I was binge watching today and came across an interesting Youtube video, the future of gaming. Most of those into Litrpg have been into MMOs or RPGs at one point. Most of those games focused on battling/ pvp/ crafting. Which is what the majority of litrpg books focus on. However there has been a shift in gaming the past two years. The most successful games weren't the Triple A high budget call of duty 5469485 or whatever number they are on now. No the most successful was the meta indie games. It's the game that makes fun of the common troops, breaks the 4th wall and talks to the player directly asking him to use those mechanics to win. Recent Litrpg actually reflects that as the newer books are now more meta with the characters and NPCs knowing they are in a game/book and abusing that. So what's the next step? What comes after playing it straight as a game then making fun of those troops? The video = we play it straight again and start appreciating it for what it is. My Theory = real people. Not the Super OP character that breaks the world with oden's hammer, not the 16 year old balancing a love triangle with his childhood friend. Maybe the next thing is just a normal person be it in or out of game. Or maybe I'm just sick of MCs with all the emotional depth of a sheet of paper. Just wondering, what are your thoughts? what do you think the next trend would be?
Storytelling and characters will become more important as the novelty of the "new" genre wears off. Less stats and better stories/characters/worlds. Interested in hearing more thoughts!
Oooh, I hope I can be a leader in this. One of my biggest fears about the book I'm finished writing is that I really drove home the idea of the "human" characters to the point that it started feeling weird when they actually engaged in combat, and they kept calling out that fact. Because really, if I actually started using magicka and wielding lightsabers to kill monsters and other people in animu style battles, it'd feel pretty f**cking weird. Like, "earlier today, I was sitting in my room failing on the Internet and deeply regretting my cringiest life choices like that one time I commented on a YouTube video with the dumbest comment in history, and now I'm slaying beasts like a battlemage, and later tonight I have to go to my safehouse and figure out how to socially interact with my Partner without running into this lightsaber I'm using 12 times to end the awkwardness". I dunno, it's harder for me to disassociate characters from actual people because even for the most action-oriented superheroes, I keep thinking "So what do they do on Tuesday evenings? Do they have any hobbies?"
Why do we play games in the first place? There are a lot of reasons for that but I choose to believe a big portion of it is driven by the idea of becoming someone who is not yourself. As long as people fantasize about being more interesting than the person who binge watches Netflix on Tuesday nights, I think there will be a place for dreaming about slaying monsters in anime style battles with lightsabers.
funny you should say that. I'm working on a piece where the heroine is slaying monsters with a lightsaber XD XD XD I think it's more like the fantasy part would take a back seat to the characters themselves, Like say a NEET that has social anxiety uses MMOs to interact with people and this slowly helps him come out of his shell... kindda, no magic wands in RL sadly.
Well. Continue Online is real people - and I'm trying to write this without feeling self aggrandizing and won't be able to so screw it - you can judge by the reviews how a humanized and flawed character who plays games more to deal with personal trauma than any sort of leveling up...went for me. Mixed bag for sure. I enjoy stories like Life Is Strange and Tyrnannywhich allow for far more Roleplaying than Game. So RPg I guess. But hey, I learned that first person allows for way more obvious single character depth than third person. A lot of LitRPG out there - third person. Might be part of the issue to "shallow" seeming characters.
I'm going to disagree with that, First person is actually interesting but offers the reader a limited view point. I'm into Discworld at the moment which is all told from a narrator point of view and believe me even characters that are there for just one paragraph are memorable. I think with Litrpg specifically the problem is YA. even ready player one did this, create a book clearly aimed at adults over thirty five yet dumb it down with all the highschool troops and drama. Maybe because that's the target audience? not sure but the end result is always a character that's not acting his/her age and rather shallow because plot! you can clearly see the author struggling to preform a balancing act. I actually read one aimed at YA but read like something that should be in the children's section and it was just down right frustrating!
I guess I'll rephrase and not use absolutes on the internet for fear of being wrong. It is typically easier for newer authors to make first person characters have more depth than to use third person. Generally third person leans well to scenes, action, and sharing stuff outside of a usually narrow first person scope.
No worries. It's just rough to compare me, or almost an other author, to Terry Prachett. That man was not only prolific, he went through editors, wasn't an indie, built up his skills over decades, and so on. We can certainly learn by example (Discworld among many) but it's not easy to produce a novel on that level without cutting our teeth - as it were - a few dozen times. A lot of us are still very new. I'm only a few years in. Others here on the boards are multiple years in. Nearly anyone who does it well, has been hiding in a basement secretly writing for decades and shoving trunk novels with dried tears into a fireplace to keep warm. I've tried to do third person and create memorable character - it' not easy. My attempt was this, https://www.amazon.com/Ember-War-Stephan-Morse-ebook/dp/B07524L5Q4/ -> not specifically as a self promotion, but to say I tried and it's harddddd whaaa.
Oh I don't compare block buster writers to new and self published ones. experience, editors and money play a big roll in all that. I'm just saying that you can have a deep and relatable character even with a third person point of view. I know HP is a bad example but I re-read that last month (Nostalgia is a thing close to halloween!) and this is what I noticed :- Book one = Third person perspective, characters memorable and layered but more attention to things and setting then them. Book two= Harry's perspective (first person) Manages to make him as shallow as a puddle and although more attention was given to the characters this time it managed to make them.... less.... not even sure how she manage that. Book three = Third person perspective. More attention to actions, this made the characters shine. Also why compare yourself to writers like Prachett or King? I say just enjoy the book or learn from it instead XD
Comparing anyone to Pratchett is going to be an unfavorable comparison. Sir Terry Pratchett is one of the greatest authors who’s ever lived.
Back to the topic, I think a wider variety of MCs as more people get into the genre. Right now the English language ones seem to be heavily weighted to "young straight white dudes", again probably from the authors writing what they know. Personally, as an old dude I'd be over the moon to find myself living as an avatar who can get kneel and then get back up without my knees sounding like someone's making popcorn, never mind being able to throw fireballs or raise the dead. Like in Paul's book, for an MC who is isolated or immobilized, it's going to be very impactful to have this idealized body. Also, adding in near-humans like elves, dwarves and such as a proxy for real-world racism, I've seen a bit of that, and that could probably go further.
Yeah, I'm going into that a bit more (but not too much!) in the rewrite of Goblin. I touched on the racism angle a lot in book two with players trying to get rid of all the dwarves. ETA: Third book kinda deals with drugs (potions) and addiction...
I said this one and ill gladly say it again Most litRPG wether intentionally or not are YA its just the way there written I actually think thats a huge part of the problem there are a lot of LitRPG books that dont realise how YA they are I will gladly explain why I think this if you want but it has to do with them being based on games and most games are marketed for younger audiences
