Seasons, death and the B-Roll¶

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

How a season runs, what happens when a character dies, and how The Crawl keeps the books' fatal stakes without becoming a permadeath-only game. Decided 2026-10-26 over thirteen passes with the founder. Nothing in this area is open; a few details are parked.

The problem it solves¶

In Dungeon Crawler Carl, death is always final. The founder's starting point: permadeath games tend to be niche (roguelites aside), and The Crawl is meant to be a seasonal live-service game, the way the books' show runs season after season. So the design splits each season into two productions:

The Main Show: the one-life competition. Fully dangerous, fully open.
The B-Roll: the safety net. In TV, B-roll is the secondary footage cut around the main story. Here it's where characters go when they drop off the Main Show, and keep playing.

The founder agreed that this works like the "hardcore" and "softcore" leagues some online games run side by side, but with different rules as well, not just different death penalties.

Intent¶

Fatal stakes where they count, without permadeath-only. A death costs a character its place on the show, not (usually) its life.
A character earns a second life by reaching Floor 3. Floor 3 is where characters pick a race and class; that unlocks respawning.
There's always a way in. Every floor stays open after its Main Show collapse, so new characters can always come down through Floors 1 and 2.
Players can keep playing without having to stay at the competitive edge. The founder made this a deliberate break from the books.
The fiction carries the rule. Being cut to B-Roll footage is a demotion inside the fiction. Both productions can be broadcast.
No safe scouting from Floor 4 on. The B-Roll always runs a floor behind, so nobody can learn a new floor from a safe copy. The risk of scouting on Floors 1–3 is accepted.
A demotion never costs a character its gear, and in the B-Roll nothing is lost on death.
Seasons are self-contained. At season end every character is archived.

Season timeline¶

Main Show is on	Also open (B-Roll)	Notes
Floor 1	—	The Main Show starts (R27)
Floor 2	Floor 1 (kept open after its collapse)	The entry path for new characters (R31)
Floor 3	Floors 1–2, plus B-Roll Floor 3 on a separate copy	Respawn unlocks (R28). Both productions run on Floor 3 at once
Floor 4	Floors 1–3	The one-floor lag starts (R30). Waiting at the B-Roll frontier is accepted (R15)
Floor N (5 and later)	Floors 1 to N − 1	B-Roll Floor N − 1 opened when Main Show Floor N − 1 collapsed

What happens when a character dies¶

Character	What happens
Generic (no race or class yet: Floors 1–2)	Deleted. The player starts a new character on Floor 1 (R32)
Has a race and class, on the Main Show, before Floor 3 collapses	Out of the Main Show (R24). The player chooses to delete it or respawn it on B-Roll Floor 3 (R33)
Has a race and class, on the Main Show, Floor 4 or later	Out of the Main Show for good (R7). Demoted to the live B-Roll floor with a copy of its dropped gear (R14, R18)
On the B-Roll	Delete or respawn (R33). It respawns on its most recently active floor (R39). Friends can also revive it (R13)

When a floor collapses¶

A floor "collapses" when its clock runs out.

R38. A character that hasn't gone through an exit when its Main Show floor collapses is killed at the collapse and respawns on that floor's B-Roll copy, which opens at the same moment. It counts as a death, so the character is out of the Main Show. From Floor 4, its corpse stays lootable and it takes a copy of its dropped gear.
On Floors 1–2 there's no B-Roll copy, so a character still on the collapsing floor dies for good.
R37. When Floor 3 collapses, every character on Floors 1 and 2 is permanently killed. The floors stay open afterwards, so characters created later still come down through them.
R40. A character without a race and class caught by a collapse on Floor 3 or later also respawns. The player can still delete it.

How the collapse rule changed

Earlier passes on the same day said collapse "no longer kills", meaning a collapsed floor stays open instead of vanishing (R31). Passes 11–13 then added that characters still standing on a floor when it collapses are killed (R37, R38, R40). Some summary lines in the project's own README still carry the older wording; the numbered rules above are the current ones.

The rules¶

Season structure¶

R27. The Main Show starts each season when Floor 1 opens.
R36. Floors 1 and 2 are Main Show floors for the whole season, with Main Show combat rules, even for characters who can no longer join the Main Show.
R31. Every floor stays open after its Main Show collapse. From Floor 3 on it continues as a B-Roll floor. This replaces the books' rule that a collapsed floor kills everyone and is gone.
R9. Every B-Roll floor that has opened stays active.
R28. Respawning unlocks when Floor 3 opens. B-Roll Floor 3 opens alongside Main Show Floor 3, on a separate copy.
R30. The one-floor lag starts when Main Show Floor 4 opens. From then on, B-Roll Floor N opens when Main Show Floor N collapses.
R15. The wait at the B-Roll frontier is accepted by design. The founder's reason: a live B-Roll copy of the Main Show's newest floor would change the Main Show entirely.
R1. Anyone can join the season and create a character at any time, entering through Floor 1.
R2. Every floor runs online.

Staying on the Main Show¶

R3. To stay on the Main Show past Floor 3, a character must pass through a Floor 4 exit, alive, before Floor 3 collapses.
R34. Every character is eligible for the Main Show until Floor 3 collapses, including characters created late. Eligibility is still subject to every other rule, such as death or demotion.
R35. A character created after Floor 3 collapses is never eligible.
R5. Nobody joins the Main Show after Floor 3 collapses.
R24. A character that dies before the Floor 3 collapse is out of the Main Show.
R7. A Main Show character that dies on Floor 4 or later is out of the show for good.

Death and respawn¶

R32. Generic characters (no race or class yet) are deleted when they die, in every production.
R33. A character with a race and class can be deleted or respawned when it dies.
R39. A respawning B-Roll character respawns on its most recently active floor: the one it died on.
R13. The B-Roll also allows revives by friends. The details of respawn and revive are parked.

Demotion and the B-Roll¶

R14. A demoted character lands on the live B-Roll floor (the newest one open).
R18. On demotion, the character takes a copy of all its dropped equipment, plus all its levels, stats and skills. The originals stay lootable on its Main Show corpse.
R10. A B-Roll character can never move back up a floor, except through demotion or respawn.
R23. Nothing moves between the Main Show and the B-Roll except demotion and respawn.

Combat and equipment¶

R11. Main Show: player-versus-player (PvP) fighting always on, friendly fire on, fully open looting on death. No opt-outs.
R12. B-Roll: players can opt out of PvP, no friendly fire, and no equipment loss on death.
R20. R12 covers loss on death only. Durability, breakage, consumables and any other way of losing an item still apply.
R16. B-Roll characters still gain gear from every normal source: monsters, quests, sponsor boxes and so on.
R19. Safe rooms work exactly as in the books, in both productions. [DCC-derived]: to be checked against the books when built.

Broadcast and season end¶

R21. Both productions can be broadcast.
R22. At season end every character goes to the Hall of Fame archive and can't be played again.

Parked¶

Where exactly a respawn happens on a floor. The founder's lean: "almost certainly" a safe room on the active B-Roll floor. R39 settled which floor; the spot on it is parked.
Details of respawn and revive.
Account-level carry-over between seasons.

Dropped along the way¶

An earlier pass had players playing Floors 1–3 offline, single-player, and joining the Main Show from Floor 4. The founder wanted that only if it could be made secure. After analysis, it was dropped in pass 3: "kill the offline mode, keep all floors online." See Offline validation.

Readings (the assistant's analysis)¶

What these rules imply for the technology:

Fully server-authoritative. The server, not the player's machine, decides every outcome.
Floors are never torn down mid-season. Every floor that has opened stays live until season end, so server cost is the sum of all open floors, weighted by how many players are on each. Floor 1's on-demand cleanup (Worldspace) helps most here.
The Main Show and the B-Roll are separate groups of servers. Demotion and respawn are the only paths between them, and both are one-way and all-or-nothing.
Season events are logged and atomic: each collapse, the Floor 3 cut, each B-Roll floor opening, and the season-end archive.
The server enforces each production's rule flags: PvP opt-out, friendly fire, and equipment loss on death.
Pressure points: Floor 3 allows some scouting, since both productions run there at once; that falls inside the accepted Floors 1–3 risk. B-Roll gear stays contained because seasons end (R22) and the productions are sealed from each other (R23).

In the vertical slice, these rules live in one tested library, with at least one test per rule. Two deliberate breaks (removing the B-Roll lag; letting generic characters respawn) each made tests fail, which showed the tests could catch a broken rule.