What is LIT-RPG? (And Why You Should Read It!)

What exactly is Lit-RPGR?? Let's discuss. #litrpg
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Lilly mentioned with tapestry walk. Her
Oʊˈkeɪ

[kenmurray]

Inventory in progression fantasy is definitely a thing, but it is usually described as an extra dimensional bag, or sometimes a “soul space” rather than being an entry on a stat sheet.

[Bryanchappell]

Dungeon Crawler Carl has pulled me out of a reading slump single handedly this year. Fun funny and not overly philosophical like most fantasy and sci fi books right now. It’s just a roaring good time.

[skandaram]

progression fantasy: stories focused around a character/characters getting stronger and more powerful.
Litrpg: Similar thing but you have an RPG-esque rules and stats to show exactly how much the character has "progressed"

it gets way more complicated when you bring in gamelit, crunchy litrpg, creamy litrpg, Wuxia, Xianxia, KIngdom building stories, etc, but basically progression fantasy is kind of an umbrella term for it all.

[metal]

Appreciate the little shoutout to Ascendance of a Bookworm in the beginning. 100% the best isekai ever and my personal favourite fantasy story of all time

[johnlastname]

Finally getting this question asked since I've been way too laz- reading books to Google it.

[walkerred]

Lit rpg has been popular in Chinese Manhua and Korean Manwha for a long time. The Gamer and Only I Level Up (or as it's more popularly known, Solo Leveling) are some examples. Murium Login, Overgeared, and the like are also some popular examples. The best one in my mind is probably SSS Class Sucicide Hunter - which is probably the best one I've read from a quality standpoint, though I recommend reading the light novel if you want a more literary detail, but the Manwha is also very good.

Outside of that, villianness manwha is also very good, with Death Is The Only Outcome For The Villainess being my favorite. More in line with a sorta Isekia spin is Academy Student Extras Guide, which is phenomenal in its own right with its art and characters.

[diblet]

Defiance of the Fall, Primal Hunter, Azarinth Healer, He who fights with Monsters, Completionist Chronicles, Dungeon Crawler Carl, Awaken online, Divine Dungeon are my favorites. Whenever a new book is released in any of those it immediately shoots to the top of my TBR.
Honorable mention:
How to defeat the Demon king in 10 easy steps (nice short stand alone zelda inspired)

[adamallen]

You actually started my path down litrpgs with Sufficiently Advanced Magic.

[xander]

The cradle series by Will Wight is an incredible progression fantasy series if you haven’t come across it!

[RecklessFables]

0:18 "Phenamanuh... DO Doooo Do DO DO " Instant Muppets moment!

[Namacil]

A lot of Lit-RPGs start out as webnovels that you can read for free online. The Wandering Inn, Dungeon crawler Carl and He who fights with monsters all started off there. I remember skipping them then because they were not my cup of tea, but I'm happy they found wider success. Still, there are many many more stories for just about anyone that carry the Lit-RPG tag. Fantesy, sci-fi and fanfictions for just about any fandom.
A personal recommendation that will most likely never come out in print due to copyright issues is Ghost in the City by Seras, which is a story set in the world of the cyberpunk game.

[siliril]

There's a lot of great litRPG in Korean webnovels and Manhwa. Solo leveling is probably the most popular, but is also very much a straight play on the tropes.

Once you know the genre a bit, I would recommend Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint, a litRPG fan has his favorite webnovel come to life in the real world, and he happens to be the only person who read the 3, 000 chapter long webnovel to the end. It's an amazing exploration of a reader's connection to a story and characters, and the ending breaks the 4th wall (Heh, iykyk) in the most heartbreaking way. Honestly anyone who feels like books have changed their life, or identifies with the word "reader" should 100% read it, until the end, I beg thee.

[goldenbrigain]

Powerfantasy with a hefty sprinkle of new age sword and sorcery with a lot more variety and imagination in the abilities the protagonists have and their enemies possess. If you've read one, you've read a Very fun. I will say one of the most interesting things about the genre is that a lot of authors in it are intensely young. Like 16-23 years old in comparison to other genres where everyone's at least in their 30's.

[NorskDaedalus]

LitRPG is *usually* (but not strictly) a subgenre of progression fantasy, at least so far as the various communities who are most into those two emerging genres would consider it.

Progression fantasy is about, well, _progress_. It's about the characters getting stronger and facing more and more challenging opponents, with power creep being more of a feature than a bug. Its roots come more from Shounen anime (especially like DBZ), but could also reasonably include Harry Potter (as a core part of the story is Harry learning new spells and becoming a better wizard). It also includes subgenres like xianxia/cultivation, which takes even more cues from DBZ and Eastern fantasy, but mostly cares about whether the protagonist's main means of overcoming challenges is getting intrinsically stronger.

LitRPG is any story where the powers are internally viewable as an in-universe stat sheet. Technically, it doesn't need any progression elements at all to be a litRPG, so long as the characters are capable of looking at an in-universe representation of their abilities, that's litRPG. There's a sort of sub-parallel genre to litRPG which is _GameLit_, which for a while was a competing term to litRPG but eventually fell into a sort of space where skills and such may _exist_, but they don't feature very prominently and you might never see a stat screen at any point.

Now, obviously the venn diagram of Progfantasy and LitRPG includes heavy overlap, but they do each have their own levels of overlap and fuzziness. HWFWM, for example, is a litRPG within a Progfantasy world thanks to Jason's unique Interface ability. Without Interface, that would be a progression fantasy.

Similarly, you could have a litRPG without progression fantasy, where the main story isn't about getting stronger but the characters know their exact abilities, but those are rarer outside of stories that are specifically about someone in a litRPG world who is either uninterested or incapable of engaging in the more typical progression fantasy elements (and even those are quite rare). The numbers, once present, nearly always go up.

Neither Progfantasy nor litRPG includes 'inventory' like effects inherently, but they're pretty common in both, but the more common manifestation thereof is as an item that can hold more items than normal (your bags of holding or storage rings).

[syferz]

Isakei - "We're not in Kanasas anymore Toto." Lit-RPG - Gandalf "Run you fools!... so I can solo this boss and get a big level up"

[phillance]

Thanks Daniel to bring your P.O.V on the genre. As an avid reader of litRPG for more than 3 years and a longtime fan of sci-fi fantasy literature, it is nice to see this new genre being recognized as more than a niche trend on the web. LitRPG help me reignite my passion for reading.

[justinzohner]

"Dungeon Crawler Carl is addictive." Why you callin me out like that Daniel. I literally binged the series these last three weeks.

[jsmxwll]

recommendation:

- "All the Skills: A Deck-Building LitRPG" by Honour Rae -- this one stands out to me because it is based around deck building rather than more familiar LitRPG tropes.
- "Beneath the Dragoneye Moons" or "Lotus Lake" by Selkie. Lotus Lake is more humorous and character driven, Dragoneye is more world buildy and more representative of mainline LitRPG.

- Cradle series by Will Wight --

[tylerprime]

For those really fiending for more lit-rpg style series, the commonly referred to "system" series in manhwa are very similar, and there are a crazy amount of them to choose from

[TimboCalrissian]

Dungeon Crawler Carl was recommended to me by a coworker less than 10 days ago and I just finished the 6th book. My first experience with LitRPG and I absolutely absorbed it.