A Dungeon Crawler World, Play by Post

Creating your character

Character creation begins before the campaign with a private conversation and questionnaire about who your crawler was before the world ended. We will discuss their work, hobbies, practical experience, personality, relationships, fears, and the strange little talents nobody expected to matter during an apocalypse. You do not need to arrive with a character sheet, choose a class, or search through sourcebooks. We will build your starting crawler together. Your crawler begins at Level 1 as an ordinary person, not an established adventurer. Their starting stats and fifteen recognized skills will be created from their history and genuine abilities. Everyone uses the same overall distribution, so no one is rewarded for claiming they were secretly an Olympic surgeon with military training. Once the tutorial is complete, the System grants additional stat points, allowing you to strengthen natural talents, compensate for weaknesses, or begin becoming something beyond human. During the First and Second Floors, you remain an Unclassed Crawler. You will still gain levels, abilities, equipment, achievements, and new skills, but you will not select a traditional D&D class. The System watches how you fight, solve problems, treat other people, respond to danger, and misuse anything foolishly left within reach. When you reach the Third Floor, the System uses those choices to create several personalized class offers. These are custom classes designed around the crawler you have actually become, including at least one option you probably did not realize you were earning. Later floors introduce further opportunities for specialization, transformation, and deeply irresponsible personal growth. D&D experience is helpful but unnecessary, and no knowledge of Dungeon Crawler Carl is required. Standard 5e rules provide the foundation, but character creation, progression, equipment, skills, and many other systems have been customized for this campaign. I will handle the mechanical construction and make sure you understand every option placed in front of you. Bring me a person, not a build. The Dungeon will take care of turning them into something dangerous.

Preparing for the session

Before the world ends, please complete the following extremely demanding survival preparations: You will need a free Discord account and access to the campaign server. The entire game is played through Discord using dedicated channels, dice and character-management bots, and your own private crawler area. There is no voice chat, webcam, virtual tabletop, or regularly scheduled session required. Before entering the Dungeon, you will complete a questionnaire about the person you want to play. This is not a traditional D&D character builder. I want to know who they were before everything went wrong: their job, hobbies, training, relationships, strengths, weaknesses, strange bits of knowledge, and the sort of things they might realistically have had with them when civilization ended. I will use those answers to build your crawler's starting attributes and skills and prepare the mechanical side of the character for you. You do not need to purchase any books, learn the campaign's homebrew systems beforehand, or arrive with a completed character sheet. Most importantly, do not come with a class or optimized build already planned. Your crawler begins as the person they were on Earth. The Dungeon will give you opportunities to become something much stranger if you survive long enough. Race and class selection do not even occur until the Third Floor. Because this is a play-by-post game, you should also be comfortable checking Discord regularly and responding when you have an active scene. You do not need to be online at the same time as me. The Crawl moves forward through asynchronous posts, so you can write and make decisions around your normal schedule. Come with an idea for someone you would genuinely enjoy putting through the apocalypse. Think about what mattered to them, what they were actually good at, what they would fight to protect, and what unfortunate series of decisions might have put them near a Dungeon entrance when the world ended. SYSTEM NOTICE: Humanity's preparation period has officially ended. Yours has not. Please complete the questionnaire and join the Discord server before entering the Dungeon.

What PUN brings to the table

Expect a character-driven, highly personalized game where your choices, relationships, discoveries, and terrible ideas genuinely shape what happens next. This is your crawler's story, not a predetermined adventure with your character dropped into it. People you help may remember you. Enemies may survive to become recurring problems. Places can change because of what you did there. The Dungeon is paying attention. Because this is a one-on-one play-by-post game, I can tailor the Crawl heavily around your character. Their profession, hobbies, knowledge, relationships, fears, equipment, and even strange bits of useless trivia can become mechanically relevant. Skills improve through use, spells can develop through mastery, achievements react to what you actually do, and the System may develop opinions about their behavior that you would probably prefer it kept to itself. You can expect detailed written scenes, NPC conversations, maps and visual references when they are useful, custom handouts, clues, loot, achievements, System announcements, character progression, and organized Discord channels that keep your crawler's story and information easy to reference. Important information will not be buried beneath hundreds of unrelated posts. Combat is dangerous and tactical, but fighting is not always the best answer. Creative plans, preparation, negotiation, environmental manipulation, exploiting something you noticed three scenes ago, and doing something I absolutely did not expect are all valid ways to survive. I use the rules as a consistent foundation, but I am happy to reward clever interpretations and Rule of Cool moments when they make sense within the world. The Dungeon is also designed to be explored rather than simply cleared in a straight line. You can investigate side passages, return to places you have already visited, pursue rumors, hunt bosses, search for secrets, build relationships with NPCs, or decide that the extremely suspicious door is somebody else's problem. Your decisions determine which parts of the world become important. You do not need previous D&D experience. New mechanics are introduced as your crawler encounters them, and I will handle much of the bookkeeping behind the scenes so you can focus on deciding what your character actually does. Experienced players will still have plenty of room to experiment with the deeper progression systems and find interactions I will inevitably regret allowing. Player boundaries will always be respected. Dungeon Crawler World can be violent, dark, absurd, and occasionally cruel, but those things should make the story more entertaining, not make the player uncomfortable. SYSTEM NOTICE: I prepare extensively. You are encouraged to ruin those preparations creatively. The System considers this a feature, not a bug.

Homebrew rules

D&D 5e provides the foundation, but the Crawl adds custom character progression, skills, achievements, classes, loot, crafting, inventory, and other systems designed to make the Dungeon feel alive and responsive. Each floor may also introduce its own rules, hazards, and deeply questionable ideas about fair play. You are not expected to learn everything upfront. New mechanics are introduced as they become relevant, and any major rules or changes will be clearly explained. I may refine homebrew as the campaign develops, using player feedback to keep it consistent, understandable, and fun. SYSTEM NOTICE: If the rules appear to be changing around you, congratulations. You have correctly identified the Dungeon.

How PUN creates a safe table

Before play begins, I will send you a private Lines and Veils questionnaire through Google Forms. This gives you a chance to tell me what subjects should never appear in the game, what can exist only off-screen, and anything else I should know before building your Crawl. Those boundaries are not permanent contracts. You can add or change a Line or Veil at any point during the campaign. You never need to explain or justify why something is uncomfortable. Because this is a one-on-one play-by-post game, safety tools are simple and private. If something in a scene is bothering you, you can message me directly at any time. We can stop the scene, rewind it, change the content, fade to black, or simply move forward. There is no pressure to remain in character while addressing a safety concern. Before your Crawl begins, we will also talk about tone, expectations, character boundaries, and the kinds of darker material you are interested in exploring. Dungeon Crawler Carl can involve violence, death, body horror, cruelty, loss, exploitation, and other mature themes. I do not want to remove those elements entirely because they are part of the setting, but player comfort always takes priority over preserving a scene exactly as I planned it. I also distinguish between making your character uncomfortable and making you uncomfortable. The Dungeon may torment, frighten, embarrass, manipulate, or threaten your crawler. That never means you as the player are expected to tolerate material you do not want in the game. If a particularly intense scene comes up, I may check in privately afterward rather than assuming everything was fine because play continued. You are also always welcome to tell me when something worked especially well, not just when something went wrong. Knowing where the fun boundaries are helps me push the fictional ones safely. My goal is to create a game where we can explore dark, ridiculous, emotional, and occasionally deeply uncomfortable stories while maintaining trust between GM and player. SYSTEM NOTICE: The Dungeon does not respect your boundaries. Your GM does.