Please be advised: a crowd of patrons chose the single most disruptive item in the dungeon's history, and the Chronicler let them. This is our take: the Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook, a grimoire of sabotage, a guide to making the system's life miserable, exists because a bunch of people with a subscription and a hunch outvoted a pop-up room. That is either the worst editorial decision in the history of collaborative fiction or the best, and I am contractually obligated to say it is the latter while filing a formal complaint about the lack of a fan vote on my own loot table.
According to a recent report from a site that also tracked how NYCC Attendees Chase $2,000 Carl Comics in Free Giveaway and previewed a Loot Box Preview: Dungeon Crawler Carl Toys at NYCC, Matt Dinniman admitted at San Diego Comic-Con that his Patreon subscribers are the equivalent of my intergalactic audience. They voted in a poll on June 29, 2020, for Carl to receive a prize carousel, and then the second-place item, a single book called "The (Dungeon) Anarchist's Cookbook", became the one Carl chose. The cookbook is now a title, a plot engine, and a recurring headache for Borant. The fans also voted for Cuba, which became the setting of *The Eye of the Bedlam Bride*, and for Mordecai's form in Book 9, which we are all watching with the tense anticipation of a crawler watching a collapse timer.
Here is what this means for you, the reader: you are not just consuming the dungeon; you are, retroactively, a co-conspirator in its worst days. Every time Carl reads a cookbook note about how to blow up a floor boss, you can thank a person who clicked a button four years ago. Dinniman has a rule: he will never let the vote decide what Carl or Donut says or does, but he will let them vote on "items that get thrown on them that change the story." This is the difference between a toy you can hold and a grenade you can throw. The Dungeon Crawler Carl Loot Goes Physical at NYCC slideshow showed you can buy a physical box of dungeon junk. The cookbook is the opposite: you cannot hold it, but it holds the entire plot together.
The practical takeaway is this: the cookbook's existence proves that the dungeon's most dangerous knowledge was crowd-sourced by people who had never faced a single goblin. That is either inspiring or terrifying, depending on whether you are a crawler or an admin. The specific detail to watch is the Mordecai vote for Book 9. If that form turns out to be something that writes Dinniman into a corner he has to spend weeks escaping, you will know exactly who to blame. And you will have to admit it was worth it.