This is long, so table of contents:
- The Origin of LitRPG
- The Inheritance and how is it different
- What is happening with other series
- A recommendation for a cute comic.
The Origin of LitRPG
As everyone knows by now, I’m a massive Solo Leveling fan. I’ve read the manhwa before the anime was ever announced and then reread it several times. Right now, with the anime release on Crunchyroll (we are up to 2 seasons), it is enjoying unprecedented popularity and some people credit it with starting the Hunter subgenre of LitRPG.
The premise of LitRPG is that somehow the protagonist enters a game world, usually loosely based on an MMO structure. In Massively Multiplayer Online games, players usually must choose a class that defines how they play the game. For example, tanks have heavy shields and armor. They are hard to kill so they taunt the enemy and bear the brunt of the attack while DPS (Damage per second) classes deal damage, and healers cast restorative spells. Players organize into guilds with strict hierarchy.
In the Hunter subgenre of LitRPG our world becomes a video game. Portals open in random locations, leading to dungeons, which, unless conquered in time, will unleash monsters upon the world. Some people mysteriously awaken to magic powers. They are usually called Hunters and they are ranked according to their ability. Hunters band into guilds, and guilds assault the dungeons. It’s World of Warcraft in real life, complete with a system window that announces when you go up a level and shows you your numeric stats like Strength and Agility.
As much as I love Solo Leveling, it didn’t originate the term “hunters.” The first mention of this system in comics actually comes to us from 2012 manhwa called I Am A Noble.
Sorry, Sung Jin-woo, you are not the first. Just the most handsome.
Unfortunately, there are no legitimate translations of I Am A Noble – please do not link pirate sites with machine translations – but there are plenty of other manhwa titles that fall into this genre. Here are some of them in no particular order. I have read all of these, and some are good, some I liked less. You can find them at your usual manhwa places like Webtoon, Tapas, Tappytoon, etc.
- Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint
- Kill the Hero
- The Druid of Seoul Station
- The World After the Fall
- The Worn and Torn Newbie
- The Player Who Can’t Level Up
- Hoarding in Hell
I’m going to link a list here: Hunter/Dungeon/Gates, but there are others, more comprehensive ones.
But the question is, where did this set up originate? What inspired it? Well, World of Warcraft is obviously one of the ingredients. The game came out in 2004, and at its peak, in 2010, had over 12 million subscribers. It also spawned an entire generation of successors. But what else happened near that 2012 mark?
On August 16, 2011 Ready Player One came out. This book was everywhere. NPR, USA Today, CNN, Entertainment Weekly, translated into 37 languages, available in 58 countries… It was a global phenomenon. If you somehow missed it, it’s about an 18 year old kid whose life is awful, so he chooses to live a completely different life in an online game. This book hit like a meteorite. Although, it is not a strict LitRPG in a sense of classes and quests, it was, without a doubt, the driving force behind the development of the genre.
When Ready Player One came out, LitRPG did not exist as a sub-category. So when did LitRPG became a thing? Who originated this term?
The term LitRPG was coined by… a bunch of Russians. I present to you Magic Dome Books. LitRPG is their bread and butter.
From their website:
LitRPG is a subgenre of science fiction and fantasy which describes the hero’s adventures within an online computer game. LitRPG books merge traditional book-style narration with elements of a gaming experience, describing various quests, achievements and other events typical of a video game.
The defining feature that sets LitRPG fiction apart from traditional portal fantasy is its use of interactive gaming language, such as the inclusion of various system messages, players’ stats, items’ characteristics and other elements appreciated by gamers. The narration in a LitRPG novel has to abide by the rules of a game while filling it with conflict and drama as the hero tries to survive in this new environment.This “book meets game” experience proved to be exactly what many gamers-turned-readers were looking for in a novel.
LitRPG books are not the same as traditional game novelizations. As a rule, LitRPG books are set in fictional game worlds which are entirely their authors’ invention, such as D. Rus’ AlterWorld or V. Mahanenko’s Barliona. Also, their use of gaming elements and attributes sets them apart from traditionally penned game novelizations.
Initially unrecognized by traditional publishing, the genre kept growing, gaining a truly insatiable readership that devoured such cult series as Sword Art Online, Ready Player One and The Legendary Moonlight Sculptor. In 2012, Russia became the first country in the world where the genre was officially recognized, receiving its current name – LitRPG – and its own place in libraries and book shops. Since then, dozens of new game-set novels have been published in Russia, some of them national bestsellers such as Play to Live by D. Rus and the Way of the Shaman by V. Mahanenko.
So they tell us right here what these writers were inspired by. Sword Art Online is a series of Japanese light novels that began as a webnovel in 2001, which was picked up for publication in Japan in 2009. This is one of those “overnight successes” a decade in the making. SAO didn’t get an English translation until 2014, but really gained in popularity when the anime adaptation came out. The Legendary Moonlight Sculptor began as a South Korean webnovel from Kakao, which began in 2007 and ran until 2019. It is a massively popular series, which spawned a comic adaptation and its own mobile game.
Both series featured virtual reality. In SAO people were playing a multiplayer game and found that they were unable to log off and in LMS a poor Korean student plays a popular new game to earn some money for his grandmother and ends creating a lot of beautiful art and eventually becomes a central figure in a power struggle over the game.
The third title mentioned is again Ready Player One, which was inspired by arcade games of 1980s. If we were to dig deeper into 1980s, we find…
Well, yes, technically, it is similar. But we are looking for something else. Something where people went through a portal and ended up in a game with specific classes and quests… Something with the portals…
And there you go. The first true expression of LitRPG on screen in 1983. Why Cavalier? Why not a Paladin? Never understood that.
Okay, fine, that was a screen adaptation. But what about the literary equivalent?
This is a tougher call, because again, we are looking for very specific things: classes, portal, game setting, quests, and so on.
I’m going to say Quag Keep by Andre Norton.
In early 1970s Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson were working on a new game called Dungeons and Dragons and they couldn’t find anyone to publish it. So in 1974 Gary Gygax partnered with Don Kaye and formed TSR, which published Dungeons and Dragons in that same year.
Two years later, Gary Gygax invited Andre Norton for a session in the new setting he was developing called Greyhawk. Quag Keep was the result of that session. It came out in 1978.
I had to grab the description from Wikipedia, because the one on Amazon is terrible.
Martin, a player in a game of D&D, touches a figurine of a warrior, and is unwillingly transported into the body of Milo Jagon, a warrior in the city of Greyhawk. Milo/Martin gradually meets others likewise transported to this world. Bound together by forces they do not understand, the players struggle to trust each other. Under the compulsion of a geas, everyone is forced to go on a quest. They eventually confront the one controlling them, the Gamemaster, and battle with him to regain control of their lives. Although they win, they find that they cannot return to “reality”, and must remain in Greyhawk. Rather than splitting up, they realize they make a good team and decide to continue their adventures together.
We do not have the literal system windows of the online game. Other than that, this hits all the points: players are portaled, they have classes, they must accomplish quests, and they band into a party.
But what about Dragonlance Chronicles? Nope, that doesn’t fit. First, it was commissioned by TSR in 1983 to promote the new campaign setting, so Quag Keep predates it, and second, it’s a novel set in Dragonlance with characters original to that world. There are no players.
Sadly, Quag Keep bombed. The critics disliked it, so it is one of the lesser known Andre Norton’s works.
But what about the portal fantasy? When did that start?
I love you, please don’t make me pull Lewis Caroll out. That is another post.
Here is a list from Goodreads. It’s pretty comprehensive, but it doesn’t include pseudo portals like H.G. Wells’ Time Machine or Edward Bellamy’s 1887 Looking Backward 2000-1887. Fun fact: Bellamy was the first to introduce the concept of credit cards in fiction.
When we market books, we have to hit the here and now references. While we might phrase things like “this work will appeal to fans of isekai” or “this work will appeal to fans of hunter LitRPG,” we are doing this to appeal to a new generation of readers because saying things like “This is like Chronicles of Narnia and Princess Bride made a baby with Game of Thrones and then gave it to Locke Lamora to raise” is confusing.
So what about the Inheritance? How is it different?
There are things that bug me about the Hunter subgenre specifically in its current LitRPG iteration. If we really dissect it, a lot of the genre deals with existing within a static system. Your class is set. Your abilities are set. You can get new abilities but only within the system parameters.
Sometimes you gain levels, but only in your class. Sometimes you can game the system and unlock something unexpected due to prior knowledge or chance. Sometimes you cannot improve at all. In Solo Leveling, Sung Jin-woo is the only person able to level up. In that world, if you “awakened” to your powers as Rank B, it doesn’t matter how hard you try, you will stay Rank B. He is the only exception.
LitRPGs generally fall into two categories: either succeed within the system and be the best at playing the class you’ve chosen or disrupt the system and become the best badass there is who answers to no one, while the rest of the people remain in their assigned roles. There is a simplicity in it: you can earn experience, have tangible progress in levels, and be assigned a course of action by the system.
If you were coming from an environment where generations of people have given up on upward mobility without inherited wealth, or a country where the government exerts pressure to keep you in your lane and your designated role, this type of system might be familiar and appealing, in part because sometimes it carries a subversive message.
Setting the social implications aside, if you look at the list of the manhwa I linked above or at Magic Dome Books, you can note something interesting. In the word of Cordelia Cupp, “What’s with all the dudes?”
This genre usually features a male protagonist, typically between 17 and 25. There are occasional older protagonists, but again mostly male. There are occasional exceptions, as always, and there are more women in books than in manhwa, but in general they are harder to find. Recently I stumbled on a LitRPG manhwa, which had a female protagonist. She had the housekeeping talent. I’m sure it was meant to be just part of the current trend exploring the cozier side of LitRPG, but the hero is kicking butt left and right because he is the best hunter who ever lived and our girl is making his bed so he can nap.
A couple of months ago, I saw a tutorial video, where two women were having an awesome time trying to nuke the Matron of Glennwood in the Enshrouded. (If you are interested, here is the link to the video.) I very much enjoyed watching them try to kill her. It kind of confirmed my theory that most of the time inspiration is accidental.
For these reasons, The Inheritance is not a true Hunter LitRPG in the strictest sense of the word.
A Little Housekeeping
Unfortunately, not every story is suitable for the online serialization. Serialized stories need to be fast paced and tightly focused so people don’t get lost. This is why serializing Hugh 2 was very difficult. It was complex and required revisions as it was being written due to the layered motivations of the protagonists. None of the projects we have currently sketched out for our existing worlds would work for serialization.
The Inheritance was conceived and structured specifically for online reading. It was meant to be a serial from the start. We are about 2/3 of the way through, so it’s mostly written. It’s our gift to you this spring because there will be very little content on the blog as we dig into our massive workload.
The Inheritance will be posted probably twice a week and in its entirety. It connects to nothing, it requires no prior reading, and it will likely be a one-off, so there probably won’t be a sequel.
There are no Easter eggs. We would never troll the BDH. Trust us.
After its run, The Inheritance will be available for sale for you to keep, probably as part of Small Magics 2, which will be collecting various free fiction from the website.
We understand that some of you are upset because you would like the free stories to be available in ebook format faster. It takes effort and time to put it all together into a cohesive anthology, and we have to have enough content to justify the price and especially the audio edition. We do not want to short-change those of you who are visually impaired or who prefer your fiction as an audio adaptation. It is difficult to book an audio narrator just for a novella-length work. There has to be significant word count for it to be worth their while. We would want to have the narrator at least booked before the ebook comes out, so we can give you an ETA.
PS. ModR suggested adding recipes our characters cook at the end of Small Magics 2. Is it weird to have recipes from our books in an anthology? It feels kind of weird.
The Top Dungeon Farmer
In conclusion, thank you for sitting through my TED talk. To make up for it, I thought I would show you my current manhwa Hunter favorite. Behold the unbearable cuteness.
The Top Dungeon Farmer. Yes, it is that adorable. Look at those bunnies! He gets a killer monster bear later and it is also adorable. I must say, I don’t care for the cat. Anyway, there are 80+ episodes, most of them free on Webtoons. If you need a distraction where nothing super horrible happens, this might do the trick.
PS. It should really go above where we talked about our world turning into a video game. There is, apparently, a real life condition called Game Transfer Phenomenon. BBC explains more. So who knows, perhaps we will start assigning classes to ourselves some time in the future.
Yes to recipes! I love it. We have recipes in our collected writings of our seniors writing group.
I read Quag Keep and thoroughly enjoyed it. I still have a copy somewhere. I thought of it when you made your post. You are correct about the description on Goodreads being a poor summary of the book. It is available on Kindle Unlimited for anyone who is interested.
It is not weird to have a recipe section in Small Magics 2. Perhaps you could ask members of the BDH to comment on recipes in the books they especially liked or found helpful. Your oven baked bacon certainly changed my cooking habits.
That’s because this talk is not about bestselling works in the genre but the origins of it. 😊
I got into watching kdramas because of a House Andrews blog post that mentioned Alchemy of Souls. Does this mean I’m about to get into manhwas? haha!
Excited to read the new serial! Thank you as always for thinking of the BDH’s BDing needs. 🙏🏼
Thank you so much for opening the door to this world for me! I read and loved Solo Leveling on Tapas at your recommendation back when we were waiting for Innkeeper on Tapas, but now I know about LitRPG, Crunchyroll, that Solo Leveling is now anime! Plus, I’m heading off to read Ready Player One! Thank you for opening these doors for me! I’m so grateful! Looking forward to Inheritance!!!
@Ilona Everyone has the flu so I pulled the trigger on a Crunchyroll subscription and binged Solo Leveling in 2 days and Saturday is now my favorite day of the week.
What else should I watch? Not necessarily LitRPG. What are the must-watch series in your opinion? Dubbed preferably, but ADHD really struggles with subbed. The main page has a lot of familiar names from my old Adult Swim days but I don’t know where to start on the non-household names.
::cracks knuckles:: You didn’t say what your preferences are, so this is going to be a long list. I am aiming for less big boobies and more funnies and action in this list. Let me know what you like after you try some of these and I will get you more specific recommendations.
Funny:
Spy x Family – a little girls with telepathic powers gets adopted by a spy and an assassin in a pseudo cold-war Europe. Double over funny.
Relatively Light:
Campfire Cooking in Another World – our dude was summoned to be a hero, but they cut him loose because he has cooking skill. Sweet and cozy. Awesome animal companions.
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime – guy dies, becomes a slime in a fantasy world. A long series, relatively light and funny.
The Saint’s Magic Power is Omnipotent – a woman is pulled into a fantasy world and promptly shunned. Turns out she is the saint – cozy. There is romance but very slow. The first season is great, the second less so.
So I am a Spider, so what? – a woman becomes a spider. Violent but endearing.
A Little Heavier:
Ancient Magus Bride – a remarkable anime, steeped in Celtic folklore. Magical, cozy, but a little heavy. The heroine is a special kind of human who has a very close ties to magic and it makes her life very difficult. Her mother tries to kill her when she is a child, and at the age of 15, she is about to step off the roof of a building, when a curator of a magic auction approaches her and suggests that she should sell herself at auction. She does and a monster mage buys her. He calls her his bride, but he doesn’t really understand what bride means and she becomes his apprentice and finds joy in life and magic. Both seasons are excellent.
The Apothecary Diaries – a servant girl enters the palace and solves mysteries in a fantasy version of Ancient China. Really good, but does address heavy themes.
Frieren – very sad, will make you cry, but poignant and a beautiful anime. 50 years after a party goes on to defeat a demonic lord in the fantasy world, the surviving elf, who is long lived, revisits her old comrades and in some cases, their tombstones.
Frieren and the Ancient Magus Bride are my favorites and a recommendation that I always make!! For some reason both series feel me with a sense of hope and peace, after the emotional rollercoasters.
I’m going to watch of the recommendations!!!
I have some of these and I sm now off to watch the rest. thank you for the variety Ilona!
Thank you for your explanation of LitRPG. I have to say I knew very little about it. I have read some of the Portal Fantasy books because I enjoy Fantasy and SciFi. I’m looking forward to The Inheritance. I am most grateful for the time you take to entertain (and enlighten) us. ❤️
I am sorry. I am totally lost. Maybe I need a primer for the primer?
The limit of my personal experience in “multiplayer” games is Elvenar. I understand the concept of multiplayer games for those known as gamers. But that’s as far as I go.
I do admit the bunnies and bees are too cute!
You are right that almost all of LitRPG has male protagonists. I am tired of male protagonists in any form of fantasy stories. One female protagonist that came to mind while I was reading this was the one in Not Your Typical Reincarnation Story available on Webtoon. It isn’t a RPG exactly, the protagonist is sucked into an online novel but finds she has limitations on what she can say or do placed on her by the author. How she interacts with her goals and limitations does have a bit of a RPG feel. The story is almost complete on Webtoon, and it is the only female protagonist “almost LitRPG” story I’ve kept reading and haven’t dropped.
I haven’t read much litRPG but one of my favorite authors wrote one that I loved: The Second Age of Retha series by A.M. Sohma. AND it has a female fighter as a main protagonist. Several in her team are female actually.
+1000 – I love this series too!
I’ll be looking forward to reading it! And I must be a weirdo, because I loved Quag Keep and read it several times as a kid.
My favorite of all the “trapped in a video game” type books I’ve read is Tad Wiliams’ Otherland series. It’s half fantasy (the VR worlds) and half sci fi (reality), with really icky bad guys and complex plotting. The characters of Rene, !Xabbu, Martine, and Orlando are some of Tad’s best creations.
Wow, I had no idea all that was out there, and I love knowing you go so hard with this hobby.
Thank you for this, there’s so much here that I knew nothing about!
Looking fwd to all the Hugh 2 and other stories when they’re ready ♡
I stumbled upon Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt D about a year ago and discovered litRPG. I have been reading books every day for 50 years and was surprised to find a genre I never knew existed ! Now I am a bit obsessed… Currently listening to Jake’s Magical Market…
Milena, DCC was my first introduction to litRPG as well, a couple years ago. That, “He Who Fights With Monsters” and “Primal Hunter” were the first three series that I introduced my hubby to. Then I went digging for some female protagonist ones for him (and I’ve listed them in a post a ways down the comments section.)
There are so many droolworthy descriptions of foods in the various HA universes. Having recipes for even some of them would make my day!
I love SAO! This whole genre sounds very fun, and wow at the research behind this blog post! Thank you for the recommendations! And… I am relatively new to the BDH. I read my first House Andrews book last summer & have devoured everything I could get my hands on since, just recently finishing the last of your published works. (Now I am re-reading the Innkeeper series and my mind was BLOWN when I realized the connections to On The Edge!!!) I just wanted to say how much fun this community is & how amazed I am at the care you (Ilona & Gordon) take with & of us. I know some of it is good business, keeping your audience engaged, but it feels like there is more to it than that. I think you see what your stories mean to us and I think you are very special people. Anyway, thank you! And I’m looking forward to the reads!
Thank you for the explanation – I had wondered what this LitRPG thing was that kept popping up as tags on books I was interested in. I like the “Ilona Andrews explains something so that Matt can now understand it” series of posts that get posted every so often.
I actually got into writing LitRPG after reading AlterWorld by D. Rus and enjoying it, but finding there to be so much room for a different (and maybe better) story. Rus vacillates between nationalistic Russophilia and a world weary criticism of his own country which is so intriguing it’s almost an entire second story within his novel. It is off-putting for some–not to mention his treatment of women in the book–but the world building is so damn good, I found myself pushing through the entire series to see if it pays off.
Two books that you don’t mention but that fill in some of the gap between Gygax and Norton and Ready Player One is the Sleeping Dragon series by Joel Rosenberg (1983) and Killobyte by Piers Anthony (1993). Neither really fits the litRPG genre quite as neatly as the more proximate Japanese and Korean forerunners, but they do stand alongside Tron and Gygax and Norton.
I’m absolutely thrilled you will be working on an Isekai and a LitRPG flavor series and am salivating alongside the rest of the BDH to get at them.
-Robert Hinshaw (Asgard’s Fall)
‘In the word of Cordelia Cupp, “What’s with all the dudes?”’
Aha, I loved Residence.
Since we did stray over into Portal Fantasy a little bit, just a reminder that the first book of The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, “Lord Foul’s Bane”, written by Stephen R. Donaldson was published in 1977.
I had all of the 6 original paperbacks that I bought as a tween/teen in the early 80s (Donaldson put out another 4 books in the series in the ’00s), and my ex-husband took them. Grrr.
Such a good series, but so damn grim. I always felt Donaldson had read all the other portal fantasies by Piers Anthony and other contemporaries and had a “hold my beer” moment where he just writes this emotionally brutal masterpiece.
I’m so old, I remember when editors said DO NOT write a book where characters get stuck in a video game. /sigh
Does Snow Crash fit in anywhere?
Thank you for this post. It was so informative and interesting! And for the recommendation. And now the comments are also full of great recommendations. I’m definitely going to have to try Dungeon Crawler Carl – the title alone sounds fun.
I always wondered what Litprg was, exactly, and now I know.
Btw, for those who finished Beware of Chicken on Kindle Unlimited, the next two books are still free on Royal Road and probably will be until the author has to pull them to publish due to the KU rules.
Second comment: I always love recipes. Trying new things is fun!
My favorite cake recipe came from an anthology. Go for it! Anything serialized on the blog will be appreciated.
I have only ever read one litRPG series, Forever Fantasy Online by Rachel Aaron, and the main character who is most imposing in combat is female so I was unaware of the extreme gender imbalance in the genre. I liked the series, though not as much as I liked her Minimum Wage Magic books. That series, called the DFZ, is probably my favorite non Ilona Andrews urban fantasy series. Fun side facts: The FFO series specifically is also a husband-wife collaboration and i got turned on to Rachel Aaron in the first place because I liked a cover illustration by Luisa Pressler that was featured on this blog.
I know I’m late to the posting game, but I don’t think including recipes is weird at all. A romance author I read, Jenny Colgan, did that quite a bit in her earlier works since she was writing about bakeries and candy shops. It was fun to try making some of recipes. The were a little different than what I normally make, since all of her books are set in either England or Scotland.
i saw Solo leveling and I clicked so fast. I became fan of it this year when I saw a glimpse of second episode of season 2 and decided go devoured the manwa and later watch season 1 and caught up to season 2 mid way. I think I devoured the manwa in a week.
very interested in your take with this new project, I also didn’t like that other characters where stuck at their rank.
love it! and yes we want the recipes! pretty please!
Good job.
this is fantastic and I would love recipes in the anthology!
my introduction to litrpg was the dungeon Crawler Carl series. literally a washed up 30-something who gets dropped in to a dungeon with his cat Princess Donut. hilarious and the cat gets to ‘play’ (ie battle for existence) with him.
my husband and I listened to the soundcore audio adaptation and both now run around the house yelling “Go*damn it Donut!” Everytime things go comedically astray.
Yay! Thanks for this! I need to get into reading graphic novels- I’m working my way up to it, so this is a great push;)
I have a burning question that I hope someone from the BDH would very kindly answer. Lately, I’ve started watching more anime series (Apothecary Diaries on Netflix in specific). Could someone please explain what it means when the characters shift from their stately artistic form to a little and cute emotional form? Is it a device meant to show inner emotion? I figured this would be the place to ask. My household is more into fiery action films at the moment, so it’s nice to find a community with the same interests;) Thanks for your time and consideration!
These cutified characters are called chibis. Usage of chibis in comic books and anime usually indicates light-hearted or funny moments when a character is comically, overdramatically, upset.
It’s a type of superdeformation style, like emojis, coming from Japan. You can read more about it here 🙂 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chibi_(style)
Thank you! I greatly appreciate both your time, and the information!
Also, I think recipes would be a fun addition to an anthology- especially if they come from established HA stories and have flair (quotes or snippets), or artwork (like a one or two page mini comic/graphic novel snippet of a character experiencing the recipe being featured.
I haven’t tried graphic novels (GN) yet, but if a snippet of a HA cooking scene from a GN story was included as a lead up to a recipe, it would be a great intro to a new story genre for us readers who haven’t gone there yet. That would be epically awesome! Like the Swedish Chef popping up on The Muppet Show! Always a surprise, but highly anticipated (Facebook keeps putting him on Reels spots for fun. Whimsy is wonderful;). Artwork of Orro would be great as well. Curran’s meal, Caldenia’s funion and Mello yellow fixation, etc. If unsure, could try putting in a few and see how people react.
As a librarian I have ordered loads of book related cookbooks for my students to enjoy. (Think Harry Potter, Winnie the Pooh, etc.) I have long wished for a House Andrews Feeds The Horde type of cookbook with recipes from across your series.
Gaming! I am glad you have literature about what you love. I did like the book RPO. I like reading about different cultures.
I am much older and gaming is not something I got into, but I was of the generation that experience the start of computers, then personal computers. I enjoyed literature that reflected that since that was something I was learning at the time. So reading your comments reminded me of the Rick Cook series that stated with Wizard’s Bane. Thank you for peek into different genre.
Recipes? Yaaassssss please!!! ALL THE RECIPES!
OMG I would love recipes haha – Maybe when you are retired you can do an entire IA World’s Cook Book!
Would love recipes, would not be weird.
Yes please to recipes! I would absolutely read any and all your recipes with great delight, create and then eat with pleasure.
Just in case someone loves the Housekeeper as much as I do, and wants a recommendation for something similar (with female main character), Welcome to Dungeon Hotel is also pretty good…
First of all, thank you very much for all the hard work. I always look forward to your blogs and everything you write. I´m also a big fan of LitRpg and Manga/Manhwa in general.
A lot of the books in the genre I like have already been mentioned in the posts. But there are a few I haven’t seen yet that I also found very much worth reading—and they might serve as helpful recommendations for others who are looking for more.
My absolute favorite LitRpg at the moment and highly recommended. If you only take one recommendation away from this post, let it be this one:
“Bushido Online” Author Nikita Thorn
Other books I enjoyed:
“Awaken Online” Author Travis Bagwell
“The Grand Game” Author Tom Elliot (for fans of “The Primal Hunter”)
I will stop here. Less is more right ^^” and I wish everyone a nice and stress-free week. Stay healthy!
Yes, share the recipes! I love seeing them. I want to make Dinah’s cake one day.
If you are wanting to make Dina’s apple cake, you can find the recipe at the end of Sweep of the Heart.
If we are allowed to request a world, I would totally love the Hidden Legacy series as a RPG game… or any game really… but then again I would love Kate’s world or the Innkeeper… you know what, make whichever one you want as a video game… bc IF YOU MAKE IT, WE WILL COME
Both Ilona and Gordon have said that they will enthusiastically say yes if anyone approaches them with the offer to turn the series into video or even tabletop games!
I know a lot of readers have based DnD sessions on Kate and Innkeeper world as dungeon masters.
A couple of my favorite LitRPG book series with a female protagonist are “Azarinth Healer” by Rhaegar, which is up to book 5 in the series and several series by KT Hannah (who happens to be an avid MMORPG gamer who is an admitted fan of EverQuest and EverQuest2). KT’s books include “System Apocalypse: Australia” (series with Tao Wong, not yet finished series), Somnia Online, and the fabulous “Library System Reset” (book 4 due out at the end of this week.)
Please, Please, Please share recipes! Passion cones would be great. Also, Quag Keep was one of my favorite Andre Norton books outside of the Witch World and ignited my long standing love affair with D n D and Gen Con’s True Dungeon set in Greyhawk.
Though I do worry a bit that I actually got the reference of “This is like Chronicles of Narnia and Princess Bride made a baby with Game of Thrones and then gave it to Locke Lamora to raise” as opposed to isekai… LOL and thank you for all you do!
There is a really good comic book series called Die that draws on the whole D&D motif. Written by Kieron Gillen and art by Stephanie Hans. Kids get sucked in a board game and then reappear like a year later but cant say what happened. 10 years later they end up back in the game and you follow them through the world, learning about their first time in the game and how they deal with the fantasy world now. Its a brilliant read.
I am so happy you recommended Top Dungeon Farmer. It is so enthralling. I am going through the episodes to relax. Thank you so much. And I love Tron too. Such a great post. And all the book recommendations! I am going to start my husband on Kate! Wish me luck ⭐
Really interesting read. I miss my book/comic/anime friends.
Yes, please, to the recipes. All the recipes:)
Dunno why you mentioned Seoul Station Druid but not Seoul Station’s Necromancer, I’m CERTAIN it came out first. Personally not a big fan, finding out the MC literally ended the world he went to so he could go home was a huge turn-off.
Not weird! I would love recipes from characters!!!