I mean, in theory, I could write my adventures in Elder Scrolls Online or WoW as a LitRPG. I dunno if folk would read that though (and yes, there are legal issues. I mean, Bethesda could hire someone to write an ESO LitRPG).
Yeah, I've been wondering when the first official WoW LitRPG will come out. They would clean up. I think Awaken Online handles the real world / game world aspects.
I refuse to read Awaken Online, so I can't say. I know there are other books with real world/game world aspects, but even those (that I have read) have VR. I mean, even RPO is VR. I meant using todays tech. Playing a PS4 and writing about it.
Oh? Why? I mean you could go back to Guardians of the Flame - that was pen and paper not VR... but I get what you're saying. Not sure off-hand. Anyone?
My own issues. I can't read present tense stories, never been able to get into any of them, no matter how good they seem or how much everyone raves about them. Just can't read it.
I'm of the opinion (in multiple places around here) that pretty much anything can be LitRPG. I describe The King's Avatar, which uses a modern gaming set up of keyboard + mouse + computer, as having a "Suspended Game Narration Perspective" where technically all the events that occur are first hand, but the game players knowledge of what is going on informs the "out of view" information providing us with the out of body experience more similar to 3rd person games and a movie. I also think Augmented Reality games can be LitRPG, and someone tripping balls and having visions (or being a schizophrenic) could be LitRPG. An Indian on peyote following the words of the Coyote to prevent the end of the world could be hilarious, or it could be The Fisher King depressing in places.
Have a dude be out for a "Google Driverless Car" test run in a MMO posing as the buddy of an awkward AI, and have the game company integrate the AI into the enemy monsters as the player helps develop it. Making the observer's life harder and more frustrating as they ultimately becomes the "key" to the AI thriving, like a sounding board that doesn't work with anyone else along for the ride. (Revealed when the AI observer dies and the AI becomes a total spastic to the point where the group thinks it is having a stroke and panic sending the companion player messages to call emergency services) Offered more money than he/she can turn down, and meant to test out the parts of the game where the sometimes totally imbalanced AI has taken over, your characters go on an adventure together that morphs from a WoW clone on easy mode as a dying game, to Dark Souls + Unfair Mario with an increasingly self aware computer program.