Plot Holes in LitRPG?

Discussion in 'All Things LitRPG' started by Paul Bellow, Jun 28, 2018.

  1. Yuli Ban

    Yuli Ban Level 18 (Magician) LitRPG Author Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    You can blame my realism-autism for pointing it out. Ever since I became a Born Again Singularitarian™, I've been playing little "slice of tomorrow" thought experiments in my head of what future technology would really be like. Upon doing so, a ton of traditionally accepted tropes stopped making sense. And while the idea of VR games definitely came up, I never quite thought about them in terms of LitRPG besides that one time a decade ago when I accidentally created a LitRPG story without realizing it. And even in that story, the usage of retro/RPG video game mechanics was treated more as a gag that occasionally got dead serious. The main characters constantly complained about having to do things the video game's way, about having to level up, unlock abilities that they should be capable of doing themselves, not go to certain areas because of invisible walls and level fences, attacking a mook in an assingly brutal way that would otherwise eviscerate any equivalent creature in real life but only took off a tiny sliver of its health bar, etc. This in a game that was completely indistinguishable from real life.

    In a video game, you'll always have stats. It's just that, as video games got ever more complex, so did the stats. LitRPG harkens back to the days of tabletop RPGS, MUDs, and retro MMOs that barely run as many pixels on screen at once as a smartphone app icon. Yet it tends to take place in future years, featuring PCs/consoles millions of times more powerful than anything that exists today (which are millions of times more powerful than those old-school systems that ran the aforementioned classic RPGs).
    It used to be that you only had to worry about your own stats, your affinities, and what level fireball spell you shoot at a pygmy wyvern. You're blessed with a +20 ATK bonus on your hellspawned halberd and it's a level 1 whelp? You could roll a 2 and it'll be a pile of ash.
    These days, the difference between hitting one spot on that wyvern and hitting another spot can determine whether or not it survives. Not to mention you could also keep running to dodge any attack it throws when you used to have to rely on turn-based combat and could only dodge if you went into a defensive position and it missed you.

    I suppose what I'm trying to say is, LitRPGs are written like old-school RPGs + the imagination required to bring them to life given narrative form, but the games themselves are usually treated as contemporary RPGs, which don't require any added imagination on your part due to having actual graphics.
    That's where the plot hole comes in.
     
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  2. Jay

    Jay Hiatus. LitRPG Author Beta Reader Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    The plothole that always bothers me is still going to be the "MC who can do everything and do it better and puts together a build that makes zero sense and yet is super OP and no one else figured out their secrets!".

    Like seriously, pouring your stats into Constitution as a caster is worthless in...every single system I've heard of? The exception might be if you're like a Warlock/Necromancer that has to use their own health to fuel the spells, but that's almost never the case that I've seen?

    The sneaky rogue pours his points into Intelligence, but somehow still manages to be super agile and fast and stabby! How does that work?

    Even in real life, specialization is a thing for many professions/athletes/etc. I mean, a professional soccer player is going to work on their speed, agility, and ability to control the ball, which is more important than being huge and super strong. A football player whose a kicker is not going to try and match a linebacker in brute strength! A surgeon or pianist is going to worry more about their hand strength, control and dexterity than they are about their stamina.

    Like yes, a jack of all trades can and does exist, but they are never up to the level of "specialists" simply because of that lack of focus on that one particular thing. And honestly, it's pretty rare in an MMO or tabletop game that being a specialist doesn't serve you well. Heck, even in Elder Scrolls where the "hero who does it all" is super common, most of the ones I know tend to specialize pretty heavily at first in being a particular thing before moving onto another.
     
    Last edited: Jul 3, 2018
  3. Yuli Ban

    Yuli Ban Level 18 (Magician) LitRPG Author Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    ^ Oh look, a wyvern! Let's see if I can roll a 2.

    Anywho, I call that Polymath Syndrome. It's easy to be a jack of all trades, and it is possible to be a polymath. However, people often get the two confused because to someone who doesn't know better, any degree of competency is the equivalent of specialization. That's why nerd characters are often flanderized into supergeniuses, why any guitarist who can use a wah-wah pedal is compared to Jimi Hendrix, and why people assume that any "scientist" brought out onto TV to preach about a subject automatically knows absolutely everything (and if they think the scientist is wrong, that makes them smarter than all of academia).

    Little kids do the same thing to their parents, thinking that they know everything just because their mother or father gave them a convincing answer for something.

    Actual polymaths are rare because of the time it takes to become an expert. This has only grown exponentially harder as society has gotten more advanced because now you have to spent literally years on a single very narrow subject just to be considered a proper expert of it. You have to spend 10+ years training just to be able to be a cancer specialist for cats and dogs, and yet people will still expect you to know everything about diseases for the northern hairy-nosed wombat because "you know stuff about animals."

    So you can possibly see how jack-of-all-trades become polymaths in peoples' minds. If you're competent in anything, you can be competent in everything— and competence = mastery.
     
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  4. Jay

    Jay Hiatus. LitRPG Author Beta Reader Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    [​IMG]
    (Okay, not a wyvern, but I tried!)

    That's a good point and I wouldn't mind if they were a "polymath" if they weren't just super better than everyone ever. I mean, a solid multi-classed character that does "pretty good" on their own, but can't easily beat a specialist isn't bad at all. Heck, I'd like to read that if they were straightforward about it and acknowledged that they were basically trying to "cover all the bases". Instead, it's always "Oh, hey, I'm the first super tank warrior ever to decide to use spells...I am now not only a better tank than all other tanks but better DPS than all the other DPS!" so it's just kind of jarring considering LitRPG is supposed to have an MMO-style feel most of the time and MMOs are masters of specializing 95% of the time.

    You raise a very good point though! I think it's a combination of what you're saying but also the very popular "power fantasy" trope in LitRPG where the author's main character is "just plain better" than everyone else because they're "special".
     
  5. Edwin McRae

    Edwin McRae Level 7 (Cutpurse) LitRPG Author Citizen

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    I think of Ready Player One and Tad Williams' Otherland as vrLIT. Neuromancer at times too. Dunno, they're just not quite as fun without all the quests and leveling up stats. ;-)
     
  6. Yuli Ban

    Yuli Ban Level 18 (Magician) LitRPG Author Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    Like I said, or maybe I didn't say it: it's just part of the genre. Obviously it's a plothole that doesn't quite stand up to any level of scrutiny, but then again, so is the concept of a 'Space Navy', but military sci-fi is not at all as awesome if it obeys realistic physics and economics.
     
  7. Jay

    Jay Hiatus. LitRPG Author Beta Reader Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    Well, I assume Space Navy because Navy = ships and there are ships in space. So....clearly the...navy would...be on the ships...? ...That's all I got. I actually have little idea why they would assume starships would have sailors. You don't really sail a starship.

    [​IMG]
     
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  8. Yuli Ban

    Yuli Ban Level 18 (Magician) LitRPG Author Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    It's more because you can tell a more relatable "human" (and decidedly "macho") story if you have a recognizable force like a star fleet, complete with a space navy that has space dreadnaughts filled with grizzled star-ship captains, green upstarts, professional secretaries, highly-trained and regimented space marines who crack off homoerotic jokes every ten seconds, blue-collar mechanics, and the occasional floor-cleaning droid rather than a floating sphere of raw, unadulterated nanobotic artificial superintelligence.

    Or, to use a piece from the developers of Halo: "it would be fun if everyone just went back to using gunpowder. Because what will war actually be like in 500 years? You pour a cup of water and everyone dies. That's no fun."

    Paraphrasing, but that's how they explained it IRL; I know there's some actual lore reason, but whatever.
     
    Last edited: Jul 4, 2018
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  9. Viergacht

    Viergacht Thunderdragon LitRPG Author Roleplaying Beta Reader Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    Funny enough, Star Trek already covered that in an episode where wars were fought by computers, and then whatever number of people the computers decided had died in their simulations were trotted off to the death chambers.
     
  10. Kidlike101

    Kidlike101 Level 18 (Magician) Citizen

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    Really? which Star Trek Because I don't remember that episode :eek:

    Voyager?
     
  11. Gryphon

    Gryphon Level 18 (Magician) LitRPG Author Citizen

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    Where quests come from. :)
     
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  12. Seagrim

    Seagrim Level 18 (Magician) LitRPG Author Citizen

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    Star Trek, The Original Series, A Taste of Armageddeon.
     
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  13. Kidlike101

    Kidlike101 Level 18 (Magician) Citizen

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    Ok, never watched the original which is funny because I was big fan of Generations and Deep space growing up :D

    Not a fan of voyager though...
     
  14. RauthrMystic

    RauthrMystic Elf Beta Reader Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    Best character design advice EVER!
     
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  15. Jay

    Jay Hiatus. LitRPG Author Beta Reader Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    Lol! I don't know about best ever, but heck, I'd love to see more books with either specialists (preferably that actually have companions/parties that help them out because hey, that's the essence of RPG, right?) or more jack-of-all-trades that are masters of none.
     
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  16. RauthrMystic

    RauthrMystic Elf Beta Reader Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    As someone who thoroughly enjoys seeing characters grow I have to agree. Seeing them actually focus on what they do and learn from it. though I don't necessarily need the party, I just want more magic!
     
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