progress update
Now on Chapter 13 of 18 of the LitRPG book. Over 2/3 of the way there!
A few people have asked what LitRPG is a genre, so I thought I would attempt an explanation here.
Basically, it’s a story about a fantasy video game, usually using elements from both fantasy and science fiction. It’s not surprising that a genre like this should have evolved. Recently, a New York Times article was roundly mocked for stating that “until fairly recently” video games were a “niche hobby typically associated with children.” This may have been true in 1980, but as painful as this may be for some people to admit, it hasn’t been the 1980s for, like, a while now, and they aren’t coming back anytime soon. In 1980, it would have been very unlikely for a group of middle-aged professionals to discuss their favorite video games over lunch. In 2023, it would be so commonplace as to be unremarkable. Even people who don’t think of themselves as playing “video games” will often play stuff like Words with Friends, Wordle, Boggle, and Candy Crush on their phones.
Anyway, given the cultural penetration that video games have achieved, it’s not surprising that novels and fiction will start to reflect that. There were several novels that could be considered “proto-LitRPG”, but it really didn’t evolve into a distinct genre until the 2010s.
To speak broadly, LitRPG tends to break down into four main types of stories:
1.) The plot revolves around the players of a video game controlled by a large and ruthless business, reflecting how in real life much of the game market is controlled by occasionally unscrupulous megacorporations. Often the game will involve virtual reality or some sort of immersion into the virtual world like in THE MATRIX. Usually the stakes in the game world and the real world are equally tense and significant, and will often feed into each other.
2.) The protagonist is kidnapped by aliens/gods/interdimensional beings and taken to a world or a pocket dimension set up to function exactly like a computer game, which the aliens/gods/interdimensional beings have created for reasons mysterious, benevolent, or malevolent. The characters often must either win the aliens’ game, find a way to escape, become the masters of this pocket dimension, or some combination of all three.
3.) Apocalypse. Earth is afflicted by some massive event or catastrophe (nuclear explosion, asteroid impact, quantum singularity etc.) that rewrites the rules of reality and causes Earth to become like a computer game. The characters must navigate this new reality.
4.) “Dungeon core” stories. The protagonist is transformed into the master of a typical RPG dungeon, and must build the dungeon, stock it with monsters, and defend it against adventurers. I think the original genesis of this version was the “Dungeon Master” games from the 90s, where you play as the evil overlord of a dungeon and fight off invading adventurers, though nowadays “Dwarf Fortress” is probably a bigger influence. Minecraft, too.
Obviously there are overlaps between the four main strands, and they have other influences – Chinese “progression fantasy” style stories have a big influence on LitRPG, and all the strands tend to have “base building” stories, where the protagonist gains control of a stronghold or a town and must collect resources and build it up.
A little preview: my LitRPG book is almost entirely in category one.
However, I think I’ve managed to create a satisfying twist on the premise.
We’ll see if I’m right soon enough! 🙂
-JM