The UK, IIRC, had one of the first D&D modules that wasn't focused on battles! Crystal...can't remember the name, but we did a write-up on it recently.
Yah true, I should have seperated that one out. But it did start with the main character being skilled at a game, and then that translating into real life!
I don't think it's so much that. Our problem is, we've got a ton of people who like to appear as something, so, if the media convince them that X is religious, then they start screeching X so they can LARP being religious. There's no real depth to it, so, if you can wait they eventually get bored and go look for the next big thing to get freaky over. Hell, we've got one pack of nitwits running around in masks and hoods who are convinced they're La Resistance.
I watched one the other day on Netflix called Enter the Warriors gate. It's not great, but I had fun watching it anyways. It has Dave Bautista as the bad guy. The beginning of it feels like a generic LitRPG, but then it starts to feel closer to something like Forbidden Kingdom (that movie with Jackie Chan and Jet Li that I think is much better). The Neverending Story comes to mind too. Not a game, but he does get pulled into a fantasy world.
I think a lot of portal fantasies and planetary romances from the pulp era have enough LitRPG elements they can be considered an important part of their DNA, entangled in the family tree of RPGs and video games in general. There's so many stories that follow the plot some random guy being dropped into a crazy new place with magic and monsters, and having to step up and get stuff accomplished with new skills & powers, and especially with LitRPGs where the MC's physical body is dead or they're otherwise trapped in the virtual world the main difference between them is the character's stats being visible.
The Last Starfighter's plot is one of the examples I use for Game Information in LitRPG. Not really in the way that everything which follows from the recruitment process is game-like because a game simulation was involved, but because interactions with the game itself led to a greater story. If what had followed had been a full immersion VR world or portal world story with game-like elements lifted from the game, then the features would exist on the same continuum and that first point of interaction, putting a quarter or token in the machine, would have been more enduringly relevant. The setting outside of LitRPG stories with actual games can be made relevant, and so most everything in LitRPG can either be categorized as "Game Information" and "Not Game Information", the definition of LitRPG currently labeling everything that isn't game-like but part of the game world as a simulation and thus window dressing for the game. Leaving the defining characters of LitRPG as UIs, character progression, and arbitrary skills or abilities activated through the interface. As for The Last Starfighter, I don't know that the alternate Earth angle really matters all that much when effectively they are in another universe. Or when Magic appears in Biblical / Arthurian tales but its the same world. The same exact planet, but back when it had magic. Even merging the fates of the Alt-Earth or far away universe long long ago doesn't change that the setting is totally different from the regular world. By the LitRPG standard Star Wars is both a reenactment and a simulation, if the game from the IP in question was perfectly real without UI features and structured progression: even when it starts as a first person shooter in a sci-fi setting. Sci-fi just gets a huge pass from the crunchy LitRPG crowd because Game Prompts in the form of technology interfaces mimic game interfaces and they have game like (ie easy and achievable) progression through technology. Some from the "SUPER CRUNCHY" side don't agree with that of course, and so those people aren't happy unless levels and activated abilities make an appearance also. This is one of those great examples that ties back into the perspective of the protagonist, and how much of an influence that has on the way the story develops and is told. As portal world stories aren't limited by the era that their protagonists come from. John Carter and the Conneticut Yankee are two more examples of "era appropriate" time and world traveling protagonists similar to Black Knight and The Last Starfighter: and I did like John Carter, but apparently I was one of the few that got hooked with a Peter Gabriel trailer. If John Carter was a LitRPG movie, it would be the single player variety.
I wonder, would some of the meta/self-aware horror movies count? Where the characters realize they're in world that plays by horror movie rules all of a sudden - Cabin In the Woods and Zombieland spring to mind.
