Side Passages

Join us as we create Jake Skillman, our first character for the Dungeon Crawler Carl tabletop RPG.

He's an former college baseball player, working at a big box store, and trying to figure out what to do with his life. Until aliens show up, wreck the Earth, and tempt millions of people into a world-wide dungeon crawl. Now he's just trying to survive in an environment that's wants to kill him for the entertainment of trillions.

Should you go to Gen Con? We’re talking about our experience at GenCon 2026 so you can decide for yourself. And be “our experience”, we mean David’s experience, because he’s the one who went.

The aliens have arrived. Every building in the world has collapsed. And now we’re all trapped in a world-wide dungeon, trying to fight our way to the 18th floor to save the world. On this episode of Side Passages, we’re looting our eight favorite concepts from the Dungeon Crawler Carl Starter Set.

The PDFs for the starter set were released to backers in late August 2026. The print version of the starter set and the core rulebook are expected to ship in late fall. We took a look at the starter set. Here are our eight killer concepts from the game.

It’s summertime, which means it's time for our annual summer reading list! Featured books include Veil by Jonathan Jans, Of Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove, Dungeon Crawler Carl Matt Deniman, God Emperor of Dune by Frank Herbert, and the Great Book of Amber by Roger Zelazny.

We return to Shadowdark environmental threats by delving deeply into underground hazards. Among the dangers we discuss are collapsing tunnels, fungal forests, and the fun-but-dangerous Goonies-style water slides. Inspiration for these threats comes from Ken's Mörka Norden campaign, which features a Viking-inspired alternative universe ... and a trek underground to explore the "Deep Crawl" in search of the nefarious Rat King.

On this episode, we’re talking about how making your monsters run away can improve your game. The concept is morale, an old school D&D game mechanic that reflects how your antagonists feel about the combat.

At the start of the combat, monster morale is high. They have overwhelming numbers and a charismatic leader. But then combat starts. They lose half their number to a fireball. The barbarian decapitates their leader with a critical hit. Suddenly, the remaining monsters are worried.

And they’re thinking of running away.

How does a new creator build a massive TTRPG audience so fast? In this interview, we sit down with Daði from Mystic Arts to discuss his journey, his magazine The Broadsheet, and how he uses tools like Obsidian to manage 15-player West Marches campaigns as well as smaller campaigns.

The Tomb of the Forgotten is a short Shadowdark tutorial dungeon introducing dungeon masters and players to the basic mechanics of the role-playing game. On this episode, we walk through the adventure and its accompanying map.

We talk about four winter hazards for Shadowdark: ice crevasses, reindeer stampede, freezing fog, and hypothermia.