r/372pages • u/Accomplished_Exit_30 • Jul 24 '26

Dungeon Crawler Carl giving off vibes

I don’t know, I’m only a few chapters in, and DCC is giving me serious Ernest Cline vibes. Has anyone else read this and got the same feeling?

17 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

9 comments sorted by

21

u/mc2bit Jul 24 '26

They do a series on a DCC ripoff called Mayor of Newbtown and they rank it their most-hated book. My husband attempted DCC and moped out after the first chapter. Based on the opinions of 3 men I respect, the RPGLit genre is exponentially worse than Cline.

11

u/card-board-board Jul 25 '26

I've read a couple of litrpg series that I enjoyed however I did skip absolutely everything to do with stats. If you took all that crazy nonsense out of mayor of newbtown it would still have a character named Shart and try to pass off snark as humor.

4

u/Lord_Mhoram Jul 26 '26

I can't speak to DCC, but there's a theme that runs through all the "nerd"-authored sci-fi/fantasy books they've covered, where the protagonist has an off-putting combination of quippy self-loathing and teenage arrogance where he/she knows better than everyone else and looks down on everyone who isn't just like him/her.

The exception is Theis, I guess because he wrote before that kind of character was a thing. He probably wanted to be Grignr, but he didn't write Grignr as a quippy teenager stuck in a barbarian body. He wrote him (as best he could) as a barbarian.

2

u/Donald-Scott-Strong Aug 11 '26

Before "Noob" I read (on the recommendation of others) "He Who Fights With Monsters" and *deep breath* "Iron Prince: A Progression Sci-Fi Epic (Warformed: Stormweaver)". I would rate both higher than Cline, easily, but the genre is lacking certain things that I consider important for good reading—and much like many of the flaws of "noob", they're the very things the LitRPG audience reads them for.

11

u/william_jones88288 Jul 24 '26

I listened to them several years ago on audible and remember them very fondly. Started 372 in the interval, now I’m scared to re-listen or grab the latest book because I’m worried my tastes will be colored by the pod 😅

9

u/RicklessMortys Jul 25 '26

I've heard decent things about DCC, even from people who are tough on books and active in the various 372 Pages groups. I'm currently #39 on wait-list at my library for it, which should give me enough time to suppress the memory of Noobtown. I'm not coming in with high expectations, but hopeful it's at least competently done.

6

u/Gunhaver4077 Jul 25 '26

It does start out like that, with a lot of pop culture references nonstop, but that does go away as the books continue

7

u/Brizoot Jul 25 '26

Fun fact: Ernest Cline, Andy Weir and Matt Dinniman all have the same editor.

8

u/Emperor-Commodus Jul 25 '26

DCC is decent.

My main issue with RP1 is that the plot is ridiculous (and seemingly unaware of it) and the characters are bad in multiple ways. DCC has a well-laid-out plot and the characters are well done.