Ondřej HrdinaThe Dungeon Crawler Carl series, created by (and initially self-published by) author Matt Dinniman, has just been confirmed to have a TV adaptation in development at Peacock. The new show will be written by Chris Yost, a comic book and film/television writer with credits on projects like The Mandalorian and Thor: Ragnarok, and will be executive produced by Yost, Seth McFarlane, and Dinniman himself. McFarlane’s production company, Fuzzy Door, is responsible for tongue-in-cheek comedies like Ted and The Orville. At first glance, it seems like a good fit for a series with such an emphasis on referential humor and metatextual deconstruction.But the really interesting thing here is that a series based on Dungeon Crawler Carl is really a triumph not just of a popular fantasy series getting turned into a TV show, but an entire style of RPGs jumping to the mainstream.Since the early days of tabletop gaming, the RPG has been a favored style of gaming due to the ability to fully immerse yourself in a character you can craft from the ground up. From the early days of physical experiences like Dungeons and Dragons and Call of Cthulhu to the massive success of virtual games like The Elder Scrolls and Baldur’s Gate, there’s something inherently appealing about the idea of becoming another person in some grand adventure and interacting with a new world through a different pair of eyes. Built on the popularity of the traditional RPG, a new fictional experience has emerged that combines the mechanical conditions of the genre with the act of reading a book: the LitRPG. Unlike choose-your-own-adventure books, which give readers a level of control that functions similarly to an RPG but still maintain a world that is “real” within the story, the LitRPG transports both the reader and the central characters into an actual RPG (much like the isekai subgenre) they must progress through, complete with a focus on leveling up and in-game stats (such as intelligence, strength, charisma). For over a decade now, the genre has been rising in popularity and volume, but Dungeon Crawler Carl is the most mainstream take on this subgenre yet.The Dungeon Crawler Carl series has definitely become the biggest example of the nascent LitRPG genre. | Ace BooksThe original novels, of which there are seven, take place in the World Dungeon, an 18-level dungeon crawl created from the resources and debris left behind by the destruction of planet Earth. Carl, a former U.S. Coast Guard, is forced to enter the dungeon (alongside his ex-girlfriend’s cat Donut and a few other human survivors) by the Borant Corporation, an alien conglomerate responsible for Earth’s demise due to the mining and consumption of its resources. The Borant Corporation broadcasts the survivors' efforts in the dungeon as part of an intergalactic game show named Dungeon Crawler World, in which “crawlers” must fight enemies and bosses, gaining experience and occasionally receiving new gear from “loot boxes” given to them by viewers at home, all the while striving to reach the final level of the dungeon.“Death games” stories (narratives that revolve around characters playing simple “games” only to discover fatal consequences) are nothing new, but in a post-Hunger Games, post-Ready or Not landscape, it feels like the best time to bring Dungeon Crawler Carl to life. At its core it's a story about the end of the world being gamified and turned into entertainment, something that many works in the death games genre have in common, and a sentiment that feels frighteningly relatable to our current political moment. Author Matt Dinniman | Phillip Faraone/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty ImagesThere's also the fact that video game adaptations are more popular than they've ever been, with massive recent successes like The Super Mario Bros. Movie and the Fallout TV show – who's to say that couldn't translate to a television series about video games, especially one that interrogates the wish fulfillment of the RPG with such bewildering humor and surprising existential weight. With the LitRPG being such a recent trend in the publishing world, it'll be interesting to see what an adaptation of Dungeon Crawler Carl will look like – it'll be a television series trying to replicate the feeling of a book trying to replicate the feeling of playing an RPG, which is already a heady concept, but if done right it could easily become one of the most unique science fiction shows on TV.The Dungeon Crawler Carl series does not yet have a release date.