Gram-Gram's Dungeon [Completed crunchy dungeon crawler!]

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

A typical stay at Grandma’s house–home cooked meals, a whiny dog, and a recliner that tries to eat you.

Who would have guessed sweet, gentle Grandma Marks was a System-Integrated-User with magic abilities beyond comprehension? Definitely not Madi. But she soon learns the truth about her deceased grandmother when she’s sucked into a Dungeon alongside the other grandkids.

Only one of Gram-Gram’s descendants gets to inherit the power, so Madi is pitted against her siblings and cousins to race through a Dungeon made up of ludicrous monsters such as [Overused Recliners] and [Incomplete Knitting Projects]. The first one to reach the end not only claims the greatest inheritance left behind by their grandmother but also gains the coveted title of [Grandma’s Favorite].

In honor of her grandmother’s legacy, Madi will do whatever it takes to reach the end of the Dungeon first, if only to ensure it doesn’t go to any of her unappreciative cousins.

What to Expect:

[+] A LitRPG on the crunchier side

[+] A story that doesn’t take itself too seriously

[+] Action and family drama (what else would happen when all the cousins get together?)

[+] The MC has unique powers that she has to learn to use in strategic ways to defeat monsters

[+] Nostalgic moments as the MC remembers her grandmother and processes her grief (partly through defeating bad guys)

[+] Absolutely no romance (this ain’t Alabama)

[+] A story contained within a single novel

Information

Status: Completed
Year: 2025
Author: EllisRaine

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.7/ 5.0
Followers: 148
Views: 60,694

Chapters(70 total)

Reviews

No reviews yet. Be the first to share your thoughts!

Community Reviews(4)

Ryujin2xdRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Alright, let’s start with what’s working, because there’s a lot here that does work, and I don’t want that to get buried under critique.
The concept is sharp. You’ve got this soft, sentimental setup—grieving grandkid, dead grandma, home full of memories—and then bam, you’re in a dungeon. Not just any dungeon, but one with emotional stakes and family competition layered on top of standard LitRPG structure. That’s a great hook. It feels personal. Intimate. Weird in a way that’s memorable.
The voice is consistent and funny. Madi is sarcastic, grounded, and just neurotic enough to feel real without becoming annoying. The anxiety, the awkwardness, the inner monologue about her smartwatch not counting steps—it all lands. The [Push]/[Pull] mechanic? Simple but functional, and the eventual creative use of both to tear an enemy in half was legitimately clever.
Alfie as the Dungeon Manager is a stroke of genius. A crusty-eyed dead family dog in a holiday sweater from grandma? That’s some unhinged Final Fantasy X-level NPC energy and I dig it. He’s not some cold exposition bot. He has attitude. He’s smug, he’s condescending, and he knows stuff. That makes him useful and irritating, which is exactly what you want from a guide in this type of story.
Also? The sibling/cousin dynamics? Solid. You managed to sketch out like a dozen characters in quick strokes without it becoming a blur, and the waiting room scene was actually kinda sweet and tense at the same time. It’s like a weirdly wholesome version of Battle Royale, if you replaced the murder with passive-aggressive family tension and gamified grief.
The pacing gets dragged down by overexplaining. Especially in Chapters 2–4, there are too many moments where the story slows to walk the reader through things they already understand—how [MP] works, how to “just use clear intent,” how skills upgrade. You don’t have to handhold so much. Trust your reader a bit more. They know what a [Push] skill is. They’ve played games. Madi’s reac
RznRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
I've read quite a few dungeon crawlers, though this one is unlike any other because it is a twisted embodiment of a beloved grandma's house. I actually dropped this right after the first floor for a month right in chapter 12, but decided to give it another shot and it was worth it.
The opening was a bit overwhelming by introducing so many characters. It sort of flipped my initial impression on who would be important to the story and with a whole family at play - it just stumbled here. Add in the subject is one of competing for a System in a bizarre dungeon of grandma's house that feels corrupted instead of endearing, a smug talking dog, weak MC abilities and a sort of continued handholding to explain game concepts made it rather frustrating. In some ways it felt like a YA novel, as in kid's first litrpg, and upon realizing that - it became a lot more forgivable because the author seems to be operating on the assumption that the mechanics and ideas here are new to the reader.
The story progresses through the levels one by one, has some challenges and explores some consequences for failure, but everything is death-proof though not mental trauma proof. The quirky enemies such as recliners, knitting projects and fine china all fit the vibe. As it enters the final level, the story has found itself and some of the oddities have purpose. It comes together for a good, if bittersweet ending. I felt much like Madi as I realized the dungeon's theme, reward and obstacles were all degrading to the depiction of grandma. To see a beloved garden be twisted into a horror felt too on the nose, and it felt as if the point would be to defeat what made gram-gram herself, clambering over a corrupted version of a life in a rush to gain her power. The sort of stuff a wicked grandmother would do, but not this gram-gram.
Thankfully it does shake off this sort of weird subtext for the most part, and it settles into more fighting with a little memorial aside here and there. While the final bos
hankRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
One of my favorites. All the people feel real as in they could be my own family. All the little battles that mean more than they should. Set in a dungeon that must be defeated, but this isn't about the dungeon, it is about the family that is forced to defeat it.
This dungeon is unique/different and has a lot of unconventional monsters that fit in well with this story but wouldn't in your normal dungeon crawl. Still that is a bonus as the dungeon more is the setting and not what the story is about.
RilkefanRoyal Road
★★★★ 4.0
This story has a few elements I appreciated - a reasonably fresh take on dungeon crawling, teenage characters who don't act like they're late twenties, a focus on sibling and cousin relationships. Unfortunately I can't get past the problems with the two most prominent characters - the MC, who's supposedly been a Stanford engineering student for several years but is manifestly not smart and doesn't have the mindset of an engineer at all; and her younger brother, who's defiantly dumb, rash, and misogynistic, and refuses to admit when he's wrong. Almost every chapter one character or another confidently asserts something they have no reason to believe. They keep interrupting the tutorial guide and not paying attention to its advice until it's plot-convenient. I'm sure the story is setting a base for the young people to grow from, and maybe thirty chapter in the fifteen I've read will look less annoying, but I just can't put up with the characters now. Four RR stars because everything else is fine and I imagine a lot of people looking for a cozy story will like this.