Blood Bowl

by Joe Abercrombie

Abercrombie takes the same gritty, violence-soaked fantasy world you loved in Blood Bowl but strips away the sports spectacle to show you the brutal politics underneath. Where Forbeck uses football as a lens for examining ambition and redemption, Abercrombie uses warfare and intrigue—but both authors share that unflinching commitment to showing how ordinary (and not-so-ordinary) people navigate systems designed to chew them up.

by George MacDonald

Here's your curveball recommendation: instead of a barbarian learning to quarterback, you get a goblin learning to rule an empire. What connects them is that both are fish-out-of-water stories about underdogs navigating systems stacked against them, but Addison focuses on the emotional and political complexity rather than the physical brutality. It's proof that high-stakes competition and personal growth work just as well in a court as they do on a blood-soaked field.

by China Miéville

Miéville builds a fantasy city so densely packed with competing factions, strange creatures, and moral ambiguity that it feels like every street corner could host its own Blood Bowl match. The protagonist is caught between warring interests much like Dunk navigates his league, but Miéville's world is weirder and darker—think of it as Blood Bowl if the stadium itself was alive and actively hostile.

by R. F. Kuang

Published in 2018, this gives you that different-decade element while delivering something Blood Bowl hints at but doesn't fully explore: what happens when your protagonist's rise to power comes with genuine moral cost. Kuang's heroine is a military prodigy in a war-torn fantasy world, and like Dunk, she's climbing from nothing—but the book doesn't let you celebrate her victories without reckoning with what they cost.

by Michael Moorcock

Published in 1972, this is the granddaddy of the flawed-antihero-in-a-violent-world template that Blood Bowl draws from. Moorcock's Elric is a swordsman (like Dunk was) thrust into situations where his personal code constantly clashes with the world's demands. It's shorter and stranger than modern fantasy, but it's essential reading for understanding how the archetype you loved in Forbeck's work actually originated.