It is funny, because I found myself looking at my other series that is straight fantasy with a LitRPG lens before I even knew it was a thing. "Hmm, are these kids advancing too quickly? Are their powers overbalanced? How high of a level is that guy? What age category is that dragon he just fought?"
As an author who writes in multiple genres, I can say that the reason I write is because I like creating characters and telling stories. I got started by creating back stories and mini fictions for my table top role playing characters. For GameLit/LitRPG specific writing, I do it because it's fun. A lot of writing Dragonsbane (my novel) felt like I was actually playing a game. Sometimes I woke up thinking "I've got to get writing so we can take down X boss" (yes, I'd think in terms of "we" since there's a group of five characters that do everything together in the novel).
M̶o̶n̶e̶y̶ I've had a long-standing interest in writing video game-inspired and video game mechanic-heavy stories going back ten years now. I just never thought there would actually be a market for such a thing. I still remember this failed superstory I planned out and never wrote back in 2009 where several arcs were meant to be "RPGs". Literally with all the mechanics you'd expect from a generic RPG video game, such as leveling up and item using/crafting and experience points to go along with the narrative. Interestingly, one of those arcs became Astral Falls and another became a different story concept I have so it's not like any of it went to waste.
I'm not gonna lie. I'm pretty dumbstruck that this is a genre too. But again, I think it makes all the sense in the world when I think back to my experiences gaming and then daydreaming about gaming. Novels are just like solidified daydreams, right?
I mean you can go back to the 1970s (at least) to see books about being trapped in a game world. I consider those LitRPG too. I'm not as strict as some others.
I'd be game. I think a role playing game with a bunch of authors as players/gm is BOUND to be a hoot, regardless of system or world. Roll20 has a pretty decent system for telegames, and a very affordable license for the gm tools that REALLY make it pretty easy to run a game.
Am I the only one who read Kilobyte by Piers Anthony when I was a kid? That one was published in '93, and has all the hallmarks of what we define as LitRPG. Aleron Kong be damned.
