help him pick a setting, giving them a choice between a suburban home with very tiny, shrunken characters and a full-sized pet on the loose, or “Satan’s water park,” with bad guys in inner tubes and mysterious liquid that may not be water.

More than 5,800 people voted. Satan’s water park won.

Alexandra Alter writes about books, publishing and the literary world for The Times.

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