The crawl

The world is post apocalyptic earth. Alien races who have been monitoring the planet are back to claim earths resources. The world has been reformed into a subterranean video game like 10 level dungeon created by advanced science that is seemingly “magic”. The “crawl” is televised as a game show through the cosmos and all of earths inhabitants are in a game like environment where they can actually die. An Artificial Intelligence narrates and controls the game from the inside. “Players” start off as regular humans with only the equipment they had in them, but as they make level 2 they are allowed to change their class and race. They must make it to the final level to earn their freedom.

The world has been restructured by ai. It is a “messed up” version of earth, the aliens in the snap of a finger erased earth’s infrastructure and repurposed it in to a 10 level subterranean dungeon that sometimes mimics earth and other times mimics pop culture and untypical dungeon and dragons aesthetic. Almost as if the aliens had been watching us from an outside lens for the whole time. Although each level is in a dungeon, magical stairwells appear after beating bosses or completing difficult puzzles and tasks. Each floor appears to have a sky and sun because the powerful ai can make anything even the organic NPCs, some created and some slaves of the crawl forced to do the ai’s bidding

Humans are all part of the crawl but various aliens are in charge of the dungeon. Although they aren’t in the dungeon the spectate and stream the reality show across the cosmos. A small dog sized fish race the Horants are funding the crawl. An octopus humanoid race the Krillons are previous crawl show runners.

Some alien races disagree with the crawl being done and televised. They attempt to end the crawl by any means. Some don’t care if all humans die, some do care if Reformed earth and ai are destroyed. “Crawlers” are allowed to give interviews and receive alien sponsors

Humans in the crawl are able to change their race and/or class at level three. The crawl uses many common dungeons and dragons classes such as elf, incubus, dwarf, goblin, orc, bugbear and some more unique ones such as crocodilian (a human crocodile bipedal race), dromedarian (a camel humanoid bipedal race), doppelgänger (a race that can change their body into whatever they have looted rearranging the atoms), primal (a human looking race that has long died out, may be related to ai). Classes include all those in most Dnd games with human earth twists, for example a bard is more like a rockstar, a hunter is more like a sniper, a rogue is more like a criminal or thief. Players start off with no magic but can gain it on level 2 when the AI allows them to change class and or race. At level four the class can be further customized and advanced. There are no real deities but many that the ai has created and can be followed

The aliens are aware of all known human earth history with a skewed perspective because they pay little attention to us

Classic dnd creatures as well as odd ones created by the ai that mimic “bad parts” of human culture. Super obese giants, juicer steroided out monsters, Karen like creatures who complain about everything, evil gerbils. There is an ancient evil that the AI continuously sets up as lore known as the darkness.