But what happens when your game session ends or you’re looking for something to do outside of the game? Books are always a good option and when it comes to books that give you the same vibes as Dungeons & Dragons, there are a lot of great choices. If you love D&D and are looking for something to read between game sessions or just to expand your entertainment horizons, here are five great books you don’t want to miss (and you don’t need to roll for initiative, either.)
Technically, we’re recommending the whole series (there are currently seven books in the series with an eighth coming out on May 12th) but every good series begins with a first book Dungeon Crawler Carl it is. The book follows Carl and his ex-girlfriend’s cat GC, BWR, NW Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk (you can just call her Princess Donut), who end up two of the rare survivors of an alien corporations attack on Earth for its resources. The duo, along with other survivors, are forced to compete in a dungeon crawl reality show for an intergalactic audience. Quite literally, the only way out is through.
Dungeon Crawler Carl is hilarious and is a perfect read for D&D fans because it perfectly replicates the feeling of a Dungeons & Dragons campaign, just in a book format (the genre is literally LitRPG). With the book utilizing gaming mechanics including inventory, looting, character classes, and levelling up, things feel familiar from a structural sense and from a narrative sense, the things that Carl and Donut go through are the sort of things you DM would throw at you, just dialed up to 11. The book is a blast.
If you’ve ever ended a D&D campaign and wondered what came next for the characters, then Travis Baldree’s Legends & Lattes is for you. A cozy fantasy novel, the story follows Viv, an orc barbarian who retires from adventuring so that she can open Thune’s first-ever coffee shop. However, while she might not be adventuring, she still has battles to face. No one in Thune knows what coffee is, there are plenty of old rivals afoot, and well, opening any business is a quest all its own.
For D&D fans, Legends & Lattes feels like a chill, relaxing postscript to a great campaign but there is still plenty of fun to be had. The book has fantastic worldbuilding, engaging characters (you’ll love the ratkin, trust me) and there’s a strong focus on the ideas found family and community. Reading the book is like gaming with friends. There are also a few other books in the series, too, so there’s a lot to enjoy.
If you’re looking to recapture the vibes of a high-stakes, homebrew campaign then the book you want to pick up is Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo. Set in Bardugo’s Grishaverse and the first of a duology (the second book is Crooked Kingdom), Six of Crows follows a thieving crew offered a chance to pull off a crazy, deadly heist that would make them insanely rich…but yeah, the deadly part.
Everything about Six of Crows is a solid fit for D&D fans. You have the way the thieving crew is structured as a “party” much in the same way D&D campaigns are set up. You have the heist of it all, a system of magic that is integrated into the overall universe and impacts combat much the way rolling dice works in Dungeons & Dragons, and there’s a ton of action as well. It’s a fantastic book.
If the thing you love most about Dungeons & Dragons is the world building, then R. F. Kuang’s The Poppy War is perfect for you. Set in a world inspired by 20th century Chinese history, the book follows Rin, a war orphan who escapes an arranged marriage by running off to a military academy and finds that she has shamanic powers. She’s soon drawn into a horrific war where she’s forced to user her powers.
The Poppy War is a grim book (and it is also the first in a trilogy) and is considered to be “grimdark”, something that works well for people familiar with Dungeons & Dragons. The lore and setting of the story also is a standout and the whole thing has the same feel as a high-stakes gaming campaign — particularly with the serious consequences of Rin’s actions.
The Blacktongue Thief has everything a Dungeons & Dragons fan could want just in book form. The book follows a thief named Kinch Na Shannack who is in debt to his guild and finds himself caught up with a questing knight following a failed robbery that sees Kinch forced on a journey to find the knight’s missing queen.
The book has a cynical and resourceful main character, an important quest, plenty of danger (this world has krakens, assassins, and more), tons of world building, some cool tattoo-based magic as part of its system, and a surprising amount of humor along with the grittier elements of the story. If you’ve ever had a quest go awry in Dungeons & Dragons, this book is for you.
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