#litRPG

[prokopetz]

"But if this other world has always operated according to video game logic, why is the isekai protagonist literally the first person to figure out all these basic mechanical exploints" well, largely because litRPG isekai is merely the latest flavour of I've Been Transported To Another World Where Everyone Is Stupid Except For Me, a venerable genre that's been a going concern at least since Mark Twain.

When I was a kid, it was American sci-fi authors writing stories about shitass engineering majors getting portal-fantasied to alien planets and single-handedly saving civilisation on the strength of being the only person in the world who knows what a flowchart is, and very little has changed – right down to the weirdly inverted character arcs where the loser protagonist discovers that they don't actually need to engage in any self-reflection at all because the very traits that rendered them odious in their native society are what make them God here.

[esamastation]

Here's the prologue of what I'm currently writing which I'm calling

Gamer girl gets transmigrated into a farm boy Ao3 link

-

If you could choose a world to be isekaied into, you probably wouldn't choose the videogame Age of Tales. It's not that it's too dark or gritty or dangerous, quite the opposite. Age of Tales is boring.

It's a painfully generic mediaeval RPG with a very generic "farm boy becomes a hero" storyline. Or farmgirl, if you go that route. There's some moral choices, but overall the story is very linear from start to finish, and no matter how evil you try to play it, the game inevitably ends with the chosen farmboy (or girl) saving the world. Age of Tales has a very generic cast of characters with very generic backstories, even more generic villains with very basic evil plots, and side quests right out of early free to play mmorpgs. Overall the game is just very… mid.

It flopped within a week of being launched, deservedly so. It landed without a splash and was forgotten within the month, and its only saving grace was that at least it wasn't a live service and as such didn't have to go through the indignity of being shut down on top of being a failure. All in all, the game was a massive flop.

And Katie had sunk nearly six hundred hours into it. 

She would have explained the appeal, if she knew what it was. The weirdly cosy art design in a game where you eventually end up leading armies in hopeless battles? The character creator that let her create a beautiful two meter hundred kilo blue-eyed wall of muscle as her player character? The weird charm of 80' and 90's fantasy novels, as depicted by the game's story? The glitch that let her literally duplicate gold bars in the tutorial section? The way you can trip the big bad down a staircase if you just happen to fill the boss arena with chairs, benches and barrels?

Katie has hundred percented the game twice, found all known Easter eggs and best glitches, and she still couldn't say why she loved it so much. Why, even as Valthor the Vile generically monologues about how he would fill the world with darkness before the final boss fight, she's already planning to play the game again from the start.

Van the Valorous - as her character this time is called - met the big bad with a big sword in one hand and tall shield in the other, his build a pitch perfect Paladin this time. Katie has played through the final battle so many times that she knows all of Valthor's moves, and Van is fully leveled at 120, so the battle isn't exactly a challenge. She spends most of it admiring the battle arena and Valthor's design. He's a classic long-haired pretty boy, with a rapier and elaborate long coat with enormous shoulders. 

Valthor takes the coat off for the final phase of the battle, which Katie had always rather appreciated. She usually takes the opportunity to take Van's clothes off for the final round too, just for the aesthetic. It's not like Van needs the defence offered by clothing at that point anyway. 

"So this is what you have chosen," Valthor says on the screen. "These people, with their puny concerns and petty squabbles. You, who like me, could've been a God!"

Katie is offered a final choice of dialogue. "You are no God, Valthor - a devil, at most," Van says and points his sword at Valthor. "And your evil reign ends now!"

"Fine. Let's end it," Valthor answers, and off goes the coat in a completely unnecessary bit of theatrical dramatics. "Have at thee!"

Katie sighs fondly, a smile stretched wide on her face as she plays through the final disappointing mini game of quicktime prompts while on her screen two shirtless men slash bloodlessly at each other.

Valthor loses and falls down. "I had… such plans," he rasps, reaching towards Van. "I was going to bring peace…and prosperity…"

"And yet you brought only war and devastation," Van says and kneels beside his fallen enemy - now, mysteriously, clothed again in his armour and cape. "Your reign is over, Valthor. It's over."

"So it is," Valthor sighs and lets his head fall to the floor. "I wonder… What kind of reign will yours be… oh Valorous one…"

And so Valthor dies and the game ends with the victorious player character walking determinately towards the camera with cape billowing behind them in the most dissatisfying sequel bait ending Katie has ever seen. It's supposed to imply what happens next, how the player character, now a General and Saviour, would probably go on to take charge of the land left behind by Valthor or whatever. 

Of course, the game never got a sequel, but there's something endearing about how hopeful they were, making an ending like that. The developers really thought they did something there.

"Ten out of ten, premium trash," Katie sighs with pleasure. "Would not recommend to anyone - except me."

She skips through the final credits and back to the starting screen, intending to start a new game. Maybe this time she'd make Van look older - a huge grizzled old man playing the part of an innocent farm boy should be hilarious.

She stops before hitting [New Game], because the starting screen has changed. There's a new option there, one she's never seen before. 

[New Game∞]

"What? I didn't know there was a New Game+," Katie mutters, confused. "Where was this the other times I finished the game, huh?" And why'd they use the infinity sign? Another of Age of Tales' weirdnesses?

Not sure if it would actually be any fun to play the game with a New Game+ but curious about what would actually transfer over with the save, Katie selects the [New Game∞]...

And is promptly sucked into her TV.

-

[Chapter 1>>]

-

Since some people were expressing interest, lmao. Still on a litrpg kick, pretty much everything I've tried to write lately has been litrpg. This one I'm more hopeful than the rest though. It has actual characters and stuff. Edit: replaced with version proofread by @nimadge, many thanks.

[alexanderwales]

One of the fantasies of litRPG is that the reader is immersed in a system that makes sense, one whose features are legible, where you know what you need to do and how you're meant to do it.

So how do you write a story that's the opposite of that? A litRPG where everything is illegible? Members of my discord have pointed out that litRPGs with fake bullshit numbers that mean nothing are extremely common, but what I mean is something that's designed to be illegible, even if it perhaps does make sense.

The games that I immediately want to go to don't end up working. Most of them are illegible at first and then become more legible as you play them, until you achieve mastery. This is interesting, but it's probably been done before, and it's kind of boring. litRPG but it's Dark Souls? litRPG but it's Noita? These are just plainly workable.

Legibility is important for good game design, so there aren't really games to draw from. A game that defies reason, where things never click into place, where you cannot have mastery, would probably be a profoundly unpopular experimental one.

So I'd need to design a system that gets more rudely complex with every turn, one that seems to get less understandable rather than more, and I'm not entirely sure how to do that for any appreciable length of time. Obviously it would be frustrating to read, there's a reason that people don't write books like this.

But it might be nice for just one example to exist, just for contrarian purposes.

[ailishmaurafiction]

Indebted to the very demoness she was sent to kill, Thesa questions everything she’s ever known, bonds with the sexy [High Devil] Merijest, and practices her interpersonal skills. Can she help Merijest rebuild her army before it's too late?

Includes:

Slow-ish burn lesbian romance

[System]-lite LitRPG about two characters accustomed to life in a video-gamey world

Steamy tension

A reverse dungeon-crawl from the bottom of a kaiju-sized mimic

An ex-Paladin trying her best not to stare at a casually nude demoness

Weird monsters from the mind of a maniac author with art and simplified bestiary-like entries sprinkled in

Religious trauma. This one is especially going to appeal to the Catholic and Ex-Catholic girlies out there. Nobody does angst like we do, babey! (Nothing inside is strictly allegorical of any religion, but the sensibilities are definitely informed by a Catholic milieu.)

Updates Tuesdays at 11:00am PDT

Chapters hover around 1-2k words each

Cover and monster art by botjira

READ IT HERE

[lunchbagart]

People, I'm sorry to give you bad news: I'm publishing a novel. It's Isekai/LitRPG and its got lots of jokes, monsters and nonsense. I'm going to start pushing it here on this account, since my kids are too old to be impressed by art on lunch bags or me in general. Any objections?

[blowfliesorangeeyes]

shout out to the like four other people who read webnovels on Royal Road, I see you and I love you

seeing posts on the perfect run, mother of learning, borne of caution beforeitgotweird, super minion, super supportive, primal hunter, mark of the fool, and a few more has been wonderful you guys make my day single handedly holding up those tags

[madcat-world]

Scions of Sylum - Nele-Diel

[litrpgburrito]

Gnight my tiny tacos. Sweet dreams.

[fyeahwebnovels]

i have created a webfiction fandom community!

hello all, i have thrown my hat in the tumblr communities open beta ring and created a community for fans (and authors) of web serials, webnovels, and generally any serially published web prose/prose-centric mixed media.

as i said, authors are welcome to join as well, but with caveats: please do not advertise any pay-to-read webfiction in the community, and please do not fight with fans over your work or insert yourself into fan conversations as an authority. basically just keep appropriate artist-fandom boundaries if you're an author, thank you.

the communities beta is still in its earliest stages and not super functional, so you'll need to send me an ask or a DM, or ask in the replies of this post, to join. i have to send out invites manually, but i will approve everyone unless your blog is outright, like, a nazi or terf blog or something. you can also DM my main @valentinedagger if contacting this blog doesn't work (i've had problems with DMs on sideblogs in the past).

[kathrynalexao3]

I painted in blood red today & wrote about walking till your feet blistered. I’m ready to get reacquainted with my past self, heal, & if shit burns down around me—well that’s just our lives at this point anyway. Fuck it. I do what I want.

And there will be more tentacle porn!

[dizzyhslightlyvoided]

Story which initially appears to be a LitRPG where the main characters are all girls, but as the plot starts moving them together, it gradually reveals that 1. they're in an actual JRPG-style game or whatever, and 2. the game was supposed to be a harem comedy or dating sim or whatever, but the boring-everydude protagonist died in the tutorial mission, so now a whole bunch of the notional plot is stalled. The villains aren't having a good time either, because too much of their stuff is also either centered around or triggered by the actions of the protagonist. The player is a separate character from the original protagonist, and eventually starts to have an effect on the plot. The girls start kissing each other.

[gleefully-macabre]

Okay this is officially the weirdest canon ship I’ve ever encountered. And I do consider it canon, if rather dubcon on one side.

A LitRPG Protagonist and his AI sugar daddy who is basically a petty trickster god with a foot fetish.

Yes, I’m reading Dungeon Crawler Carl.

Yes, I’m on the sixth book.

Yes, I’ve reached that scene.

If ya know, ya know.

[esamastation]

Hello, here follows a bit of original LITRPG writing in the form of a forum post. I have no idea how to explain or what to title it. It is a thing.

In which the origin of System is pondered upon.

-

Theories of Apocalypse forum

The System - is it human made? by the Witchess of Londonium, 1st of June, 20xx

Guys, I figured it out, I connected the dots. 

The System wasn't created by the IFAR. 

I know, I know, there's like a billion theories about this, and of course everyone knows what the Elves say. The System is a Gift to all of humanity. Sure. And then there's that crackpot Mayfeather's theory about it being inheritance from ancient aliens that bred with humans thousands of years ago. Personally I think that's just because he wants a harem of furries, but each to their own. And then there's the stuff about american military experiments that went rogue, but that seems a bit too much of a coinkydink for me, what with the apocalypse happening at the same time.

Though, now that I think about it, a weird human program would go rogue during the apocalypse, wouldn't it. And I actually kinda do think that's close to what happened - though not that it was secret military drugs or nano machines or whatever.

I think it's something bigger - something we all knew and loved, in the old world. Something… ever present, that was part of all our lives. Something utterly beyond IFAR's comprehension.

I mean, think about it. This thing is huge, in like, cosmic, evolutionary, technological revolution sense, huge! This thing is like the dawn of information technology but times a hundred, with, I don't know, genetic engineering and all of weight loss and bodybuilding industry thrown in the mix. This is the "next step in human development" level of stuff!

And weight loss and bodybuilding industries of old wish they had what we have now. We can literally level up now, and with each level we get stronger. And that's just on the base level. We can change our species now! I've seen people transform themselves completely with the System. One chick, she's a dragon now, just through the System. This guy I know, super into calisthenics, yeah, he can bench press cars now, through the System. I've seen people with wings, tails, horns, with multiple arms - and there's rumours about this one old lady, she can just transform herself into other things. And all we need to do to make all that possible… is level up and get some exp.

… which, okay, it isn't that easy to get exp, you really gotta work for it, and sometimes it's so damn hard to get ahead you just wanna cry, but still. 

Why would they ever give this thing to us? 

Here's the thing. I don't think they did.

Just think about it - why would they give this thing to us? It makes us stronger, it powers us up - it gives us magic. And okay, yes, it also, consequently, spreads magic around, which helps them, making things more magical and more chaotic and dangerous - but seriously! Why would they want to empower us? They're here to subjugate us! How does giving us all this power and opportunity benefit them in any way? 

It doesn't, it just doesn't - just look at the Dragon Battle of Paris. You can bet your probably by now feathery butt that those guys who ate it in the Boulogne-Billancourt wish we didn't have the System.

So here's what I think happened. I think it was a complete freak accident. 

When the Veil was breached and the Aurora Magicalis happened, those particles changed everything they came in contact with, right? We got magical people and creatures and trees and houses and lakes and, I don't know, magical damn water towers now. And those were like intrinsically linked changes too - the thing with the metro proves it! One thing changes by magic and everything that's a copy or similar enough of the original changes too.

And that's why we have giant centipede trains all over the world now.

Which is still terrifying.

So, what happened to the internet when magic particles hit it? What happened to all that knowledge just interlinked all throughout the world? People think it vanished with everything else electronic - but we know you can't vanish things by magic. You can only move things… or change them.

I think the internet got whammied, guys, the same as the rest of us - and like everything else that got whammied, it gained a life of its own. But the internet isn't like a train or, I don't know, a taxi cab that's suddenly alive, it doesn't really have a specific territory where it exists. It's everywhere in the world and it's got no one specific spot where it starts from and we just accessed it with our phones and computers and whatever. 

(Yes I know the internet has physical forms on servers and data centers or whatever, shut up, I'm thinking magically here.)

So, the internet gets magically whammied. Where does it go? It goes where it's always gone - to us. It was made by humans, for humans, for sharing of human discovered and developed and intended information. So it just… attached itself to us. And it's still doing the same thing it's always done - sharing information.

And why is it running out of lives like a videogame now? Well, have you ever wondered how much of the internet bandwidth in total was taken by online videogames? Okay, it probably wasn't that much - but it was still kinda significant amount! Or who knows, maybe the first bit of the internet that got whammied was someone's Steam account, who knows.

Either way, I blame the evils of online videogames, as many concerned aunties have before me. Heh.

Or maybe I'm talking out of my ass and it's all a plot by the Elves to Stockholm Syndrome all of humanity - but isn't it a bit weird, how none of them have this thing? Isn't it a bit of a hell of an inconvenience to them, that we do? Did no one else notice in the early days how shocked they all were to see some of us flinging magic right back at them?

And isn't it a little bit more comforting to think that this Awesome thing that now unites us all wasn't made by our enemies - but that we ourselves made it?

Because, guys, I definitely don't think they were expecting it. When I ran into goblins the first time, they totally thought they could just roll right over us. Orcs too. And the Elves, man… I'm definitely not the only one with a bad first impression. I don't know what they were expecting me to go, bend over, lick their boots, beg for my life, maybe. They were definitely not expecting a fireball to the face, lemme tell you.

Between you and me, I don't think they would've given me, or anyone, that skill if they had a choice in the matter. 

Also it just makes sense though, right? I mean, it's not like Elves even know what videogames are. They don't have computers, they never developed, like… Dungeons and Dragons or anything like that. I bet some human had to explain to them what levels and upgrades even are - because that's, that's really weird and really niche human knowledge, in the grand scheme of things, right? It hasn't been a thing for more than maybe a hundred years.

I don't actually know how long the concept of a "Character levelling up and getting more powerful" has been a thing - feel free to let me know because I am kind of obsessed with this and I suddenly need to know.

Anyway, The System. It's definitely been to the benefit of all of us using it in this bullshit apocalypse, right? And the IFAR… Yeah, I don't think it's been to their advantage at all.

Also, like, come the feck on. When you really think about it, the info the System gives us… isn't it kind of familiar? Boil it all down and what we have are chats and forums and wikis at our fingertips! What kind of invading force gives the people they're invading a communication tool like this? Like, sure, it took a while to get here and it takes effort to use it, it has a cost - but so did the internet.

This is nothing new to us, human peoples of the Earth. Such as it is, right now… invaded and transformed and on the brink of being conquered by damn fantasy Elves… 

So, that's my pitch. The System is the sentiment and magical new form of the World Wide Web, with an online RPG twist.

What have you been doing with it?

336 credits, 759 replies, 163 awards.

-

Tadaah, the thing. Relating vaguely to this Isekai based DND campaign idea I had, which was originally an original story which I wanted to write, which I think is this?

Also IFAR is short for "Invaders from another reality", lol.

Anyway. The thought won't leave me alone but I have no idea what to do with this. Maybe I could do prompts based on this? Idk. Some sort of RP thing??

[alexanderwales]

Pitchposting: a wayward mother's litrpg

[cw: child abandonment, bad mothers]

I came up with this idea while trying to describe a non-standard litrpg that wouldn't sell, and it gripped me enough that I've been thinking about it. Now's the time to set that idea free.

Our protagonist is a woman in her thirties or maybe forties. She's divorced with two children, but she left the children with their father. She's got all kinds of issues, and felt trapped in the marriage and her life, and overwhelmed by taking care of the kids what felt like day in and day out. I don't think the age of her children really matters that much, but they need to be old enough to play videogames.

She gets isekaied into the world of a videogame that her children most loved, the one that they had been talking to her about for years, the source of their obsession. She gets a videogame interface.

Let's start with what I find compelling about the premise: the litRPG isekai stuff is being used to examine a relationship between a mother and her child(ren). We can have some power fantasy, as a treat, but mostly we have this very firm and unique lens through which to look at the world, and we have things that we surely must want to confront, revelations about motherhood and about this specific character, whoever she ends up being. In theory, the thing we're moving toward is a synthesis where we have excised the tension.

So, some questions that pop out to me:

How many children does this woman have? I don't know that it matters all that much, but where you have multiple characters who fulfil the same role, it's almost always better to condense them down. The flip side to this is there's maybe less to explore, and I think there's a different tenor to a single child and what we must assume is true of the character.

Does it have to be a woman? Is there not as much meat on the bone if it's a father who left his children? I think that this could also work, certainly, the reason it was initially a mother instead of a father was that I was trying to pick a protagonist that would lose as much RoyalRoad audience as quickly as possible while still being technically in the litRPG genre. (There are obviously different stereotypes about men and women. I kind of think the central idea of "your mom gets isekaied into that game you were obsessed with and she never really understood" probably hits right for more people, but I don't know.)

What kind of game? Alright, yeah, fair. The main point of the idea is that it's a game the mother is only passingly familiar with. Maybe she went so far as to throw a themed birthday party at one point, but she does not understand it, and maybe over the course of the story, gradually comes to understand (though really, understanding her child(ren) through the game is the main point). I'm thinking some kind of JRPG. Definitely better if it's a game with a story.

Should this game be real? Another interesting question! If the game is a real game, say FF7, then we can assume that the reader knows things, and there can be dramatic irony. If we invent a game, then we have a lot more control over what the game is, and can stay in the mother character's head better as we're in mutual ignorance.

Okay, I think those are all the most salient questions, time to stop workshopping this. I have more ideas than I have time to write novels. Thanks @thewadapan for the idea of pitchposting.

[horrifierproject]