LitRPG

Ritley

Karazhan Raider
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Speaking of prolific writers, just finished Defiance of the Fall 7, and I see that there are another fucking 300 chapters on RR/Patreon, which should be about another 3 books. He writes a chapter about every day it seems. Fuck me. Granted, a lot of it is pretty repetitive or boring or pointless, but that's still a lot of words on paper.

Found out what happened with the fridging, then the reversal because I assume people freaked the fuck out on him and he had to come up with some way to fix it, but I feel it is still a pretty big cop out.

Overall I'm sort of meh on the series, but it keeps me reading, so there's that I suppose. And knowing there is a shitload more already out there is appealing, unless it ends up sucking.

Am I the only one that notices all the snorting? Every motherfucker snorts in these books. Not cocaine or snuff, but apparently they all make that embarrassing noise with their nose constantly. I counted 5 in one chapter once. Once I notice something like that, it stands out to me, and it drives me fucking insane. Hopefully someone complained to him and the next 300 chapters are snortless, or at least snort-reduced. But if I have to notice it, now you do too!

Currently trying to figure out what to read next. Anybody have some good litrpg series suggestions? They need to be in book form (whether Kindle Unlimited or just downloaded) as I can't see any way to read something like Royal Road on my Kindle and ain't nobody got time to read on websites. I've read a lot of the big series, HWFWM, Dungeon Crawler Carl, Murderhobo, the one with the Ritualist guy (Jason?) and his chiropractor buddy Jax with the T-Rex arms, multiple dungeon series (Troll Nation is the only one that pops to mind, but there are several I've read), Everybody Loves Large Chests, Reality Benders, that one about The Land by the "king of litrpg" that turned into a giant faggot, I've also read a couple books of The Wandering Inn and I gave up on that after hating that barefoot runner bitch for like an entire book, and the main character is almost (but not quite) as annoying...I'm sure there are plenty of others that I'm forgetting and will only remember once you've suggested them.

I noped out of defiance of the fall around book 3 or 4, can’t remember. It’s one of those series that has a ton of filler where the only thing that often happens is numbers go up.

Here’s some of the better ones that I have read recently:

The Ripple System
Portal to Nova Roma
Battle Mage Farmer
Path of Ascension
The Infinite World
Apocalypse Redux
 
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Gask

Bronze Baron of the Realm
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This one is decent, the author periodically loses interest in writing but there's enough there to enjoy and kill time with. The main character is a personality devoid struggle machine, 3 books available.
I didn't particularly like any of the characters but the scenario was entertaining enough for awhile. The main character is a chaotic, childish contrarian who always comes out ahead. 108 chapters, daily releases.
 
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Ukerric

Bearded Ape
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They need to be in book form (whether Kindle Unlimited or just downloaded) as I can't see any way to read something like Royal Road on my Kindle and ain't nobody got time to read on websites.
The way I do some of them is use the Chrome WebToEpub extension. You can even pick which chapters you want to include (if you want to split a long series into books), and it generates an epub that you can send to your Kindle afterwards.
 
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velk

Trakanon Raider
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Pretty much anything even remotely successful goes straight to KU these days, so that doesn't limit you much.

Hmm - things that have kept me at least mildly entertained for an extended period of time :


Notable for good characters, most litrpg are mostly blank slate protagonists and cardboard cutouts. ( E.g. name one thing that the main character of Defiance of the Fall likes other than fighting ;p )



Isn't really outstanding in any particular category but is good in all of them, just solid light entertainment.



Trying hard for the biggest of the big numbers ! This one is an odd duck mixing in slice of life stuff with typical litrpg shenanigans.


OP man smash ! Very colorful and vivid power descriptions. This one has the worst litrpg system though, not in terms of quality, but like the one you would least want to have to put up with given it is cryptic as fuck, makes no sense and requires you to make life changing decisions where the only information is vague metaphorical symbolism


Story most likely to be confused with Defiance of the Fall; seriously, if they had the same character names you'd have trouble telling which one you were reading.

Eric Ugland's Good Guys/Bad Guys was pretty entertaining.

Chmilenko's Iron Prince was pretty great.

New Game Minus by Sarah Lin was pretty fun - ancient lich on the brink of permanent death uses a wand of soul swap on the triumphant adventurer and is extremely surprised to wake up as a level 1 barbarian in what seems to be some kind of game.
 
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Void

Experiencer
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I noped out of defiance of the fall around book 3 or 4, can’t remember. It’s one of those series that has a ton of filler where the only thing that often happens is numbers go up.

Here’s some of the better ones that I have read recently:

The Ripple System
Portal to Nova Roma
Battle Mage Farmer
Path of Ascension
The Infinite World
Apocalypse Redux

This one is decent, the author periodically loses interest in writing but there's enough there to enjoy and kill time with. The main character is a personality devoid struggle machine, 3 books available.
I didn't particularly like any of the characters but the scenario was entertaining enough for awhile. The main character is a chaotic, childish contrarian who always comes out ahead. 108 chapters, daily releases.

Pretty much anything even remotely successful goes straight to KU these days, so that doesn't limit you much.

Hmm - things that have kept me at least mildly entertained for an extended period of time :


Notable for good characters, most litrpg are mostly blank slate protagonists and cardboard cutouts. ( E.g. name one thing that the main character of Defiance of the Fall likes other than fighting ;p )



Isn't really outstanding in any particular category but is good in all of them, just solid light entertainment.



Trying hard for the biggest of the big numbers ! This one is an odd duck mixing in slice of life stuff with typical litrpg shenanigans.


OP man smash ! Very colorful and vivid power descriptions. This one has the worst litrpg system though, not in terms of quality, but like the one you would least want to have to put up with given it is cryptic as fuck, makes no sense and requires you to make life changing decisions where the only information is vague metaphorical symbolism


Story most likely to be confused with Defiance of the Fall; seriously, if they had the same character names you'd have trouble telling which one you were reading.

Eric Ugland's Good Guys/Bad Guys was pretty entertaining.

Chmilenko's Iron Prince was pretty great.

New Game Minus by Sarah Lin was pretty fun - ancient lich on the brink of permanent death uses a wand of soul swap on the triumphant adventurer and is extremely surprised to wake up as a level 1 barbarian in what seems to be some kind of game.
Thanks for the suggestions you guys. I have actually put a couple of those series on my Kindle just in case I'm somewhere without wifi and need something to try. Unbound and Primal Hunter are two that I know for sure I've put on there, as they are constantly suggested to me by KU. Will have to give a few of them a shot and see if any stick. Honestly, I'm pretty lenient with shit litrpg as long as it isn't complete dogshit in terms of writing, grammar, editing, etc. I read all 9 books of Reality Benders, and those are translated from Russian and it is super obvious, so my bar isn't that high.
The way I do some of them is use the Chrome WebToEpub extension. You can even pick which chapters you want to include (if you want to split a long series into books), and it generates an epub that you can send to your Kindle afterwards.
Will Ferrell Old School Movie GIF


This might be the single most useful thing I have learned all year. You da man!
 
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slippery

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Finished the most recent Awaken Online book, Armageddon. Pretty solid. Will be interesting to see where they go from here.
 

Xarpolis

Life's a Dream
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15,613
You guys should really read Overgeared. It's a Korean webnovel that's now officially licensed by wuxiaworld. I really like the story. And it's LONG. Currently on chapter 1740. The author is constantly increasing the story for the better, the writing style is really enjoyable. It keeps me entertained.
Here's the official link...

And my own personal collection from copying and pasting all of the chapters over the years, and updating things when the author makes a change.
Overgeared - Google Drive (for some reason all the icons say zip. They're .epub files)
 

Rogosh

Lord Nagafen Raider
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You guys should really read Overgeared. It's a Korean webnovel that's now officially licensed by wuxiaworld. I really like the story. And it's LONG. Currently on chapter 1740. The author is constantly increasing the story for the better, the writing style is really enjoyable. It keeps me entertained.
Here's the official link...

And my own personal collection from copying and pasting all of the chapters over the years, and updating things when the author makes a change.
Overgeared - Google Drive (for some reason all the icons say zip. They're .epub files)
Quit it around 190 a couple years back, just got boring.
 

TJT

Mr. Poopybutthole
<Gold Donor>
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You guys should really read Overgeared. It's a Korean webnovel that's now officially licensed by wuxiaworld. I really like the story. And it's LONG. Currently on chapter 1740. The author is constantly increasing the story for the better, the writing style is really enjoyable. It keeps me entertained.
Here's the official link...

And my own personal collection from copying and pasting all of the chapters over the years, and updating things when the author makes a change.
Overgeared - Google Drive (for some reason all the icons say zip. They're .epub files)
I read like 300 chapters of this...

But this wuxiaworld link did they do some editing for him? It reads way better than whatever I was reading.
 

Ritley

Karazhan Raider
15,711
34,227
Couldn’t make it past the first few chapters, translations like this are always awful. Story may be great, but I can never get past the writing itself.
 

Xarpolis

Life's a Dream
14,106
15,613
I read like 300 chapters of this...

But this wuxiaworld link did they do some editing for him? It reads way better than whatever I was reading.
I don't know what the people at Wuxia did. I don't believe they changed the story at all, but they aren't using standard machine translating any longer. They have a very good personal translator (rainbowturtle) that does the work. He/She is always looking for the best possible answer for the translation, and has had to go back a few times when guessing the gender of a character, or the way to name a character or thing. I'm happy reading it. And realistically, skipping out after 100 chapters doesn't get you into the real glory that is this story. The Grid character is still trying to figure out who or what he is and is constantly jealous of others. That mostly fades quickly, before vanishing all together. It's a solid story with positive character growth.
 
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Tuco

I got Tuco'd!
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I finished arc 3 of Mother of Learning. I really enjoyed it and the next arc is out on royalroad and will be out on audible in a few months.

Started The Primal Hunter Series by Zogarth a few days ago. Am getting really into it. Please no spoilers!
 

Void

Experiencer
<Gold Donor>
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I finished arc 3 of Mother of Learning. I really enjoyed it and the next arc is out on royalroad and will be out on audible in a few months.

Started The Primal Hunter Series by Zogarth a few days ago. Am getting really into it. Please no spoilers!
Pretty much anything even remotely successful goes straight to KU these days, so that doesn't limit you much.

Hmm - things that have kept me at least mildly entertained for an extended period of time :


Notable for good characters, most litrpg are mostly blank slate protagonists and cardboard cutouts. ( E.g. name one thing that the main character of Defiance of the Fall likes other than fighting ;p )



Isn't really outstanding in any particular category but is good in all of them, just solid light entertainment.



Trying hard for the biggest of the big numbers ! This one is an odd duck mixing in slice of life stuff with typical litrpg shenanigans.


OP man smash ! Very colorful and vivid power descriptions. This one has the worst litrpg system though, not in terms of quality, but like the one you would least want to have to put up with given it is cryptic as fuck, makes no sense and requires you to make life changing decisions where the only information is vague metaphorical symbolism


Story most likely to be confused with Defiance of the Fall; seriously, if they had the same character names you'd have trouble telling which one you were reading.

Eric Ugland's Good Guys/Bad Guys was pretty entertaining.

Chmilenko's Iron Prince was pretty great.

New Game Minus by Sarah Lin was pretty fun - ancient lich on the brink of permanent death uses a wand of soul swap on the triumphant adventurer and is extremely surprised to wake up as a level 1 barbarian in what seems to be some kind of game.
So I read all of Unbound and Primal Hunter that is available on KU, and the latest HWFWM.

Unbound is pretty good, and I don't hate the main character as much as some other series, but what is it with all these series requiring people to sit and contemplate shit?? Don't get me wrong, Unbound at least has a pretty different take on it, but fuck me I'm tired of people contemplating their inner existence all the time. Defiance of the Fall does it, Primal Hunter does it some, I'm sure others I'm forgetting.

Also, Evie sounds like a way better chick than Vess, but maybe that's just me.

Primal Hunter is entertaining, but if he fucking "smirks" one more motherfucking time...<insert SLJ meme> Huge way overleveled beast approaches...Jake smirks. If the entire series ends with him smirking and then getting pulverized out of reality by someone better, I will be happy. Not once in 4 books did I ever feel like I was actually worried for his continued existence. Of course I never am with these books, but this one doesn't even really pretend like the others do. Also also, some of his writing style just irks the fuck out of me. All the AKAs, the "one would have to say" and countless other quirks he repeats constantly. But the motherfucking smirking. FUCK!

He Who Fights With Monsters 8(?) was mostly more of the same bullshit. Finally got the "new girlfriend" stuff but thankfully it was brief and not even really that important. If it weren't for the supporting characters this series would have been worthless long ago.

Not sure what I'll read next. Maybe I need a break from all this litrpg.
 
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velk

Trakanon Raider
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1. Also, Evie sounds like a way better chick than Vess, but maybe that's just me.

2. Huge way overleveled beast approaches...Jake smirks. If the entire series ends with him smirking and then getting pulverized out of reality by someone better, I will be happy.

3. Not sure what I'll read next. Maybe I need a break from all this litrpg.

1. Absolutely true, but this is probably because Vess has less personality than Alinity does.

2. Now that you mention it, this would be the most awesome possible way for this series to end.

3. The ones you did read are the most similar of all of them, so that probably did not help. Path and Outcast are pretty different from those ones, for what it's worth. There's no shame in getting sick of a genre though, plenty of other good stuff to read.
 
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Void

Experiencer
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I was without any of these lists for a bit and needed something to read a few days ago, so I got the 3 currently available books of the Rise of the Winter Wolf series by Shane Purdy.

Utter shit. Don't waste your time. Yes, I read all 3, but that's so you don't have to. The main character (named Wolf, which totally plays into the rest of the series) is mostly unlikable, the writing is crap, and the plot is 99% him traversing the dungeon, easily killing almost everything due to his overpowered ability, and seeing what loot he gets. The premise is like all the others, planet suddenly integrated into The System, except that he is one of 1000 chosen to compete in a special dungeon that he can't leave except by finishing it or dying. Which is livestreamed to everyone in the universe. Even the attempts to show the dungeon crawl from the POV of the hosts of the different shows that follow the streams are terrible.

The worst part was when someone close to him dies (outside of the dungeon that he is stuck in), and upon hearing about it he just clenches a fist or something and then says he has to hurry up and get out of this dungeon. Did I mention he's only on maybe level 50 out of a 1000 level dungeon at this point?? And he's been in it for months. Good luck with that plan, chief!

I am 75% certain that he actually just decided later that he needed a death somewhere after writing yet another boring book, so he added a couple of pages about it in the middle somewhere, and then two or three references later. That's it. That's the only way I can explain the lack of importance that this death seems to have had upon him. Sure, the author will probably say that he's already commented about how reserved the main character is (which he has), and that led to him having an "ice" power, but come on. He gets upset over other shit that seems less important than someone he cares about dying.

I've already wasted more time on this series than it deserves. Avoid at all costs.
 
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Ritley

Karazhan Raider
15,711
34,227
I was without any of these lists for a bit and needed something to read a few days ago, so I got the 3 currently available books of the Rise of the Winter Wolf series by Shane Purdy.

Utter shit. Don't waste your time. Yes, I read all 3, but that's so you don't have to. The main character (named Wolf, which totally plays into the rest of the series) is mostly unlikable, the writing is crap, and the plot is 99% him traversing the dungeon, easily killing almost everything due to his overpowered ability, and seeing what loot he gets. The premise is like all the others, planet suddenly integrated into The System, except that he is one of 1000 chosen to compete in a special dungeon that he can't leave except by finishing it or dying. Which is livestreamed to everyone in the universe. Even the attempts to show the dungeon crawl from the POV of the hosts of the different shows that follow the streams are terrible.

The worst part was when someone close to him dies (outside of the dungeon that he is stuck in), and upon hearing about it he just clenches a fist or something and then says he has to hurry up and get out of this dungeon. Did I mention he's only on maybe level 50 out of a 1000 level dungeon at this point?? And he's been in it for months. Good luck with that plan, chief!

I am 75% certain that he actually just decided later that he needed a death somewhere after writing yet another boring book, so he added a couple of pages about it in the middle somewhere, and then two or three references later. That's it. That's the only way I can explain the lack of importance that this death seems to have had upon him. Sure, the author will probably say that he's already commented about how reserved the main character is (which he has), and that led to him having an "ice" power, but come on. He gets upset over other shit that seems less important than someone he cares about dying.

I've already wasted more time on this series than it deserves. Avoid at all costs.
Most of the litrpg genre is extremely poorly written with shitty characters and basically no real plot. They literally exist to be super OP and collect loot, and somehow they are always still rated pretty high. I got midway through towers of heaven third book just for lack of something good to read, and good god is it awful
 

velk

Trakanon Raider
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Yeah, with how many are about, it's easy to mistake something like the writing and characterization of DoF as being average for the genre, but there are literally hundreds of them that you have never heard, for very good reasons.

The ones that get recommended here are like the Stephen Kings of the genre.
 

Ukerric

Bearded Ape
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The premise is like all the others, planet suddenly integrated into The System, except that he is one of 1000 chosen to compete in a special dungeon that he can't leave except by finishing it or dying. Which is livestreamed to everyone in the universe. Even the attempts to show the dungeon crawl from the POV of the hosts of the different shows that follow the streams are terrible.
So, Dungeon Crawler Carl, without the comedy.
 
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Ukerric

Bearded Ape
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Most of the litrpg genre is extremely poorly written with shitty characters and basically no real plot. They literally exist to be super OP and collect loot, and somehow they are always still rated pretty high. I got midway through towers of heaven third book just for lack of something good to read, and good god is it awful
That third book was when the author had IRL problems and decided he needed to wrap up the story because he knew he would never finish it.
 

Ukerric

Bearded Ape
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The ones that get recommended here are like the Stephen Kings of the genre.
Recent top notch recommendations:

Divine Apostasy series, by A. F. Kay (yes)
The Great Core's Paradox I & II, by Zendran (snek litrpg)

Second tier recommendations:
Azarinth Healer, by Rhaegar (much edited/rewritten version from the RR one, which is actually finished)
Wake of the Ravager, by Macronomicon (if you like adolescent humor, that is)
 
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