Now here is a weird special fiction sub-genre that I wouldn’t have thought of in my wildest dreams.
I came across this term while browsing Solo Roleplaying reddit – another niche game style where the goal is to entertain yourself playing a tabletop RPG. Some tell the events to themselves, some just dream, others write some kind of written records to aid their memory. Often this can include some game system terms in a sidebar or a separate paragraph to show where the game mechanics come in to take some authoritative control and confuse the solo gamer. (This game is basically just writing a story, without emulation.)
Someone mentioned that this kind of written record is like “LitRPG”.
Now this is a strange term I haven’t heard before. What newfound creation has this corner of the young internet created?
Google to the rescue.
Wikipedia defines it as follows:
LitRPG, short for Literary Role Playing Game, is a literary genre that combines the traditions of computer RPGs with science fiction and fantasy novels … and visible RPG statistics (e.g. power, intelligence, damage) are an important part of the reading experience.
– Wikipedia on LitRPG
The best search on Google (or at least my version that Google thinks is most relevant to me) is The Verge article on LitRPG. The article writer Paul Miller is highly critical of the literary aspects of the books (i.e., he is extremely incomplete) but the primary concept is that a real person gets lost in the MMO world and learns to live, stat blocks and everything else.
A more positively biased summary of LitRPG comes from (naturally) a LitRPG author’s page.
I’m excited about the potential of LitRPG as a tool to examine our admiration for games and virtual worlds. Through our player and NPC characters, we can explore the relationships between real lives and virtual lives and better understand our own psychology around the human-tech interface. Why do we want to lose ourselves in digital fantasies? How are we motivated by missions and leveling up? What’s so satisfying (or not) about virtual relationships? By trying to answer these and many other questions through LitRPG, we can try to understand the actions and motivations of hundreds of millions of people who now call themselves “players”.
– Edwin McRae, “What is LitRPG”
Later, when I dived for informational dumps of old Reddit titles for years, I got a few examples of which titles were generally considered “LitRPG”. Most of them looked like self-published studies that go to discount box prices on Amazon.
Since I didn’t want to have an unprecedented view for dubious quality products, and mostly just very curious, I have identified two generally recognized not terrible examples that can be viewed for free.
Excellent. Free is good. Enough to see if I like it or not.
The Wandering Inn looks like a web story serialized in the Worm style. The main character, Erin Solstice, is a modern human being who is suddenly teleported to the Wild-esque fantasy world where a bunch of new game-like rules (eg Responsive monster breeds, skill leveling) are as universal as breathing.
Faced with almost no relevant survival skills, the best way is to take shelter in a mysterious inn and fall into a Recettear-like situation where one becomes a fantasy innkeeper.
AlterWorld: Play Live. A LitRPG Series (Book 1), D. Rus. This Russian writer is mostly known for the budding species of kindling (haha, pun, see what I do there). In this fantastic version of the Earth, it has become possible for people to ‘be drawn’ into a completely immersive MMO universe, to become fully digital where the physical body can be thrown comfortably with no adverse effects on the digital self. This is known as “perm mode” (as opposed to “permanent death” I think.)
When protagonist Max learns that he has a deadly disease suited to the plot, he deliberately brings to life his grand plan to trigger “perm mode” and become Laith, a High Elf Sorcerer in MMO AlterWorld (because you know, there’s something in the face of Drizzt and every player you have to go against race / class norms). There are some different, fictitious phrases and terminology scattered throughout, possibly depending on the author’s Russian background.
The quality of later books is apparently much worse because some unpleasant themes recognize themselves in the author’s writings, but if one wants to study the genre, it makes sense to at least take a look at the original genre-origins. It’s free, after all. There is no payment scheme for more.
I got a few episodes in both titles, I must say… I don’t know… Everything feels strange. Creepy weird. Yet oddly compelling, it’s a fictional train wreck in some way.
On the one hand, the serialized version of web stories feels like a harmless fan-fiction prose version of web comics inspired by the various games I love to review and follow – WTF Comics (a distinctly Everquest-flavored adventure campaign, for the past few years, but current content is top notch. ), LFG Comic (a commentary on something more semi original, half WoW flavored), etc.
Let’s face it, good web comics become famous because their comic book qualities (as in art, layouts, etc.) are of fairly high quality. Apparently fewer of the current LitRPG cohort meet the thresholds of good prose, making their “literary” claim a trivial hypothetical or at least somewhat preliminary.
Expect levels of fan fiction quality of English – some pretty good, others just plain awful, occasional weird misspellings or grammatical errors. Editorial cleaning passes are unlikely.
However, the authors clearly have some ideas and are keen to convey them and are more or less understandable, so it is possible to wonder about the fates of these characters and the precarious situations in which they find themselves.
What I find weird is the thematic mix of fantasy and reality.
I always knew I didn’t play MMO games like many other players do, they put themselves or an idealized version of it on their avatar and then play the game.
I never intentionally made a character like myself and then put the real world in the game. LitRPG, on the contrary, seems full of people doing exactly that. Fully immersing themselves in them means physically throwing themselves into the game world.
I play MMO games from a GM’s or author’s perspective. I separate myself, being divided into various pieces that contain crowds. Some have aspects of me, some have aspects of others, blended in a unique formula that makes them different. Each of these parts is a character with their own personalities and backgrounds. They need a name.
Once they’re named, they’re not me. They are them.
Total immersion in me means that these characters can fully exist as completely appropriate beings in these new worlds and environments – there is no strange juxtaposition of trying to solve today’s problems and sensitivities (a move from a gamer’s brain that cannot do this) from their own personalities avatars in a non-modern fantasy setting. to separate.
To me, LitRPG seems to have been written by a generation with less history of books, but whose growth experiences are the weird physical and virtual blend of always being on the internet, always having social media. playing some kind of video game all the time. No wonder their real-world self merged with their digital selves, and this aspiration must resolve the paradox.
This will be the positive form of LitRPG. A much worse form might be the crook who has weak ground in the actual game or this messy dilemma but still tries to throw out the fake game jargon. At this point I think the problem is clear. Any fiction requires a coherent world. If the fiction of your fictional world is badly created due to the lack of understanding of game systems, the inconsistency shines and grows in every paragraph.
Overall, I’m not sure a fan fiction style writer has the capacity to formulate a coherent fictional game world for his stories. Not only are they authoritative responsibilities, they are now taking on game designer responsibilities for game jargon and skill / system interaction. This is a very big request.
In a stand-alone RP report, this is fine because the game system and rules come from built-in texts from other authors.
A Let’s Play game of a real game that I enjoy reading well written ones has the same foundation because the game system and rules actually exist. The authors’ responsibility then is to simply write well and be entertaining and, if necessary, explain the system texts and rules.
Reading any LitRPG makes me feel like I’m on shaky ground. I’m not sure if the rules are consistent or if they will be bent to match the fiction.
Maybe my concern is wrong and there are writers who can really handle both. Plan a story that includes both conflict and challenging characters as well as building a game world full of strict rules design. But it seems that there may be some tradeoffs here and there.
In any case, the last oddity, I think I find my obsession with the script to be curious. I tend to go over most system posts.
This way of placing the game text on a sacred pedestal of a full paragraph is a strange convention of LitRPG. It reminds me of the way 4x strategy players examine every last word of a skill, resource, or structure and basically optimize their ways in a game for minimum-max and mathematically.
I accept that I do not do such a thing unless the circumstances require it. I will choose what sounds good, put them all together if possible, and read only if I have to. If you ask me, the game text is not meant to parse word by word. It’s like an information system message. Spam can be sent. It seems enough to understand the big picture.
Still, LitRPG adds that it is a strange and curious genre. I think it’s okay to follow free stories, if someone has time, just to find out what happens next.
