Hi folks, My name is Kristy and I'm a writer of 18 years. My debut gaslamp novel is coming out with Filles Vertes Publishing (small press) in a few months/early next year and between book 2 and 3 for that series I am writing a LitRPG novel.... despite 2 weeks of research on a totally different topic. Apparently it sort of 'snuck in' under my creative radar and hijacked my muse. I've offered it words, but it's ever so hungry. I am probably going to query this LitRPG novel instead of self-publishing (I just really don't have the funds or dedicated hours in the day for marketing levels for self-pub) but I am very happy to plunge into the community and learn about the ways of this very warm and welcoming society. I've been secretly stalking pet-peeves on facebook, learning your ways. I am a second-generation table-top gamer, grew up mainly with AD&D (yes, I'm a THAC0 veteran, I've seen things man... I've seen things) and vampire the masquerade when I was a wee kid. And early generation otaku- I think my first litRPG was probably .Hack//Sign I have probably seen or read most stuff in the genre from manga/manwha/manha side of things. It's the English art side I'm actually playing catch ups with! I prefer adult over YA novels, so a lot of the litRPG stuff hasn't tickled my interest because I'm very, very picky with YA. Because I want my novel to be stand-alone, I'm going to give it a beginning, middle and end. I've found that there's a big trend to serialization in the genre and this can lead to some books being less than fulfilling (not all, I've definitely had 4-5 that I felt were great!) While I love series, I am also not a fan of serialization. I think it's just cause I'm an impatient person. I think I've been burned too much by other serializations and I've found most go too long. Anyway, nice to meet you all!
Welcome aboard. I got you added to the @LitRPG Author group. Let me know if you have any questions and enjoy your stay!
I'm not published/self-pubbed for a litRPG yet, but thank you~ I can scurry into the secret squirrel caverns and learn the ways of your people.
Awesome sauce~ I'm excited, the litRPG community is really interesting and I've been stalking so many of the facebook groups and the like for a while now.
I miss the old forums and message boards. Nowdays I only see them for text-based gaming and that's always constantly moving to messenger programs. I find a forum easier to browse at leisure than a discord group constantly pinging. Plus, there's an element of exploration to be had.
I'm a weird person who can apparently 'follow instructions, search for things and read directions.' before jumping about going 'how do I do X' in the forums. Like, when I start a new MMO, I check the forums about tips for the class I want to play, or if I'm stuck on a quest, I look it up before posting another thread about a common spot others have also gotten stuck with. Evidently it's not a common skill. Years of talking to every NPC in a town to see if there were hidden quests (and learning not to cast detect evil on little boys searching for their dogs in the wilderness...)
Greetings! AD&D was one of my fun toys years ago. I would set there with some of the guys who had memorized the Monster Manual, then get them ticked when nothing they encountered was in the book and they had no OOC to use. Ahh, Good times with all that cussing and complaining.
OKay this response has evolved into an essay so I'm breaking it up into sections: Gaming: From middle school to my early 20s I was pretty much raised by the World of Darkness. The base mechanics became second nature to me, and it’s the reason why I chose to adopt a d10 system for my LitRPG. I played all the games (even Wraith), but most commonly ended up with Vampire or Werewolf due to the large number of games available. I also played a bit of D&D in the form of Neverwinter Nights, and table top games with people from my Mind's Eye Theater group, but the WoD was home and home is where the heart is. Pet Peeves: You'll find a -lot- of variation in terms of pet peeves. In fact one of my top annoyances (Harems and sexual wish fulfillment), are a sub-sub genre that some readers actively seek out. LitRPG readers in my experience tend to be a lot more forgiving of things like typos, word over use, and grammar mistakes than in other genres based on what I've read in some very popular novels Traditional Publishing: If you're planning on to go traditional you need to make sure your craft is rock solid compared to other titles that are available that have been self published unless you already have an agent. The query process is soul sucking and brutal. Respectable agents don't f'ck around, and will send you a form letter rejection in 2 seconds flat if you don't hook them in the first 3 sentences. Once you get a few requests either a partial or full manuscripts you'll spend around four to ten weeks waiting, at which point they'll either offer you representation, invite you to send future manuscripts to them directly (rather than going to the slush pile) or say something like "I don't feel it's a good match." or "The writing isn't quite where it needs to be." I went through this for over a year before I finally just said 'screw it' and self published my first novel. Didn't even try agent hunting for the second (my first LitRPG), and quite frankly, in the last 3 weeks I've earned about a quarter of what the average advance would have netted me in traditional for a first time traditional author. I'm getting paid faster, without the stress of queries, and I'll (theoretically) be able to launch 2-3 more books by the end of the year. With the horrendous snail pace that traditional publishing moves at (seriously sometimes 3-6 weeks to get a response to an email), I'd be lucky to have 2 books out a year. tl'dr on traditional publishing: I see the value for wide genres like Sci-Fi, Fantasy, etc, but for LitRPG which has such a small and voracious reader base that expects quick releases, I can't think of a single upside of going traditional.
High fives for another WoD veteran~ I didn't really like the new Requiem games that much (got myself the 20th anniversary editions, of VA though) The d10 system is in my top three. I really like Mike Pondsmith's d10 systems (cyberpunk and mekton are my absolute favourite games. I just wish mekton zero were actually coming and not some distant mythical fairy that got kickstarted 5 years ago and never came out) recently I've been sort of tooting the horn on Fantasy Flight's Genysis system. I was verrry skeptical when the new star wars games had it; but it is the absolute number 1 best story-teller dice mechanics system I've ever seen. Like, blew my mind good. Traditional publishing is tough. But Self-publishing is tough too. My first query run I got 90 something rejections, a few reqs for full, but I learned how to pitch better and query better after that. The novel that got picked up was my second run of queries- about 30 queries sent. 15 flat out rejections, 8ish reqs for full- I had 4 offers from small press and ended up going with the one I liked the most. Though 1 offer is all it takes. Following the rules and instructions is the quickest way to get good responses. I think it was actually a pitch-party highlight frenzy that helped me with that novel-- I had a pretty good pitch (particularly because I knew what I was doing on the second round in the game) and it got a lot of attention. The editor I picked had the full already in her slush and messaged me going 'hey, send me that thing from that pitch' and I was like 'uhm... it's already in your slush, you req'd full of that about three weeks ago' She read it in one night. I had another editor who sent an offer about four days after she got the full; but I went with FVP because they were friendly and discussed it with me a lot beforehand. I'm not exactly certain of the date my debut is coming out (not something I have control over any more) my publisher signed for exclusive first-option on book two of that series, which I finished about 2 weeks ago. I'm focusing on this litRPG novel now as a break between book 2 and book 3, because I needed the small break mentally from the world. (book 2 was dirigible heist and heists are hard, like, homg, my brain is not wired for master-criminal activity) I want to aim for big five with the litRPG book; so I'm going to query mainly agents rather than scatter shot like I did for the first one. Niche genre is hard to sell for big 5, but not impossible. The trick is finding what they want and learning how to tailor it to the agents and editors, not the readers. They crave something unique and different, but it has to fit on a shelf somewhere. If you don't know your audience, your genre, age range, you're shooting yourself in the foot. I can only imagine how hard it must have been for Anne MacAffrey's dragon riders of pern (which as far as I am aware is one of the older but most well known cross-genre series) to get through the slush. It did, however. But yeah, royalties and speed are definitely with self-publishing. I very much support it; authors getting all the money upfront, making their own fortune is fantastic. And soooo much good stuff would never see the light of day without SP; I have some absolute favourites that don't sit well with some of the traditionals for genre over-saturation (I read a lot of urban fantasy and traditional agents and editors are pretty 'urgh' on it because they've been flooded over the last 10 years- their lack of wanting to read more creates a vaccum of it getting through the gates to see the light of day-- without self publishing, some authors I love wouldn't be on the market) there is no perfect system for publishing, however. Small press is not really much easier from the marketting or promoting side of things. I can get my book into galleys and review bookclubs a little easier, I don't have to trapeiz amazon, formatting or figure out what cover-type would be most effective for my market... but there's no magic button to make a book successful, even in small press. The big five have marketting teams behind them. They have the money to throw at billboards, tv slots, major shelf-space in local bookstores. I can go to my locals and arrange book-signings and they can order from the catalog.
I used to be a literal daily WoD gamer in the official chats, etc. I was very offended when they decided to kill oWoD and replace it with nWoD, and never bought a single Requiem book because I felt it was a slap in the face to customers who had been with them from near the beginning. I remember staring at my 300+ book library thinking ".... You're making this obsolete? F*ck you." I started when 1st edition was just going out of print and the game shop still had the old soft cover and newer hard cover 2nd ed for sale.
A thousand nos and a yes is still a yes. Anne McCaffrey had an established relationship with Mrs. Ballantine (half of the Ballantine Books husband and wife owners), since Betty Ballantine was the editor for Anne's first book, Restoree. After that one was published, Anne and Betty paid to have her first Pern works published in Analog Science Fiction magazine. Once Weyr Search and Dragonrider (parts one and two) were awarded Hugo and Nebula awards, Pern was officially picked up by Ballantine Books, and Weyr Search and Dragonrider were combined in a full-length novel titled Dragonflight, the first book in the Dragonriders of Pern series.
I know a guy who was so angry with the new WoD he literally burned his whole collection. He was about 19 at the time, but it still hurts me inside to think of that. Also, the amount of rage it takes. I think I'm lucky as a second-gen gamer. My first-gens all spent the money on the insane splatbooks in the 80s-90s and as a result, when I was old enough to build my own collections, I was well and truly wise to splatbooks and their dangers. It's something I will definitely happily toot for the new 5th edition D&D. 4 years now and we have all of 4 splatbooks. A rate of expansion that isn't blown out of porportion- each checked and 'fairly' balanced. Unlike pathfinder which very.... very.... swiftly became it's own enemy. I've seen the pattern my whole life; splatbooks ruin games. They seem fine at first, but inevitably power creeps and changes and the creators decide to 'redo it all from scratch to fix the problem' and they just start the whole cycle over again. I don't mind upgrading to new editions, trying to fix mechanics (and to be fair.... as someone who's played a Kaisyd, some clans/bloodlines in OWoD were pretty over-powered)--- mechanics need tweaking in some systems. I'm reminded of the number of editions that L5R has had in the last... what, 18 years? I literally cannot keep up. I don't try, either. I like the collected 20th editions for OWoD though. Keeping the aesthetic alive. Honestly, that was most of my issue with NWoD. The horror of gehenna's impending inevitability, the gothic struggle between man and beast just wasn't strong as it had been. The dice mechanic was improved, but at the cost of the aesthetic. (that and when you've memorised books and books of clan lore and then read 'oh, toreadore don't exist anymore' it hurts)
Hallo~ Wow, so... she basically had to win an award first for it to happen. And a Nebula, like, not just any award, but that one..... Challenge accepted. Yeah, at the end of the day, one yes is all it takes; though there's no fairness or equality to who gets or doesn't get the yes.
Well technically, it came down to who she knew. She and Betty Ballantine were friends, and Betty edited her first book. They'd likely have taken a chance on Pern anyway, thanks to that preexisting relationship, but the awards just cemented its place in history. I love the D10 system too - my favorite of the WW books is Exalted. But then, I've always been more of a roll player than a role player, and Exalted just lends itself as a campaign setting to the kind of campaign that I enjoy. I also really like the D6 system in GURPS (and weirdly, it doesn't seem to have suffered from the same kind of codex creep as the Palladium Books-of-the-month club did). I'd really LOVE to play Shadowrun, but the clunky rules and dealing with Deckers ruins a really good system setting.
Yeah, having a stepping stone to build on is basically where I am at the moment writing wise as well. I've got a pipeline laid down, just have to follow it (however slow it is.) I love Exalted, yes. It is such a great setting, one of my all-time favourites. Though I don't mind the new 3e, I just sort of sighed a bit at the cycle resetting. Never really got into GURPS. Honestly, i've played it... twice, maybe? I'm a bit anti-Palladium, but that's because I've played percentile systems and they all have the same problem. Percentile systems are terribly flawed. Some devs make great effort to have the world imported and go to so much trouble... but it's still percentile (I'm 100% biased on this one) Shadowrun has balance issues in the core books, and yes, deckers slow down combat. A lot. The balance issues have never been fixed; they change from edition to edition, but they still haven't been able to make the classes on even footing. I like Cyberpunk especially; it and shadowrun are two systems I find really immersive. Though last time I played with a few newbies who hadn't played cyberpunk and didn't know how to solve problems like I do. Grenades. Grenades solve any and every problem you have in these two games. You will never have the same problem twice. (though our pilot did go absolutely thermite happy toward the end. Thermite solves problems like doors and heavy-power suits. Problems that flash-bangs don't solve but frag-grenades would have solved...)
