Hello, Crawlers!

(There’s a TLDR at the end if you just want the highlights!)

We’ve got a lot of ground to cover before level collapse, so before you settle in to read consider grabbing some XP cookies, eating some mana toast, or relieving yourself (in a bathroom, please, we don’t need any more rage elemental incidents) before you continue reading.

New Achievement! Survive the first Kickstarter campaign! Who knew it was so hard to put $#17 in a box and send it to people?!

We’d like to take a moment to address the Krakaren in the room… This campaign wasn’t without its hiccups. It took us longer to fulfill than we would have liked due to a plethora of issues, but in no small part due to the ever-changing tariff policies this year.

Thank you all for bearing with us during this campaign, and we hope everyone is enjoying their items. (Except for the few unfortunate souls whose underwear disappeared in customs… rest assured our pantsless and underwearless heroes, your orders will be on the way at the beginning of October!)

The Next Campaign...

We are very excited to announce that the next campaign’s prelaunch page is now live with TWO BOOKS ROLLED INTO ONE CAMPAIGN!

Both Carl’s Doomsday Scenario and The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook are getting special edition treatments!

Be sure to go and follow the next campaign so you don’t miss all the cool stuff we’re launching on October 14th! (We’ll announce a specific time for launch soon so everyone has a fair chance at the limited slots available for the most expensive tiers.)

Product Changes on the next Campaign

There’s a few things that have to change moving forward, but rest assured, we have you and your bookshelf’s beauty at the forefront of our thoughts with regards to these.

The Ace Hardcover Deal

These beautiful editions of DCC that we all know and love happened to throw a big wrench into our plans! As part of Matt’s traditional publishing deal, Ace has the exclusive rights to create standard hardcover editions of Dungeon Crawler Carl which means… we can no longer produce our version of the standard edition for future campaigns. Rest assured! We have a plan that we’ve talked over with Matt and he approves of!

Changes to Future Books

Since there won’t be future standard editions, we’re making a slight pivot to the presentation of the limited edition version and, most importantly, we’re including ways for people to get updated book jackets for V1 so that regardless of whether you have the standard or limited edition, we will maintain shelf cohesion as the rest of the series goes on.

Moving forward, our editions will have the book covers done in full color, and the book jackets will receive the foil treatments. In order to ensure everyone who backed the first campaign has V1 editions that match the rest of the series (whether you got limited or standard), we’re including an exclusive tier for V1 backers where you’ll receive the updated V1 edition book jacket with purchase of the V2 book.

All you’ll have to do is put the new jacket on your V1 edition, and the spines will continue to match on your shelf as the series goes on. We’re really excited about this change, and think the jackets will look even better with holographic treatments. Here are some other important miscellaneous changes:

• The reverse side of the dust jackets will have black and white sketches of the cover on them on all future editions.

• First edition runs will continue to be individually numbered.

• Moving forward, we’ll be shipping these out in such a way that backers who respond to their PledgeManager shipping surveys first receive lower numbers since the numbers were simply random on the first campaign. 

• There is no way to reserve or specify which number you want. We wish we could accommodate such requests for the diehard collectors out there, but it simply isn’t feasible across the entire series for so many people.

Now that we aren’t producing the standard editions and having to worry about budgeting the interiors to be reasonable for potential retail sale, we can upgrade to paper that feels more premium. The type of paper we chose for this first campaign was acid-free premium stock, but a lot of people missed the paper texture we all know and love from a book.

We sat down with Matt this year at DragonCon, let him review a ton of paper types we can choose from, and we settled on a slightly thicker paper with a color and texture that matches expectations for books (while the previous type felt a bit more appropriate for a magazine or some such). This upgrade in paper thickness and paper texture is just one more thing to look forward to for future editions.

The Nature of Limited Edition

With that Ace hardcover deal, our only option to continue this edition is with the limited edition route. Of course, there are a lot of crawlers that have discovered DCC since we ran the first campaign. We get more and more customer support emails each day from folks who are hoping we’ll sell the V1 edition again in the future.

That being said, we did say those were limited edition, and we have to abide by that. After talking it over with Matt, we have a path forward.

Everyone who backs the V2/V3 Kickstarter campaign and any future ones will receive a signed and numbered, limited edition hardcover. We will print these books with 25% more than we need to account for damaged copies, misprints, etc. If we have leftovers available after the campaign has fully fulfilled they may be available as add-ons for future campaigns.

To make sure everyone knows how many copies of the Limited Edition of each volume exists, once we get the final books shipping to us we will update each future campaign with the exact quantity count that is en route to the warehouse.

On the first campaign we had over 6,000 total backers (including late backers) and some of those folks even ordered multiple books. For this reason, we printed 10,000 of the limited editions. So what happens to the extras?

Since we’ll have a few thousand numbered limited editions of V1 left, we’ll be selling those as add-ons on the next Kickstarter campaign. Once we run out of them, we will be selling reprints—more on that in the next section.

As for the extra Standard editions, they will not be available for sale. But for clarity for all the collectors out there, there were 3,000 printed of this edition.

Reprints of V1 AKA: Quest Failed Bitchmeat Limited Edition

To ensure newer DCC fans who want a special edition can get one without compromising the specialness of the limited V1 run (and this is the same way we’ll handle each subsequent edition in the future), we will be reprinting V1 once we sell out of its initial stock. However, the reprints will have some critical changes we want to make everyone aware of:

• The reprinted V1 edition will be in line with future treatments of all future editions. Its cover will be in color, the jacket will have the holo treatment.

• All first edition runs are/will be signed and numbered. Reprinted editions are not signed or numbered. As a result, they will not have the additional tip-in title page either.

• All reprinted editions (on future editions as well) will have black ribbon bookmarks instead of color bookmarks.

• At Matt’s request, all reprints will have the label “Quest Failed Bitchmeat Limited Edition” on them as a final way to differentiate them from the 1st edition prints.

• Bitchmeat Editions and late pledges do not come with the “Name Included on Thank You Page” reward. Additionally, no new names will be added to the originally printed list in V1.

After the last DCC campaign ends, we will be unable to print more copies of V1 for the rest of the series. All Bitchmeat reprints are still limited runs via Kickstarter and will not be available for purchase forever. As a result, the Bitchmeat run of the last book in the series will only be available during the final book’s campaign and as a late pledge. 

Again, one more time for the crawlers in the back… After the last DCC Kickstarter campaign ends, the Extreme Mayhem Editions will no longer be produced in any form or fashion.

Between the slew of changes we’ve made to V1’s first edition compared to its reprint (from ribbon bookmarks, numbers, signage, and difference in paper) we feel good that the initial run is different enough that collectors can be satisfied in the first edition’s promised uniqueness.

To be crystal clear: the Quest Failed Bitchmeat Editions of V1 won’t be available for purchase until we run out of the limited edition of V1.

Improvements

We’re making a lot of changes behind the scenes to ensure things go more smoothly in the future. It’s important to us that you all know we are listening, learning, and improving, so here’s a few of the ways we’re going to ensure future campaigns are more timely, transparent, and smooth:

• More Help

  • We grossly underestimated the need for plentiful customer support help on this campaign. If you’re one of the backers who had to wait longer than five business days to get a response, we apologize. It’s not acceptable, and we’re implementing a better ticketing system for us to stay organized and getting more people on board to help us out.

• Communication & Transparency

  • This means monthly updates to let you know what’s happening and more a better job of engaging with comments on the Kickstarter and update posts.

• We’re actively exploring other fulfillment partners for the next campaign to make shipping smoother.

  • Once we had everything ready to ship out back in July, we told everyone we’d be starting to ship things. We didn’t expect to only be shipping out 250 orders per day for over 6,000 total crawlers. This led to a lot of frustration and confusion that we intend to avoid in the future by switching to a new fulfillment partner to get orders out in a more timely manner.

  • Speaking of fulfillment, we’re also going to ensure shipping goes a bit smoother in the future by shrink-wrapping all of the books to protect them and their dust jackets. We hope between this and more careful packing procedures that fewer crawlers will encounter damaged books.

Reminders

For those who have not fully locked in their order on PledgeManager, this is your LAST REMINDER to fill out your survey! We’ll be doing a final export of orders at the end of the day on October 5th. So if you haven’t completed your PledgeManager survey yet please do so now by going to: https://matt-dinniman.pledgemanager.com/projects/dungeon-crawler-carl-v1-hardcover/

We cannot fulfill your order unless you have filled this out since we need your address, and, for those who are expecting underwear, your sizing info.

October 5th, 2025 is the last day to turn in your Pledgemanager survey in order to claim your rewards for this campaign.

Thank You

Thank you all for your patience and understanding on this campaign, especially those of you whose rewards have been delayed to the bitter end. We appreciate all the support for Matt and his stories, and we're committed to making this next campaign go more smoothly across the board.

If you're interested in joining us for Floor 2 and Floor 3 of the dungeon, head over to the new campaign, give it a follow, and join us for our biggest level up yet!

TLDR: 

• Book 2 and 3 Kickstarter is imminent. 

• No more regular editions. Everything is special.

• A limited number of book 1 special editions are still available.

• When those are gone, you may get a non-signed, non-numbered Bitchmeat edition of book 1 for “shelf cohesion” as the suits call it.

• The dust jackets will have the holo treatment and the books themselves will have their covers in full color. Updated dust jackets for Book 1 are included with V2 if you backed the first kickstarter.

• This next campaign will be printed + shipped faster.