The litRPG thread

[Arkandel]

So a friend started reading litRPG books and since it was the first time I had even heard of the term I figured I'd make a thread about them.

Is anyone else a fan? Or have any reviews to offer? Is this a thing?

In case others don't know what the hell I'm talking about (as I did not a week ago) here is a link explaining what litRPG is all about.

It just seems so weird to me. Like blogging about playing a game then making a book out of playing it... but the game itself is made up.

[friarzen]

My long time TT gaming buddy hooked me a couple of months ago. We've described the genre as kind of the Harlequin Romance of Fantasy/SciFi. Quickly published, lightly edited and pretty formulaic, but...still enjoyable. He started me out with the "Delvers LLC, by Blaise Corbin" as the first-hit's-free sample. Most of these books are all found on Kindle Unlimited (and/or a Facebook group that is dedicated to the litRPG community).

There is also now a splinter sub-genre called DungeonLit or DungeonCore, where the protagonist IS a dungeon. My daughter has been hooked on these enough that I've actually been working on switching my Rogue-like MU* over to being a asymetric-PVP between player-as-adventurers and players-as-dungeons (since I was already building the game to be PVE adventurers-vrs-AI-dungeons, this is just allowing the players to also control their own dungeon territory).

I will warn that there does seem to be a heavy, juvenile tendency towards anime-esque Harems-surrounding-the-MC, so be just prepared.

[Auspice]

I read the link.

I still don't get it.

I'm going to cry once there's the invariable 'You've seen his stream! Now read the hit book 'Pewdiepie plays Fortnite!'

[Runescryer]

LitRPG before there was LitRPG....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Record_of_Lodoss_War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Cards

[friarzen]

Wow, that page seems really misleading to me. I'd say the core trope in litRPG is that the world the main characters exist in, for what ever reason, forces RPG tropes onto them. Imagine your favorite character from your favorite series gets a Warcraft Ding whenever some unseen experience bar fills up and they are then visually/mentally presented with character development choices.

It isn't about the experience of the reader "watching someone play a video game", it is about the character experiencing life like an RPG. It is weird, but just another trope, whether their story is interesting or not is still a matter of how good the author and editor are.

[Sparks]

@Auspice said in The litRPG thread:

I still don't get it.

Does "Sword Art Online is very popular" help?

More seriously, I think litRPG mostly started with a "what if you were stuck in a game" version of portal fantasy (i.e. person from our world gets stuck in another) stories, like Tsukasa waaaaay back in the old .hack//SIGN anime. And that same premise was the beginning of the Sword Art Online novels, Log Horizon, and so on. (As well as books like Rachel Aaron's wonderful Forever Fantasy Online, which the second book of just came out, and which if you're reading litRPG I highly recommend. And I actually think Somnia Online was pretty good, among the self-published ones.)

Those are admittedly the types of litRPG I like best, since I really do like portal fantasy stories.

Now litRPG seems to be enough of its own thing that people do stories where the protagonists aren't stuck in the game, and sometimes the stories even involve their real-world lives. Or where the characters have always been in a given world, but that world happens to have video-game mechanics as guiding natural laws or such.

[Auspice]

I actually have never watched/read Sword Art Online. >.>

[Ghost]

@Auspice said in The litRPG thread:

I actually have never watched/read Sword Art Online. >.>

It's all on Nertflerx. It's pretty good anime. Thousands of people stuck in an online VR game where death in-game means death for real...and they can't disconnect.

[Auspice]

@Ghost said in The litRPG thread:

@Auspice said in The litRPG thread:

I actually have never watched/read Sword Art Online. >.>

It's all on Nertflerx. It's pretty good anime. Thousands of people stuck in an online VR game where death in-game means death for real...and they can't disconnect.

Sooooo.... Reskinned .hack?

[Ghost]

@Auspice said in The litRPG thread:

@Ghost said in The litRPG thread:

@Auspice said in The litRPG thread:

I actually have never watched/read Sword Art Online. >.>

It's all on Nertflerx. It's pretty good anime. Thousands of people stuck in an online VR game where death in-game means death for real...and they can't disconnect.

Sooooo.... Reskinned .hack?

Kinda, but I think SAO is better by far. I also like that they change games between seasons.

[Runescryer]

@Ghost said in The litRPG thread:

@Auspice said in The litRPG thread:

@Ghost said in The litRPG thread:

@Auspice said in The litRPG thread:

I actually have never watched/read Sword Art Online. >.>

It's all on Nertflerx. It's pretty good anime. Thousands of people stuck in an online VR game where death in-game means death for real...and they can't disconnect.

Sooooo.... Reskinned .hack?

Kinda, but I think SAO is better by far. I also like that they change games between seasons.

I love SAO, but the biggest disconnect for me is that each season, the dangers of the interface tech are exposed and explored, and PEOPLE STILL USE IT.......smdh

Also, if you didn't know, Excell Saga is sort of the sequel to SAO. Or SAO is the prequel to Excell Saga.

[Sparks]

@Runescryer said in The litRPG thread:

@Ghost said in The litRPG thread:

@Auspice said in The litRPG thread:

Sooooo.... Reskinned .hack?

Kinda, but I think SAO is better by far. I also like that they change games between seasons.

Also, to be fair, while .hack//SIGN is the first litRPG story I can really think of, only Tsukasa was stuck in The World. In the Aincrad arc of Sword Art online, it's literally everyone who happens to be online at a certain time who becomes trapped in the game, unable to log out, and if the Nervegear is removed it will microwave their brains. And if they die in game, it's literal permadeath, as the Nervegear will also microwave their brain in the real world.

@Runescryer said in The litRPG thread:

I love SAO, but the biggest disconnect for me is that each season, the dangers of the interface tech are exposed and explored, and PEOPLE STILL USE IT.......smdh

To be fair, they got rid of the Nervegear and its successor is entirely safe.

***=The only reason anyone was trapped in ALfheim Online in the Fairy Dance arc...***

click to show

...was that their player data was shunted to that game before SAO released everyone, so they were still comatose with the Nervegear restrictions.

***=And during the Phantom Bullet arc...***

click to show

...the threat wasn't technological at all, but lunatic PKers who found killing people who respawned wasn't as much of a rush as PK'ing was back in Sword Art Online during the time everyone was held captive, and so literally had one of them killing players in the real world with injectable poison when the other killed the player in-game.

***=Ordinal Scale was an original story for the anime, and...***

click to show

...yeah, I concede this one. Why the hell people still used the Augma when it became clear things were going wrong, I do not know. Why people are still using the Augma in later arcs, I definitely cannot fathom; sure, the villain was dealt with, but no technology should have that backdoor.

I would say that Kirito and the rest of the guild have displayed poor judgment, but everyone kept using the Augma. So, people be dumb? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

***=During the (extremely freaking long) Alicization arc, which the anime has only covered like the first third of...***

click to show

...no one's "trapped"; Kirito's only being left in the virtual world to help his brain recover after he got poisoned by the one of the Laughing Coffin killers from Phantom Bullet who hadn't gotten caught.

***=In the current (novel) arc, Unity Ring...***

click to show

...no one's trapped, but they're playing a VR survival sandbox game. Which will in no way end badly, I'm certain, but I've not read the latest novel yet.

@Runescryer said in The litRPG thread:

Also, if you didn't know, Excell Saga is sort of the sequel to SAO. Or SAO is the prequel to Excell Saga.

*whispers* I think you mean Accel World, not Excel Saga.

[Runescryer]

@Sparks said in The litRPG thread:

@Runescryer said in The litRPG thread:

Also, if you didn't know, Excell Saga is sort of the sequel to SAO. Or SAO is the prequel to Excell Saga.

*whispers* I think you mean Accel World, not Excel Saga.

Yes, you're right...don't know why it's stuck in my mind like that

[Thenomain]

Stories about people playing RPGs has been floating around Dragon Magazine since at least its early teens, if not in the first ten issues.

My favorite was about NPCs trying to stay sapient outside the tabletop game time long enough to get to Earth and confront the players.

Which reminds me of The Gamers.

Which makes me wonder what about this is surprising to @Arkandel . Spill the beans, bro.

[Lotherio]

@Thenomain

... And the Saturday morning D&D cartoon was kids going on a ride and getting stuck in D&D, meta enough the a guy called Dungeon Master gave them magic items, classes, and guided them on adventure.

[Arkandel]

@Thenomain said in The litRPG thread:

Which makes me wonder what about this is surprising to @Arkandel . Spill the beans, bro.

All of it. The fact that it's a thing at all surprises me. The fact that people would read about other people's imaginary experiences of playing a non-existing game surprises me.

I don't understand!

[ZekeTheG33k]

So. A book about RPing a character in a VR system? Damn, I thought it was some kind of RPG system.

[Thenomain]

@Arkandel said in The litRPG thread:

@Thenomain said in The litRPG thread:

Which makes me wonder what about this is surprising to @Arkandel . Spill the beans, bro.

All of it. The fact that it's a thing at all surprises me. The fact that people would read about other people's imaginary experiences of playing a non-existing game surprises me.

I don't understand!

Dude, do you even Critical Role? People watch other people role-play.

I think @Lotherio wins, though.