Hello, fellow adventurers! While I'm sure there are plenty of magic users in these parts, you've never quite met a mage like me. What do I mean? Well, I'm a wide area of effect specialist! Now, before you start talking about how all your mages can cast fireballs and cones of cold, I'll just say this...fireball is way, way too pinpoint and accurate for my tastes. Me? I 'm not living unless I'm casting explode planet. In all seriousness, though...I'm a fairly uninteresting person, so I suppose I'll just state frankly why I'm here. I'm a new reader to the genre and also an aspiring writer of sorts, though I really don't know if my writing qualifies as "LitRPG" at all. However, none the less, I love the genre because it checks a box that I fail to find in most other literature...an embracing of the over the top, overpowered and awesome. I am a child of the anime boom, and as a result my tastes are heavily influenced by my childhood of shonen anime, giant super-awesome robots and exploding planets. Out of a frustration at the utterly, laughably weak, underpowered and pathetic magic systems that seem to be all the rage in most mainstream fantasy lately, I found this little gem of a genre and was instantly hooked. Call me shallow, but I love a protagonist who is, well, powerful, at least by the end of the story, and when it comes to powerful, awesome protagonist who do over the top, awesome, overpowered things, LitRPG certainly delivers. While I am still vert new to the genre, I devoured the first book of Awaken Online in an entire night, and have since started slowly branching out into other titles. I love this genre, I love how anime-influenced it can be and I love how it's unafraid to be over the top and overpowered, and totally unapologetic about that fact. So why am I a wide-area specialist? Well, because my writing, even if it may not exactly be LitRPG, shares that same lack of fear and shame about having overpowered characters and over the top scenarios. I'm hoping that even if my writing is more science-fantasy than litRPG, that I'll have fun spending time with people who share at least somewhat similar tastes and learn a bit by reading in a genre that gives the same metaphorical finger to the newfangled fantasy idea that your magic must be weak and low-powered to be effecive. So lock up your planets. Hide your multiverses. The god of destruction is here to blow them up....and hopefully meet some nice people, have some fun, and learn a bit, too!
yes! I feel like there are two camps, those who sneer at the OP chars and those who secretly eat 'em up in fistfulls. I'm def a glutton. Welcome cutie!
Yes...give me your positive energy so I can drop a spirit bomb of fun on this community. I'm glad to find I haven't been chased out with torches and pitchforks for my "shallow" or "lowbrow" tastes! It's nice knowing I'm not alone in enjoying literature with over the top, overpowered, world-breaking protagonists. Either way, pleasure to meet both of you.
Meet Bob, with his glorious feathered hair riding his valiant bobage. He is a practitioner of unconventional magic, and he too wants to destroy the world. Just glancing at him will burn your neck, and he is going to take over the world with a horde of red-necks. Flee while you can, we are coming... Yea. Yea, I know. I'm banned.
Never drink Olde English 800 malt liquor again, dude. The Formaldehyde level in that stuff is enough to reverse a zombies decay. Greetings. I'm not against it, being an anime fan myself. However, I am a stickler for it being wrapped around a decent story, which there are too many anime which lack in that department. One Punch Man and Overlord do the overpowered quite good. I'm just not that big a fan of Dragonball Z. For me, it was overhyped and dragged the fights out way too long. Throw in the Deus Ex Super Saiyan and it just got to be ridiculous for me. For me, I think the best parts of those shows OPM and Overlord, was that they did away with the handwaving to get to the OP level, and just ran with the OP stuff. It's more annoying to watch a writer who runs the character from level one to level 200 in 40 pages using ridiculous plot holes the size of the Yamato than just starting there, especially since that's where they wanted the story to be anyway. Russian LitRPG is really rife with that.
I am fine with OP characters, as my friend likes to say "MC, OP, YO." To translate for my friend, "Of course he's OP he is the main character, dumbass." My books weight more to the normal end of the scale, for writing, though a little OP flavor here or there seems to find its way in. Welcome to the party and make sure to leave the small pockets in your magic so your friends get a front row seat without taking damage, ala the Arch Mage prestige class from D&D.
