As soon I as I heard that there would be a surpsise reveal of the new pinball machine, I wanted to try it. It was in the Crawl Con room by Rengade Games in the Indiana Convention Center.

What is Dungeon Crawling Carl?

Well, you are about to hear about it from everyone you know. Buckle up.

Dungeon Crawler Carl is a wildly popular LitRPG series by Matt Dinniman that kicks off with a guy named Carl running outside in nothing but his boxers, a leather jacket, and his ex-girlfriend’s tight pink Crocs to catch her prized tortoiseshell Persian cat, Princess Donut. That wardrobe choice saves their lives: seconds later, aliens flatten every building on Earth, killing everyone indoors.

The survivors are herded into a colossal underground dungeon and forced to fight their way down floor by floor. The entire death trap is broadcast across the universe as a massive reality show, meaning sponsors, fan popularity, and audience bloodlust dictate who lives or dies. Carl teams up with Donut, who gains human speech and immediately weaponizes her pampered show-cat ego to manipulate the galactic viewers. Meanwhile, the dungeon’s AI develops a weird, sadistic foot fetish and actively refuses to give Carl decent lower-body armor, forcing him to fight off monsters while basically half-naked.

Because it’s LitRPG, the story includes video game mechanics like stat screens, loot drops, and system notifications. But it works perfectly as both a genuinely tense survival story and a hilarious, deeply angry satire about corporate greed and the entertainment industry. If you get into it, I recommend the audiobook. They are narrated and voiced by Jeff Hays. His performance is so good.

What is Dungeon Crawler Carl Pinball?

Dungeon Crawler Carl is a pinball machine based on the Dungeon Crawler Carl book series, written by Matt Dinniman. You play as Carl, accompanied by Princess Donut, navigating the various dungeon levels and all of the dangers and challenges it presents. Fighting mobs, battle bosses, cast spells, build your viewer count, collect friends, and figure out how to not just survive in the dungeon, but also how to get vengeance! Every aspect of the game combines to immerse you into the story. This includes a host of thematically integrated interactive mechanisms, an audio experience led by Jeff Hays voicing all of the characters, new artwork from Luciano Fleitas, Brad Albright, as well as other Dungeon Crawler Carl artwork shared by Renegade Game Studios, and game rules that connect you with all of the major events and plotlines and many of the minor plotlines as well.

After getting a chance to see the surprise reveal of the game, I got my own surprise. Matt came out to hang with the pinball players and talk about the weather… I MEAN DUNGEON CRAWLER CARL. Matt kicked off something bizarae and sweeping. Like I said, buckle up!

To end the annual event, I attended the Arkham Horror LCG Card Council held live on Twitch to design a new card for Arkham Horror: The Card Game. I got to be a part of the in-person card council last at Arkham Nights 2019 held at the Fantasy Flight Headquarters in Minnesota. I helped design the card, “Shrine of the Moirai BETA”. MJ Newman mentioned during the live stream that this card is coming up in the next cycle!

The Fantasy Flight Team leveraged Twitch polls and chat to help design a new card based on Romana Kendelic’s artwork from Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game. The art is from Ian Hardaway’s Uncanny Presence card from The Sleeper Below series.

The new card will be for Arkham Horror: The Card Game and will be tagged with “BETA” until it is play-tested and released with an upcoming campaign. We spent over an hour debating the class, what makes this card playable, its name, its trait, and what the card does. The conversation + chat + and polls made the whole process enjoyable and productive.

Here’s what the “Exiled Council” came up with…

• Name: Burn After Reading
• Class: Survivor
• Level: 1
• Text: Discard or Exile a non-weakness card in your hand or play area. Discover clues equal to half that cards level rounded up. If you exile that card, remove one doom from the current agenda.
• Cost: 2
• Trait: Insight
• Icons: Will & Intellect

Fantasy Flight Games announced on Twitter that they made a print-and-play version of the card and linked to a high-resolution PDF in the game’s support area. Some changes were made.

Thanks to Fantasy Flight and especially, MJ Newman, Jeremy Zwirn, and Evan Johnson for hosting a great event! Hopefully, we will get to see each other next year!

From what I learned from the Google box, Canyon Spells is Jimmie Linville and Daniel Pingrey who have been making music since high school. Their collaboration is tight and has produced a lot of great music across many genres. Their set at Gen Con was tight, fun, and really entertaining. I have not heard a great new band in a long, long time, and this was a pleasant surprise at Gen Con, of all places. I am not sure where they are going or if they will get stuck with an identity crisis, but they have great song writing and performing chops. YouTube has many videos of their band performing A LOT, which is a sign of a great band. Bands need to perform as much as they can, book gigs, and travel to obscure gaming conventions to strengthen their craft. I hope they find their way into the mainstream. They deserve a shot.

How much time have you wasted trying to choose the best salad dressing?

Jeff also mentioned the paradox of choice. He recommended that we watch a TED Talk from Barry Schwartz on the subject of choice and try to apply it to game design. Barry does not talk about game design in his TED Talk, but his message about choice can easily apply. A game with no choice is not fun. A game with too many choices is also not fun. You need to find a balance and do not overwhelm your players with too many options. Choice is central to the art of game design. You need to decide which choices to present to players and which ones that can be removed from your game.

I recommend that you watch Barry Schwartz’s TED Talk, The Paradox of Choice, to get the full context and see how you can apply it to game design.

He was really awesome to talk to and inspired me to get writing about one of my characters, named “Dog”. Thanks for the bag of holding!

I lost… But, I got some awesome runner-up gifts and got to play an intense battle with a great player.

If you ever go to a gaming convention you will notice all of the ironic t-shirts everyone wears. For example, the overweight guy wearing a small Supperman t-shirt. Each year more and more t-shirt vendors invade the exhibit hall at Gen Con.

If you know me, you know that I just had to create a bunch of sarcastic, novelty shirts. I just can’t not do it. So in 2006 I made up a bunch of shirts. I sold a few, mostly it was a waste of time. A few survived and I gave them out to my friends for Gen Con 2006. One in particular was a shirt for The Dungeoneering Dad that read, “My other shirt is a v-neck”. Looks like TDD gave it away…

Today, I find that exact shirt on a website called “toomanytshirts.com” – a site where “a random dude from Pittsburgh” wears and photographs a different t-shirt every day.

That was a pleasant surprise to see the old shirt still making its rounds with my trademark bar code on the sleeve. I completely forgot about the two weeks I was “T-shirt Hans”.

Here are some of my other more popular (less popular) t-shirt slogans:

• Rage Against the Washing Machine

• Got Rhetorical Questions?

• I believe in God and Aliens

• 3 out of 5 dentists agree 60% of the time

• Community Chest

• I hate Slogans

• WWW.JD

• Political Statement

• I am case-Sensitive

• I’m the man from Nantucket

• Ask me about today’s specials

• I hate scallions

• My favorite font is Ironic Sans

Gen Con 2007 turned out to be one of the best. The last day of the four day convention, the squad got to meet a hero of ours — Reiner Knizia. Reiner is a German game designer that has created some of my favorite board games and continues to put out challenging, fun, and creative games several times a year. Two of my favorite board games are Lost Cities and Ingenious.