Campaign Ideas

We are currently in the Campaign Ideas phase. You can see how I simplify that here. But right now I wan to come up with a few campaigns that could set-up for the next story. And in particular, I want to create the elevator pitches for them.

Now, when I think about coming up with an idea, there is an intimidation element to it. What is going to make a great epic story for a longer campaign? But I think it’s fair for people to borrow ideas from everywhere. So whether that’s a movie, an anime, a book, folklore, whatever it might be, borrow it to help generate ideas. There is a difference between weaving elements into a bigger narrative that show-up elsewhere.

So let’s get down to some ideas.

The End is Known

For ten years there has been war with the demons. No one knows how it started, but demons and devils poured forth from the hells working together. And now only a small band of heroes remains having battled and felt loss over the years. They face off against one last devil, Asmodeus stands before them, and they quake. Asmodeus speaks and it’s all over.

You awake with a new vague memory in your head. A voice that wasn’t there before. It says, something bad is going to be happening. It’s coming, the monsters are coming. But you look outside your window and it’s normal. It’s just another day in your life and nothing seems worse, except for this voice and this vague memory of a devil speaking some incantation. This one is inspired by a LitRPG book I listened to, couldn’t find the title of it, and A Returners Magic Should Be Special.

Notes: This is both the end and the elevator pitch all wrapped into one. The characters kind of know what the end is. But how will these characters now become heroes who can deal with what is coming. And what do they believe, do they believe that is coming or not?

The Puppetmaster

It’s a world of legends and stories. But new stories keep on popping up and they are similar to old stories that you’ve heard before. A magic lamp, three bears living in a house, and wolves, oh so many wolves. The stories are just that, though, right? They are just stories, it can’t be something real.

Notes: Short and sweet pitch here. Not much to set-up, the world matters less for this one, and I wouldn’t even use the title because it’s going to give away some of what the end might be. But this is a question of what if the fairytale world came to life and it wasn’t the happy stories that we know, but the bears, wolves, and everything is now out to kill you?

The Monster Within

The wrought iron gates clanged as a strong wind howled down from the north. It shook the window panes with an unsettling rattle. But neither the clanging of the gate or the rattle of the window were what drew your attention. On the wind there was a song of melancholy and despair. The words couldn’t be made out, but you knew that they came from the castle up on the mountain. There was a narrow cart path leading up there, and that is where you needed to go, because, there was a monster up there who needed to be dealt with.

Notes: This one is going to be a bit different. Clearly I’m going for a gothic horror vibe for it. But I want to go more monster of the week with it. I enjoy the monster of a week trope and it’s going to lean into that with beasts like werewolves, vampires, and other creations that are well fitting for a Curse of Strahd type setting. What does the end game on this one look like? Honestly, it could look like Strahd or some vampire lord, or even work up to a Lich lord who is controlling things.

Time of Legends

No one would mistake you for the heroes of old. They are now something of legend as were the monsters they faced. The demons of old were locked away. How do you know, because you live right outside one of those dungeons. Something strong is starting to happen around the dungeon though. The terrain is changing and you don’t know why. Some thing it is a sign that the seals are weakening. But if that’s the case, who is supposed to stop them. You are tasked to find those heroes from one of the larger towns and are sent out with provisions, a map, a well wishes.

Notes: The obvious thing here is that the seal is weakening on the dungeons. The second obvious thing is that these are the heroes who are needed. But while the players will know that I know that and you know that, the characters wouldn’t. Why think that they are heroes when they just lead normal lives? And the in the big town, that is there real heroes live and fight in wars for kings and defend against assassins and cast amazing spells. This one steals form a lot of anime. I’m not going full Last Dungeon Town (etc etc) where they are super powerful, but they might find that city heroes aren’t what they think.

What’s the Next Step for this Dungeons and Dragons Campaign?

The next step is pitching the idea to the players. We spun up a Discord Server to share links and notes from the last session. So I plan to drop all of the options in there today with any tweaks that I want. And then the players will get to decide what campaign sounds the most interesting to them. If I ran a game for you, which one would you want to pick?

As the Dungeon Master, I like the idea of them all obviously. But I think that if I were a player, I like the sound of the first and the last the best. The other two feel more monster of the week whereas the first and last feel like they are going to lead to a more epic end. But let me know your pick on the Facebook post or down in the comment section below.

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I don’t think that matters if they already have. Dungeons and Dragons is a great spot to borrow, steal, and ask the players to help create your story with you. I talk about this often, Dungeons and Dragons is a cooperative story telling game, and that means that you can tell whatever story you want. Even if you are ripping off something else, go for it.

But You Want It To Be Original?

I get that, I really do. When I say rip something off, I don’t mean fully do that. Stealing a whole story is not going to be nearly as interesting as stealing pieces that you like. But using pieces that you like, that makes it easier on you. You don’t need to come up with everything yourself. I use stuff that I’ve read all the time, because it is cool. If there is a giant set piece in a story that I like, I will use that to create a combat or encounter in my game.

Tower of the Gods is a great example of this, you can find what is happening in that in the Friday Night D&D Posts. What is stolen in there? Well, first off, the whole idea of the tower, that is 100% stolen from the LitRPG series Arcane Ascension and Towers of Heaven. Heck, I named my campaign Towers of the Gods, it’s a bit on the nose. But I didn’t steal the whole plot of either of them.

How Do You Keep the Balance?

That is the trickier part, keeping a balance so that you don’t rip off everything. I think it’d be easy to just try and create the beats from either of those stories and see what happens. However, if someone already knows the story, that isn’t going to be interesting to them. It would be like playing through the Lord of the Rings trilogy. If Frodo still needs to throw the ring into Mount Doom, that’s boring. And never give your players the One Ring, they will abuse the power.

Instead, pick and choose a few things. In Tower of the Gods, I took the leveling up or getting the class power from the tower from Arcane Ascension. In that book, you go into the power and you get a power of some sort and that is where it starts for the main character. But, I also took the idea of potentially fighting over the tower, but that was from Towers to Heaven. Two separate story ideas that I wove together.

Borrow Lightly

So, with that example, borrow lightly. From Arcane Ascension, I took the leveling and the school idea. The plot that I run is very different. On the flip side, Towers to Heaven, I introduced the idea of fighting over the tower. But how I run that is exceedingly different than how the author of that book wrote it.

Like I was saying, grab nuggets of things. A concept or a image that you really like from a story. Weave that into your game and it saves brain power for you. But just borrow a little bit, even if people don’t know what. Because I want to tell my own story, and most DM’s are going to want to tell something that is fairly well their own.

Steal Moments

This is basically the same thing as borrowing lightly. Don’t steal everything. But it is totally okay to steal things that stuck out to you. If there is an important moment in the story, such as the luck of the draw when getting your class in Arcane Ascension, steal that. I 100% just took that and put it into my story. They drink from a cup when they are about to exit the tower. My players picked a cup to drink from and that determined what class they got.

So that imagery, I really liked. It made sense to me for how you’d end up getting a class. Now, it totally went against how Dungeons and Dragons normally does it, but it was a fun way change things up for people who know D&D pretty well. I made it work different than it did in the book, though, giving the players more agency in potentially picking what class they ended up with.

Beg For Help

Now, this sounds silly, but asking the players to help will cause your story to verve at times towards story and tropes that have already been done. Most people who play Dungeons and Dragons know fantasy. You and I know all sorts of books, movies, and television shows that are fantasy. Whether we actively think about them all the time or not, that doesn’t matter, we know them. So when you ask for help in creating a location or character, you will find that tropes start to show up or ideas from books show up.

This is a good thing. Grounding your fantasy world and story into what people know is important. It means that you and the players are more connected to the world and can more easily understand what is going on. I get the idea to do something extremely out there and unique, but that isn’t always great. Sometimes it can take people out of the story, instead of keep them in.

Putting It All Together

So how much should you or shouldn’t you beg, borrow, and steal? That is a great question. For some stories, it might be a fair amount that is pulled in from other places. Or there might be chunks of the story that are and other chunks that aren’t.

In Tower of the Gods, the whole Dorin subplot, trust me, there is no way that is any published book. Or if it is, there is no way that I’d have made it to that part of a book, because it is just so weird. So while I borrow from Arcane Ascension and Towers to Heaven, there are other parts that you can blame the players for, or myself as the DM for letting it get there.

So don’t steal everything, people will know when you have the novel on the table with you. But borrowing a little bit, all of that is good. Stealing a memorable moment, that is amazing. And asking for help means that players will be even more engaged. Don’t be shy about it because what you do will never be exactly like that book, movie or television show.

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The Story

There is a giant dungeon in the middle of the town of Orario. It’s a place where adventurers can go and test themselves and grow their stats. However, you don’t get stats and you can’t become an adventurer unless you are part of a familia. These familia are headed up by gods and goddesses who have come down from the heaven to interact with their children. Bell Cranel is one such adventurer who can only find one god who will work with him, the goddess Hestia, because he is too small and doesn’t look like a normal adventurer. Hestia, also doesn’t look like a normal god and doesn’t have a familia of her own until she brings Bell into the fold. Bell, in the dungeon, encounters Ais Wallenstein, a top level adventurer from the Loki familia when she saves him from a minotaur and he falls for her. This makes Hestia very jealous but grants Bell a skill which allows him to level up quickly.

The Show

Season 1 vs Season 2

So, there are a few things to cover with how this show goes. Let’s start with the first two seasons, since that is what I’ve seen. There is a big tonal shift between the two seasons. The first season is all about Hestia and Bell and how Bell is growing into a hero. The second season focuses more on how the gods interact with each other and I’m not really sure we end up going into the dungeon at all. It is a bit jarring, and while there are parts of it that are still well done, it feels much more scattered in focus, which is a shame, because the first season left more to be explored in the dungeon and with Bell growing. I’m not sure if season three is more focused or not, but I will check it out when it’s dubbed. Season 2 also leans more into the fan service in a different way, I’ll talk about that later.

Sub vs Dub

Before watching the dubbed version of the show recently, I have watched the subbed version as well. The dubbed version is better between the two of them. However, I wanted to watch the subbed version and will likely continue with that in Season 3 now that I’ve watched dubbed because I am working from home, so I can put it on in the background. The dubbed voice acting is good for some characters, but for others is a bit stiff, which is a shame.

Fan Service

Is it Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? is what is known as a harem anime. along with other things. Bell Cranel basically ends up surrounded for the most part by girls. However, he’s more of a clueless leader of the harem versus some anime where characters seem to realize that girls love him. Bell really only has eyes for Ais (pronounced the same) and a lot of the other girls have eyes for Bell. Hestia in particular wants Bell all to herself. And there is fan service because of that, Hestia wears small clothing and is buxom and the same can be said for other goddesses and adventurers as well. In the first season, there is a lot of fan service, but it’s done in a way that really highlights how Bell is such a pure character and only has his focus on Ais. In the second season, we delve into a story arc with Ishtar who runs the redlight distract of Orario and it is much more on display there in a way that is very different than season one. I felt like that arc really pushed it over the top in a way that it didn’t need to.

The Story

But with all of those things, is the story good. Season 1 is one of my favorite anime seasons of all time. They just do a great job of creating this main character who is so focused on becoming the best adventurer and becoming the strongest or catching up to Ais so he is worth her attention. And the interplay between Hestia, the other gods, and Bell is really good. The second season, like I’ve said before, loses some of that focus as the story expands. And the story jumps around a bit more. Now, the first arc in season two is quite good with the Apollo familia, but the subsequent two are less interesting. I want to spend more time in the dungeon and I want more of Bell and Ais, and Hestia complaining about Ais. I hope that season three, whether or not we go back to the dungeon feels like a more cohesive story.

Who Should Watch This Anime?

I do have some final thoughts on this. I have talked about how there is a fair amount of fan service. For that reason, Is It Wrong To Try To Pick Up Girls In A Dungeon? won’t be for everyone. I’ve enjoyed both of my watches of it, though, like I said, the second season wasn’t as good. I think that even with the fan service most anime fans will like season one. The anime has a heavy LitRPG type feel to it, and tells a good story in season one. If that season is just fine, then I’d skip season two. I’m not sure that I’ll ever go back and watch season two again, though I might depending on if more comes out for the anime and I feel like I need to catch up. But season one is good, season two drops off.

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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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We meet up again with the main characters of the first book, Lyr (Marcus in the real world) and his friends in their guild Virtus. Things are going pretty well for them, they have a large guild, Aldford is growing, and possibly the most fun news for them, their stream is doing really well and they are making a lot of money for the guild members in the real world. However, things can’t keep going smoothly for Virtus as they run into an old enemy and characters from Eberia make their way to Aldford bringing new challenges with them. Lyr has to decide who he can trust and figure out if he can save Aldford from problems growing below it.

If you look at my goodreads scores, I knock this book down to a three star as compared to the others that I had a four star books. I don’t think that this book is a massive drop off, just a little one. The biggest issues I have with the book are one of editing that I’ve mentioned before. It’s just using the same adjective or not reading something out loud so it has past and passed within a couple of words of each other. The editing is still rough, and it’s a shame because it doesn’t seem to be getting better. And now that might just because he doesn’t actually go to much of an editor or because the books are being rushed out, but they would be better, and possibly a full star better if they were well edited for content.

The other thing I had an issue with, and this was only for part of it, he tried to wrap too many storylines together. While the first book bounced around, the stories generally stayed separate, with just a few odd bits of tying things together, but it was done pretty simply. In the second book, and by that I do mean #1.5, the story is contained to a smaller area, and for that reason, Chmilenko does a solid job of tying various story elements together. In this one we’re back to the bigger world that surrounds Aldford, and we get too many storylines trying to tie together. I actually think that he does a good job tying them together at the end, but the rest of it, is chunky. That’s the best way to describe it, and it’s pretty obvious. You’re dealing with one thing, then that thing is completely dropped for another thing, and then you drop that other thing for another thing, and repeat. The characters have pretty one track minds. It could have been blended together better. Another way to put it would be in Dungeons and Dragons terms where the players get distracted by a seed you were laying for the future and leave the current main plot for a long time, so you feel like you have to tie it back in sooner than you would have. That’s how it feels like this story was written.

That said, I do think that in the end, it was tied together. There was some actual weight to what happened at the end. You got some of what you wanted as a fan and that had been hinted at earlier in the book, but the book isn’t without loss. In something like a game where you can respawn, Chmilenko makes sure that some things do have some real consequences. Though, I think the epilogue scene is kind of out of place, just because of how they are handling a future villain, again, probably too early.

I also think that the characters continue to develop. Not just the main five characters who were in the original book, but some of the added members of Virtus. While a few characters get less page time than in the first book, it doesn’t seem like they are being overlooked, and with a large cast of characters to draw from, that’s pretty impressive. I can see why he wrote the #1.5 book now as well so that you’d get to know some characters and some ideas of what is going on in Eberia and the larger world as Aldford is off by itself. But there are characters who show up in this book from #1.5 and they continue to be developed. Though, I feel like some of that is being handled poorly because of how forthcoming they are or aren’t with information sometimes. It seems a bit out of place for the character and it seems a bit like this book and characters were started before #1.5 was with those characters.

Overall, I still think that this is a good LitRPG series. I want to read/listen to the next book, but that probably won’t be until 2020 for the audio book, even if the book is published this year. I hope, eventually, that more content editing work will be done on the books, but even if there isn’t, I’m fairly used to it at this point. This book definitely doesn’t make me want to stop the series, even with a bit of a lower rating. And I care about the characters and what happens to them, which is always a good thing.

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Let’s do a bit of a refresher, what is Ascend Online. Ascend Online is a full dive, full immersion video game with a fantasy setting. While other companies in this world have tried to create games like this before, they haven’t worked, but this one is amazing and it feels right. We are following one group of players who show up in the city of Eberia in the first book and then head out into the wilds. This time we are following Lazarus Cain (great name), a half-giant half-elf who instead of going out adventuring like most players did, joined the thieves guilds in Eberia to try something different in the game. However, when he wakes up in a another thieve’s guilds hideout without his memories and a sigil emblazoned on his chest, he has the adventure come to him.

It was a bit interesting starting this book, because I saw that this was book #1.5, so I knew I wanted to go in what is technically the right order, but I wasn’t sure what I should be expecting. I wasn’t expecting for it to be in Eberia and with a different group of players. That took a few minutes to get used to, but I think that I like Lazarus as well as I like Marcus (Lyr) in the other books. Mainly, because I think that Lazarus is a bit more of an interesting character. I like Marcus, but he is more of the prototypical hero. Lazarus, while part of the thieve’s guild is still a caring person and is worried about the world. Again, Chmilenko does a good job of staying away from creating an edgelord which would have been easy to do yet again. The characters that Lazarus interacts with, the other players in the games and the NPC’s, also seem to be a bit more fleshed out with, which is nice.

Another thing that makes me like this book a little bit better is that the story is a bit more focused. The first one jumps around a bunch more and leaves a lot of open ends to the story. Now, I think that’s good, since we’re in a series, to not tie everything up, but you feel like there are two stories in the first book. This, on the other hand, is all about finding the memories and figuring out what is going to be happening and how to stop it. I think it also helps that this story is in Eberia and not in a larger area. This is actually some good advice for young writers or new Dungeon Masters, keep your story focused to a smaller location and it’ll probably end up being a tighter story because you don’t need to fully build and explain as much of the world.

Now, this book isn’t perfect. You can still tell that Luke Chmilenko is a young author. There are some things, like the NPC’s swearing that is a bit jarring. I feel like in a fantasy world, the NPC’s should have their own way to swear or phrases that they use as compared to just saying what we say now. For the players, I’m fine with it, but for the NPC’s it’s a bit world. The other thing, and I complained about this in the first book as well as the Sufficiently Advanced Magic series, is use and listen to your editor. While I think it was a little bit better in this book in terms of writing, Chmilenko still had a serious issue with repeating or over writing sections of his book. This comes down to describing something and then repeating the same description of the same thing in just a little bit later, sometimes in the same sentence. Any editor worth their salt would have fixed this issue. It’s stuff like “The slow moving river of sewage slowly drifted by, it’s went wafting up to us” or something similar to that, where you have it already described as slow and then repeated. Definitely could save on words that way and make it clearer. I’m not going to knock him for the stat blocks, as I think they are an issue just because I’m listening to the series, not reading it.

Overall, I liked this book better than the first. It definitely still has the issue that I’ve found in so many LitRPG’s where it’s overwritten and just needs a good going through by an editor. I think that this is a better book than the first, and I really enjoyed the story and the main character. This is a very traditional LitRPG, but it’s a good series for someone who wants to start in the genre. I’ve already started book #2, so expect in a few weeks a review on that one as well.

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Ascend Online, a book by Luke Chmilenko, is a story of a new, fully immersive video game that is coming out. It’s basically a surprise to everyone in the world that it’s happening, because, other places have tried immersive games, and they’ve failed. But this one looks much more impressive from the trailer and it certainly is. In fairly typical LitRPG style, the main characters end up in the video game and the whole of the story is spent there. Marcus and his friends go into the game together, but because Marcus takes longer than everyone else picking his character, he gets sent to a small village and separated from everyone else, instead of the main city. So it follows him as he has adventures and gets different quests while waiting for his friends to join him, beating the rush of adventurers who will be pouring out there for sure.

Now, that bit of synopsis screams edgelord, an edgelord, in this setting, is that character who would set themselves as an actual ruler of an area and do things that they think are dark and edgy that makes them cool. And there have been a few LitRPG stories that I’ve listened to where characters seem to be headed in that direction. Also a few authors who seem like they are trying to be that themselves. This book could have easily gone down that path, and you do run across some characters who get that sort of treatment in the book, but Marcus and his friends are actually good people. It’s really refreshing to see handled that way, and I think that is one of the things I appreciated about the book.

The other big thing I like about the book is that while it’s in a game, the author does take some steps to just write a fairly epic feeling fantasy story. Yes, we do get one of my least favorite bits, because it is a LitRPG, but the world is well conceived as compared to some other LitRPG’s that I’ve read where it just felt very generic. It felt much more like a video game than this one does. Now, like I was saying, we do get one of my least favorite things which is stat blocks and heads up displays that you get in actual video games. I think that in book form, that wouldn’t be as bad, but for an audio book, it makes for some boring listening. Since I’ve just listened to it, I’m going to assume that the book has it laid out in a table you can skim over faster than it takes someone to read it, especially when not a ton has changed always.

Let’s quickly talk about the actual writing in the book. This is another spot where I don’t want to say it’s bad, but it certainly isn’t good. I think that Chmilenko writes compelling characters and a fairly interesting story, tying different things together well, while stringing together different quests, but the actual writing is a bit clunky. This book could be made a lot better by just having a better editor, or having taken the advice of a good editor. It isn’t a case where there are just dumb sections of the book that could be cut, I think that they’ve done a good job of keeping what is needed, but there is a lot of need to clean up sentences. A word will be used in a sentence and then used again, or something will be described at the start and end of a sentence. Just a little more time on editing would have been able to clean up the sentences, that in some sections were pretty commonly bad and other sections were better, and made it an easier listen to. Does this take too much away from the book to make it listenable/readable? I think for a lot of people it might, which, is a shame, because I like the story. But it really pulls you from immersion when you feel like the author is repeating himself. I think I said this with Sufficiently Advanced Magic, if you are going to write and possibly self publish LitRPG work, find a good editor and listen to them. I know it might be beating a dead horse, but it’ll make a huge difference.

So, what do I think of the book and would I recommend it? Clearly I’m enjoying the book as I’m listening to what is technically book #1.5 in the series. Different cast of characters, but I think better writing than the first book. If you can make it through the rough sections of writing and want to check out a LitRPG book, I think it could be an interesting read. I think I might prefer Sufficiently Advanced Magic, though that one drags in spots more so than this one does. Ascend Online is a good book in the LitRPG genre, however, most books in the LitRPG genre seem to be less good than your standard fantasy. So yes, I can recommend it, but don’t spend much money on it, in fact, try and find it at your library if you can.

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The first is by duplicating description in the same sentence. or using too much description.

The second is by using large words for the sake of large words.

A couple of examples form books that I started reading and then quit, and one that I am actually continuing.

“The trials are our exegesis…” – A Warriors Path by Davis Ashura

“While thinking internally to myself…” – Ascend Online by Luke Chmilenko

Let’s talk about why these are poor. First, using “exegesis” in a sentence, and I shared this with a co-worker who reads a lot, is not a common word that people know. Learning new words isn’t bad, but there weren’t context clues to provide the answer to what it means. So someone would have to stop reading your book to look it up if they don’t know the meaning. And why weren’t there context clues, because this was sentence number one in the book.

I know what “exegesis” means, and because it was the first sentence, I immediately stopped listening to the book. What the first sentence tells me about the book is that it’s going to be using a lot of big words for the sake of using big words. And it’s supposed to be an epic fantasy book, premise seemed interesting, but if, in one sentence, it feels like the writer is shooting for showing off their knowledge of the English language, it isn’t ideal.

The second example is really about that first one, giving too much description. “Thinking internally” is a redundant statement. Besides that, the Ascend Online book, which isn’t bad thus far, spends too much time going through the fine details of the RPG aspect of a LitRPG. That can be done at the start, but then needs to fade to the background and that’s another way it is overwritten. It doesn’t just imply some things that the writer knows are happening in the background, but instead spells them out in great detail. This is something that happened in the Arcane Ascension series, where the writer would spend too much time explaining something that the characters already know for the sake of the reader.

So how can you avoid overwriting a story?

I think the biggest thing you can do is be a harsh critic of your own work. Not of yourself, but taking a step back from the work, look at it and ask yourself, is this part needed, or is this from a different story that I just haven’t written yet. Just because you’re cutting something, doesn’t mean that it wasn’t good, it just might not be for this story.

Along with that, ask yourself if you need to spell that out for the reader or how easily the reader can understand it. If you feel like a reader can infer what is being written about, for example, when leveling up in a LitRPG, if you’re in a video game, like Ascend Online is, have there be a noise, like a ding, when a skill levels up. As a reader, I’ll know that whatever skill was used immediately prior to the “ding” leveled up, the author doesn’t need to tell me that metal working leveled up when you were just working with metal, that should be obvious to any reader, and if the reader missed if, they know from the “ding” to look back at the previous action to see what it was. Doing something as simple as that will make the story flow better.

Ask yourself, is all this backstory/world building needed at the beginning? That’s another piece of overwriting that I see very often. It falls into the camp of too much description, but ask yourself where and when you need the backstory and world building. Too much of it is front loaded, instead, put it in when it is needed. I suspect what you’ll find, even if you had it front loaded before, is that when you reach the end of the story, there will be world details that still haven’t been put into the story, and that’s awesome. That means you’ve found the parts that were overwritten and don’t matter to your story. Also, by interweaving the backstory and world building into the main body of the story, I, as a reader, am more apt to remember them as if they are all at the beginning, I might just skim over them to get to the action.

The other thing that is often forgotten in LitRPG or with self published writing, is use an editor and copy-editor. The copy-editor is going to cut down on grammar and spelling issues, so not as important for overwriting, but the editor is the person who is going to track down those overwritten bits, question why there is so much detail or why you are using a word. They are going to be harsher on your writing than you will be able to ever be. With that, it’s important that, even if you have a friend who likes to read and is good with English, don’t use them as your editor. They aren’t going to be able to be as harsh on the work as it might need to be, because they know you. I feel like I’ve read several books where they had some editing work done, but the author either refused to trust their editor, or the editor was a friend. So there’s another thing, the editor wants you book to succeed, even if you don’t know them, because they want more work from you. When they suggest cutting something that you really liked, it isn’t because they hate you or what you wrote, it’s because they genuinely should care about helping you make the best book. So find an editor that you can trust who isn’t your friend.

Obviously, there is more that you can do, but let’s spend a little bit of time looking at some books that I really do like.

The Dresden Files – I don’t think these are overwritten. My reasoning for that is because Jim Butcher gives you enough detail but not too much and he doesn’t spend any time at the start of any books explaining something about his world that is going to show up later. There are points where as a reader, I feel like between books he’s repeating himself, but if someone was reading them once and as they came out, they probably would need that reminder. Since I’m reading them after the fact and in a row, I wish it wasn’t there, but it is smart that it is there.

Lord of the Rings – Tom Bombadil. That’s all that I need to say, JRR Tolkien had some stuff that he wanted to get into the book and added to the book that is most certainly not needed. Tom Bombadil was cut from the movies for a reason, and probably should have been cut from the book. I’ll give him some slack for the time frame, but Tolkien does overwrite, and when you think about The Silmarillion, you can see how much he cut and had in backstory that he decided to publish separately, thankfully.

Chronicles of Narnia – I think that this is another example of something that isn’t overwritten. CS Lewis does a good job keeping his series short and to the point in each book. There are a few bits that haven’t always aged the best, but that isn’t an overwriting problem, so not an issue for here. From The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, through The Last Battle, you get the information you need when you need it and the stories are on point. You could argue that The Magician’s Nephew is simply a book of backstory, but it is fairly important backstory for the world, and the book reads as a novel onto itself with plenty of action and interesting moments versus just an explanation of how the world works.

What are some book series that you think are overwritten? Are there some sentences that are really poorly written, if so, share them below, please, I love weird stuff like that.

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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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That then got me thinking about an anime and book series. Is it Wrong to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon and Sufficiently Advanced Magic both deal with towers/dungeons that have various floors and in one case the lower floors are harder, in the other the higher floors are harder. And in the case of Sufficiently Advanced Magic there are multiple towers. The anime obviously has an anime feel to it, but so does Sufficiently Advanced Magic. I’d say that it has litJRPG feel to it.

So stealing a bit from a number of them, I really like the idea of these towers being out there, put in place by some magical being. The tower is never the same as they are magical and they are an important part of the culture.

Instead of starting at level 1, players start at level 0, which is pretty deadly, but they get to go in as a group of four and the tower provides some starting gear for them. But the PCs have to survive the first floor of the tower which is basically the proving grounds. If the PC’s survive, they hit level one and get their class. That is basically the goal of people in the society, to get into the tower and get a level and be able to have a more interesting life than those people who aren’t able to afford the entry fee or can’t find a group to put together a proving.

Once the PC’s (or their back-up PC’s have succeeded), the PC’s will be courted by a couple of different organizations, basically schools who train up adventurers so that you have skills for the real world, but only once you’ve done several years of work for them. Each school is always trying to get the best and the brightest, and each school has an area that they specialize in, so there is sabotage, corporate intrigue, spying, that goes on between the schools that the players might have to take part in.

For the players, though, the biggest thing is going to be the first ever tournament that they have to get ready for which will be a grueling slog through the largest tower to get to the highest level, which no one has ever done before, but that event is ten years out. So that is what the game is building towards, that final big climb.

Before that, there are going to be several things that the PC’s will have to do. They are going to have to do some covert operations to find out what other schools know about various towers, since schools will specialize in a single tower. Along with that, they are going to start to find out that weird things are happening, such as monsters who have only been seen in the tower are coming out of the tower and the inner workings of the towers is starting to get known.

You’ll have to decide when you want to hit the tournament and the tower, but I think that level 10 would be a great starting point. The competition will have them in the tower for weeks if not months, so players will, for once, actually have to keep track of things like food, arrows, spell components, carrying limits, etc. I wouldn’t track these things otherwise in the game, but this competition is supposed to be huge and grueling and by making them worry about what they have, it’s going to make the tower feel more epic and challenging.

This then is going to be a lot of the rest of the game as your players power through level after level of this tower that is set in a pocket dimension somewhere. Players are going to have to deal with traps, monsters, puzzles, and possibly other groups who are making their way to the top as well. All while keeping track of their gear. This part is going to be pretty intensive for the Dungeon Master because you are going to want to create something where there are short cuts, hidden routes, etc. so the players have a plethora of options and that they don’t have to get stuck somewhere.

Once your players get to the top, or even if they don’t, some other group will, that is going to unleash something bad onto the world, probably an elder god. The towers are all going to be prisons that are keeping something sealed away. That’s going to be the big boss and why the monsters are starting to break free from the towers in preparation for the the elder god being released.

Just a few other notes:

If your players are up for it, it could be really interesting to have the tower randomly select or weighted selection for what class the players are going to get. If the player does more combat, go with one of the martial classes or weight it towards that. If they are the ones who solve the puzzles, start building a pool of the more INT focused characters. You could really have a hat for each player and drop in pieces of paper to go along with one of each class to the hat and have them draw it out of their specific hat.

The other thing is that you’ll need to spend a fair amount of time building up the big bad so that it isn’t a completely surprise at the end, top of the one tower. Maybe there was a minor monster released when one of the other towers had it’s top floor reached before, but then there was a massive boon/blessing that went along with it as well, so that is why the various schools are willing to send people to climb the biggest tower to the top, because they hope the boon will be great, and there should be a great boon up there. I would even tailor them to the players so they have a boon specific to them to take on this over the top monster that is released.

Would you want to play in this game? What are your thoughts on the idea?

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