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A Deeper Dive

What is LitRPG?

Let’s look through some history, examples, and subgenres from this incredible genre – hopefully filling in some blanks of knowledge for you!

Numbers, stats, pages and pages of skills and upgrades – I’m sure you’ve seen it by now.

Even if you’re a novice reader in the genre and depending on what your background is, you might be wondering just what the heck they are or are supposed to be. Well, look no further! I’m here to demystify why all these numbers have started to invade your books and introduce you to the wonderful world of LitRPG.

Now before we get too heavy on the details, I am going to assume that you have read the basics of exactly ‘What’ LitRPG is as I covered in my Progression Fantasy article. If you haven’t read that just yet – I highly advise beginning your journey there then coming back here. On the other hand, if you’re ready, let’s go on ahead and start in with a bit of history.

Where Did LitRPG Come From?

At this point it’s hard to imagine a time before numbers and game like mechanics started to make their way into our media but in reality the LitRPG genre is relatively young genre having only ‘truly’ been around for the last ten years. 

Note that I have the quotations there for a reason and that is because while LitRPG is incredibly popular in the moment right now there are several books and shows which in hindsight do fall into this genre category that have been published many, many years ago. I like to think of these older books as a kind of Proto LitRPG series which share many of the same qualities that eventually found their way into more modern books and shows, however may not follow all of the expectations, tropes, and/or rules that more modern LitRPG series have or follow today.

Examples of Proto LitRPG works

This is by no means an exhaustive list of entries for the extremely early works of the genre. However, if you are looking to find the first examples of what could be defined as a LitRPG series these are all solid series, novels, and shows that you could explore to get a better understanding of the early inspiration for this genre.

Of all of these novels, stats, numbers, and other game like additions generally took a back seat to the overall development of the story. All of these older works tended to focus more on a more traditional storytelling method without as much reliance or use to have these numbers and attributes to help tell the story for them. This was something that largely started to change and evolve as we entered the early 2000s thanks to one huge market explosion that came to dominate the gaming world: MMORPGs.

Which Then Changed Everything

Here’s a section which is probably going to date me, but I vividly remember the day when I first logged into EverQuest, made a high elf enchanter, entered Greater Faydark, and proceeded to get my butt kicked by a bat. It was amazing, and considering where I am today, lifechanging.

I’m sure if you’re here reading this, you’ve had a similar experience and can change out a few words of the above to suit your own beginnings when it came to MMORPGs.

Needless to say however, it doesn’t matter what the title of your chosen game was, the arrival and subsequent explosion of MMORPGs created a whole new way of playing games, taking what in the past had just been a table top experience with Dungeons and Dragon (or similar games) into something worldwide and on demand. But more than that, it didn’t stop. It went from a few hundreds of thousands of people playing the early MMORPGs – Asheron’s Call, Ultima Online, EverQuest, and more, to over ten million people playing World of Warcraft alone at it’s peak. It was a world wide phenomenon that still stretches out to this day, if perhaps at more spread out and smaller numbers somewhat.

Regardless the impression was made on several generations of gamers, creating the desire – no, the need – for numbers to go up.

Numbers Go Up = Good

You’ve all been there. You hit a new level. You get a new piece of gear. You unlock a new skill. You sell an item for a huge chunk of gold at the auction house. You see the number go up and for a split moment, all feels right in the world.

Then you get back right to it, looking to make the next number go up, repeating the loop, chasing the next high.

This, at its heart, is what makes LitRPG and by extension Progression Fantasy so appealing to readers, even those who aren’t or haven’t been gamers in ages. Because until both of the two genres were born there hadn’t been all that many options for readers (and gamers) to choose from that would scratch this particular itch. Especially for those former gamers who no longer had time to play games as extensively as they had in the past, or found the gaming choices they had, not appealing to them anymore.

In any case, this combination of elements – starting first with the blockbuster MMORPGs (and the general rise of RPG gaming in general), combined with authors and creators looking to put their own spin on things inspired the first wave of ‘Classic-Modern’ LitRPG. Yes, I’m calling books that are less than fifteen years old classics, but only as a way to show how far we’ve travelled in such a short amount of time.

From the East to the West

While it has appeared in many formats over the decades since its initial inception, Classic-Modern LitRPG was first born from the plethora of works coming out of China, Japan, and Korea. Some of these are the examples we included above such as, .hack//Sign, Sword Art Online, Legendary Moonlight Sculptor, and so many others that I simply can’t name without forgetting something. Regardless, it was these works that took the first step of showing readers a brand new idea that hadn’t otherwise existed or had been executed in a relatable way up until that time, especially since everyone now knew, and possibly loved, playing MMORPGs.

From there as popularity grew, and translations gradually made their way across the world, the genre eventually inspired the works of many Russian authors, which built upon the works with the addition of heavier stat and attribute filled novels using them to augment the narrative and to truly make them feel as if you were playing a video game or MMORPG despite it being a written work. The earliest of these novels then gradually started to make their way from Russian into English which then in turn kicked off the explosion that would eventually become LitRPG. 

A term by the way that was coined late in 2013 by one of the first Russian authors to take on this genre, Vasily Mahanenko.

From there the transition from east to West was all but inevitable as more and more Russian books were written and translated into English eventually inspiring their own works, which I still generally categorize as ‘Classic-Modern’ LitRPG given all of their similarities and approach to story structure. If you’re looking to see where the genre first came from before western authors began to dominate it I’d highly suggest checking out the first wave of Russian books to be translated into English as followed below:

The Rush That Followed After

There is truthfully no better way to describe the years that followed after LitRPG made its debut in English and started to attract authors (myself included) to the genre. Many of whom had no formal reading training or had even ever considered writing. While not exactly a requirement for producing great work, the early days of English LitRPG was a learning experience for everyone both in quality and in defining ‘what’ exactly a LitRPG novel was.

During this stretch authors stuck every single idea they could possibly think of into a novel, essentially writing whatever inspired them in the moment. There were no conventions, there were no (or few) tropes, nor was there were anything around to really differentiate the reading audience when it came to the many sub-genres that LitRPG now has.

For this reason many of the early LitRPG novels that came out were all virtual reality MMORPG style works. These were the kind of novels that were popular at the time over in Russian and Asian works, and by extension these were the novels that inspired many of us, myself included once again, to try our hand at these stories changing them and adopting them in ways that we wanted to see but otherwise couldn’t find.

An example of all of these early MMORPG style works would be:

As all these works came out, the response from the readers was nothing but amazing and the genre not only grew exponentially, but subgenres were gradually born as authors started to explore other themes, progression styles, and even starting concepts that weren’t MMORPG oriented.

And With That Exploration Came New Sub-Genres

Nothing exists in a vacuum and nor does something last forever. That goes doubly true for entertainment and gaming. As more and more LitRPG books were written, the popularity of the Virtual Reality and MMORPG style books started to slowly, but surely wane. As more authors readers came into the genre, they wanted to explore new ideas with different stakes and eventually gave birth the following sub-genres of LitRPG.

  • Dungeoncore 
  • Card-Based/Deckbuilding
  • The Arrival of a System

And we’ll waste no time in diving into them in detail!

Dungeoncore

From my perspective, I believe that this was one of the first true sub-genres within LitRPG and arrived relatively fast on the scene once the genre took off in North America (Inspired by Asian Mangas and anime).

However to better define this sub-genre there is no better definition to quote from than from the master Goodreads List for Dungeoncore novels:

“[Dungeoncore is a]  LitRPG subgenre, where the main character is a ‘Dungeon’ or, in a more general sense, a powerful being that is bound to one place and has a great influence over that place by supernatural means (in a fantasy setting) or technological means (in a sci-fi setting). ‘Dungeon Core’ (a physical vessel where protagonist’s mind and/or soul resides) is often referred to as his ‘soul’, and the ‘Dungeon’ itself (a surrounding area that is over protagonist’s control) is often referred to as his ‘body’. The main character has the ability to change reality around himself to improve his ‘body’ in various ways, which can include changing layout of the area; creating or improving its dwellers (plants, animals or magical/technological beings); any items etc. As the plot develops, protagonist improves himself and his domain, expands his territory and establishes contact with outside world.”

At its heart these kinds of novels are twists on the normal protagonist in the sense that they may not actually be flesh and blood people as we ourselves, but rather the minds of people (or monsters!) that have otherwise been fixed into a single location of which they exact some level of control over. I know that this might be a bit of a tough concept to grasp initially, however once you read a few examples it isn’t too hard to figure out.

And to help with that – I have plenty of examples that are all worth reading:

Card-Based/Deckbuilding

Next on the list of our sub-genres are Card-Based LitRPGs, which as you guessed it are inspired by trading card games such as Magic the Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and so many others, which with their own style and system to them!

Despite that however there are a few general themes that are observed throughout these kinds of story.

Typically, the cards are the representation of magical or technological abilities or powers, which can be traded, looted, sold, stolen, and created the exact same way that an item can be. Depending on the story, the use of cards might be limited to one’s ‘deck’, which can limit the amount of cards a character in the story can use at one time. At a trade off however, because these decks are limited, characters within these stories often change out what they have available to them in the situation at hand, allowing them to essentially ‘specialize’ for a given situation. The thrill in this situation is in reading how the characters manage these limitations and acquire new cards to fill out their overall ability set.

Because this is one of the newer genres in the overall LitRPG ecosystem there aren’t actually many series out just yet – so if you’re looking to get right in on the ground floor of a newly growing sub-genre, I’d highly recommend you check out the following series:

The Arrival of a System

Moving to the next entry on our list – the Arrival of a System is perhaps one of the largest sub-genres to LitRPG presently and the one with the widest amount of range in terms of story, appeal, and structure.

More than that, this sub-genre tends to have a variety of names such as System Apocalypse, Apocalypse RPG, and conversely Post-Apocalypse LitRPG.

Since this particularly sub-genre is rather well defined, I am going to quote Trevor Well’s description over on Levelup.pub who wrote a rather great explanation of:

“At its core Apocalypse LitRPG books are required to stay in the confines of a cataclysmic event that will cause the end of the world, while keeping with the mechanics that create a LitRPG. The books setting and themes need be apocalyptic in nature and it must have a LitRPG system that drives the story. This is often called system apocalypse which simply means a game system appearing to the character within the book during an apocalypse. In order be apocalypse LitRPG all rules must be followed. In essence, Apocalypse LitRPG books are a sub-genre of LitRPG where a game system arrives on Earth.”

So at it’s heart a System Arrival book often starts off with a present day earth or similar reality, which is then brought to its knees by the forcible implementation of a game-like system upon it with apocalyptic consequences for those who are too weak or too timid to survive. (Sort of like The Walking Dead, but if you got experience and loot killing other zombies and humans!)

If this is a genre that you’d like to know more of, I’d highly suggest you check out any of the following:

And That’s Only Where We Are Now

As one of the founding authors of the genre, I’ve had the opportunity to see quite a lot of growth within LitRPG over the last ten years and counting, enough to be confident when I say that we haven’t even scratched the tip of what creativity has to offer us. So much in fact, I have no doubt that in the weeks after I finish this article, I’ll see the beginnings of a brand new subgenre start to emerge and grow, until one day it joins the above list.

In the meantime however, if you looking to jump into the wonderful LitRPG genre – or see where it first evolved from – there is no better time to start than now. Happy Reading!

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