If you liked the sillyness while also cynically grappling with galactic politics, try the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams.

If you liked the powerscaling and gradually getting involved in greater and greater conflict, try the Cradle series by Will Wight.

If you liked emotional depth in a silly fantasy situation, try some of the Discworld books by Terry Pratchett, but don't read them in publication order. I'd say read all the Sam Vimes / Night Watch ones first and then maybe the Moist von Lipwig / civil infrastructure ones.

If you liked a main character who's terrifying to others but tries incredibly hard to protect them at the expense of their own mental health and prefers solving problems with explosives, I highly recommend the Murderbot series by Martha Wells.

Dungeon Crawler Carl kind of spans a few genres. It's a LitRPG, but it also borrows a lot from absurdist satire like Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett, and leans heavily into scifi tropes.

I love trashy LitRPG, and if you're into that you should check out "He Who Fights with Monsters." It's arguably the next best in the genre. BUT... it's a big step down in writing quality, and the satirical/scifi angle is way weaker.

If it's more the satire you like, and if you haven't read them already, Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett are probably actually closer in terms of the reading experience, and are legitimate beloved classics. I can recommend those without any reservations.

If you're looking for something you might not have heard of, Martha Wells "Murderbot Diaries" or Dennis Taylor's "Bobiverse series" are both scifi with an edge of satire, and a lot of fun to read.

I'd call out Murderbot in particular as worth checking out if you've already read the classics.

This was my first foray into LitRPG, so I can't recommend anything similar. But I will say (mostly commenting so I can come back later and find other recommendations, mruu haha) that the last time I found a series of this overall scale and page-turnicity (coining it (too many coffee-induced parentheticals sorry)) was Glen Cook's Chronicles of the Black Company.

Oh god, I'm as annoying as my son. Oh shit, I owe him an apology. I owe the world an apology, there are two of us now. Anyway, Black Company. Main takeaway.

Honestly, there's probably a ton of LitRPG out there.

Look up Sword Art Online. It's not LitRPG, it's a Japanese LN (light novel, their equivalent to YA (young adult) fiction). It's also an isekai, which directly translates to "another world," as in, you're stuck there. Like DCC, it's about a group of (10,000) people who are trapped in a dungeon, except this one is a video game. Death in the game kills you IRL, and dying IRL kills you in the game (a lot of loners who lived alone went out this way). The only way to win is if someone (or a party) is able to complete the entire dungeon, of 100 floors, each with a boss guarding the stairwell. No floor timers, floors can be returned to, and plenty of people just find a town and say "this is my life now" and hope their loved ones don't pull the plug.

And that's only the first book. They resolve that in book 1, though book 2 is a bunch of stories that take place during that time (and so is book 8). Later books involve other games with other weird stuff going on.

Now there are over 2 dozen books. They're all pretty short. It's also been made into an anime, with four seasons covering roughly 100 episodes. (Some fans don't like the fourth season, though.) The episodes that have been released only cover about 18 of the books, and the anime is on hold until the next book arc is complete. We're all waiting on season 5 (except for a bunch of idiots who think season 4 will be remade just for them). There are audiobooks for a lot of them, and they come out about 2 a year, with the English voice actors from the anime doing the audiobooks. The main girl was also the player character in Cyberpunk 2077, though she sounds a lot sweeter here. It's fun (on both sides) when she slips into the other voice.

But basically, DCC is the west's first big isekai, though some say the first isekai was Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the book from the 1800s. Japan has never owned the genre, it just has the most entries. There are other isekais out there, but not all of them have the dungeon element. Alternatively, Japan has a lot of dungeon crawling stories that aren't isekai, like Delicious in Dungeon. That has some of the silliness of DCC, but not so much the urgency.

Oh, there's also the anime Sword Art Online was based on. It's not a book though, it was an original animation, and games have been made. There may be manga (comic books read right to left), but I haven't seen actual LNs for it. It was called .hack//SIGN, the acting is atrocious (both Japanese and English dubs), but it really kicked the party off in Japan in 2001. Very similar to the first arc from SAO, except it's just one guy who's trapped, the others can come and go as they please, but a bunch of them get together to figure out why the one guy's trapped. A couple of them have investigative backgrounds, so they start by looking for people in comas. There's also a mystery surrounding a rogue AI, and an NPC child who won't wake up. It's not good if you're looking for action (or good acting), but the story is worth exploring, it's just they probably could have done it in about half the episodes. All the exposition and world building would have been better if the acting was decent. The visuals and trippy music are neat, though. But again, it's watched, not read. If you don't already like anime, it's not a good entry point (though, it was mine).

Anyway, if Japan is anything to go by — and clearly it is — there should be copycat series popping up any time now. Sword Art Online didn't start the isekai trend and was itself based on earlier work, but it was popular and it created a demand, opened the floodgates for a whole bunch more to come out. A lot of them featuring a very similar looking main character. So expect more dungeon crawling LitRPGs that aren't the same as DCC but have a lot in common.

If you like audiobooks and litrpg, Chrysalis is a fun read.

If you like worldbuilding, give The Wandering inn a try.

If you like the sci fi aspect, I liked The Nature of Predators and Systema Delenda Est .

But my favorite to recommend is Queen in the Mud . Fantastic work.

Love that book shelf!

Final Chapter is just there for convenience, the Final Space animated series was silly fun too. Needed to have the conclusion in hand x.x such a raw deal they got being cancelled.

Surprised nobody has mentioned TWI yet - The Wandering Inn. Starts as a slice of life isekai that slowly grows in scope and is now contending for title of longest works of writing in existence. Worth a read, there's ten characters in there for every reader.

Mage Tank has similar wacky vibes. It's an isekai esque litrpg. Main character stumbles on a way to get extra stats and dumps them all into his constitution, ending up with absurd Regen. The story revolves around dungeon delving as a larger overarching threat emerges. He's also a bit of a braggart. I recommend the audio book, Daniel wisniewski has excellent delivery.

There's Discount Dan, which feels like DCC but takes place in the backrooms. And all their equipment is a mix of junk and cosplay pieces. It's fun, but probably not quite as well written as the above or DCC.

I'll throw 1% life steal in here, though it's not very similar beyond being a progression fantasy. Audio book is also narrated by Wisniewski, which is how I came across it. People absorb a core thing that gives them an ability. MC gets one that sounds super lame, but finds some ways to game it.