So, what is a LitRPG book?

LitRPG is a novel where it takes place in a world where there are statistics for the characters, like you would in an RPG. This can either be split between the real world and a game world, like Ascend Online and Awaken Online, or it can be a world that just happens to have RPG like rules, which you get in Towers of Heaven (though that kind of walks the line between the two) and Sufficiently Advanced Magic. In these books, you see the characters clearly leveling up and becoming better at things, gaining new skills, and getting new quests (fairly often). The quests is more obviously laid out in the ones where they actually go into an RPG, but the other ones really do the same thing as well.

LitRPG is a really easy and obvious way to do the heroes journey as you have that marker of progression for the character, and if the character is good, eventually they’ll be able to do more and more good. Now, you also have books like the first one in the Awaken Online series where the characters aren’t good, but might, in fact, be the villain of the piece if you really look at it. But if you don’t consider them going that far, they become an edge lord. I have mentioned the term before, but an edge lord is a character who is supposed to be the bad boy and edgy. I highly recommend not doing an edge lord character if you decided to write litRPG, because it seems like a wish fulfillment and often then leads to stupid situations just for fulfilling some wish of the author.

Now, LitRPG has also moved into other mediums. I actually think LitRPG most likely started in Japan, though you could argue that D&D Novels might have been the original. Manga and Anime like Is It Wrong to Pick Up A Girl in a Dungeon? and Sword Art Online are examples of LitRPG or LitJRPG that have been around for a little while. Is It Wrong to Pick Up A Girl in a Dungeon? is an example of an anime where the world itself has RPG rules to it, and Sword Art Online goes between the real world and various game worlds. It’s interesting to see how popular that these anime are or aren’t, but personally I find them both enjoyable.

So, what makes a good LitRPG?

I think that there are a few things to look for. First, you can often tell within the first few minutes or pages if the book has some sort of fulfillment edge lord fantasy feel to it. This will often be done by creating situations of unnecessary violence or hits of things of a sexual nature. This has happened in a few times when I started listening to something and I could tell quickly that it was going to be a situation where we were going to end up with an edge lord.

I also think that you can tell the quality of the writing pretty quickly by how they use descriptions or dialogue. I’ve noticed that some of the writers, since a lot seem to have originally been self published, don’t structure their books in the best way. I talked about this in my world building article, but don’t spend the first few chapters or third or whatever of the book explaining your world to me. Show me and also give me plot at the same time. If you can’t do that, I’m probably going to set down your book. And the same with dialogue or maybe more so with relationships. Know your strong points in writing. Also, be careful what point of view you use.

Also, when creating LitRPG works, have your system figured out and dispense some of the information for leveling up, things like that into your book. But don’t lean too heavily into the trope of the pop-up messages in your screen of how much damage you take or when a skill upgrades. You can show us a character sheet once in a while. I think that this is less annoying in the written form, but when I’ve been listening to things on an audio book, it really wrecks the feel you’re trying to create for the world and the characters.

Finally, have your story cohesive. People are familiar with RPG’s, you often have one quest and then another and then another, and eventually you might tie them all together, but you’ve been playing for a year now and you’ve lost one of your story threads along the way at some point, so that’s fine. But in a book, I can listen to even some of the longer LitRPG books in a week or maybe two. So that means the thread that you lost, because you might actually be pulling from your own pen and paper RPG, or just because you didn’t keep enough notes in your writing, it’s obvious to me. And if you’re doing it intentionally, don’t. It might feel thematic, but you’re writing, and like the character sheet, those things that you don’t notice in a pen and paper RPG are very obvious in a LitRPG book.

And let me do a finally, finally and say this. LitRPG is a ton of fun, I’ve been enjoying what I’ve been listening to. It has been making me want to play more D&D and write my own LitRPG, but please, people, please, if you are going to write something and self publish it on Amazon or somewhere, please hire and editor. Or at least have some friends who aren’t going to be Yes Men read the story and give you feedback. In Ascend Online, he needs someone to edit his content because he isn’t great at description so uses words over and over again. If the Sufficiently Advanced Magic writer had a good editor, they could have fixed the bad romantic language that the author tried to add to the book. And really, this isn’t just for litRPG, but please use a good editor people.

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The premise of the books is that on the continent of Kaldwyn there are several nations, all of which have a spire in them. These spires, put there by the goddess, grant amazing powers to those who can afford to go into them, but those powers need to be honed. Corin Cadence, comes from a noble family, so he can afford to go into the tower at the proper time to get his attunement. He really wants to get an attunement that will be able to help him find his brother who disappeared in the tower during his test five years ago. Most likely, his brother is dead, but Corin hopes to find him, or if not, eventually become strong enough to climb to the top so he can entreat the goddess to bring his brother back. Things don’t go as Corin expected in the tower, but he does leave with an attunement, just not the one he had hoped for. We then get to follow him and some old friends and they go through school and unravel the mysteries that the spires have to offer.

The story has an interesting premise and a solid execution on the premise. The main character is actually quite strong, too often not the case in books that seem targeted towards a younger audience, and the supporting characters really shine. I wouldn’t call this a very complex story, but it doesn’t need to be, and the concept of these spires that give you power and that you can basically level up your power is strong direct tie to LitRPG writing. This is also where I’ve seen some reviews say that it isn’t, because it doesn’t do the classic RPG thing of giving you XP and leveling you up, however, attunements become stronger the more mana you get, it’s a very obvious one for one comparison.

I also have to give some props to the author for his writing of the series. I’ve done several LitRPG books, I guess just these two plus one other that I’ve finished and have started a fourth one now and tried to start a few more, but fairly often LitRPG is self published and you can really tell. I don’t know if Andrew Rowe self published, but his work is much more polished than other LitRPG writing. I also have to give him credit for being able to write action with emotion extremely well. While I never truly believe that he’ll kill off one of the side characters, though I do suspect it’ll happen at some point in time, you still tension surrounding it, and the tertiary characters you know aren’t safe, and they are named characters. And when it comes to plot, Rowe does a good job of not over plotting it or leaning into making too many twists, which can often be the folly of younger writers.

With all of that said, there are a few glaring flaws in the writing. Rowe sets up Corin Cadence to be a character who really dislikes being touched, who has major troubles with relationships and trusting anyone. And then he throws him into a romance or some sort of a romance with another character just because that character is mysterious for the reason why Corin is interested. It’s sloppy and forced, which is really annoying, because you have a harem (yes, that is why I said LitJRPG, it’s basically a platonic harem feel) style story, but one that has a strong protagonist that is never written like he’d rush into a romance. Also, why does there even have to be a romance. This issue with writing those romantic style relationships is then exacerbated when the Corin is betrayed by someone he cares about, and we’ve just been listening to how he doesn’t trust people, but somehow in book two he’s starting to trust the character who betrayed him, without anything more than a few throw away lines.

The other major flaw is handling of bisexual, gay, and gender fluid character introductions in the books. This is supposed to be something that is normal on the continent, but the author, treats it like it is 2000. There’s a lot of explaining of what is going on, which doesn’t make a ton of sense, because we’re getting this from first person perspective. The main character who has lived in this society his whole life doesn’t need to think about why someone is gender fluid. Someone who has been in the country for over a year, and if this is common, won’t be wondering about this. It should just be stated and treated as normal. We need more authors to do that in their writing, treating something as if it’s normal in their world so that we understand it as normal there and we don’t break the immersion into the story. It also helps make those things feel more natural in the real world when they are treated as expected in what we read, not called out because the author doesn’t think the readers will get it somehow?

All of that said about the negatives, those parts of the book are small. They are just jarring because the rest of it, like I said, is solidly written and the best example of LitRPG that I’ve read thus far. The first one was basically the writers dream of being an edgelord (someone who want to seem edgy by saying or doing risque or offensive things) and the newest one leans too heavily into the stat block side of RPG’s. This one hides what it is behind the curtain well. I would compare it to Is It Wrong to Try to Pick up Girls in a Dungeon with the tower aspect and a character who is always looking to get stronger to try and prove something. In some ways, this book might actually be better as a manga and anime than it is as a novel, and I mean that as a compliment as I think it would work extremely well in those forms, and it works well as a novel.

If you are interested in trying a LitRPG, I would recommend the Arcane Ascension series. I have hopes that it will end up interestingly, and even if it is a pretty straight forward plot thus far, the characters are strong and make the series very enjoyable. It even has a bit of a slice of life feel about it at times. I don’t know that the series will be for everyone because generally LitRPG does tend to be self published, and have more editing flaws in it than your normal novel. Again, though, this one is cleaner than most that way, and work well.

Have you heard of this series and given it a chance? What are your thoughts on it, and does it sound interesting to you? Have you read any LitRPG that you like?

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