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The Crawl

Written 2026-10-27 from the project's own design docs.

The Crawl is the founder's design for a seasonal live-service game: an online game that keeps running and changing after launch, organised into seasons that each start fresh. In The Crawl, each season is a season of an alien reality show filmed in a dungeon. Players create characters, fight their way down through floors that close on a timer, and try to stay on the show for as long as they can.

It is inspired by Dungeon Crawler Carl, Matt Dinniman's LitRPG book series (notes on the books are on Dungeon Crawler Carl). The Crawl is meant to be an original game, not an adaptation: it borrows mechanics, not names, characters or text.

Status: parked

The founder parked the project on 2026-10-27. Nothing is in progress. The design and a small working prototype are kept as they stand.

Where it stands

  • A vertical slice runs end to end on one PC (built 2026-10-26). A vertical slice is a thin working version of the whole stack. This one has:
    • the season, production and death rules as a tested library;
    • a game server whose floor-collapse clock really runs;
    • a game client you can walk around Floor 1 in and take the stairs down;
    • bots for load testing.
  • Nobody has played it yet. It has been checked by tests and scripted runs only. Gamepad input is untested.
  • Combat and character design are at the theory stage. The founder's words (2026-10-26): "We don't need to implement combat code until we start talking about player or AI controllers." The numbers that exist are first guesses, and the founder has deliberately deferred the math until the theory is complete.
  • A combat rules library exists and is tested, but by the founder's choice it isn't connected to the server or the client.

How the design is recorded

The project has strict rules for its own design docs, and these pages follow them:

  • The founder's decisions are canon. Each is dated, quoted where the wording matters, and restated as numbered rules (for example R27 or W0). The rule IDs are kept on these pages so they can be traced back.
  • Decided and open are kept apart. Every page separates what's decided from what's still open.
  • Readings are labelled. The AI assistant that keeps the docs (Claude) adds analysis and recommendations. Those are always marked as its readings, never as decisions. On these pages they appear under "Readings" or are marked (reading).
  • Nothing is invented. Where the design is silent, the gap is recorded for the founder rather than filled in.
  • IP check. Any element taken straight from the books (a name, character or text) is tagged [DCC-derived] so it can be checked before anything public. Mechanics are treated as fine to reuse; names and text are not.

Pages

Page What it covers Status in the docs
Vision Camera, controls, world scale, destruction, loot, the clock, combat variety Decided; 2 open questions
Seasons, death and the B-Roll The two productions (Main Show and B-Roll), floor collapse, death and respawn, season end Decided; nothing open, a few items parked
Worldspace How big floors are, what gets generated and cleaned up, the continuity rule Decided; tuning numbers open
Tech stack Rust everywhere, the vertical slice, what's proven, load-test results Decided; version policy open
Offline validation An offline mode that was analysed and then dropped Superseded
Combat and items Earth Weaponry, the lethal damage model, the five attributes, stamina and mana, professions Partly law, partly proposal; gaps listed
Conditions and environment Bleeding, poison, disease, fire, heat and cold as two shared building blocks Law
Characters and progression "Everything is numbers and modifiers", levels, healing, starting kit Theory; math deferred; 2 open questions
Dungeon Crawler Carl Fan research notes on the source books: premise, franchise, the IP line Research log
DCC: the dungeon and its floors The books' dungeon structure, clocks, safe rooms, bosses and floor formats (spoilers) Research log
DCC: game systems and the show The books' stats, classes, loot, viewers, sponsors and AI (spoilers) Research log

Open questions waiting on the founder

These were listed as open when the project was parked:

  1. Do level-ups grant only points the player spends, or partly automatic gains? (Characters)
  2. The shape of the modifier model: what a modifier targets, its operations, their order, stacking and duration. This is the next piece of theory the design needs. (Characters)
  3. Smaller combat gaps: hunger, thirst and sleep; equipment slots and weapon swap time; whether carrying a load drains stamina; numbers for Intelligence and Charisma. (Combat)
  4. The list of starting professions is still a proposal. Only two are the founder's. (Combat)
  5. Playing the slice for the first time.

Planned order when work resumes

As recorded at the park:

  1. Finish the theory: the modifier model, then the remaining combat gaps.
  2. Rebuild the combat library on the modifier model, before tuning any numbers.
  3. The "pre-final" math: Dexterity, movement speeds, attribute gain per level, attribute scaling.
  4. Player and AI controllers. Only then connect combat to the server and client.
  5. Then the slice's leftovers: looting and gear, safe rooms, sizing later floors, Floor 1 cleanup, and server-side movement checks.