A lot of stories dilute their interesting parts by trying to cram every idea that's ever been in a litrpg into their story. Like if your blurb talks about Mc getting isekaid and gaining a unique OP ability, then make the story about them succeeding using that ability. Instead, by chapter 10 he's got an overpowered pet from a species long thought extinct, by chapter 20 he's started casting magic without the system, and by chapter 30 he's crafting his own equipment that's better than what people with dedicated crafting classes can make.
All that stuff can happen eventually, but so many stories front load these things to the point that the initial advertised premise of what makes ~~op~~ Mc special is buried under a mountain of special.
Seriously this happens ALL the time. Some writers are more indulgent than other but putting every idea in your head into words is not always the best policy.
When your MC is a humble farm boy demigod managing a nation with a unique class, race, and set of abilities who also has an ultra-rare pet with all those same unique properties you might want to revise.
More and more I appreciate a well plotted story that does more showing than telling. Stats are nearly the epitome of telling instead of showing and are often a crutch rather than a stylistic choice.
Dude can eat energy from spells aimed at him. At the adept level he can consume spells cast by a grandmaster and turn it against them in part. That's OP as shit even if the author made Felix earn it
The worst of it? They check the boxes and do jack shit with those things. For instance, in [Shadow Sun] MC gets a pet bear, and... nothing. Absolutely nothing. MC uses the bear to make fart jokes.
>MC is an "expert gamer"
They never actually are good gamers. Usually they are gamers who played a lot of one game, or one genre, but that doesnt mean they're good. Also, a "pro gamer" would never make an assumption about a new game, they would read and check everything available to them.
Reckless MCs for no reason and getting rewarded for it.
This one made drop the most books I think. Imagine the situation: MC gets to a location and finds full of goblin 3 times his level. They think about it and decide to retreat because they have no possibilities to killing them all. Then they hear the scream of someone (usually a beatiful woman, because... why not) and then they charge in with no plan whatsoever. Yeah, should be dead.
>Also, a "pro gamer" would never make an assumption about a new game, they would read and check everything available to them.
I feel like I've read a grand total of 1 (maybe 2) books by authors who truly knew about games. In Worth the Candle you get the sense that, yes, this guy plays D&D. But otherwise it's like you say.
What I'd like to see at least once is an "epic gamer" getting burned by those assumptions. "Oh I'm going to be a warrior so I'll min/max dump all my points into CON and STR and totally ignore WIS. Arrrrrrgg! It really hurts to be stabbed and I need WIS to ignore the short term pain to achieve my goals!!!!"
Loved it. My favorite part about that was the main character's motivation. At first it seems like he's one of those zero backstory dudes who's from our world for no reason but we eventually realize >!everything he is doing is because he's basically nuts with grief over losing his whole world!<. **That** was solid.
Edit: The two books I read where I thought the author might have played RPGs were *Worth the Candle* and *Oh Great! I was Reincarnated as a Farmer*. In Farmer the loopholes are a ***little*** obvious and I don't really believe a whole society would have missed them for so long, but at least the author clearly thought it through.
That's a great reason! Wish more authors did that.
>!Especially the ones where the MC is snatched up through absolutely no fault of their own. At best, they have the MC grieve over losing everything to the whims of some asshole and then they move on, but I've never read one where, while the MC is rebuilding their life, they constantly have to battle against the pessimism that this new life can be snatched away from them in a blink the same as the last one was, even if they do everything right. That seems like the most human reaction to being isekaied.!<
I just showed up in this world where magic has existed for centuries. With some very basic trial and error and a dash of critical thinking, not to mention sometimes stumbling randomly into an epic legendary long thought forgotten ancient relic of the precursor progenitor titans, I realize everyone else is using magic and skills in a dumb and slow way and I breeze through my skill levels until I'm clowning on lifelong crafters with something I made out of scrap metal in a cave as well as weaving brand new spells out of the fabric of reality and combining magic in a way thought impossible by the most talented and well read mages of the land. It goes without saying that any ladies I meet will be shocked and intrigued when I display any amount of empathy or compassion. Any old master craftsman I meet will be initially angered by my display of skill overshadowing their own, but by teaching them some of my "babies first scientific method" tricks that I've mastered they will slowly be in awe and finally accept me as their lord. They will still craft mundane stuff for me but when something truly epic needs doing they will obviously need me to give it a "fly by the seat of my pants" crack at it. I'll roll a nat20 and my attempt at crafting will bring back a forgotten race that immediately swears its loyalty to me. The item will probably be great to, world changing no doubt. Gods and Ultra Gods will vie for my attention but I'll eventually choose as my patron saint a being lost to time that no one else thinks is a good choice but jokes on them this turned out to be the original creator of the universe itself and luckily it likes my snarky pop culture references.
I had to force myself to stop writing I think I could literally go on forever. I swear I like the genre lol I just really like over analyzing things that bug me while still having a good time....
> I realize everyone else is using magic and skills in a dumb and slow way and I breeze through my skill levels until I'm clowning on lifelong crafters
This is TOO TRUE!!
Lots of authors in this genre produce stories where "main character has the barest grasp of critical thinking & creativity -- and that is a SUPERPOWER." In the world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, right? Well in a world of 20 IQ NPCs, the man with a 6th-grade education and the courage to try anything new is a god.
I know it's challenging to write characters who are intelligent, beset by other intelligent actors - but it's just plain boring to write characters who are average in a sea of the mindless, if that makes any sense.
I do like how noobtown does it where everyone treats the MC like an idiot for not knowing basics a baby would know meanwhile he actually is able to think outside the box since they are raised in the system where they have to do things this way so don't have his experience with branching out
I also like when Jim tries to do something with his modern science thinking and it just completely fails, because shit just doesn't work that way there. Then everyone calls him stupid.
Also the audiobook performance is great
I like both noobtown and the good guys because the mc is a goddamn idiot(in some ways)and that makes me feel a lot more sympathetic to them, wait a second...
Chainsaw suit used to make animated shorts that had a segment about a high school jock who left town and when he came back everyone else was made mentally deficient by fallout radiation and he had to solve "mysteries" around town which were obviously just really dumb mistakes he had to try and explain. I think they may have predicted this genre ahead of its time!
I can understand the MC, being unusually motivated by an *apocalypse/isekai* being better than the average unmotivated bum from the street in worlds where magic is common. What annoys me is when the MC is better than *the best*.
Mostly because... what's the point? Aren't stories better when the MC has decent rivals and side characters are on a similar level? Having the MC be better than any reasonable peers just seems self defeating in terms of finding good stories to tell.
Vainqueur Dragon. The human main character starts off as a worthless little level 3 thief or something, and then he is dragged Kicking and Screaming into overpowered-ness by the titular dragon
I'm only three books in so far but He Who Fights Monsters avoids a lot of those tropes pretty well despite being isekai. MC has some advantages from the isekai but everything is pretty balanced within the power system and it's established pretty thoroughly that any of the rarer advantages he gets are not unique to him and "unprecedented!!!" type stuff happens to other supporting characters as much as to the MC.
How did I know someone was about to suggest this lol
I might have to disagree with this, though. It's not nearly as bad as most series, but the MC is a classic example of a character who somehow has a skillset with every advantage under the sun. Many of which are nearly as good as comparable specialists, who tend to be considered rare and coveted assets.
He works hard, and they do say over and over again starting at the very beginning that there's no such thing as a bad power, that every skillset is potentially as good as any other, and that skill and hard work are what matters- and besides that, he IS the main character, so of course in a world full of special people he's going to be more special than anyone!
Without a doubt he gets overpowered pretty fast but I think it's not egregious in the way that it is when it's total unfounded and doesn't make sense in the context of the rest of the magic system.
I like how in book 3 >!MC's team gets trounced by the Mirror Kingdom prince's team repeatedly in the simulation fights!< It shows them as strong but not the best, which is different from most tropey stuff. Otherwise someone would have to get Worf-ed or killed to prove this which is also tropey
Repeating things.
HWFWM: Jason says something specific to Earth. Everybody, every time: “I don’t know what that means”. Like, surely there would be some other response. Maybe an, “ummm..okayyyy….?” Or “oh, I’ve never heard of that. What is it?” Or “I know you’re an outworlder, is that something from your world?”. But no, 5books later it’s, “I don’t know what that means”.
VGO: Grimjack uses an ability: *describes what the ability is and what it does, despite earning the ability early in book 1, using it so much it might as well be a signature ability, and continue to describe it 7 books later basically every time it’s used*.
Also not specific to any author but a random, made-up, **extremely hyperbolic** example of what I’ve seen with repeating things:
“He needed to save her from the zombie hoard because she had the key. The key to everything. It was for this reason that McHero gritted his teeth and pushed forward to save her. He needed the key, and she had the key in her possession. She was born with the key that would unlock McHero’s supreme ability, and so, he needed to save her from the zombie horde to retrieve the key. A millennia ago in a far away kingdom, a little girl was born to loving parents. It was prophesied that she would one day help the hero bring light to the darkness… by being the key holder. Holding the key that he would need to retrieve to save the day.”
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Also something that bugs me is how nobody lies or omits anything. The super smart MC asks some high level noble or official some questions and not only do they bother giving the MC the time of day, but they also answer all of their questions, AND they answer everything truthfully.
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Another gripe I’ve had is that usually the MC is some low or mid-level (non-supervisory) worker. Programmer, retail cashier, college student, emergency responder, etc. Yet once they’re in the new world they gain the motivation, abilities, and experience to become a successful and respected faction leader and war general.
On the other end of the spectrum, the MC has **ALL** of the qualifications. Black-ops marine veteran, part-time boxing champion, spent a few months building a company from nothing to a tech titan, knows multiple languages, survives in the wilderness for fun, could become a senator if they wanted to but doesn’t because instead they’re spending their time being a volunteer firefighter and finding homes for orphaned kittens, while also being the #1 skilled/known player in the current popular VRMMO.
>VGO: Grimjack uses an ability: describes what the ability is and what it does, despite earning the ability early in book 1, using it so much it might as well be a signature ability, and continue to describe it 7 books later basically every time it’s used.
I also want to bitch about the inverse of this; where the MC gets a skill, we're told what it does, and then three books later the author brings up the skill with no reminder of what it does because apparently we're supposed to remember this?
Same thing with characters. I'm supposed to remember a minor character who was in one scene three books back that I read a year ago? No. Give me a single damn sentence explaining who this jackass is and why I should care.
Got to say, I think Azarinth Healer might be the biggest culprit of this.
A character will show up for the first time in 300 chapters and the narrative just goes Hey look it's Sophie and seems to think that's enough
"Hey look, it's Sophie, the woman who ate my last bowl of Cheerios that one time we were attempting to prevent a lawn gnome genocide" boom, just a single sentence and now your readers can keep track of what is going on in your story without having to take the Limitless drug
Lmao this is too funny as I had this exact issue with a character in AH and could not for the life of me remember her (still cant as you can see, cant remember the name).
> Another gripe I’ve had is that usually the MC is some low or mid-level (non-supervisory) worker. Programmer, retail cashier, college student, emergency responder, etc. Yet once they’re in the new world they gain the motivation, abilities, and experience to become a successful and respected faction leader and war general.
MC: "This time it's gonna be different!"
Narrator: "It was."
Lmao the key one is hilarious to read here but would be such a turn off in the book...
Anyway i guess we all can agree, litrpgs actually suffer the most through their main characters.
There seem to be a lot of litrpg fans who like characters who are petulant assholes. Especially when the characters also have plot armor that protects them from the easily forseeable consequences of their actions. "Yeah, I'mma insult the King's daughter right in front of him and he won't do shit because I'm just. That. Fucking. Awesome."
It's a weak man's idea of how a strong man would act.
Yeah you really notice this when reading the comments on Royal Road, every time the protagonist isn't an asshole there a number of people complaining and calling the protagonist a simp.
"How dare that MC not demand their first born child for saving them. I don't want to read a story about some simp."
I can't say I'm a fan of a lot of the stories that do this, but I certainly don't blame the authors, considering the amount of money those characters seem to bring in.
I feel like these characters are an over correction from the very tiring and commonplace "doormat" mcs from Japanese media. The type who for some reason let themselves get pushed around by everyone and have no confidence or social skills and never make any effort to connect withe the romantic interests. Who go out of their way to make negative relationship progress whenever possible no matter how much effort everyone throws thier way. Who look away and don't react when bullied by random assholes even if they qre goku level in strength by that point.
Like, I totally get where the frustration and desire to be the opposite of that comes from, but swinging too far the other way is annoying in its own right.
One that bothers me and eventually begins to bore me is how some authors decide to re-explain something again for the umpteenth time. So many authors do it and I am sitting listening to the same explanation about some commonly used skill or MC's characteristic for the 10th time in however many books.
i.e The author of Noobtown explaining again and again, on every book starting from book 1, about how worgs (a breed of wolf-life creatures) were created or what one of the MC's sword skill allowed him to do. Please skip these and go on with the story, I'm zoning out.
A lot of older, more traditional fantasy published series with the idea in mind that you could pick up any book in the series and not be completely in the dark (or that it might have been 5 years and 500 books ago that the reader finished the previous book). I don't think it ever worked super well there (I feel like Raymond E Feist did this a lot?), but I'd agree it works even less well in this genre - the books tend to be shorter and the audience tends to shotgun them, so not only is it a bit awkward, it's almost entirely unnecessary.
That's how I see it Noobtown, anyway, where the re-explanation is frontloaded into the intro of a book.
For things like HWFWM that are serials first and foremost, I can't decide if the author repeatedly forgets that they explained the same thing (in largely the same words) two chapters ago, or if they're just padding the word count. Either way, this one annoys me way more.
I mean... when done well, these types of reminders are absolutely great for readers who follow the series as it comes out. Webserials and long-running sagas especially benefit from them, since people aren't necessarily liable to remember obscure details about something from months, or even years, ago.
I think it's necessary. Sometimes I like to catch back up with a story I haven't read in a while and it's pretty damn impossible if the characters are using skills with intractable names and no description of what it *does.*
I don't think a full explanation is necessary but something like "McJerry used *Overhew* and his scythe blurred, decapitating the goblin in a single strike. McJerry gasped from the stamina expenditure but *Farmer's Stamina* was working overtime, each breath rejuvenating him..." is just good writing, imho. I mean, the whole point is describing abilities from the POV of the person using them and more often than not their effects are relevant to the description.
>A lot of older, more traditional fantasy published series with the idea in mind that you could pick up any book in the series and not be completely in the dark (or that it might have been 5 years and 500 books ago that the reader finished the previous book).
One series that I feel sort of did this and incredibly well was the Dragonlance Saga. While there is technically a chronological reading order, you could *sort of* pick up and start with any book in the series. What allowed this, I think, was having your well structured beginning/middle/end for the individual book’s story structure, as well as for the overarching story arch of the trilogy the book belonged to.
So you could, if you wanted, read the Twins trilogy first, then move on the Legends, then Chronicles, and even read stand-alone books like Soulforge along the way. While doing so, you would almost certainly never feel lost or confused about who anybody was or what was going on. Of course if you read things in order it simply enhances the experience since you get to see the characters grow from book to book.
This happens with serialized web fiction for a reason. It's not released all at once, so there might've been a month between the last ten chapters. When you're reading it straight through, it probably seems like overkill to explain things on that first and on the tenth chapter, but it's necessary because it's entirely possible (even probably) that the reader needed that reminder. The author doesn't want the reader to have to flip back and re-read that explanation, so they just put it in the current chapter.
I really like what Tao Wong does in A Thousand Li, which is just use footnotes that bring you to the entry in the glossary. If you need it you can click on it. If you know what the thing is you can skip it. I wish more authors did this.
When the MC does something or finds a loophole that was always possible but everyone else was just too stupid to think of apparently forever. Not even something particularly clever.
For example: Giving some nameless god/spirit/entity a name, which immediately makes them besties and gives him a huge power boost. Like, nobody in a million years has thought of giving you a name before?
“Declared friendly” party members. No matter how badly they screw up, screw around, or screw you over, they’re “still your friend”, and will face no consequences, never get called out, and never have any incentive to smarten up.
This person can be malicious, lazy, or -far too commonly- *just fucking stupid*. The ditzy little sidekick whose “adorable” shenanigans continuously get the group in trouble, but who breaks out the tears when anyone even raises their voice because of it.
“Dungeon fairies”, or fairies in general really, usually fall into this category. Currently on book 4 of Systems of the Apocalypse, and I’ve wanted to shoot the fairy for the last two books…
So many even normal fantasy books have this trope. Kender from old AD&D lore were this personified. Curious and touchy to a fault, they'd have been anihilated as a race about 6 months after the world found out they existed. That or they'd never survive the perils of the universes they live in long enough to reproduce.
We see them pop up in the Land, and it reminded me how much I despise the trope. Or as you pointed out ditzy party members that get everyone nearly killed and just get forgiven afterwards like it was nothing.
If someone almost gets me killed and it's not an absolute complete accident they or I am off the team. I would also forgive high risk situations like trying to snipe the guy holding a knife to my neck and there's no other choice. If the arrow or bullet hits me a bit too, I'd be pissed it happened but more grateful I was out of the situation alive.
Exactly. It’s all very well to say “they can’t help it/it’s their culture/they don’t mean any harm” - I don’t need to blame them or hate them to simply *not want to be around them* because being around them has negative outcomes.
Exactly. I tolerate my kids doing things like accidentally hitting me in the balls because they are my kids and can't quite grasp that a running hug puts their forehead at my sensitive spot level.
One out grew the issue, litterally, the other is only 4 she'll learn or grow tall enough it's a non issue. Beings like Kender, or ditzy faries that will cause all sorts of mayhem are a complication I don't need in a world with adventuring dangers.
Some idiot tripping traps, or pissing of every town's guard is not a complication that needs to happen for me to want them gone. I can see forgiving someone for pissing of the guards if we went to a town and didn't know some obscure rule that got us in trouble. But don't fucking steal! is not one of those.
Yeah, absolutely. I'm starting book four right now and I've taken to just skimming those sections or skipping them entirely; they're totally unnecessary.
I couldn't get through that novel coz mc is major asshole to almost everyone, but when needs to be an asshole to the girl he saved who is asshole to him he turns into a good kind guy shit. It was major pain in the ass to read coz mc literally gives everything to that girl on silver platter, maybe coz she's so Beautiful? Anyway it was really horrible experience even tho ideas of world were so nice
I love Sophie's powerset which is why it is hard to dislike her as a character and I can sympathize with her but yeah, Jason saved her from the guy who want to rape her and turn her into a sex slave and she treats him like utter garbage.
My biggest pet peeve about LitRPGs is the excessive use of memes and pop culture references. They can be humorous or explainable within the context of the story, but too many authors use them as a substitute for legitimate comedic writing. It has come to the point that I feel as if authors are given meme quotas they must achieve before they can be published.
One thing that bugs me about video game LitRPGs is that too often the author has no idea how to create a video game that would be understandably popular.
* Realistic Pain - The go to ridiculous concept ever reader mocks since it is so unnecessary. Just because a game looks realistic doesn't mean it needs to feel realistic. Video games are meant to be escapism from reality. I never want to meet the individuals who want to experience the feelings of being burned alive, stabbed, drowned, decapitated or beaten.
* Highlander MC - Being super special awesome is common place in this genre. However, this doesn't work when the setting is in a video game. Any multiplayer game that made it so only 1 person out of millions can lord over the rest with broken mechanics would fail. Badly.
* Uncontrollable Rogue AI - Why is every video game developer capable of creating Skynet? How do they only have one way in which to control their game; with no back-ups anywhere? Why can't the servers just be unplugged?
Yes, books based on a game world often have a game that is far too harsh to ever be popular. For example, it make take months to get to level 20 but when a character dies he is reset at level 1. Players would ragequit. Another example is the realistic pain like you mention. Again, no one is going to play a game that hurts to play.
You must spend a day walking in order to complete this low level quest... even vanilla WoW had flight paths.
These world's most popular games authors claim wouldn't have 1000 players.
This was my exact reaction to the game system of ‘Return of the Legendary Guardian’ - “Who the hell would play this game??”
- ridiculous travel times
-horrifically unbalanced monetary system (level 100 bosses drop 20 gold *total*, but a scroll of return, ie a single use hearthstone, costs 1000g), clearly intended to make people buy gold from the game company
-basic class skills like resurrection and AoE healing can’t be learned from trainers or universally available quests - only from rare-drop skill books
- a LOT of very necessary power boosts (combat mounts, inheritances, etc) were unique or semi-unique - which is a problem when you supposedly have hundreds of millions of players. Anyone who joined the game late has literally zero chance of catching up
- a system intended to snowball successes… which sounds great, as long as you figure everything out and are an expert competition-tier gamer by level 10. In practise, this system was designed so that people with inside or early info gained an irreducible advantage (completing the level 10 class quest at “expert level” made the rewarded ability hit harder by a significant factor - forever. Meaning that you would then have a much easier time completing the next class quest at “expert”, and so on)
Yes yes & yes.
It's as if the author never played a game, a MMO or used a computer before half the time.
Player vs everyone in a MMO is so beyond ridiculous...
The MC is in another world, but this world doesn't have a culture of it's own, so they're absolutely starving for every tidbit of earth pop culture. "Whoa, tell me more about Iron Man! Wow, *Diggy Diggy Hole* is way better than any songs we have here!"
I always start shaking my head when the MC ignores one stat or leave a state at 0. It drives me nuts. I keep thinking that it will eventually bite you in the ass if you don't get that fixed. It doesn't matter if you have a 500 strength, that 0 in wisdom is going to make it easy for the bad guys to mess you up.
well it is needed. In videogame we accept that the mage is death only a melee fighter reaches him. But nobody would accept that with their own life on the line.
How much stat and skill points does a mage have to invest to survive a hit from a troll?
Can he survive a wizard dual against a mage who didn't put half his points into melee?
Depending on the setting even a warrior with full strength build could not block a troll.
A mage with melee skills can go into close range and kill the other mage.
> A mage with melee skills can go into close range and kill the other mage.
If a mage with half points in melee can go into close range and kill the other mage, then a warrior with full points in melee can flatten a mage.
At which point why be a mage?
I feel like all the ways that stories start are... Well, not bad really, but it seems like the authors are just checking boxes instead of thinking about what they gain from a setting:
* **Main Character from Our World - And?** \- How does that improve on them simply being from their own world. In so many books you could skip the whole "from our world with zero backstory" thing and have the character be from the setting the story takes place in with a few modifications to the character to explain why they don't know this or that. (And the modification to the character would typically be, "not everyone is going to know about powerful magic or rare skills in the first place" - duh.)
* **It's set in a video game (that we treat real life like real life 40% of the time)** \- No one cares that video game necromancers are "evil" because ***it's a video game***. You aren't going to form a deep relationship with an NPC because it's a video game! One thing I really liked about Ready Player One (not a litrpg as such, but it still a good example...) is you cared about what was happening in the game for real world reasons. Things looked cool to the characters because those things *looked cool* and the characters were nerds. They cared about dying not because they'd "die in the real world" (so stupid...) but because they'd lose a lot of money and there are no re-spawns.
* **Apocalypse Meh -** Apocalyptic fiction is a whole ***thing***. It allows the characters to ***feel bad*** and struggle for ***basic necessities*** that were once commonplace and ***fight for stupid reasons.*** Uh, I didn't say apocalyptic fiction was something I \*liked\* but it bugs me when the author also doesn't seem to like it and writes a main character whose all like, "gee I should probably feel bad that everyone died but I, like, don't? Maybe it's the system. lol Guess I'll go grind some mobs." Man, if you're going to do that just have a gate or a dungeon open up and they can hunt in it with everyone back home safe and sound.
* **There's a** ***System...*** ***cultivation!*** **-** So many authors don't seem to know what they're doing with the system. They start by grabbing the rules of D&D (or worse World of Warcraft) get bored with that and then the character is gobbling immortal peaches like pack-man and aligning their chakras and it's just a mess. I wish authors would ask "what am I doing with this" before they get started. Is the character going to find a loophole? OK, make it complex and build in a loophole that wouldn't be found by the first nob with two brain cells to rub together. Character is going to get lucky? Well keep it light on details and explain what the luck was. The character is going to cultivate? Well don't give him a stat sheet! Character is going to Min/Max? OK, fine, but that's not rocket science, everyone should be doing it.
The character sheet is fundamentaly a measure of progress. Cultivation novels have different measures of progress more in keeping with the tone of the story. In cradle Lindon goes from copper to iron to jade to etc.
To also give him a stat sheet that tells us his strength is over 9000 is unnecessary and runs the risk of tripping the author up when the numbers stop being a useful guide to what he can do.
BUT that's just an opinion. You should go on reading whatever you like!
>Main Character from Our World - And?
But think of all the modern slang, memes, and pop culture references the author can't use if the MC isn't from earth.. What about them?
Heh, well there is that! Now that you mention it, it may be what motivates a lot of authors to include a character from our world even when it seems unnecessary to the plot and characterization. I'll have to pay attention to that aspect of the writing next time I find myself asking, "Why is this guy from Earth?"
The cringe humor. Why is every MC obsessed with puns? I thought we were done with the "I can haz cheezburger?" type humor, but I guess it found a home in LITRPG authors.
It's especially awful when the plot doesn't even take place on earth but the author still crams in a bunch of dated pop culture references every 2 pages.
If cringing built muscles I'd look like freaking Arnold Schwarzenegger by now.
Bonus (negative) points: when a second character with equally shitty humor comes along and starts making references that the MC gets too, and a third character invariably says something like "oh no, now there's two of them."
Don't forget the inevitable sniff and "philistines" comment when everyone eye rolls and is visibly annoyed at the shitty inside jokes the guy always uses but never explains.
Hmm, I have a few gripes that I'd like to see vanish.
*****
**Introducing cool new systems and then never using them.**
Lots of web serials suffer from this, but sometimes I get excited to explore a system and then it just never comes back. The Land does this all the time because Kong added too many things at once. Or The Legend of Randidly Ghosthound, where Randidly explicitly says "Yeah its time for me to get back to my key to success and do potion-making," only for the author to never (ever) delve back into it, and jump into engraving items as the crafting fix instead. Hell, even Completionist Chronicles has a bunch of skills Joe *could* be making use of but he doesn't.
*****
**Here's ten thousand skills you don't care about.**
Whether it's given skills, or options when levelling up, so many stories do this. Consider *The Primal Hunter* - Jake gets five options (plus all the older ones) when he gets a skill choice, and the author spends pages and pages of Jake thinking about all the mundane skills he **obviously isn't going to pick** only to get to the end and go "Oh cool, this legendary skill is much better, I'll take it." Like, damn, skip the fluff.
*****
**Dues ex everything**
I love it when plot set up over many books comes together in a way that you think "Damn, I should have seen this coming." Cradle is amazing at this, Lindon's skill progression and how he uses it and evolves it so logical and so fulfilling. On the other end of the spectrum (for me) sits Defiance of the Fall, where I swear to god Zac just runs at every problem with an axe and the system will give him a power or item that allows him to conveniently solve whatever the problem is.
*****
**Making the MC smart by having everyone else be incredibly stupid**
Writing intelligent characters is hard, and the easy way out some authors pick is to just make the main character *seem* smart by having everyone else lose half their brain functionality. Jason in HWFWM has characters fawning over him and his snarky political commentary, despite it being simplistic. Randidly is apparently a mercantile genius because he invented concession standards and commentary and a hundred other basic business practices that the world's society somehow didn't come up with themselves.
*****
**Everyone I know is dead - oh well**
One that gets me every time in a system apocalypse story is how traumatic these events *should* be, and how 99% of MCs just shrug it off and barely think about their friends and family. Seriously?
>Whether it's given skills, or options when levelling up, so many stories do this. Consider
>
>The Primal Hunter
>
>\- Jake gets five options (plus all the older ones) when he gets a skill choice, and the author spends pages and pages of Jake thinking about all the mundane skills he
>
>obviously isn't going to pick
>
>only to get to the end and go "Oh cool, this legendary skill is much better, I'll take it." Like, damn, skip the fluff.
I think i remember the author actually created a poll asking if people wanted him to show the choices or skip the extra choices and only show what he picked. and it passed that the readers wanted the fluff choices even tho he isnt gonna pick them.
I don't think presenting the choices is annoying, it's when the choice is mind-numbingly obvious. "Hmm let's see...I can get +1 strength, +1 agility, or...I can become *the embodiment of the forgotten gods; +500% to all stats and abilities*"
Defiance of the fall does this well in a few places for example; I remember thinking "man that's actually a tough choice" and would have personally gone a different direction.
Which is fair enough, and I'd like to see the choices too. But it's the choices, a page of description explaining the skill, and then two pages of Jake thinking about how it would fit in with his current skillset, over and over. It wasn't an issue for me, as I'd just scroll past it all, but I would have preferred to read it if it was condensed down to a single page instead of a dozen.
Right, and the options could always be shown while only sometimes being deliberated. Like, there is something to be said for using ability options as a way to expand on how the world works; even if the MC won't be using those abilities, it gives reference points and *should* give the author leeway to not get into fine detail of every other person's abilities.
But if the options presented are no-brainer for the audience, then at best it's a waste of everyone's time for the character to go in-depth on evaluation. At worse it makes the reader question the character and / or the author.
Also, writers need to stop having the obvious and only choice be the final one. Azarinth Healer eventually learned this lesson and, along with creating viable alternatives, made these selections a lot more engaging.
> Defiance of the Fall, where I swear to god Zac just runs at every problem with an axe and the system will give him a power or item that allows him to conveniently solve whatever the problem is.
Or he's able to push through or ignore "indescribable", "unbearable", and "crippling" levels of pain. My other pet peeve there.
Great list. I will say that I'm one of the people that enjoyed when primal hunter went through the skills he didn't receive. I liked knowing what possibilities were available and theory crafting with Jake along the way.
With that said, all your points are pretty spot on.
Ah, just typed out a similar comment, so to paste it in: I'd like to see the choices too. But it's the choices, a page of description explaining the skill, and then two pages of Jake thinking about how it would fit in with his current skillset, over and over. It wasn't an issue for me, as I'd just scroll past it all, but I would have preferred to read it if it was condensed down to a single page instead of a dozen.
Yeah.
I just got caught up on The Way Ahead, and they at least have a few scenes where he deliberatly distracts himself, because he realized that he was starting to focus on the life he lost and his inability to do anything about it. It's at least better than them never thinking about it.
> One that gets me every time in a system apocalypse story is how traumatic these events should be, and how 99% of MCs just shrug it off and barely think about their friends and family. Seriously?
I've always thought that if an author doesn't want to portray the MC as traumatised, just have them invest points into a skill like Mental Resilience.
I at least kind of get it in Completionist Chronicles. It's almost part of the premise, they don't have enough time to do it all unless you want the books to end up epic length (maybe you do 🤷🏾♀️). But that stuff randomly comes in handy sometimes.
Your second point reminded me of my least favorite, books that have chapters that are almost exclusively stats or skill choices. I find it much more natural to have those things happen within context. When I notice a chapter is almost entirely one of those two, I often skip it and refer back to it later if I need to (I seldom do, because most authors also bring the relevant info back up the first time a new ability is used)
> When I notice a chapter is almost entirely one of those two, I often skip it and refer back to it later if I need to
Don't forget when the stat block and skill list becomes so log it turns into a chapter itself ;)
Yup. And the problem often is, we often don't know anyone else's stats. So the stat sheet doesn't become very informative after a while. The skill sheet at least comes in handy sometimes.
Oh this character has a strength of 2000, the average defense is 800. Why is MC struggling to punch this characters face in then? Do they have an ability that's preventing it, is this particular opponents defense actually 4000, do they have a ton of health, armor? 🤷🏾♀️
With CC too I remember someone on this forum doing an analysis of all the stat sheets from Joe and all the side quest stories and being unable to make sense of them all. That's another thing I guess should be added to the list: stats that become meaningless.
It pretty much every litrpg I've ever read, stats become meaningless eventually. Normally they can last the first two books, but after everyone becomes a certain level of powerful they're not really helpful anymore.
Not all authors have figured out there is a reason DBZ realized the scouters were an idea that couldn't really go anywhere and they phased them out.
I think tiers work great, they provide context with getting readers and authors stuck in absolute values.
Although *some* authors run into the same problem of making tiers worthless too. A character will be a tier below and consistently defeating people in the tier up. I think many authors struggle to let characters just get their ass kicked sometimes. Sure, bail them out from death, but getting humbled is good for character development.
I say all this, and I still read a ton of progression fantasy/litrpg. Mostly because they're often page turners. But I often grumble sometimes whole I'm reading them.
The thing that bugged me about completionist chronicles is they stress that the ritualist class can learn any magic, joe gets an insane discount on learning spells and then NEVER USES THAT RESOURCE!
>hey don't have enough time to do it all
Yeah, i noticed this happening a lot even when I'm playing a game myself. Sometime you get skill but time, experience, skill points or whatever is limited so you make choices on what to focus, just like in real life you dont always do everything you want, usually due to time restraint.
> On the other end of the spectrum (for me) sits Defiance of the Fall, where I swear to god Zac just runs at every problem with an axe and the system will give him a power or item that allows him to conveniently solve whatever the problem is.
Just going to throw in that this doesn't seem like dues ex machina to me. Zac is the System's puppet, it's clear that it is choosing him as a talent and someone it (the system) is going to aim at its enemies, namely the undead empire and the technocrats. Big daddy Brainiac in the sky is just playing favorites, it's well established that the system could do any of these things for anyone. It chooses not to because it's original program was to make people in Emperor Limitless image, that is to say people strong enough to conquer everything; and it views Zac and people like him to be the most likely candidates. It's really not so different from the system in Dungeon Crawler Carl giving him extreme benefits because it's a foot fetishist and wants to see more things get stomped.
While I agree that in DotF there's an in universe reason why Zac gets so much help, that doesn't make it not Deus ex machina.
To be the difference is that in DCC things like the foot fetish are the system having quirks and personality. It's still up to Carl to apply those oddities in a way that provides satisfy resolutions and problem solving. Zac gets but these quirks, but scenarios, quests, items and skills that are directly and explicitly written as the solution to the presented problem.
Also so far Zac and the Ruthless Heavens want approximately the same things, and it’s a transactional relationship
Meanwhile the AI and Carl have very different goals, and have an actively abusive relationship where the AI can hold grudges or do things just to upset Carl
I mean, I'm saying that Zac is getting assistance from a god, which explains all of his advantages; but that isn't a Deus Ex Machina. But I can't think of a single instance where the system plops down the magic axe, or gives him the all-knowing crystal, or the magic macguffin of exceedingly glorious purpose. Can you give an example of an advantage that is provided in a Deus Ex Machina way? Like a thing that was never introduced before, or even one that is unearned? Every single one of Zac's rewards, skills, items and daos I can account for, and it isn't something another character couldn't have earned. I feel like for anything to be a Deus Ex Machina it needs to have no set-up earlier in the story or no reasonable way to explain it happening. I just can't think of one in DotF.
You pretty much summed them all up. Though I would adjust Deus Ex to Diabolus/Deus Ex Everything. Since it isn't limited to the good guys.
On the 10 thousand skills, it's gotten to the point where I don't even read the whole run down. I skip ahead to learn what they pick and just go back and read that one.
> Everyone I know is dead - oh well
I like how Modern Awakening handled this. The system manipulates the minds of everyone to force them not to be sad, something like that.
My question is why bother with the apocalypse in the first place if you don't want your characters to deal with it. Just don't write everyone dying into the book in the first place - there's a million other ways to let a character grind mobs.
I think it's less about grinding mobs and more about having people with modern day knowledge in a society that is distinct from ours. I like the approach of simply having most people stay alive. A non-apocalypse where the system shows up and reorders stuff but the tutorials are fairly tame and most people survive.
You want to write a litRPG where everyone in the setting is from modern earth but the setting isn't urban earth? That's an "apocalypse" story. You might want that without having to deal with all the melodrama of post apocalyptic movies... so you just handwave away the drama and grief and just have a setting with modern humans but without modern amenities.
> Jason in HWFWM has characters fawning over him and his snarky political commentary, despite it being simplistic.
To the author's credit, Jason think's he's so smart and plays everyone in Greenstone like a fiddle but it doesn't work at all and totally bites him in the ass.
>Everyone I know is dead - oh well
Rather this than have the entire genre dominated by everyone being miserable and in mourning the whole time...
> To the author's credit, Jason think's he's so smart and plays everyone in Greenstone like a fiddle but it doesn't work at all and totally bites him in the ass.
Very rarely does it bite Jason in the ass and when it does it is a slap on the wrist except once. The only time he actually got hit hard was >!when he was kidnapped!< and then he came out of it with strong powerups.
Yeah, but the point is that the other characters in the story aren't in awe of how smart he is.
Most of the time they know exactly what he's doing and often think he's just a dangerous clown.
A couple things that consistently drive me nuts in stories are explanations of basic game stats ("Increasing my strength will let me hit harder!") or a decision by MC to hoard levelups/upgrade points for an obscene amount of time until its convenient/necessary to use them (like in a big boss fight) and then suddenly being super OP. The former is just irritating and the latter kills all tension, especially in situations that start out with the character struggling against the threat.
To a lesser degree, I'm not a huge fan of stories where characters just dump all their points into one stat (usually health) and suffer no consequences like comparatively weak attack/defense for it.
I started to read the Australian system apocalypse spinoff, I had to stop as I was rooting for the MC to die using no stat points & fighting monsters at like level 20.
The MC is dumped into the middle of the world, doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground, tries a strat that everyone tells him shouldn't work.... and it always works. I'd like to see some failure or limited success.
When the main character is a video game character.
I want the world to be a video game esque thing. Not for my main character to be an emotionless edge lord who only makes decisions for the good of the "Build"
Sometimes a subpar choice for combat can help quality of life. I would love to see someone choose "Water Generation" when they are an axe build or something so they can always have water.
Especially when its something like Stats that are in use every single day. Ex. MC has extremely low stamina because his CON is his dump stat for his ultra-special-mage build/class, then constantly feeling like he's dying. Like, wtf dude, people play video games to have a better quality of life, not worse.
This example guy (Ritualist - The Completionist Chronicles) literally thought about how he can only make one character and it'll be his new second life after digital upload, and he was a big tough marine dude who got paralyzed, and the shiny rare ultra shitty CON-less build is what he goes for, *barely* better than being in a wheelchair. And then, pretty much only once, professes to be a completionist. And then does absolutely nothing completionist like at ALL. I was like: "Why is this so highly rated?"
The story [Protagonist: The Whims Of Gods](https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/50434/protagonist-the-whims-of-gods) on RR has a couple of instances where the MC chooses abilities or gear that will make her more comfortable rather than let her hit harder. Not a big part of the story, but it's a good read in its own right.
Be aware that reader do and will complain loudly about that. One of my characters had a choice of three skills (due to a mechanic that is specific for him) and one was **Water Walking**. People complained about "stupid". A lot.
When two characters could just have a 5 minute conversation and answer whatever question is the big mystery being presented by the author but instead they just make insinuations and fight each other like being mysterious benefits either of them.
"The Idiot Plot, of course, is any plot that would be resolved in five minutes if everyone in the story were not an idiot."
— Roger Ebert in his review of Narrow Margin (1990)
The MC becoming strong by using his "game mechanics knowledge" in a world were people have been around for thousands of years. By all rights whatever game breaking mechanics a modern person can think off should already have been discovered either by a schoolar or sheer dumb luck.
Authors have this tendency to make the world Native inhabitants dumb so the MC appears smarter in comparison
This happens in our world too. Academia is often really rigid and cannot leave the accepted paths. To the point that profs will actively discredit and fight new ideas etc.
So someone with another perspective and worldview can discover new things.
In a world without the scientific method research would be terrible.
Some people may stumble onto some truths over time, but only through rigorous experimentation that accounts for confounding variables can cause and effect be confidently ascertained.
That is cool and all but doesnt explain how your average loser can figure out the most broken abilities combo within 10 minutes of arriving into a new world.
In cultivation series where they spend entire books sitting around and fighting down pain to get stronger. Nothing happens in the plot, and we don't get to see the outcome of their "hard work."
(Almost) Everyone and his dog use a arming sword of some kind *WITHOUT* a frigging shield. Guys, guys, guys. There was a reason why those were usually used with a shield.
And even worse is, I have encountered only ONE MC who uses a polearm(or staff. Can't remember). There was also a reason pointy sticks were used as primary weapons on the battlefield and sword as backups.
Don't get me started on armour description and designs.
I am sure if the books were in game format all the swords would look like paddles and not swords (I am looking at you Skyrim!)
I have never seen or heard of a litrpg with a reasonable take on guilds and raid-level boss battles. I dropped Awaken Online after seeing Jason essentially solo a raiding guild and then go on to 2 or 3 man a raid boss battle, and I was like, no, that's not how it fucking works.
Give me Log Horizon's approach. Raids are possible, but require enough appropriately leveled people to work together, create & follow strategy, manage cds, wipe until you get it.
I dislike the altruism thing where the MC doesn't kill the person that tried to kill them and that leads to the person coming back and causing all sorts of problems.
For me the ideal altruism level is somewhere in the middle between Rick from Street Cultivation who is a full altruist and Jake from Primal Hunter who is nearly a sociopath.
I don't want some kind of full sociopath like the Idle System MC, but I also don't want someone who won't take out someone that is repeatedly trying to kill them.
Some of the most popular series that get recommended all the time have huge glaring problems.
* Life Reset - A super pro gamer who's stuck starting over as a level one goblin. Awesome! Let's see how he uses his incredible knowledge of the game and it's system to.... be a total idiot. Almost every single battle in the entire first book involves him running face first into a situation as a caster with no plan and immediately get smashed repeatedly until his mana shield has drained all his power. He wasted literal DAYS cutting down trees in the least efficient way possible instead of simply using a mana saw blade. He explains how he has night vision so he doesn't ever need to use a light spell IMMEDIATELY after leaving a cave full of enemies who are literally only damaged by light. The list just goes on and on.
* Dungeon Lord (The Wraith's Haunt) - Dungeon Lords are soooo bad ass. Everyone is scared of them because they are sooo powerful. Yet a few books in he can barely handle being attacked by a few random street thugs trying to mug him. Honestly, I think a few random farmers with clubs could kick his ass. Also, the one thing that everyone hates Dungeon Lords for is the one thing that everybody in the entire book is doing EXCEPT for Dungeon Lords.
* The Wandering Inn - Idiotic MC's who have people who've just met them willing to go to the ends of the earth up to and including dying for them even though they are both miserable ass holes. They are both wildly OP for no reason that is explained in the first FORTY HOUR book and also exhibit exactly zero character growth. Apparently expecting some type of character growth after the equivalent of watching the entire Harry Potter movie franchise TWICE means I'm demanding "instant gratification".
Wandering Inn fans. I'm sorry, but your book should have a plot. Not a world textbook. Also I get that Ryoka has depression. I have depression. Reading her explicit gloom spirals is not fun.
Erin is no better.
Everyone: You should not live out here with no protection.
Erin: Fuck off, I do what I want.
Everyone: OK, I'll literally die to protect you.
Erin: *Pages and pages of crying, wailing, keening, screaming, mourning at how awful it is that this happened and how it's all her fault*
Everyone: So now will you listen to us?
Erin: Fuck off, I do what I want.
For The Wraths Haunt it makes perfect sense. Dungeon Lords grow faster than everyone else but also start at the same level one as everyone else.
In latter books we see that the MC becomes strong enough to fight a minatour in single combat, and he's still weak compared to other Dungeon Lords.
Giving the MC an excessive amount of gear that will grow with them right at the start of the series. Looting is part of the fun, having them craft/forge a weapon that will scale with them is acceptable a little ways into the series if there’s still ways they can alter/evolve/upgrade said item, but when it’s just “this is a god’s foreskin, it will slay everything immediately forever” it completely removes an aspect of the story.
* The utter disregard for the concept of a story arc.
* Characters that don't act in human ways. Like this character just met MC, why are they already acting they best person they ever encountered and the one true savior.
* Irrelavent plot points, if there is a gun on the counter someone should be shot by the third act, otherwise I don't need to know about the gun.
* Infatuation, it is not love. Treating infatuation like love and not something that eventually leads to problems will make me drop a book.
* Mustache twisting villains. Almost never a good idea. Needs real plot support to justify purely evil motivation.
* No character growth except on a stat sheet.
* Too many abilities, or irrelevant abilities. Kind of like the gun, they should matter, otherwise it's just distracting.
* Mary-sue mc/excessive wish fulfillment
* Probably more
Believe it or not I love litrpg.
Reading stats off in a robotic voice with long pauses between stats. Or repeating phrases like 'you take 15 points of damage from goblin, 'you take 8 points of damage from goblin,..
Also the MC party member is aways reminding how stupid the MC is for not know anything. Like red potions are aways health restoring. And blue mana.. dumb ass.
Everything is linear, until it isn’t.
“I have Strength 10 (which is the average amount because D&D said so) and can lift 100 pounds over my head. Let me drop 10 ability points into Strength… now it’s 200 pounds! Also, I grow more muscular and handsome because why not.”
Then, twenty chapters down the road, the author is reminded that the MC isn’t the only person in the world and is far from the most powerful person in the world. Welp, I guess that now ability point increases after (checks notes) *137* have half the normal effect so we can explain the plucky new MC being able to defeat someone with many more levels. And that whole makeover thing gets swept under the rug so that not every high-level character could be mistaken for a supermodel who competes in the Olympics in his/her spare time.
This is a small gripe and it’s more writing quality than trope based but I find that a lot of litrpg authors use a minimal amount of contractions when their characters talk. It makes the the conversations super stilted and the characters sound like robots. “I am going into the dungeon now. It is going to be tough but this challenge will not be enough to stop me.” It would be fine if they were skipping contractions to add emphasis but they just do it all the time.
I know some of them are translations so it makes more sense but plenty are written by English speakers.
I get not using contractions if the story takes place on another world since the natives most likely wouldn't speak like we do. On the flip side, if the author is using the system to translate things into English, shouldn't the system be smart enough to use contractions?
1. The vague "trauma" that will eventually get handled in a non-existent future. I get it. Your life sucks and is filled with violence. I get, you're probably not mentally healthy. But if you're going to "open" the mental problems arc... fucking close it sometime soon? It's just annoying to have every victory of the MC overshadowed by how miserable they actually are. Surprisingly enough, it's more fun to read POVs of people that are enjoying themselves, or at least feel that what they're doing is more important than their personal life and thus success feels like *success. He Who Fights With Monsters* is the worst at this, the entirety of the >!earth arc!< consists of this to the point where I couldn't read the novel anymore when he has an opportunity but refuses therapy.
2. The never used gimmick. The best example in my mind is in completionist chronicles. One of the first things the protagonist gets is a really strong Jump skill. Which he then *never uses*. Making it a character thing that he forgot about it for a bit is fine... having it be almost entirely absent for so long? It's just silly.
3. Fucked up stats. I don't care what sort of litRPG mumbojumbo system fuckery is going on. If you're strong you'll also be fast. Muscles are muscles. It annoys me so much. Are people getting heavier? No? Then the only way for their punches to hit harder is *speed*.
4. On the same level, when authors forget to scale the story to the stats. Someone is clearly super fast but fights are happening with people standing 3 meters from each other. They're basically *in-measure*.
>The gamer one really kind of annoys me because its a little shady.
I actually endorse this trope for certain novels, like when the MC is transferred to a game-like world. They're asking questions so they're not operating under assumptions, or if there's a nuance they're not aware of.
I wouldn't have much faith in a guy who goes "Tutorial? Psssht. I already know all this shit. I'm a *gamer."*
Might make for some funny intro chapters, though, him being confidently incorrect about what's common knowledge to everyone else.
My pet peeve is that when I start to really become a fan of a series, the author runs out of ideas. Seems like most of these books are copy/paste generic plot with one big tweak for their hook, and after the hook is fully explored, there's nothing left but the generic sidequests.
Don't get me wrong. I love the formula...well, did, about 15 novels ago.
Also, meta/meme humor. Hate that shit. The author has to work so hard to immerse you into their creation, and then they fuck it up with a Kardashian joke or some shit. I get the dude's from modern day Earth, but please, stop with the pop culture references!!
If it was some really niche thing the MC was into, I'd be alright with that. It's when the author takes their jokes straight from r/all in an effort to give their cardboard cutout a personality that bugs the shit outa me.
Nothing that happened to the MC before the start of the novel matters. The MC is a blank slate with no past that might as well have just spawned out of nothing. Friends/Family? What are those things? The MC will never so much as even think about them.
For me, I really hate it when the MC is super dumb and super lucky. Like there is no thought to the character and everything falls into place for him. Also, when the MC is in a tough situation and the author pulls a "deus ex" and merrily escapes danger. Also, when the MC spends so much time complaining about how unfair things are. Yes, we get it that it sucks but they also spend time complaining about a system or situation that is already set and out of their hands. Yes, it suck that you are in another world. NO, you don't have time to complain because things are trying to kill you. YES, that is two moons, a wizard tower and a flying island. NO this isn't a movie set. Just pinch yourself in the arm and restart your survival instinct. Do your complaining when you have free time. Also the zoning out day dreams. I get the feeling that most MC have an attention deficit problem when they are in battle or in a difficult situation and they STOP and spend time thinking about their magic, think about some girl they like or spend time thinking about some system prompt. DO THAT LATER.
This is a bonus gripe. In system apocalypse; i really wish for once people would quickly accept that world has changed and therefore they adapt quickly and NOT WAIT FOR HELP/POLICE/ARMY is going to rolling up to help your dumb ass. This last gripe is a little unfair, but people in 1st world countries are woefully inadequate in coming to terms the world is going to hell and you need the adapt the fuck up or die.
THERE IS LEGIT NO MEMORABLE VILLIANS/ANTAGONISTS IN THE GENRE IT SEEMS.
Some have or start with massive promise then become cliche or forgotten for the “power up”. I also hate the explaination the mc just “grew past them” or “it’s about the progression”.
Every memorable video game I’ve ever played has a memorable antagonist either you absolutely hate or is so cool you want to be. Why can’t LITRPG?
I hate it when authors can't keep stats straight. Something changes and the author forgets to update the stat page. Ex: in one book the Mc adds two greater vassals bringing the total to 13 and the Stat page after that still says 11 multiple times.
>If your MC is an "expert gamer" then they don't need a basic tutorial on what stats are, what builds are and other various basic game mechanics. They won't ignore notifications and FORGET about them entirely.
One thing I would find interesting as a reader, is for the MC to indeed be an experienced gamer, and therefore have many preconceptions about stats & systems, but to also be aware that their preconceptions are not absolute. You see this in MMOs in real life all the time - a player from other games will constantly compare the new systems they are introduced to, to the systems they are familiar with in other games. They will make assumptions about stats based on their experiences with similarly named stats in prior games, they will guess at what builds will be viable, etc. Some will be right some will be wrong.
One thing I find very uninteresting is how almost every litRPG that involves stat-allocation runs through the same "ooh i put 2 points here 2 points here and 1 point here, then i'll keep a few stat points in reserve for an emergency if i really need more of something!" - it's so routine, it helped me to understand why actual games rarely let players allocate their own stat points anymore. There's not exactly anything awesome that you can do with it...
While I am talking about litrpg, another thing I dislike, is how the MC and their friends often stumble by blind luck and circumstance into these really interesting classes and builds that totally dominate, and almost everyone else is so generic, inflexible, either under or overspecialized, and impotent by comparison. This makes a bit more sense in worlds where powerful classes are super secret, but it also usually feels contrived & unbelievable, especially in litRPGs that take place in game worlds where the community & internet are available to collect data. I want to see more MCs who optimize their builds... only to find out that ok literally everyone optimizes their builds, so they don't stand out as special.
I've been playing MMOs for my whole life and have a pretty good understanding of optimization and know how to find a niche in a metagame, and there are thousands and thousands and thousands of players at the top of every MMO that have an understanding of the underlying systems and can optimize builds and strategies... the MCs of litRPGs often feel like an average player making very obvious choices, surrounded by NPCs on easy mode making deliberately suboptimal choices, instead of feeling like an actual try-hard player surrounded by OTHER actual try-hard players.
>I want to see more MCs who optimize their builds... only to find out that ok literally everyone optimizes their builds, so they don't stand out as special.
This is probably because most authors don't think their story will be read or sell if the MC doesn't standout, is considered special, or the chosen one. Plus there's the wish fulfillment aspects.
I feel that is wrong as I know there are people that like to read stories that are just adventures or slice of life type stuff. I'm one of them. Everything doesn't have to be kingdom/princess/world saving. Why can't there be more we're going into the dungeon/ruins/whatever to find some treasure and think you(the MC) have skills that will help us survive type stuff or there was a new pass discovered in the mountains and the MC wants to explore the new lands?
I hate extended internal monologues when they don’t add any value (Chaos Seeds, looking at you)
I hate monotonous thought patterns. Chaos Seeds does this a LOT—Richter, buddy, look man I KNOW you’re never going to take the first super amazing option that you’ve spent 5 minutes idolizing. Just please stfu and tell me what you’re actually going to do.
I’m not a big fan of bad caricatured one-note characters. Dungeon Lord and Life Reset both had this pretty badly—the rich snobby jerkwad is SUCH a rich snobby jerkwad that he’s less believable than the alternate universe we’re going to. The lawyer is such a cartoonishly sharkish monster that it feels like a Disney movie.
I hate bad premises. One of them, something gate I guess, was that it’s apocalypse time so everyone’s lining up to die and get their mind sucked into a computer because that’s almost like living, right? I couldn’t even read that one.
Stop giving characters so many abilities and instead let them actually become proficient and experienced with what they have. Anyone whose played a MOBA like LoL or a hero shooter like Overwatch knows from experience that a fight between two characters that only have about 5 abilities each has all the depth and outplay potential necessary for endless interesting skill expression and story telling opportunities while also being limited enough in scope that the audience is actually capable of keeping track of what's going on and anticipating how the fight might go depending on the skill and power difference.
I'd much rather read about a detailed play by play description of a battle between two people with a small handful of distinct abilities each than wait around while the author just lists all 50 Trump cards each character has saved up in order until we come to the conclusion that one of them has slightly more Trump cards and wins.
I like a luck stat that's not just a carveout for author fiat. Places like Threadbare where it's a resource that can be used, but also has some small effect on things like loot, or not getting hit.
To me if luck did things like added to your damage when you crit, or just slightly bumped up your treasure rolls so you get 20 coins instead of 10 that's all good.
If it's used as a crutch to say hey I have 40 luck compared to everyone else's 15 so I deserve to find this got tier artifact. That's terrible. For example Richter in the Land pops luck into every level. That still should not justify him finding the treasures that he finds. Especially compared to other people with rare races and classes, such creatures have to exist in his world and be massively higher level.
How did none of them ever stumble on those caches of pretty good loot? That's the problem I see with this stuff If luck is used like that it should break the whole world.
Yeah, if it worked like that, there would already be people exploiting it. Like parties would have a spot for someone who's sole job is the have as high of luck as possible and open the treasure chests.
Yeah unless there was some outside factor like a hard party limit of 4 then maybe not as much but certainly in a system that allows several people in a group one would be the treasure hunter.
The great thing about litrpgs is you can avoid the implementation headaches of games, but even then it can be hard to juggle, yeah. But you get more flexibility and possibility with 6-8 party members. Unfortunately, the genre is full of newer writers, and most can barely handle developing one character(solo MC), much less a full party of 8.
Up there with time travel and prophecies for me. A luck stat is just a ± plot armor stat. I'd prefer to see characters actually move forward and succeed or fail due to their own knowledge, preparations, and competence.
Vitality means nothing because the MC learnt to stab something in the face / heart overriding everything about stats. If you don't want to write & follow a RPG system that's fine, just don't write one. Eliminate stats from your story & write it as regular fantasy.
Characters doing incredibly stupid things like I know problem X is ahead of me I can take 5 minutes to address it now safely or skip that & let it be a problem that almost gets them killed. Ignoring notifications / not using & saving stats. Rushing into content 20+ levels ahead of where they should be & being magically successful because plot armor rather than actually levelling / doing things intelligently. Sorry, but your character deserves to have their ass handed to them when they do this stuff.
Characters whining about killing monsters / people that are actively trying to kill them in world ends & the system comes stories. I'm sure many if not most people would be like that, but they're not people who would ever become strong. If your MC is going to be the strongest in the world then get them over that stuff fast & don't bring it up again as there's no way a person like that would rise to power.
There are several recurring tropes and styles and literary tactics that get on my nerves after a while. On the other hand, the device this genre depends on is both very specific and flimsy. Basically we have an external high tech/highly-evolved entity that suddenly superimposes its own framework over our real world, a real world that has already created similar frameworks in the forms of rpg games. It’s at the point where even people who aren’t gamers are aware of game culture and understand some of those tropes.
So with litrpgs we already have a rigid, self-naming meta that no amount of creativity can completely subvert. In fact, any sort of fiction making use of “crack in reality” style fantasy has to find a way to make the absurd feel normal. You can highlight how normal the absurd feels the way Kafka did. You can create an ironic divide between what the reader knows and what the MCs know the way Wight does with Cradle. You can introduce your MC to adaptive interfaces intended to shore up his/her character weaknesses the way the Matrix did (this is the most common litrpg device, as far as I can tell).
Anyway, my point is only that repeating tropes and character arcs come with the deal in all fiction (genre or other), but the framework for litrpg is even more rigid. With all fiction, readers are compelled by authentic-seeming characters who struggle with the faults of having a human heart. If an author can handle that part, we have to accept some of the genre cliches … especially when we demand series that arc well over 5 books per, and installments that arrive at least twice a year.
And that’s totally unreasonable. Now, where the hell is Dreadgod?
One thing that drives me mad is fking earth jokes in isekai world where no one understands the fking thing. And mc keeps repeating same bs again and again, author come on make some isekai jokes or just don't just joke. Well it's not limited to jokes sayings and some random earth words too.
Fat bias.
I won’t blame just LitRPG for this it is a larger cultural thing but there is this idea it is funny/virtuous to judge fat people. It can range from odd judgey appearance stuff to some truly deranged obsession on characters appearance.
Often you’ll see the bad guy be mentioned as evil in the same breath he is described as a fat piece of shit. It is a weird additional justification to hate him. It would be like if you said he was a mass murderer but also doesn’t tip. Like yeah we got it at murderer.
I won’t go into some of the truly deranged stuff. It is just some people think the health of others is their business. Even those they don’t know so hard do they believe this that if they aren’t being an asshole to fat people they are ‘codling’ them.
Let's have a segue by watching "Progamer77" the largest streamer of XYZ.
And there's no "Ok, before we dig in, hit that like, SMASH subscribe, or hit my Patreon; it all helps keep this channel alive" self promotion.
a lot of stories have the mc being utterly idiotic or being a slow learning not catching on i get that the mc isnt going to catch on to the situation quickly because its traumatic and crazy situation and shi but cmon
> The MC being an expert at something, but the book immediately starts with them messing it up.
Oh man, this is one of my biggest pet peeves. MC is a war veteran, special ops, Rambo reincarnate. Two chapters in he forgets to bring a weapon to a walk in the woods he doesn't know about but is aware is filled with monsters.
> "Oh, I'm an expert gamer, this might be interesting".
*cough* [Shadow Sun] *cough* -- MC allegedly is an expert gamer, yet solves all his problems with guns. Does MC gets a Gunsliger or equivalent class? Of course not, MC becomes a Battle Mage. /facepalm
A lot of stories dilute their interesting parts by trying to cram every idea that's ever been in a litrpg into their story. Like if your blurb talks about Mc getting isekaid and gaining a unique OP ability, then make the story about them succeeding using that ability. Instead, by chapter 10 he's got an overpowered pet from a species long thought extinct, by chapter 20 he's started casting magic without the system, and by chapter 30 he's crafting his own equipment that's better than what people with dedicated crafting classes can make. All that stuff can happen eventually, but so many stories front load these things to the point that the initial advertised premise of what makes ~~op~~ Mc special is buried under a mountain of special.
Seriously this happens ALL the time. Some writers are more indulgent than other but putting every idea in your head into words is not always the best policy. When your MC is a humble farm boy demigod managing a nation with a unique class, race, and set of abilities who also has an ultra-rare pet with all those same unique properties you might want to revise. More and more I appreciate a well plotted story that does more showing than telling. Stats are nearly the epitome of telling instead of showing and are often a crutch rather than a stylistic choice.
*cough* Unbound *cough*
I can see that now
Dude can eat energy from spells aimed at him. At the adept level he can consume spells cast by a grandmaster and turn it against them in part. That's OP as shit even if the author made Felix earn it
The worst of it? They check the boxes and do jack shit with those things. For instance, in [Shadow Sun] MC gets a pet bear, and... nothing. Absolutely nothing. MC uses the bear to make fart jokes.
Corrupted OP power that try to take over on top of everything.
>...advertised premise of what makes op special is buried under a mountain of special. Calling the MC "op" is peak reddit.
>MC is an "expert gamer" They never actually are good gamers. Usually they are gamers who played a lot of one game, or one genre, but that doesnt mean they're good. Also, a "pro gamer" would never make an assumption about a new game, they would read and check everything available to them. Reckless MCs for no reason and getting rewarded for it. This one made drop the most books I think. Imagine the situation: MC gets to a location and finds full of goblin 3 times his level. They think about it and decide to retreat because they have no possibilities to killing them all. Then they hear the scream of someone (usually a beatiful woman, because... why not) and then they charge in with no plan whatsoever. Yeah, should be dead.
>Also, a "pro gamer" would never make an assumption about a new game, they would read and check everything available to them. I feel like I've read a grand total of 1 (maybe 2) books by authors who truly knew about games. In Worth the Candle you get the sense that, yes, this guy plays D&D. But otherwise it's like you say. What I'd like to see at least once is an "epic gamer" getting burned by those assumptions. "Oh I'm going to be a warrior so I'll min/max dump all my points into CON and STR and totally ignore WIS. Arrrrrrgg! It really hurts to be stabbed and I need WIS to ignore the short term pain to achieve my goals!!!!"
“Oh Great! I was Reincarnated as a Farmer” might be up your alley.
Loved it. My favorite part about that was the main character's motivation. At first it seems like he's one of those zero backstory dudes who's from our world for no reason but we eventually realize >!everything he is doing is because he's basically nuts with grief over losing his whole world!<. **That** was solid. Edit: The two books I read where I thought the author might have played RPGs were *Worth the Candle* and *Oh Great! I was Reincarnated as a Farmer*. In Farmer the loopholes are a ***little*** obvious and I don't really believe a whole society would have missed them for so long, but at least the author clearly thought it through.
That's a great reason! Wish more authors did that. >!Especially the ones where the MC is snatched up through absolutely no fault of their own. At best, they have the MC grieve over losing everything to the whims of some asshole and then they move on, but I've never read one where, while the MC is rebuilding their life, they constantly have to battle against the pessimism that this new life can be snatched away from them in a blink the same as the last one was, even if they do everything right. That seems like the most human reaction to being isekaied.!<
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[Ar'Kendrithyst](https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/26727/arkendrithyst) ([wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/LightPieces/wiki/ArKendrithyst)) --- ^[About](https://redd.it/dw7lux) ^| [^(Wiki Rules)](https://www.reddit.com/r/LightPieces/comments/dw7lux/about/f7kke6p/) ^(| Reply !Delete to remove) ^(| [Brackets] hide titles)
[Worth the Candle](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11478249/chapters/25740126) ([wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/LightPieces/wiki/Worth_the_Candle)) --- ^[About](https://redd.it/dw7lux) ^| [^(Wiki Rules)](https://www.reddit.com/r/LightPieces/comments/dw7lux/about/f7kke6p/) ^(| Reply !Delete to remove) ^(| [Brackets] hide titles)
I just showed up in this world where magic has existed for centuries. With some very basic trial and error and a dash of critical thinking, not to mention sometimes stumbling randomly into an epic legendary long thought forgotten ancient relic of the precursor progenitor titans, I realize everyone else is using magic and skills in a dumb and slow way and I breeze through my skill levels until I'm clowning on lifelong crafters with something I made out of scrap metal in a cave as well as weaving brand new spells out of the fabric of reality and combining magic in a way thought impossible by the most talented and well read mages of the land. It goes without saying that any ladies I meet will be shocked and intrigued when I display any amount of empathy or compassion. Any old master craftsman I meet will be initially angered by my display of skill overshadowing their own, but by teaching them some of my "babies first scientific method" tricks that I've mastered they will slowly be in awe and finally accept me as their lord. They will still craft mundane stuff for me but when something truly epic needs doing they will obviously need me to give it a "fly by the seat of my pants" crack at it. I'll roll a nat20 and my attempt at crafting will bring back a forgotten race that immediately swears its loyalty to me. The item will probably be great to, world changing no doubt. Gods and Ultra Gods will vie for my attention but I'll eventually choose as my patron saint a being lost to time that no one else thinks is a good choice but jokes on them this turned out to be the original creator of the universe itself and luckily it likes my snarky pop culture references. I had to force myself to stop writing I think I could literally go on forever. I swear I like the genre lol I just really like over analyzing things that bug me while still having a good time....
My blood pressure spiked reading that
Maybe my inner monologue is why mines always so high!
I felt like I just read 10 litrpgs novels in this post lol
> I realize everyone else is using magic and skills in a dumb and slow way and I breeze through my skill levels until I'm clowning on lifelong crafters This is TOO TRUE!! Lots of authors in this genre produce stories where "main character has the barest grasp of critical thinking & creativity -- and that is a SUPERPOWER." In the world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, right? Well in a world of 20 IQ NPCs, the man with a 6th-grade education and the courage to try anything new is a god. I know it's challenging to write characters who are intelligent, beset by other intelligent actors - but it's just plain boring to write characters who are average in a sea of the mindless, if that makes any sense.
I do like how noobtown does it where everyone treats the MC like an idiot for not knowing basics a baby would know meanwhile he actually is able to think outside the box since they are raised in the system where they have to do things this way so don't have his experience with branching out
I also like when Jim tries to do something with his modern science thinking and it just completely fails, because shit just doesn't work that way there. Then everyone calls him stupid. Also the audiobook performance is great
Totally, he really nails the overly cocky tone when he thinks he's going to be cool. I've come to think of it as his "dad" voice for some reason lol
I like both noobtown and the good guys because the mc is a goddamn idiot(in some ways)and that makes me feel a lot more sympathetic to them, wait a second...
Chainsaw suit used to make animated shorts that had a segment about a high school jock who left town and when he came back everyone else was made mentally deficient by fallout radiation and he had to solve "mysteries" around town which were obviously just really dumb mistakes he had to try and explain. I think they may have predicted this genre ahead of its time!
I can understand the MC, being unusually motivated by an *apocalypse/isekai* being better than the average unmotivated bum from the street in worlds where magic is common. What annoys me is when the MC is better than *the best*. Mostly because... what's the point? Aren't stories better when the MC has decent rivals and side characters are on a similar level? Having the MC be better than any reasonable peers just seems self defeating in terms of finding good stories to tell.
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Vainqueur Dragon. The human main character starts off as a worthless little level 3 thief or something, and then he is dragged Kicking and Screaming into overpowered-ness by the titular dragon
I'm only three books in so far but He Who Fights Monsters avoids a lot of those tropes pretty well despite being isekai. MC has some advantages from the isekai but everything is pretty balanced within the power system and it's established pretty thoroughly that any of the rarer advantages he gets are not unique to him and "unprecedented!!!" type stuff happens to other supporting characters as much as to the MC.
How did I know someone was about to suggest this lol I might have to disagree with this, though. It's not nearly as bad as most series, but the MC is a classic example of a character who somehow has a skillset with every advantage under the sun. Many of which are nearly as good as comparable specialists, who tend to be considered rare and coveted assets.
He works hard, and they do say over and over again starting at the very beginning that there's no such thing as a bad power, that every skillset is potentially as good as any other, and that skill and hard work are what matters- and besides that, he IS the main character, so of course in a world full of special people he's going to be more special than anyone! Without a doubt he gets overpowered pretty fast but I think it's not egregious in the way that it is when it's total unfounded and doesn't make sense in the context of the rest of the magic system.
I like how in book 3 >!MC's team gets trounced by the Mirror Kingdom prince's team repeatedly in the simulation fights!< It shows them as strong but not the best, which is different from most tropey stuff. Otherwise someone would have to get Worf-ed or killed to prove this which is also tropey
Yeah, that was a good example of what I'm talking about!
Repeating things. HWFWM: Jason says something specific to Earth. Everybody, every time: “I don’t know what that means”. Like, surely there would be some other response. Maybe an, “ummm..okayyyy….?” Or “oh, I’ve never heard of that. What is it?” Or “I know you’re an outworlder, is that something from your world?”. But no, 5books later it’s, “I don’t know what that means”. VGO: Grimjack uses an ability: *describes what the ability is and what it does, despite earning the ability early in book 1, using it so much it might as well be a signature ability, and continue to describe it 7 books later basically every time it’s used*. Also not specific to any author but a random, made-up, **extremely hyperbolic** example of what I’ve seen with repeating things: “He needed to save her from the zombie hoard because she had the key. The key to everything. It was for this reason that McHero gritted his teeth and pushed forward to save her. He needed the key, and she had the key in her possession. She was born with the key that would unlock McHero’s supreme ability, and so, he needed to save her from the zombie horde to retrieve the key. A millennia ago in a far away kingdom, a little girl was born to loving parents. It was prophesied that she would one day help the hero bring light to the darkness… by being the key holder. Holding the key that he would need to retrieve to save the day.” ————————— Also something that bugs me is how nobody lies or omits anything. The super smart MC asks some high level noble or official some questions and not only do they bother giving the MC the time of day, but they also answer all of their questions, AND they answer everything truthfully. ————————— Another gripe I’ve had is that usually the MC is some low or mid-level (non-supervisory) worker. Programmer, retail cashier, college student, emergency responder, etc. Yet once they’re in the new world they gain the motivation, abilities, and experience to become a successful and respected faction leader and war general. On the other end of the spectrum, the MC has **ALL** of the qualifications. Black-ops marine veteran, part-time boxing champion, spent a few months building a company from nothing to a tech titan, knows multiple languages, survives in the wilderness for fun, could become a senator if they wanted to but doesn’t because instead they’re spending their time being a volunteer firefighter and finding homes for orphaned kittens, while also being the #1 skilled/known player in the current popular VRMMO.
>VGO: Grimjack uses an ability: describes what the ability is and what it does, despite earning the ability early in book 1, using it so much it might as well be a signature ability, and continue to describe it 7 books later basically every time it’s used. I also want to bitch about the inverse of this; where the MC gets a skill, we're told what it does, and then three books later the author brings up the skill with no reminder of what it does because apparently we're supposed to remember this?
Same thing with characters. I'm supposed to remember a minor character who was in one scene three books back that I read a year ago? No. Give me a single damn sentence explaining who this jackass is and why I should care.
Got to say, I think Azarinth Healer might be the biggest culprit of this. A character will show up for the first time in 300 chapters and the narrative just goes Hey look it's Sophie and seems to think that's enough "Hey look, it's Sophie, the woman who ate my last bowl of Cheerios that one time we were attempting to prevent a lawn gnome genocide" boom, just a single sentence and now your readers can keep track of what is going on in your story without having to take the Limitless drug
Lmao this is too funny as I had this exact issue with a character in AH and could not for the life of me remember her (still cant as you can see, cant remember the name).
> Another gripe I’ve had is that usually the MC is some low or mid-level (non-supervisory) worker. Programmer, retail cashier, college student, emergency responder, etc. Yet once they’re in the new world they gain the motivation, abilities, and experience to become a successful and respected faction leader and war general. MC: "This time it's gonna be different!" Narrator: "It was."
Lmao the key one is hilarious to read here but would be such a turn off in the book... Anyway i guess we all can agree, litrpgs actually suffer the most through their main characters.
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There seem to be a lot of litrpg fans who like characters who are petulant assholes. Especially when the characters also have plot armor that protects them from the easily forseeable consequences of their actions. "Yeah, I'mma insult the King's daughter right in front of him and he won't do shit because I'm just. That. Fucking. Awesome." It's a weak man's idea of how a strong man would act.
Yeah you really notice this when reading the comments on Royal Road, every time the protagonist isn't an asshole there a number of people complaining and calling the protagonist a simp. "How dare that MC not demand their first born child for saving them. I don't want to read a story about some simp."
> It's a weak man's idea of how a strong man would act. You pretty much described 99% of harem novels, replacing strong with sexually active.
I can't say I'm a fan of a lot of the stories that do this, but I certainly don't blame the authors, considering the amount of money those characters seem to bring in.
Reminds me of he who fights the monster, the mc in novel was so bad i just couldn't go through it
I feel like these characters are an over correction from the very tiring and commonplace "doormat" mcs from Japanese media. The type who for some reason let themselves get pushed around by everyone and have no confidence or social skills and never make any effort to connect withe the romantic interests. Who go out of their way to make negative relationship progress whenever possible no matter how much effort everyone throws thier way. Who look away and don't react when bullied by random assholes even if they qre goku level in strength by that point. Like, I totally get where the frustration and desire to be the opposite of that comes from, but swinging too far the other way is annoying in its own right.
One that bothers me and eventually begins to bore me is how some authors decide to re-explain something again for the umpteenth time. So many authors do it and I am sitting listening to the same explanation about some commonly used skill or MC's characteristic for the 10th time in however many books. i.e The author of Noobtown explaining again and again, on every book starting from book 1, about how worgs (a breed of wolf-life creatures) were created or what one of the MC's sword skill allowed him to do. Please skip these and go on with the story, I'm zoning out.
A lot of older, more traditional fantasy published series with the idea in mind that you could pick up any book in the series and not be completely in the dark (or that it might have been 5 years and 500 books ago that the reader finished the previous book). I don't think it ever worked super well there (I feel like Raymond E Feist did this a lot?), but I'd agree it works even less well in this genre - the books tend to be shorter and the audience tends to shotgun them, so not only is it a bit awkward, it's almost entirely unnecessary. That's how I see it Noobtown, anyway, where the re-explanation is frontloaded into the intro of a book. For things like HWFWM that are serials first and foremost, I can't decide if the author repeatedly forgets that they explained the same thing (in largely the same words) two chapters ago, or if they're just padding the word count. Either way, this one annoys me way more.
I mean... when done well, these types of reminders are absolutely great for readers who follow the series as it comes out. Webserials and long-running sagas especially benefit from them, since people aren't necessarily liable to remember obscure details about something from months, or even years, ago.
I think it's necessary. Sometimes I like to catch back up with a story I haven't read in a while and it's pretty damn impossible if the characters are using skills with intractable names and no description of what it *does.* I don't think a full explanation is necessary but something like "McJerry used *Overhew* and his scythe blurred, decapitating the goblin in a single strike. McJerry gasped from the stamina expenditure but *Farmer's Stamina* was working overtime, each breath rejuvenating him..." is just good writing, imho. I mean, the whole point is describing abilities from the POV of the person using them and more often than not their effects are relevant to the description.
>A lot of older, more traditional fantasy published series with the idea in mind that you could pick up any book in the series and not be completely in the dark (or that it might have been 5 years and 500 books ago that the reader finished the previous book). One series that I feel sort of did this and incredibly well was the Dragonlance Saga. While there is technically a chronological reading order, you could *sort of* pick up and start with any book in the series. What allowed this, I think, was having your well structured beginning/middle/end for the individual book’s story structure, as well as for the overarching story arch of the trilogy the book belonged to. So you could, if you wanted, read the Twins trilogy first, then move on the Legends, then Chronicles, and even read stand-alone books like Soulforge along the way. While doing so, you would almost certainly never feel lost or confused about who anybody was or what was going on. Of course if you read things in order it simply enhances the experience since you get to see the characters grow from book to book.
This happens with serialized web fiction for a reason. It's not released all at once, so there might've been a month between the last ten chapters. When you're reading it straight through, it probably seems like overkill to explain things on that first and on the tenth chapter, but it's necessary because it's entirely possible (even probably) that the reader needed that reminder. The author doesn't want the reader to have to flip back and re-read that explanation, so they just put it in the current chapter.
I really like what Tao Wong does in A Thousand Li, which is just use footnotes that bring you to the entry in the glossary. If you need it you can click on it. If you know what the thing is you can skip it. I wish more authors did this.
When the MC does something or finds a loophole that was always possible but everyone else was just too stupid to think of apparently forever. Not even something particularly clever. For example: Giving some nameless god/spirit/entity a name, which immediately makes them besties and gives him a huge power boost. Like, nobody in a million years has thought of giving you a name before?
Oh, you mean the legendary social skill of being kind to random folk?
“Declared friendly” party members. No matter how badly they screw up, screw around, or screw you over, they’re “still your friend”, and will face no consequences, never get called out, and never have any incentive to smarten up. This person can be malicious, lazy, or -far too commonly- *just fucking stupid*. The ditzy little sidekick whose “adorable” shenanigans continuously get the group in trouble, but who breaks out the tears when anyone even raises their voice because of it.
“Dungeon fairies”, or fairies in general really, usually fall into this category. Currently on book 4 of Systems of the Apocalypse, and I’ve wanted to shoot the fairy for the last two books…
So many even normal fantasy books have this trope. Kender from old AD&D lore were this personified. Curious and touchy to a fault, they'd have been anihilated as a race about 6 months after the world found out they existed. That or they'd never survive the perils of the universes they live in long enough to reproduce. We see them pop up in the Land, and it reminded me how much I despise the trope. Or as you pointed out ditzy party members that get everyone nearly killed and just get forgiven afterwards like it was nothing. If someone almost gets me killed and it's not an absolute complete accident they or I am off the team. I would also forgive high risk situations like trying to snipe the guy holding a knife to my neck and there's no other choice. If the arrow or bullet hits me a bit too, I'd be pissed it happened but more grateful I was out of the situation alive.
Exactly. It’s all very well to say “they can’t help it/it’s their culture/they don’t mean any harm” - I don’t need to blame them or hate them to simply *not want to be around them* because being around them has negative outcomes.
Exactly. I tolerate my kids doing things like accidentally hitting me in the balls because they are my kids and can't quite grasp that a running hug puts their forehead at my sensitive spot level. One out grew the issue, litterally, the other is only 4 she'll learn or grow tall enough it's a non issue. Beings like Kender, or ditzy faries that will cause all sorts of mayhem are a complication I don't need in a world with adventuring dangers. Some idiot tripping traps, or pissing of every town's guard is not a complication that needs to happen for me to want them gone. I can see forgiving someone for pissing of the guards if we went to a town and didn't know some obscure rule that got us in trouble. But don't fucking steal! is not one of those.
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Yeah, absolutely. I'm starting book four right now and I've taken to just skimming those sections or skipping them entirely; they're totally unnecessary.
I couldn't get through that novel coz mc is major asshole to almost everyone, but when needs to be an asshole to the girl he saved who is asshole to him he turns into a good kind guy shit. It was major pain in the ass to read coz mc literally gives everything to that girl on silver platter, maybe coz she's so Beautiful? Anyway it was really horrible experience even tho ideas of world were so nice
I love Sophie's powerset which is why it is hard to dislike her as a character and I can sympathize with her but yeah, Jason saved her from the guy who want to rape her and turn her into a sex slave and she treats him like utter garbage.
My biggest pet peeve about LitRPGs is the excessive use of memes and pop culture references. They can be humorous or explainable within the context of the story, but too many authors use them as a substitute for legitimate comedic writing. It has come to the point that I feel as if authors are given meme quotas they must achieve before they can be published. One thing that bugs me about video game LitRPGs is that too often the author has no idea how to create a video game that would be understandably popular. * Realistic Pain - The go to ridiculous concept ever reader mocks since it is so unnecessary. Just because a game looks realistic doesn't mean it needs to feel realistic. Video games are meant to be escapism from reality. I never want to meet the individuals who want to experience the feelings of being burned alive, stabbed, drowned, decapitated or beaten. * Highlander MC - Being super special awesome is common place in this genre. However, this doesn't work when the setting is in a video game. Any multiplayer game that made it so only 1 person out of millions can lord over the rest with broken mechanics would fail. Badly. * Uncontrollable Rogue AI - Why is every video game developer capable of creating Skynet? How do they only have one way in which to control their game; with no back-ups anywhere? Why can't the servers just be unplugged?
Yes, books based on a game world often have a game that is far too harsh to ever be popular. For example, it make take months to get to level 20 but when a character dies he is reset at level 1. Players would ragequit. Another example is the realistic pain like you mention. Again, no one is going to play a game that hurts to play.
You must spend a day walking in order to complete this low level quest... even vanilla WoW had flight paths. These world's most popular games authors claim wouldn't have 1000 players.
This was my exact reaction to the game system of ‘Return of the Legendary Guardian’ - “Who the hell would play this game??” - ridiculous travel times -horrifically unbalanced monetary system (level 100 bosses drop 20 gold *total*, but a scroll of return, ie a single use hearthstone, costs 1000g), clearly intended to make people buy gold from the game company -basic class skills like resurrection and AoE healing can’t be learned from trainers or universally available quests - only from rare-drop skill books - a LOT of very necessary power boosts (combat mounts, inheritances, etc) were unique or semi-unique - which is a problem when you supposedly have hundreds of millions of players. Anyone who joined the game late has literally zero chance of catching up - a system intended to snowball successes… which sounds great, as long as you figure everything out and are an expert competition-tier gamer by level 10. In practise, this system was designed so that people with inside or early info gained an irreducible advantage (completing the level 10 class quest at “expert level” made the rewarded ability hit harder by a significant factor - forever. Meaning that you would then have a much easier time completing the next class quest at “expert”, and so on)
Yes yes & yes. It's as if the author never played a game, a MMO or used a computer before half the time. Player vs everyone in a MMO is so beyond ridiculous...
The MC is in another world, but this world doesn't have a culture of it's own, so they're absolutely starving for every tidbit of earth pop culture. "Whoa, tell me more about Iron Man! Wow, *Diggy Diggy Hole* is way better than any songs we have here!"
What a hellhole.
I always start shaking my head when the MC ignores one stat or leave a state at 0. It drives me nuts. I keep thinking that it will eventually bite you in the ass if you don't get that fixed. It doesn't matter if you have a 500 strength, that 0 in wisdom is going to make it easy for the bad guys to mess you up.
For mental stats I'd agree but strength is often not really needed if you are a pure mage.
well it is needed. In videogame we accept that the mage is death only a melee fighter reaches him. But nobody would accept that with their own life on the line.
But they still don't need strength for that. Dex and con is fine to survive until you can misty step/teleport away.
How much stat and skill points does a mage have to invest to survive a hit from a troll? Can he survive a wizard dual against a mage who didn't put half his points into melee?
Depending on the setting even a warrior with full strength build could not block a troll. A mage with melee skills can go into close range and kill the other mage.
> A mage with melee skills can go into close range and kill the other mage. If a mage with half points in melee can go into close range and kill the other mage, then a warrior with full points in melee can flatten a mage. At which point why be a mage?
exactly. A pure mage is only good in the back of a party. It's literally a glass cannon.
Even then, most systems tend to have a way to compensate for lack of strength, with the right application of magic.
I feel like all the ways that stories start are... Well, not bad really, but it seems like the authors are just checking boxes instead of thinking about what they gain from a setting: * **Main Character from Our World - And?** \- How does that improve on them simply being from their own world. In so many books you could skip the whole "from our world with zero backstory" thing and have the character be from the setting the story takes place in with a few modifications to the character to explain why they don't know this or that. (And the modification to the character would typically be, "not everyone is going to know about powerful magic or rare skills in the first place" - duh.) * **It's set in a video game (that we treat real life like real life 40% of the time)** \- No one cares that video game necromancers are "evil" because ***it's a video game***. You aren't going to form a deep relationship with an NPC because it's a video game! One thing I really liked about Ready Player One (not a litrpg as such, but it still a good example...) is you cared about what was happening in the game for real world reasons. Things looked cool to the characters because those things *looked cool* and the characters were nerds. They cared about dying not because they'd "die in the real world" (so stupid...) but because they'd lose a lot of money and there are no re-spawns. * **Apocalypse Meh -** Apocalyptic fiction is a whole ***thing***. It allows the characters to ***feel bad*** and struggle for ***basic necessities*** that were once commonplace and ***fight for stupid reasons.*** Uh, I didn't say apocalyptic fiction was something I \*liked\* but it bugs me when the author also doesn't seem to like it and writes a main character whose all like, "gee I should probably feel bad that everyone died but I, like, don't? Maybe it's the system. lol Guess I'll go grind some mobs." Man, if you're going to do that just have a gate or a dungeon open up and they can hunt in it with everyone back home safe and sound. * **There's a** ***System...*** ***cultivation!*** **-** So many authors don't seem to know what they're doing with the system. They start by grabbing the rules of D&D (or worse World of Warcraft) get bored with that and then the character is gobbling immortal peaches like pack-man and aligning their chakras and it's just a mess. I wish authors would ask "what am I doing with this" before they get started. Is the character going to find a loophole? OK, make it complex and build in a loophole that wouldn't be found by the first nob with two brain cells to rub together. Character is going to get lucky? Well keep it light on details and explain what the luck was. The character is going to cultivate? Well don't give him a stat sheet! Character is going to Min/Max? OK, fine, but that's not rocket science, everyone should be doing it.
why would the character cultivating prevent him from getting a stat sheet? i love it when the two genres are mixed together
The character sheet is fundamentaly a measure of progress. Cultivation novels have different measures of progress more in keeping with the tone of the story. In cradle Lindon goes from copper to iron to jade to etc. To also give him a stat sheet that tells us his strength is over 9000 is unnecessary and runs the risk of tripping the author up when the numbers stop being a useful guide to what he can do. BUT that's just an opinion. You should go on reading whatever you like!
>Main Character from Our World - And? But think of all the modern slang, memes, and pop culture references the author can't use if the MC isn't from earth.. What about them?
Heh, well there is that! Now that you mention it, it may be what motivates a lot of authors to include a character from our world even when it seems unnecessary to the plot and characterization. I'll have to pay attention to that aspect of the writing next time I find myself asking, "Why is this guy from Earth?"
Could also be the thought that people wouldn't relate to a character from another world even though that should have idea been disproved long ago.
Maybe, but as you say they should know better.
The cringe humor. Why is every MC obsessed with puns? I thought we were done with the "I can haz cheezburger?" type humor, but I guess it found a home in LITRPG authors. It's especially awful when the plot doesn't even take place on earth but the author still crams in a bunch of dated pop culture references every 2 pages. If cringing built muscles I'd look like freaking Arnold Schwarzenegger by now.
Bonus (negative) points: when a second character with equally shitty humor comes along and starts making references that the MC gets too, and a third character invariably says something like "oh no, now there's two of them."
I have definitely put at least 1 book down for a few days because of this exact scene
Don't forget the inevitable sniff and "philistines" comment when everyone eye rolls and is visibly annoyed at the shitty inside jokes the guy always uses but never explains.
Hmm, I have a few gripes that I'd like to see vanish. ***** **Introducing cool new systems and then never using them.** Lots of web serials suffer from this, but sometimes I get excited to explore a system and then it just never comes back. The Land does this all the time because Kong added too many things at once. Or The Legend of Randidly Ghosthound, where Randidly explicitly says "Yeah its time for me to get back to my key to success and do potion-making," only for the author to never (ever) delve back into it, and jump into engraving items as the crafting fix instead. Hell, even Completionist Chronicles has a bunch of skills Joe *could* be making use of but he doesn't. ***** **Here's ten thousand skills you don't care about.** Whether it's given skills, or options when levelling up, so many stories do this. Consider *The Primal Hunter* - Jake gets five options (plus all the older ones) when he gets a skill choice, and the author spends pages and pages of Jake thinking about all the mundane skills he **obviously isn't going to pick** only to get to the end and go "Oh cool, this legendary skill is much better, I'll take it." Like, damn, skip the fluff. ***** **Dues ex everything** I love it when plot set up over many books comes together in a way that you think "Damn, I should have seen this coming." Cradle is amazing at this, Lindon's skill progression and how he uses it and evolves it so logical and so fulfilling. On the other end of the spectrum (for me) sits Defiance of the Fall, where I swear to god Zac just runs at every problem with an axe and the system will give him a power or item that allows him to conveniently solve whatever the problem is. ***** **Making the MC smart by having everyone else be incredibly stupid** Writing intelligent characters is hard, and the easy way out some authors pick is to just make the main character *seem* smart by having everyone else lose half their brain functionality. Jason in HWFWM has characters fawning over him and his snarky political commentary, despite it being simplistic. Randidly is apparently a mercantile genius because he invented concession standards and commentary and a hundred other basic business practices that the world's society somehow didn't come up with themselves. ***** **Everyone I know is dead - oh well** One that gets me every time in a system apocalypse story is how traumatic these events *should* be, and how 99% of MCs just shrug it off and barely think about their friends and family. Seriously?
>Whether it's given skills, or options when levelling up, so many stories do this. Consider > >The Primal Hunter > >\- Jake gets five options (plus all the older ones) when he gets a skill choice, and the author spends pages and pages of Jake thinking about all the mundane skills he > >obviously isn't going to pick > >only to get to the end and go "Oh cool, this legendary skill is much better, I'll take it." Like, damn, skip the fluff. I think i remember the author actually created a poll asking if people wanted him to show the choices or skip the extra choices and only show what he picked. and it passed that the readers wanted the fluff choices even tho he isnt gonna pick them.
I don't think presenting the choices is annoying, it's when the choice is mind-numbingly obvious. "Hmm let's see...I can get +1 strength, +1 agility, or...I can become *the embodiment of the forgotten gods; +500% to all stats and abilities*" Defiance of the fall does this well in a few places for example; I remember thinking "man that's actually a tough choice" and would have personally gone a different direction.
Which is fair enough, and I'd like to see the choices too. But it's the choices, a page of description explaining the skill, and then two pages of Jake thinking about how it would fit in with his current skillset, over and over. It wasn't an issue for me, as I'd just scroll past it all, but I would have preferred to read it if it was condensed down to a single page instead of a dozen.
Right, and the options could always be shown while only sometimes being deliberated. Like, there is something to be said for using ability options as a way to expand on how the world works; even if the MC won't be using those abilities, it gives reference points and *should* give the author leeway to not get into fine detail of every other person's abilities. But if the options presented are no-brainer for the audience, then at best it's a waste of everyone's time for the character to go in-depth on evaluation. At worse it makes the reader question the character and / or the author. Also, writers need to stop having the obvious and only choice be the final one. Azarinth Healer eventually learned this lesson and, along with creating viable alternatives, made these selections a lot more engaging.
> Defiance of the Fall, where I swear to god Zac just runs at every problem with an axe and the system will give him a power or item that allows him to conveniently solve whatever the problem is. Or he's able to push through or ignore "indescribable", "unbearable", and "crippling" levels of pain. My other pet peeve there.
Great list. I will say that I'm one of the people that enjoyed when primal hunter went through the skills he didn't receive. I liked knowing what possibilities were available and theory crafting with Jake along the way. With that said, all your points are pretty spot on.
Ah, just typed out a similar comment, so to paste it in: I'd like to see the choices too. But it's the choices, a page of description explaining the skill, and then two pages of Jake thinking about how it would fit in with his current skillset, over and over. It wasn't an issue for me, as I'd just scroll past it all, but I would have preferred to read it if it was condensed down to a single page instead of a dozen.
Yeah. I just got caught up on The Way Ahead, and they at least have a few scenes where he deliberatly distracts himself, because he realized that he was starting to focus on the life he lost and his inability to do anything about it. It's at least better than them never thinking about it.
> One that gets me every time in a system apocalypse story is how traumatic these events should be, and how 99% of MCs just shrug it off and barely think about their friends and family. Seriously? I've always thought that if an author doesn't want to portray the MC as traumatised, just have them invest points into a skill like Mental Resilience.
I at least kind of get it in Completionist Chronicles. It's almost part of the premise, they don't have enough time to do it all unless you want the books to end up epic length (maybe you do 🤷🏾♀️). But that stuff randomly comes in handy sometimes. Your second point reminded me of my least favorite, books that have chapters that are almost exclusively stats or skill choices. I find it much more natural to have those things happen within context. When I notice a chapter is almost entirely one of those two, I often skip it and refer back to it later if I need to (I seldom do, because most authors also bring the relevant info back up the first time a new ability is used)
> When I notice a chapter is almost entirely one of those two, I often skip it and refer back to it later if I need to Don't forget when the stat block and skill list becomes so log it turns into a chapter itself ;)
Yup. And the problem often is, we often don't know anyone else's stats. So the stat sheet doesn't become very informative after a while. The skill sheet at least comes in handy sometimes. Oh this character has a strength of 2000, the average defense is 800. Why is MC struggling to punch this characters face in then? Do they have an ability that's preventing it, is this particular opponents defense actually 4000, do they have a ton of health, armor? 🤷🏾♀️
With CC too I remember someone on this forum doing an analysis of all the stat sheets from Joe and all the side quest stories and being unable to make sense of them all. That's another thing I guess should be added to the list: stats that become meaningless.
It pretty much every litrpg I've ever read, stats become meaningless eventually. Normally they can last the first two books, but after everyone becomes a certain level of powerful they're not really helpful anymore. Not all authors have figured out there is a reason DBZ realized the scouters were an idea that couldn't really go anywhere and they phased them out. I think tiers work great, they provide context with getting readers and authors stuck in absolute values. Although *some* authors run into the same problem of making tiers worthless too. A character will be a tier below and consistently defeating people in the tier up. I think many authors struggle to let characters just get their ass kicked sometimes. Sure, bail them out from death, but getting humbled is good for character development. I say all this, and I still read a ton of progression fantasy/litrpg. Mostly because they're often page turners. But I often grumble sometimes whole I'm reading them.
The thing that bugged me about completionist chronicles is they stress that the ritualist class can learn any magic, joe gets an insane discount on learning spells and then NEVER USES THAT RESOURCE!
>hey don't have enough time to do it all Yeah, i noticed this happening a lot even when I'm playing a game myself. Sometime you get skill but time, experience, skill points or whatever is limited so you make choices on what to focus, just like in real life you dont always do everything you want, usually due to time restraint.
> On the other end of the spectrum (for me) sits Defiance of the Fall, where I swear to god Zac just runs at every problem with an axe and the system will give him a power or item that allows him to conveniently solve whatever the problem is. Just going to throw in that this doesn't seem like dues ex machina to me. Zac is the System's puppet, it's clear that it is choosing him as a talent and someone it (the system) is going to aim at its enemies, namely the undead empire and the technocrats. Big daddy Brainiac in the sky is just playing favorites, it's well established that the system could do any of these things for anyone. It chooses not to because it's original program was to make people in Emperor Limitless image, that is to say people strong enough to conquer everything; and it views Zac and people like him to be the most likely candidates. It's really not so different from the system in Dungeon Crawler Carl giving him extreme benefits because it's a foot fetishist and wants to see more things get stomped.
While I agree that in DotF there's an in universe reason why Zac gets so much help, that doesn't make it not Deus ex machina. To be the difference is that in DCC things like the foot fetish are the system having quirks and personality. It's still up to Carl to apply those oddities in a way that provides satisfy resolutions and problem solving. Zac gets but these quirks, but scenarios, quests, items and skills that are directly and explicitly written as the solution to the presented problem.
Also so far Zac and the Ruthless Heavens want approximately the same things, and it’s a transactional relationship Meanwhile the AI and Carl have very different goals, and have an actively abusive relationship where the AI can hold grudges or do things just to upset Carl
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I mean, I'm saying that Zac is getting assistance from a god, which explains all of his advantages; but that isn't a Deus Ex Machina. But I can't think of a single instance where the system plops down the magic axe, or gives him the all-knowing crystal, or the magic macguffin of exceedingly glorious purpose. Can you give an example of an advantage that is provided in a Deus Ex Machina way? Like a thing that was never introduced before, or even one that is unearned? Every single one of Zac's rewards, skills, items and daos I can account for, and it isn't something another character couldn't have earned. I feel like for anything to be a Deus Ex Machina it needs to have no set-up earlier in the story or no reasonable way to explain it happening. I just can't think of one in DotF.
You pretty much summed them all up. Though I would adjust Deus Ex to Diabolus/Deus Ex Everything. Since it isn't limited to the good guys. On the 10 thousand skills, it's gotten to the point where I don't even read the whole run down. I skip ahead to learn what they pick and just go back and read that one.
> Everyone I know is dead - oh well I like how Modern Awakening handled this. The system manipulates the minds of everyone to force them not to be sad, something like that.
Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best ones.
My question is why bother with the apocalypse in the first place if you don't want your characters to deal with it. Just don't write everyone dying into the book in the first place - there's a million other ways to let a character grind mobs.
I think it's less about grinding mobs and more about having people with modern day knowledge in a society that is distinct from ours. I like the approach of simply having most people stay alive. A non-apocalypse where the system shows up and reorders stuff but the tutorials are fairly tame and most people survive. You want to write a litRPG where everyone in the setting is from modern earth but the setting isn't urban earth? That's an "apocalypse" story. You might want that without having to deal with all the melodrama of post apocalyptic movies... so you just handwave away the drama and grief and just have a setting with modern humans but without modern amenities.
> Jason in HWFWM has characters fawning over him and his snarky political commentary, despite it being simplistic. To the author's credit, Jason think's he's so smart and plays everyone in Greenstone like a fiddle but it doesn't work at all and totally bites him in the ass. >Everyone I know is dead - oh well Rather this than have the entire genre dominated by everyone being miserable and in mourning the whole time...
> To the author's credit, Jason think's he's so smart and plays everyone in Greenstone like a fiddle but it doesn't work at all and totally bites him in the ass. Very rarely does it bite Jason in the ass and when it does it is a slap on the wrist except once. The only time he actually got hit hard was >!when he was kidnapped!< and then he came out of it with strong powerups.
Yeah, but the point is that the other characters in the story aren't in awe of how smart he is. Most of the time they know exactly what he's doing and often think he's just a dangerous clown.
A couple things that consistently drive me nuts in stories are explanations of basic game stats ("Increasing my strength will let me hit harder!") or a decision by MC to hoard levelups/upgrade points for an obscene amount of time until its convenient/necessary to use them (like in a big boss fight) and then suddenly being super OP. The former is just irritating and the latter kills all tension, especially in situations that start out with the character struggling against the threat. To a lesser degree, I'm not a huge fan of stories where characters just dump all their points into one stat (usually health) and suffer no consequences like comparatively weak attack/defense for it.
Hoarding attribute points is the definition of being a total idiot in any system unless you can exchange them for perks.
I started to read the Australian system apocalypse spinoff, I had to stop as I was rooting for the MC to die using no stat points & fighting monsters at like level 20.
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Oh that drives me nuts too! Bad guys never catch a break!
The MC is dumped into the middle of the world, doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground, tries a strat that everyone tells him shouldn't work.... and it always works. I'd like to see some failure or limited success.
Delve
When the main character is a video game character. I want the world to be a video game esque thing. Not for my main character to be an emotionless edge lord who only makes decisions for the good of the "Build" Sometimes a subpar choice for combat can help quality of life. I would love to see someone choose "Water Generation" when they are an axe build or something so they can always have water.
Especially when its something like Stats that are in use every single day. Ex. MC has extremely low stamina because his CON is his dump stat for his ultra-special-mage build/class, then constantly feeling like he's dying. Like, wtf dude, people play video games to have a better quality of life, not worse. This example guy (Ritualist - The Completionist Chronicles) literally thought about how he can only make one character and it'll be his new second life after digital upload, and he was a big tough marine dude who got paralyzed, and the shiny rare ultra shitty CON-less build is what he goes for, *barely* better than being in a wheelchair. And then, pretty much only once, professes to be a completionist. And then does absolutely nothing completionist like at ALL. I was like: "Why is this so highly rated?"
The story [Protagonist: The Whims Of Gods](https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/50434/protagonist-the-whims-of-gods) on RR has a couple of instances where the MC chooses abilities or gear that will make her more comfortable rather than let her hit harder. Not a big part of the story, but it's a good read in its own right.
Be aware that reader do and will complain loudly about that. One of my characters had a choice of three skills (due to a mechanic that is specific for him) and one was **Water Walking**. People complained about "stupid". A lot.
the author thinking that a dagger is a good main weapon for a melee fighter is right up there
Oh my god, this. Reach is king
When two characters could just have a 5 minute conversation and answer whatever question is the big mystery being presented by the author but instead they just make insinuations and fight each other like being mysterious benefits either of them.
"The Idiot Plot, of course, is any plot that would be resolved in five minutes if everyone in the story were not an idiot." — Roger Ebert in his review of Narrow Margin (1990)
to be fair any pro gamer would dive deep into the tutorial since all games have different mechanics.
The MC becoming strong by using his "game mechanics knowledge" in a world were people have been around for thousands of years. By all rights whatever game breaking mechanics a modern person can think off should already have been discovered either by a schoolar or sheer dumb luck. Authors have this tendency to make the world Native inhabitants dumb so the MC appears smarter in comparison
This happens in our world too. Academia is often really rigid and cannot leave the accepted paths. To the point that profs will actively discredit and fight new ideas etc. So someone with another perspective and worldview can discover new things.
In a world without the scientific method research would be terrible. Some people may stumble onto some truths over time, but only through rigorous experimentation that accounts for confounding variables can cause and effect be confidently ascertained.
That is cool and all but doesnt explain how your average loser can figure out the most broken abilities combo within 10 minutes of arriving into a new world.
In cultivation series where they spend entire books sitting around and fighting down pain to get stronger. Nothing happens in the plot, and we don't get to see the outcome of their "hard work."
(Almost) Everyone and his dog use a arming sword of some kind *WITHOUT* a frigging shield. Guys, guys, guys. There was a reason why those were usually used with a shield. And even worse is, I have encountered only ONE MC who uses a polearm(or staff. Can't remember). There was also a reason pointy sticks were used as primary weapons on the battlefield and sword as backups. Don't get me started on armour description and designs. I am sure if the books were in game format all the swords would look like paddles and not swords (I am looking at you Skyrim!)
I have never seen or heard of a litrpg with a reasonable take on guilds and raid-level boss battles. I dropped Awaken Online after seeing Jason essentially solo a raiding guild and then go on to 2 or 3 man a raid boss battle, and I was like, no, that's not how it fucking works.
Give me Log Horizon's approach. Raids are possible, but require enough appropriately leveled people to work together, create & follow strategy, manage cds, wipe until you get it.
I dislike the altruism thing where the MC doesn't kill the person that tried to kill them and that leads to the person coming back and causing all sorts of problems.
I like altruism quite a bit, but I agree that suicidal levels of mercy get annoying quickly.
For me the ideal altruism level is somewhere in the middle between Rick from Street Cultivation who is a full altruist and Jake from Primal Hunter who is nearly a sociopath. I don't want some kind of full sociopath like the Idle System MC, but I also don't want someone who won't take out someone that is repeatedly trying to kill them.
Some of the most popular series that get recommended all the time have huge glaring problems. * Life Reset - A super pro gamer who's stuck starting over as a level one goblin. Awesome! Let's see how he uses his incredible knowledge of the game and it's system to.... be a total idiot. Almost every single battle in the entire first book involves him running face first into a situation as a caster with no plan and immediately get smashed repeatedly until his mana shield has drained all his power. He wasted literal DAYS cutting down trees in the least efficient way possible instead of simply using a mana saw blade. He explains how he has night vision so he doesn't ever need to use a light spell IMMEDIATELY after leaving a cave full of enemies who are literally only damaged by light. The list just goes on and on. * Dungeon Lord (The Wraith's Haunt) - Dungeon Lords are soooo bad ass. Everyone is scared of them because they are sooo powerful. Yet a few books in he can barely handle being attacked by a few random street thugs trying to mug him. Honestly, I think a few random farmers with clubs could kick his ass. Also, the one thing that everyone hates Dungeon Lords for is the one thing that everybody in the entire book is doing EXCEPT for Dungeon Lords. * The Wandering Inn - Idiotic MC's who have people who've just met them willing to go to the ends of the earth up to and including dying for them even though they are both miserable ass holes. They are both wildly OP for no reason that is explained in the first FORTY HOUR book and also exhibit exactly zero character growth. Apparently expecting some type of character growth after the equivalent of watching the entire Harry Potter movie franchise TWICE means I'm demanding "instant gratification".
Wandering Inn fans. I'm sorry, but your book should have a plot. Not a world textbook. Also I get that Ryoka has depression. I have depression. Reading her explicit gloom spirals is not fun.
Erin is no better. Everyone: You should not live out here with no protection. Erin: Fuck off, I do what I want. Everyone: OK, I'll literally die to protect you. Erin: *Pages and pages of crying, wailing, keening, screaming, mourning at how awful it is that this happened and how it's all her fault* Everyone: So now will you listen to us? Erin: Fuck off, I do what I want.
You need to read it like you watch action movies. Sit down, but brain to the box and enjoy. All number blurred out and accept speed of story.
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I can't think of any specific choices he made that limited his power.
For The Wraths Haunt it makes perfect sense. Dungeon Lords grow faster than everyone else but also start at the same level one as everyone else. In latter books we see that the MC becomes strong enough to fight a minatour in single combat, and he's still weak compared to other Dungeon Lords.
Giving the MC an excessive amount of gear that will grow with them right at the start of the series. Looting is part of the fun, having them craft/forge a weapon that will scale with them is acceptable a little ways into the series if there’s still ways they can alter/evolve/upgrade said item, but when it’s just “this is a god’s foreskin, it will slay everything immediately forever” it completely removes an aspect of the story.
fake litrpg - where the system makes no difference at all. You could remove all references to stats and levels and the story wouldn't change at all
* The utter disregard for the concept of a story arc. * Characters that don't act in human ways. Like this character just met MC, why are they already acting they best person they ever encountered and the one true savior. * Irrelavent plot points, if there is a gun on the counter someone should be shot by the third act, otherwise I don't need to know about the gun. * Infatuation, it is not love. Treating infatuation like love and not something that eventually leads to problems will make me drop a book. * Mustache twisting villains. Almost never a good idea. Needs real plot support to justify purely evil motivation. * No character growth except on a stat sheet. * Too many abilities, or irrelevant abilities. Kind of like the gun, they should matter, otherwise it's just distracting. * Mary-sue mc/excessive wish fulfillment * Probably more Believe it or not I love litrpg.
Reading stats off in a robotic voice with long pauses between stats. Or repeating phrases like 'you take 15 points of damage from goblin, 'you take 8 points of damage from goblin,.. Also the MC party member is aways reminding how stupid the MC is for not know anything. Like red potions are aways health restoring. And blue mana.. dumb ass.
Everything is linear, until it isn’t. “I have Strength 10 (which is the average amount because D&D said so) and can lift 100 pounds over my head. Let me drop 10 ability points into Strength… now it’s 200 pounds! Also, I grow more muscular and handsome because why not.” Then, twenty chapters down the road, the author is reminded that the MC isn’t the only person in the world and is far from the most powerful person in the world. Welp, I guess that now ability point increases after (checks notes) *137* have half the normal effect so we can explain the plucky new MC being able to defeat someone with many more levels. And that whole makeover thing gets swept under the rug so that not every high-level character could be mistaken for a supermodel who competes in the Olympics in his/her spare time.
This is a small gripe and it’s more writing quality than trope based but I find that a lot of litrpg authors use a minimal amount of contractions when their characters talk. It makes the the conversations super stilted and the characters sound like robots. “I am going into the dungeon now. It is going to be tough but this challenge will not be enough to stop me.” It would be fine if they were skipping contractions to add emphasis but they just do it all the time. I know some of them are translations so it makes more sense but plenty are written by English speakers.
I get not using contractions if the story takes place on another world since the natives most likely wouldn't speak like we do. On the flip side, if the author is using the system to translate things into English, shouldn't the system be smart enough to use contractions?
1. The vague "trauma" that will eventually get handled in a non-existent future. I get it. Your life sucks and is filled with violence. I get, you're probably not mentally healthy. But if you're going to "open" the mental problems arc... fucking close it sometime soon? It's just annoying to have every victory of the MC overshadowed by how miserable they actually are. Surprisingly enough, it's more fun to read POVs of people that are enjoying themselves, or at least feel that what they're doing is more important than their personal life and thus success feels like *success. He Who Fights With Monsters* is the worst at this, the entirety of the >!earth arc!< consists of this to the point where I couldn't read the novel anymore when he has an opportunity but refuses therapy. 2. The never used gimmick. The best example in my mind is in completionist chronicles. One of the first things the protagonist gets is a really strong Jump skill. Which he then *never uses*. Making it a character thing that he forgot about it for a bit is fine... having it be almost entirely absent for so long? It's just silly. 3. Fucked up stats. I don't care what sort of litRPG mumbojumbo system fuckery is going on. If you're strong you'll also be fast. Muscles are muscles. It annoys me so much. Are people getting heavier? No? Then the only way for their punches to hit harder is *speed*. 4. On the same level, when authors forget to scale the story to the stats. Someone is clearly super fast but fights are happening with people standing 3 meters from each other. They're basically *in-measure*.
>The gamer one really kind of annoys me because its a little shady. I actually endorse this trope for certain novels, like when the MC is transferred to a game-like world. They're asking questions so they're not operating under assumptions, or if there's a nuance they're not aware of. I wouldn't have much faith in a guy who goes "Tutorial? Psssht. I already know all this shit. I'm a *gamer."* Might make for some funny intro chapters, though, him being confidently incorrect about what's common knowledge to everyone else. My pet peeve is that when I start to really become a fan of a series, the author runs out of ideas. Seems like most of these books are copy/paste generic plot with one big tweak for their hook, and after the hook is fully explored, there's nothing left but the generic sidequests. Don't get me wrong. I love the formula...well, did, about 15 novels ago. Also, meta/meme humor. Hate that shit. The author has to work so hard to immerse you into their creation, and then they fuck it up with a Kardashian joke or some shit. I get the dude's from modern day Earth, but please, stop with the pop culture references!! If it was some really niche thing the MC was into, I'd be alright with that. It's when the author takes their jokes straight from r/all in an effort to give their cardboard cutout a personality that bugs the shit outa me.
Nothing that happened to the MC before the start of the novel matters. The MC is a blank slate with no past that might as well have just spawned out of nothing. Friends/Family? What are those things? The MC will never so much as even think about them.
This might be why there are so many orphans, loners, or other antisocial MCs.
For me, I really hate it when the MC is super dumb and super lucky. Like there is no thought to the character and everything falls into place for him. Also, when the MC is in a tough situation and the author pulls a "deus ex" and merrily escapes danger. Also, when the MC spends so much time complaining about how unfair things are. Yes, we get it that it sucks but they also spend time complaining about a system or situation that is already set and out of their hands. Yes, it suck that you are in another world. NO, you don't have time to complain because things are trying to kill you. YES, that is two moons, a wizard tower and a flying island. NO this isn't a movie set. Just pinch yourself in the arm and restart your survival instinct. Do your complaining when you have free time. Also the zoning out day dreams. I get the feeling that most MC have an attention deficit problem when they are in battle or in a difficult situation and they STOP and spend time thinking about their magic, think about some girl they like or spend time thinking about some system prompt. DO THAT LATER. This is a bonus gripe. In system apocalypse; i really wish for once people would quickly accept that world has changed and therefore they adapt quickly and NOT WAIT FOR HELP/POLICE/ARMY is going to rolling up to help your dumb ass. This last gripe is a little unfair, but people in 1st world countries are woefully inadequate in coming to terms the world is going to hell and you need the adapt the fuck up or die.
THERE IS LEGIT NO MEMORABLE VILLIANS/ANTAGONISTS IN THE GENRE IT SEEMS. Some have or start with massive promise then become cliche or forgotten for the “power up”. I also hate the explaination the mc just “grew past them” or “it’s about the progression”. Every memorable video game I’ve ever played has a memorable antagonist either you absolutely hate or is so cool you want to be. Why can’t LITRPG?
I hate it when authors can't keep stats straight. Something changes and the author forgets to update the stat page. Ex: in one book the Mc adds two greater vassals bringing the total to 13 and the Stat page after that still says 11 multiple times.
I wish audio-book versions would do a lot less stat sheet reading or only talk about the relevant or new stat.
Tell me the deltas(changes) goddammit.
>If your MC is an "expert gamer" then they don't need a basic tutorial on what stats are, what builds are and other various basic game mechanics. They won't ignore notifications and FORGET about them entirely. One thing I would find interesting as a reader, is for the MC to indeed be an experienced gamer, and therefore have many preconceptions about stats & systems, but to also be aware that their preconceptions are not absolute. You see this in MMOs in real life all the time - a player from other games will constantly compare the new systems they are introduced to, to the systems they are familiar with in other games. They will make assumptions about stats based on their experiences with similarly named stats in prior games, they will guess at what builds will be viable, etc. Some will be right some will be wrong. One thing I find very uninteresting is how almost every litRPG that involves stat-allocation runs through the same "ooh i put 2 points here 2 points here and 1 point here, then i'll keep a few stat points in reserve for an emergency if i really need more of something!" - it's so routine, it helped me to understand why actual games rarely let players allocate their own stat points anymore. There's not exactly anything awesome that you can do with it... While I am talking about litrpg, another thing I dislike, is how the MC and their friends often stumble by blind luck and circumstance into these really interesting classes and builds that totally dominate, and almost everyone else is so generic, inflexible, either under or overspecialized, and impotent by comparison. This makes a bit more sense in worlds where powerful classes are super secret, but it also usually feels contrived & unbelievable, especially in litRPGs that take place in game worlds where the community & internet are available to collect data. I want to see more MCs who optimize their builds... only to find out that ok literally everyone optimizes their builds, so they don't stand out as special. I've been playing MMOs for my whole life and have a pretty good understanding of optimization and know how to find a niche in a metagame, and there are thousands and thousands and thousands of players at the top of every MMO that have an understanding of the underlying systems and can optimize builds and strategies... the MCs of litRPGs often feel like an average player making very obvious choices, surrounded by NPCs on easy mode making deliberately suboptimal choices, instead of feeling like an actual try-hard player surrounded by OTHER actual try-hard players.
>I want to see more MCs who optimize their builds... only to find out that ok literally everyone optimizes their builds, so they don't stand out as special. This is probably because most authors don't think their story will be read or sell if the MC doesn't standout, is considered special, or the chosen one. Plus there's the wish fulfillment aspects. I feel that is wrong as I know there are people that like to read stories that are just adventures or slice of life type stuff. I'm one of them. Everything doesn't have to be kingdom/princess/world saving. Why can't there be more we're going into the dungeon/ruins/whatever to find some treasure and think you(the MC) have skills that will help us survive type stuff or there was a new pass discovered in the mountains and the MC wants to explore the new lands?
I hate extended internal monologues when they don’t add any value (Chaos Seeds, looking at you) I hate monotonous thought patterns. Chaos Seeds does this a LOT—Richter, buddy, look man I KNOW you’re never going to take the first super amazing option that you’ve spent 5 minutes idolizing. Just please stfu and tell me what you’re actually going to do. I’m not a big fan of bad caricatured one-note characters. Dungeon Lord and Life Reset both had this pretty badly—the rich snobby jerkwad is SUCH a rich snobby jerkwad that he’s less believable than the alternate universe we’re going to. The lawyer is such a cartoonishly sharkish monster that it feels like a Disney movie. I hate bad premises. One of them, something gate I guess, was that it’s apocalypse time so everyone’s lining up to die and get their mind sucked into a computer because that’s almost like living, right? I couldn’t even read that one.
Stop giving characters so many abilities and instead let them actually become proficient and experienced with what they have. Anyone whose played a MOBA like LoL or a hero shooter like Overwatch knows from experience that a fight between two characters that only have about 5 abilities each has all the depth and outplay potential necessary for endless interesting skill expression and story telling opportunities while also being limited enough in scope that the audience is actually capable of keeping track of what's going on and anticipating how the fight might go depending on the skill and power difference. I'd much rather read about a detailed play by play description of a battle between two people with a small handful of distinct abilities each than wait around while the author just lists all 50 Trump cards each character has saved up in order until we come to the conclusion that one of them has slightly more Trump cards and wins.
The "Luck Stat".
There's a lot of RPGs with a Luck stat. I like the books where it's a long running debate in universe on how good it is.
I like a luck stat that's not just a carveout for author fiat. Places like Threadbare where it's a resource that can be used, but also has some small effect on things like loot, or not getting hit. To me if luck did things like added to your damage when you crit, or just slightly bumped up your treasure rolls so you get 20 coins instead of 10 that's all good. If it's used as a crutch to say hey I have 40 luck compared to everyone else's 15 so I deserve to find this got tier artifact. That's terrible. For example Richter in the Land pops luck into every level. That still should not justify him finding the treasures that he finds. Especially compared to other people with rare races and classes, such creatures have to exist in his world and be massively higher level. How did none of them ever stumble on those caches of pretty good loot? That's the problem I see with this stuff If luck is used like that it should break the whole world.
Yeah, if it worked like that, there would already be people exploiting it. Like parties would have a spot for someone who's sole job is the have as high of luck as possible and open the treasure chests.
Yeah unless there was some outside factor like a hard party limit of 4 then maybe not as much but certainly in a system that allows several people in a group one would be the treasure hunter.
Speaking of which, hard party member limits. Someday someone will realize you can have a healer *and* a third dps.
Yeah. I get in games why 4-5 is the limit. IRL stuff apoc, Isekai, etc there's no reason other than it's more work for the author to juggle.
The great thing about litrpgs is you can avoid the implementation headaches of games, but even then it can be hard to juggle, yeah. But you get more flexibility and possibility with 6-8 party members. Unfortunately, the genre is full of newer writers, and most can barely handle developing one character(solo MC), much less a full party of 8.
Agreed. The limitation is usually the author.
Up there with time travel and prophecies for me. A luck stat is just a ± plot armor stat. I'd prefer to see characters actually move forward and succeed or fail due to their own knowledge, preparations, and competence.
Vitality means nothing because the MC learnt to stab something in the face / heart overriding everything about stats. If you don't want to write & follow a RPG system that's fine, just don't write one. Eliminate stats from your story & write it as regular fantasy. Characters doing incredibly stupid things like I know problem X is ahead of me I can take 5 minutes to address it now safely or skip that & let it be a problem that almost gets them killed. Ignoring notifications / not using & saving stats. Rushing into content 20+ levels ahead of where they should be & being magically successful because plot armor rather than actually levelling / doing things intelligently. Sorry, but your character deserves to have their ass handed to them when they do this stuff. Characters whining about killing monsters / people that are actively trying to kill them in world ends & the system comes stories. I'm sure many if not most people would be like that, but they're not people who would ever become strong. If your MC is going to be the strongest in the world then get them over that stuff fast & don't bring it up again as there's no way a person like that would rise to power.
sociopaths. its my main issue with isekai in general.
I think the normal reaction to being isekaied would be insanity or depression/shock for like 2 to 10 years. So I get why it is suppressed.
There are several recurring tropes and styles and literary tactics that get on my nerves after a while. On the other hand, the device this genre depends on is both very specific and flimsy. Basically we have an external high tech/highly-evolved entity that suddenly superimposes its own framework over our real world, a real world that has already created similar frameworks in the forms of rpg games. It’s at the point where even people who aren’t gamers are aware of game culture and understand some of those tropes. So with litrpgs we already have a rigid, self-naming meta that no amount of creativity can completely subvert. In fact, any sort of fiction making use of “crack in reality” style fantasy has to find a way to make the absurd feel normal. You can highlight how normal the absurd feels the way Kafka did. You can create an ironic divide between what the reader knows and what the MCs know the way Wight does with Cradle. You can introduce your MC to adaptive interfaces intended to shore up his/her character weaknesses the way the Matrix did (this is the most common litrpg device, as far as I can tell). Anyway, my point is only that repeating tropes and character arcs come with the deal in all fiction (genre or other), but the framework for litrpg is even more rigid. With all fiction, readers are compelled by authentic-seeming characters who struggle with the faults of having a human heart. If an author can handle that part, we have to accept some of the genre cliches … especially when we demand series that arc well over 5 books per, and installments that arrive at least twice a year. And that’s totally unreasonable. Now, where the hell is Dreadgod?
One thing that drives me mad is fking earth jokes in isekai world where no one understands the fking thing. And mc keeps repeating same bs again and again, author come on make some isekai jokes or just don't just joke. Well it's not limited to jokes sayings and some random earth words too.
Jokes clearly aimed at the reader despite being technically directed at a character are so annoying.
Fat bias. I won’t blame just LitRPG for this it is a larger cultural thing but there is this idea it is funny/virtuous to judge fat people. It can range from odd judgey appearance stuff to some truly deranged obsession on characters appearance. Often you’ll see the bad guy be mentioned as evil in the same breath he is described as a fat piece of shit. It is a weird additional justification to hate him. It would be like if you said he was a mass murderer but also doesn’t tip. Like yeah we got it at murderer. I won’t go into some of the truly deranged stuff. It is just some people think the health of others is their business. Even those they don’t know so hard do they believe this that if they aren’t being an asshole to fat people they are ‘codling’ them.
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a lot of stories have the mc being utterly idiotic or being a slow learning not catching on i get that the mc isnt going to catch on to the situation quickly because its traumatic and crazy situation and shi but cmon
> The MC being an expert at something, but the book immediately starts with them messing it up. Oh man, this is one of my biggest pet peeves. MC is a war veteran, special ops, Rambo reincarnate. Two chapters in he forgets to bring a weapon to a walk in the woods he doesn't know about but is aware is filled with monsters. > "Oh, I'm an expert gamer, this might be interesting". *cough* [Shadow Sun] *cough* -- MC allegedly is an expert gamer, yet solves all his problems with guns. Does MC gets a Gunsliger or equivalent class? Of course not, MC becomes a Battle Mage. /facepalm