LitRPG

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I know not everyone likes Quest Academy, but the latest KU book came out and I haven't been this obsessed with reading for a few months. He's not even doing exciting shit, just crafting during break with his parents, but I'm totally enthralled and not even 20% in. And his parents are great fucking characters the way they are written.

I realize everything eventually gets stale, but I could read like twenty more books of this right now.
 
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Ritley

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Xarpolis said:
KU is the author? I haven't heard of Quest Academy before.
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Brian Nordon is the author.

I unfortunately read this book on Patreon already, so no new book for me. I am still enjoying reading it, though it is concerning how little actual time is passing in each of the books. Needs to pick up the pace at least a bit.
 
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Maximis Velocity said:
I am really enjoying The World series by Jason Cheek. Feel like it was written by one of us.
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The World

Visit Amazon's The World Page and shop for all The World books. Check out pictures, author information, and reviews of The World
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It's a good read. Does a good job mixing the real life with VR.
 
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Maximis Velocity said:
I am really enjoying The World series by Jason Cheek. Feel like it was written by one of us.
www.amazon.com

The World

Visit Amazon's The World Page and shop for all The World books. Check out pictures, author information, and reviews of The World
www.amazon.com
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17 books so far, wtf. I saw another series, Defiance of the Fall, the author was on Reddit butthurt about something and he said he’s trying to make it a 35 books series (or maybe he said 25, I forget)….seriously, wtf. These aren’t short books, are all these litrpgs ridiculously long like this or are there shorter ones that wrap up after 3-6 books like fantasy novels?
 
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Maximis Velocity

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Hateyou said:
17 books so far, wtf. I saw another series, Defiance of the Fall, the author was on Reddit butthurt about something and he said he’s trying to make it a 35 books series (or maybe he said 25, I forget)….seriously, wtf. These aren’t short books, are all these litrpgs ridiculously long like this or are there shorter ones that wrap up after 3-6 books like fantasy novels?
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They are a little shorter than other series installments. It flows well. Lots of room for the series to keep going with many characters only partially developed so far.
 
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Hateyou said:
17 books so far, wtf. I saw another series, Defiance of the Fall, the author was on Reddit butthurt about something and he said he’s trying to make it a 35 books series (or maybe he said 25, I forget)….seriously, wtf. These aren’t short books, are all these litrpgs ridiculously long like this or are there shorter ones that wrap up after 3-6 books like fantasy novels?
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A lot of them start as web serials, so there is a strong incentive to keep going as long as possible when it is successful, as there's no guarantee that new series will receive the same degree of success. The same kind of applies to regular publishing as well, but to a lesser extent as the publisher has higher standards for how much profit an ongoing series needs to make to be worth it for them.
 
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Void

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Hateyou said:
17 books so far, wtf. I saw another series, Defiance of the Fall, the author was on Reddit butthurt about something and he said he’s trying to make it a 35 books series (or maybe he said 25, I forget)….seriously, wtf. These aren’t short books, are all these litrpgs ridiculously long like this or are there shorter ones that wrap up after 3-6 books like fantasy novels?
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Well, the DotF author ran out of ideas a few books ago, so I'm not sure what he's going to do for another 15-25 books. I gave up on it because the last book I read was literally 90%+ the main character contemplating his navel I mean meditating to improve his core and consolidate his gains and shit. Tuco loves that shit, I can't stand it past a certain point.

And yes, the drive is to have a more or less endless revenue stream. Except that for almost every one of these series, the first few books are usually the best because you are learning a new world and new characters. Once you get past that and power levels increase (because they have to or readers get bored), they start to kinda get all the same. If I had a nickel for every series that had a special dungeon where people go specifically to get new abilities and rewards and special shit, I'd have at least a few bucks.
 
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Void said:
Well, the DotF author ran out of ideas a few books ago, so I'm not sure what he's going to do for another 15-25 books. I gave up on it because the last book I read was literally 90%+ the main character contemplating his navel I mean meditating to improve his core and consolidate his gains and shit. Tuco loves that shit, I can't stand it past a certain point.

And yes, the drive is to have a more or less endless revenue stream. Except that for almost every one of these series, the first few books are usually the best because you are learning a new world and new characters. Once you get past that and power levels increase (because they have to or readers get bored), they start to kinda get all the same. If I had a nickel for every series that had a special dungeon where people go specifically to get new abilities and rewards and special shit, I'd have at least a few bucks.
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Yeah I’m about to give up on dotf too. Chapter after chapter of this dude just sitting in caves pondering is fucking lame and boring as fuck. Most of the shit he talks about I can’t even wrap my head around what’s actually happening. There’s so many different energies and pathways and souls and fundamental truths and doing shit mentally it’s stupid.

The characters and conversations are all really shallow. No one has much of a personality, and there are tons of conversations that just get cut short with “Well, whatever” cause the author can’t do banter for shit. The main character is also really inconsistent. Sometimes he seems like a normal guy with normal decent ethics then other times he’s brutally murdering people for no reason or robbing people. He’s also super greedy and he will always get tons of insane level ups that no one else comes close to and he’s disappointed. I also can’t figure what detriment his being “merely a mortal” state has on him. He surpasses the fuck out of everyone who is a cultivator all the time with basically no issues. He sets up this false hurdle whenever he’s leveling something up and he just surpasses it every time.

Also pretty tired of how much he repeats some shit. “Spits out a mouthful of blood/ichor” long winded explanations about how some attack normally goes against normal people then…”However” that’s not the case with Zac! and the already mentioned “Well, whatever”. “Consolidate his gains”, “Cards” and “Aces”, and a few others I can’t think of at the moment.

The book I’m in now I’ve just been skipping through whenever he’s doing his cultivation garbage which is most of the book, so I’m probably just gonna end it. The first bunch of books were fun despite all the complaints I mentioned but like you said, the dude seems to have ran out of interesting ideas.

Edit: This genre may not be for me if this is how they all are. I’ve read tons of sci-fi and fantasy, and play video games so it seemed like it would be up my alley. However Dungeon Crawler Carl seems like an outlier in that it appears it has a well defined scope going into it with character development and an end planned for it. I’m not on board with dozens of books to keep an author fed. World of Time started stretching his story out like that for no reason and I hated that practice.
 
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Hateyou said:
Yeah I’m about to give up on dotf too. Chapter after chapter of this dude just sitting in caves pondering is fucking lame and boring as fuck. Most of the shit he talks about I can’t even wrap my head around what’s actually happening. There’s so many different energies and pathways and souls and fundamental truths and doing shit mentally it’s stupid.

The characters and conversations are all really shallow. No one has much of a personality, and there are tons of conversations that just get cut short with “Well, whatever” cause the author can’t do banter for shit. The main character is also really inconsistent. Sometimes he seems like a normal guy with normal decent ethics then other times he’s brutally murdering people for no reason or robbing people. He’s also super greedy and he will always get tons of insane level ups that no one else comes close to and he’s disappointed. I also can’t figure what detriment his being “merely a mortal” state has on him. He surpasses the fuck out of everyone who is a cultivator all the time with basically no issues. He sets up this false hurdle whenever he’s leveling something up and he just surpasses it every time.

Also pretty tired of how much he repeats some shit. “Spits out a mouthful of blood/ichor” long winded explanations about how some attack normally goes against normal people then…”However” that’s not the case with Zac! and the already mentioned “Well, whatever”.

The book I’m in now I’ve just been skipping through whenever he’s doing his cultivation garbage which is most of the book, so I’m probably just gonna end it. The first bunch of books were fun despite all the complaints I mentioned but like you said, the dude seems to have ran out of interesting ideas.

Edit: This genre may not be for me if this is how they all are. I’ve read tons of sci-fi and fantasy, and play video games so it seemed like it would be up my alley. However Dungeon Crawler Carl seems like an outlier in that it appears it has a well defined scope going into it with character development and an end planned for it. I’m not on board with dozens of books to keep an author fed. World of Time started stretching his story out like that for no reason and I hated that practice.
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I feel like it isn't necessarily the genre, but the fact that a large majority of them start on Royal Road and similar sites (and of course now Patreon earnings paired with that). The drive there is for consistent output to keep the income flowing, and it is probably easier to keep the same story going for years instead of ending one and starting a new one that might not keep the same level of fanbase support. Not having read much on RR, I can imagine the trepidation over starting a series, only to see it flounder and dwindle in updates so that you never get more of the story, is fairly high with readers there. Yet, the beginning to most of these stories is typically the best part.

I've said it before, but RR is like the TikTok of literature. Easily digestible bites of slightly entertaining ideas wrapped in a whole lot of stupid. But no one younger than us wants to read an entire book straight through anymore, it seems. Even the RR books that make it over to Kindle Unlimited, you can see the "ten minute chapter" construction of the entire book easily. I don't think that's exclusive to litrpg, just the "web serial" genre as a whole.

Well, and to be fair, most of this type of litrpg is also based around the new character striving to become that world-bending superbeing they saw once, and that's gonna take a while just by default, so it is easy for the author to stretch it out in the name of (somewhat) consistency. Some of those mega cultivators in DotF didn't reach that level for millions of years, but Zac will get there in a few hundred or thousand at most even with the artificial slowdowns, but that still could be dozens of books.

There are a few litrpg books that have satisfying endings, but other than Murderhobo I'm drawing a blank right now. I'm sure others will have ideas where I'm forgetting.
 
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Tuco

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Guys, Defiance of the Fall is S-rank writing.

1749850471686.png
 
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DotF was never well-written, and I got bored of it eventually, but I'll still give the guy credit for keeping absurd amounts of power creep going far longer than I thought was possible.
 
Hateyou

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velk said:
DotF was never well-written, and I got bored of it eventually, but I'll still give the guy credit for keeping absurd amounts of power creep going far longer than I thought was possible.
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The 10 kilometer high avatars fighting with 1 kilometer spears made me laugh.
 
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I knew that no power creep was too high to maintain my interest after I watched 400 episodes of Dragonball AFTER one of the big bads destroyed a planet.

 
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Xarpolis said:
I found a website that lets me download virtually every book I search for. It works great for grabbing a lot of the things you guys reccomend.

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Why am I unable to reach this url?

EDIT: Also, speaking of power creep, the latest He Who Fights With Monsters is really getting up there. It is almost (almost) amusing how the author is trying to limit Jason's powers in normal fights...yet still leaving it so that whenever he needs to he just crushes the opposition.

Honestly getting pretty boring now, but I'll check out the next book at least.
 
Ritley

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Void said:
I feel like it isn't necessarily the genre, but the fact that a large majority of them start on Royal Road and similar sites (and of course now Patreon earnings paired with that). The drive there is for consistent output to keep the income flowing, and it is probably easier to keep the same story going for years instead of ending one and starting a new one that might not keep the same level of fanbase support. Not having read much on RR, I can imagine the trepidation over starting a series, only to see it flounder and dwindle in updates so that you never get more of the story, is fairly high with readers there. Yet, the beginning to most of these stories is typically the best part.

I've said it before, but RR is like the TikTok of literature. Easily digestible bites of slightly entertaining ideas wrapped in a whole lot of stupid. But no one younger than us wants to read an entire book straight through anymore, it seems. Even the RR books that make it over to Kindle Unlimited, you can see the "ten minute chapter" construction of the entire book easily. I don't think that's exclusive to litrpg, just the "web serial" genre as a whole.

Well, and to be fair, most of this type of litrpg is also based around the new character striving to become that world-bending superbeing they saw once, and that's gonna take a while just by default, so it is easy for the author to stretch it out in the name of (somewhat) consistency. Some of those mega cultivators in DotF didn't reach that level for millions of years, but Zac will get there in a few hundred or thousand at most even with the artificial slowdowns, but that still could be dozens of books.

There are a few litrpg books that have satisfying endings, but other than Murderhobo I'm drawing a blank right now. I'm sure others will have ideas where I'm forgetting.
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Good description of a big problem with the genre. There’s really 3 directions these can go, either system driven, character driven, or plot driven. 90% are system driven, which is by far the easiest to write. They fizzle out after a few books because once the system is explained and the immediate problem of surviving the transition is solved, the authors don’t know how to write anything but numbers get bigger.

There’s a reason that the best ones like DCC aren’t heavily system based, it’s just a backdrop to the greater overall story and character development.
 
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Void

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Ritley said:
Good description of a big problem with the genre. There’s really 3 directions these can go, either system driven, character driven, or plot driven. 90% are system driven, which is by far the easiest to write. They fizzle out after a few books because once the system is explained and the immediate problem of surviving the transition is solved, the authors don’t know how to write anything but numbers get bigger.

There’s a reason that the best ones like DCC aren’t heavily system based, it’s just a backdrop to the greater overall story and character development.
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And a large number of the character driven ones have characters that are straight up unlikable. Randidly Ghosthound immediately comes to mind, but there are countless others. The latest We Hunt Monsters is what I'm reading right now, and I hate the main character so fucking much that I'm only reading to hopefully see him get screwed in the end. He won't, because I'm pretty sure the author thinks him being a complete dickhole is cool, but I can hope.

You can have despicable characters or ones with massive flaws, but they still need to be relatable in some way that keeps a reader rooting for them. Dexter is a perfect example. Horrible, horrible human being by almost every metric, but we still like him. The guys in these shitty books are not anywhere near as evil as Dexter (well, mostly), but they are even less people that we can identify with. Seems hard to do, but it happens constantly in these books, which probably says something about the type of author that writes them.
 
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