And then spending a considerable amount of time constantly reminding the reader that the character is a monster despite them spending almost all of their time in said human body.
I really hate that, or even a character just becoming bipedal and more human like when they weren't initially. It really takes out what made the concept unique. The Monster LitRPG's on Royalroad I've read have tended to not do this.
>I'm in another world as a monster >Turns into a human and never goes back >I'm in another world and I'm the weakest >Gains an OP ability and is now the strongest (or were always the strongest from the beginning, people just underestimated them)
Most of the litrpg webtoons are just pure wish fulfilment which is boring asf. Main character is the most op thing in existence and beats everyone up for 300 chapters. Also everyone is attracted to them.
When confronted with a list of options, the protagonist must pitch a temper tantrum and get a secret power. Otherwise the reader might get *bored* watching them actually think.
Gotta say, I mostly read Female MCs, but none do it as well as Salvos; it's interesting rather than a temper tantrum! I really like how the options are weighed and honestly, sometimes it's hard to guess what she's picking which is just great in my opinion since 99% of the time the selections are predictable, I'd recommend it to anyone who wants a silly female MC that is fun to read!
@@ribbonquest "Unlocks"? You're clearly doing it wrong if the Edgelord class isn't the default class for your main character. Have isekai taught you nothing? /s
Earlier this year I read one about a sea turtle whose first evolution was a choice between light, dark, and VOID. There is always room for more edgelord.@@MusicoftheDamned
I think I remember reading that one's mandated by the publisher. Which doesn't make it any easier to sit through, but they're not allowed to go off-script.
@@lugiae It's more often because of Amazon. They like to have Wjispersync where you can swap between the ebook and the audio where you last left off. If they cut the stat pages then the book and audio wouldn't match.
Don't worry everyone, he's waiting a bit for the franchise to fade out of mind and enter nostalgia-range, then we're going to have a reboot of TWA with poor CGI and a direction that completely misses the original point of the channel.
Some twenty years ago a classmate in my creative writing class wrote a story set in an RPG world. It had all the hallmarks of your standard isekai: a bland protagonist with OP stats, magic high school, female characters fawning over protag-kun. It was terrible and I clowned him for it. I never thought he was actually a pioneer of the genre
Many a teenager back in the 2000s and 2010s were pioneers of this genre that's for sure. Hormones + video games + anime would certainly guarantee that fact.
It lacked copycat a mainstream character It was fucking everywhere during the early 2010s You just needed to change hair color in order to get the most original character of the decade
It's been a fanfic trope for a long time. People love how strong a shonen-style character is by the end of a series with constant power creep; and then write stories not realising it ruins in the attraction of a story if there's no challenge for the MC. Also Peggy Sues, utterly perfect self inserts because when people imagine themselves in the story they wouldn't make mistakes or have difficulty like everyone else did. I don't think we could ever find who invented the idea, it's likely to have been a thing since early storytelling, just not written down in a way we can see today.
there was a guy in my class 6 years ago.more specifically, he’s my BFF. He wrote a litRPG and it’s really good. The MC is an “anti-god” (kind of god that kills other gods to strengthen), he reincarnated with his friends into a world created by a guy named A (the strongest guy in the friend group) world during an accident. Because A enjoy seeing their power getting nerfed so he doesn’t release them( the world itself is a jail that greatly nerf the power of gods that fallen in it which make them unable to escape without beating the lessen version of A in the world to gain the wish to escape). the MC and his friends actually enjoy living in the world since as Anti-gods, they barely have anything to do and it’s boring but until a random day, A just cause power outage to troll the MC making him mad and he go on the journey with his friends to escape the world and beat A ass up in their god form (in the after story, I learned that they’re unable to beat A after escaping the world). The thing that make it good is the stats actually make sense, no over power abilities or items (the only OP thing is the “2 deaths, 1 win” strategy which was used in one chapter, the strat is to let the sword man guy use counter ability of the true drifter’s katana then let the mage who’s wearing a voodoo necklace use sacrifice ability which do infinite damage to an ally (here is the swordman) the swordman will die (he will get respawn after that) and the same time do a infinite damage sword hit at the mage, the mage will die but will reflect the infinite damage at all enemies in the fight and kill them all. they can’t do that again after the chapter because A patched it by removing the counter’s friendly fire in that chapter). The characters actually have to use multiple abilities in one fight, die and lose multiple times before actually win and abuse a strategy multiple time because it works. The enemies are smart, they don’t underestimate their foes and do really good teamwork, sometimes they even become emotionally, think of master’s words, get the power of friendships or the urge to protect loved ones then full heal, strengthen and then destroy the MC’s team, example: Lux Salvatoris, the hero of all lights which was commanded by the light emperor to stop the MC’s team from wreaking havoc the overworld (yes, the MC’s team were bad guys who do everything to escape the world) Lux was beaten after a long fight but he can’t let that happen so he becomes one with the light (die slowly and explode when died) and eradicate everyone in the team when they’re not ready. there’re a lot more unique things, Lores, mechanics, plots, ect. that I didn’t talk about but those were things that impressed me the most. My friend still writes and send chapters to me up till now (it’s bout to end) he says he may publish it if he feels like it’s good enough.
Oh, forgot to mention a thing that his light novel (or not light as it’s long af, I didn’t ask him if it’s a novel or light novel). It have a lot of fan service… it’s not what you think, it’s brutal violence like the MC slamming a girl’s head who’s trying to charm him at the table rapidly until she die in a bar ( it’s completely fine since 20% of the death in the bar is caused by other causes other than the shotgun roulette game). Any type of those “filthiest love” in his words, he deal with them by making the MC and some of his teammates violence toward things like that. Oh yeah, he also make me draw all the important female characters have the body of a skinny man, all those who have an attractive body usually die like every other unimportant characters(literally flat= strong plot armor)… I love that!!! (apparently he’s into girls like that, no wonder why)
I would unironically love if a book I was enjoying had a sex scene in it, and the whole thing was described with the word "Boobies" just copy pasted over and over again for a page and a half. Then the story just gets back on track like nothing happened.
One web novel i read had sections with the dating characters discussing NSFW things in spoilers. Which i read, but good that there was an option to avoid. Then there was one sex scene between them, supposedly the most important one. Inside a spoiler. When you open the spoiler, this is just a line saying "and then they fucked".
I love how the actual SAO explanation for why the guy trapped everyone there was so bad that even JP couldn't commit to it and sprinkled in a reference to the abridged parody.
@@g.f.martianshipyards9328The actual explanation really was “it’s been so long I don’t even remember.” The abridged went for extremely tight publisher deadlines which also made the designer stay awake for 500 hours straight, in which state what he did made perfect sense to him, and then he was just in too deep not to commit to the character.
@@hakairyu1Exactly. They even poked fun of the original ending by having him originally say the same thing only for it to turn out to be a joke when the characters rightfully complained about how bad that was, then he piled on to that before giving a much better explanation which JP referenced of Metacritic roasting his pride and joy, he tried to get an extension but since his publisher was Bethesda, they didn't accept bugs as a reason to postpone the game further so he spent several days straight working on the game, and in his sleep deprived mind, thought that doubling down and holding the players hostage until he figured a way out was the best course of action. But yeah, in the original it was literally "I don't remember anymore", and that kind of fruit is already 6 feet underground and poking at fruit that low hanging isn't really all that funny to be honest. Especially since the parody did it far better than you ever could.
JP, wherever you are I hope you are okay and doing well. please don't feel pressured to make content for us. though we miss you, if things aren't going well in your life, its good to take some time off. On the other hand if things are going well, so well that you want to focus on those things, that's okay too. we'll still have your old videos, you covered a lot of topics and I always find myself returning to them. Best of wishes from one of your fans
Agreed. I realized lately I hadn’t seen any new videos and was surprised how long it had been. I hope JP is doing well and will share some more writing tips with us. It’s great advice.
I remember my mom disdainfully describing Harlequin romance novels and the people who obsessively consume them like candy, and litRPG has struck me as the male nerd version of that.
It's been a while JP, much longer than the usual wait. I'm not sure if everything's okay on your end but I wish you all the best, whatever may or may not be happening (and a happy April Fool's day to you, not a joke for once).
What I find worse than "this person is the only one to discover this strat/that this skill is actually OP!" Is when the protagonist bumbles their way into a busted build by sheer accident. Because there's nothing more satisfying in a genre that's purportedly about strategy than watching someone brainlessly fail upwards through dumb luck! Edit: Yes obviously comedic stories are an exception to this
Even worse is when they take the skills that everyone says are weak but the combo makes them super duper strong. Like one where the guy takes Stealth and Archery. Both of those skills supposedly suck in that story but they become busted when used together. Meanwhile, in the real world everyone knows stealth archer is a busted build and every single build would have been tried in days after the game came out with entire guilds formed around the idea of testing different builds to find esoteric super combos.
@@starburst98 yeah especially that those combos always are so obvious. Like i'm sorry, but you need to be literal monkey to not realize that skill which gives you permanently increasing HP and skill that deals increased DMG the more HP you have, is obvious combo.
There’s a Netflix series based off a wattpad fanfic called my life with the Walton boys where a girl’s entire family dies and in her moms will she says she wants her to live with her friends family and for whatever reason they have like 10 kids, all boys
Reminds me of in SAO's Gun Gale Online where the sniper girl to my knowledge is literally the ONLY sniper in the game. Like, are you telling me that in this massive online competitive shooting game NO ONE has ever tried to be a sniper before especially when they have such massive buffs, even tethering on GAMEBREAKING such as the first shot ability. Realistically, there would be SWARMS of players roofcamping every single surface of the map.
Given how advantageous that ability is, it'd be on every 'pvp viable' build out there. Heck, why isn't she using an AoE weapon with it like a grenade launcher? Doesn't matter if your trying to be a pistol toting gunslinger, a regular rifle soldier or a sniper, not having prediction line on first shot is an ability that just begs the question 'why would that not be in every build?'
So this is untrue. Sinon isn't the only sniper in GGO. Nor is such ever suggested. She is an extremely good sniper with an extremely high spec sniper rifle that makes her services highly saught after as a merc. But snipers and designated marksman are pretty common. Especially in the AGGO spinoff where, just off the top of my head four or five named characters are fitted out for long range engagements. Heck, Pitohui pulls out a Barret .50 cal and bifurcates a couple poor saps at half a mile during the second Squad Jam.
@@Sorain1 Part of it is that high end, exotic, and support weapons seems to be legit extremely rare in GGO by design. You either get really lucky. Grind really hard. Or shell out a lot of real world money. In the Gun Gale Alternative novels and anime one of the characters, Fukaziroh, is in fact a grenadier and specializes in lobbing her 40mm grenades as pocket artillery for her squad.
Thats what got you? You cant even imagine the rage i felt when kirito was like "lmao i can port my OP stats from SAO and block bullets with my sword" in a GUN GAME I feel the anger swelling again
He overlooked the Part Betrayal, where the MC is in a party at the start, and is often abandoned and/or betrayed with their lover stolen by their main rival in the party. This normally causes the MC to strike out on their own and discover their hidden ability. Sometimes the ability has a downside that made them seem week, thus causing the abandonment/ betrayal.
Oh No! And then they Find out that their Suppose Former Love interest is also the One that Started this Betrayal Plan! All for very Shallow and Vague reasons!
There is a messed up Manga that covers this. It is TRULY twisted on another level. But it wasn't so much just his rival, the entire party decided to use him, arrest him on trumped up crimes, then execute him through torture. He was resurrected by a goddess and given OP powers. If I recall correctly, the explanation was he sold his soul and every single person who betrayed him. He destroyed everyone, last chapter I read, destroyed the Devil and now is going to heaven to wage war on the Gods for allowing corruption to run rampant. I can't recall the exact title but remember I am warning you, it is REALLY messed up
I've only seen it (intentinally) done ONCE,and it's Royal Road's The Heart Grows. With Arifueta,the MC fell in a hole & was presumed dead,noone actually betrayed him.
@@chee.rah.monurB _Shield Hero_ comes to mind, with the caveats that the original party never quite forms and it's the (potential) lover that abandons and betrays him .
It's like a popular subgenre recently with how much I read about it, though mostly it's on generic guilty read I pour through just because I like to feel good one day.
I'm sorry, did you mean "I don't wanna get hurt, so I'll max out my defense"? For the record, it's actually real and word for word the title of the series
As a LitRPG author, I've been dreading/looking forward to this video for years. Thanks for skewering the genre without skewering me. Couple stabs came close, but I'm feeling mostly intact.
I'm an avid reader. Some of them were quite accurate! I really agree with the point about harems, it feels like every male MC I've ever read goes that route which is why I try to avoid them and stick to female lead LitRPGs. So far my favorite is Salvos, but Amelia the Level Zero Hero is a close second. They feel fresh
I was just taking a read through the comments and I'm happy to see Salvos mentioned! It's so good. I also really enjoy Awaken Online, that's a fun one too. @@Xiao457
"Life in a dysfunctional RPG" would be a trip! Having an "In-Universe perspective" of a poorly planned/optimized game as the developer(s) try to make the thing work.
Its not a bad idea, if protag kun gets the short stick , ot at least has really broken useless things as hurdle that are very badly balanced, against him. And are real and have personality could be fun. Everyone loves an underdog.
SAO Abridged did this. A lot of the comedy is derived from its version of SAO being just fundamentally broken in so many different ways. They even made the developers’ motivation for making it a death game be explicitly that he knew it was too buggy for a proper release and he wanted to delay the inevitable critical backlash.
the funny thing is one of the guys IRL who has a reputation as one of the best swordsmen (Musashi) has a LOT of stories where him being the best translates to "I caught them unawares and/or unprepared and I was smart enough to stay away from anything that sounded like an attempt to ambush me". So apparently Swordsman is a class governed by the Ambush and Stealth skills and Wisdom as a stat, and the higher levels are locked behind Chaotic Evil.
Not only, he was aüpearently really that good, but he also was cunning and was known for barely legal tricks like unnerving opponents by coming too late.
Once more, the cosmic, all knowing, all mighty, romantic tringular writer decends from the heavens to share a mere *droplet* of his knowledge to us _l o w l y_ pencil scribblers.
I just came back to this channel because I suddenly remembered it out of nowhere (I used to watch it a lot and religiously waited for the next video). My heart sank a bit when I saw the last video was 7 months ago considering he makes videos every 1-2 months.
Litrpg is such an underrated story idea because its almost always done in a really bad way. Rpg elements in a world would drastically shift the method and means of a given nation to consolidate power, the meaning and process of accrument of wealth, and the societal structures of its inhabitants. How would rpg power logically effect commerce? Social heirachy and interaction? Political, ethnic, and gender conflict?
I would recommend "I am a spider, so what?". It´s a light novel, a manga and an anime. Though the later is not a good adaption at least on the human part of the story since that seems to be done by a different studio than the spider parts. But it does it quite well.
I started reading Salvos which is litrpg about demon in hell. I found it quite interesting but author had to take interesting setting and throw it away because that demon got transported into typical fantasy Earth and most of the story is "Let's go grinding" literally. I read quite far but eventually stopped because author was pushing goal further and further away "We need to kill this thing" "We killed this thing but turns out we need to find item" "We found item but turns out we can't use it, we need to get lvl 100" "We got level 100 but turns out we need lvl 100 specialization"
People would absolutely pay for a game with real pain. Though I imagine it would start off as an option, then the gate keepers would start screaming you aren't real gamers without feeling your skin get peeled off.
@@TheDoctorProfessor You are watching a comedy wrting video on writing ltrpg's. And you consider yourself a "real gamer". So please stop looking in the mirror because it has no interest in being a strawman for you.
I miss you JP! Your content is what got me into writing and literature! If it wasn't for you I never would have been interested in books after school ruined reading for me. I hope you're doing alright, I know content creation can be stressful, but if you could at least let everyone know you're okay!
I like how in Konosuba they make fun of the consequences of reality working off of video game rules, like having a magic school that doesnt actually teach magic since you aquire spells by spending skill points.
I love that , also kazuma has to use his game exploiding skills and tricks to make use of his overpowered but kinda useless and hopeless party . Who also are all friends.
@@floricel_112 nah it seems to be very consistant about humans having organic bodies that obey physics, the shittiest cantrips can still cause great pain if used right, alcohol works off body mass, you don't just become more resistant to it through some poison resist and later on in the story ideas from his world are very effective.
An issue that hurts litrpgs is that on sites like Royal Road there are many commenters that want the protagonist to be a gary sue who always wins and always makes the 110% most optimal choice. If the protagonist messes up in any way they go. "WHY THE FUCK WOULD I WANT TO READ ABOUT AN IDOIT!!?? YOU ARE A HACK AUTHOR!" Not to mention if the protagonist doesn't turn into a violent murder hobo because someone was slightly rude to them they go. "AGH WHAT A DOOR MAT SOI BOY!"
So true, I see far far to many comments on anime episodes about weak protaganists who actually lose fights and don't just win everything. People are used to OP protaganists who never work for anything so when a good writer makes a character earn their strenght people don't understand it and assume the character is just weak and badly written.
It's my experience the story is better off once they inevitably move on. At least on the site I use (Fiction Live), there's always a new power fantasy where the author will get sick of writing before it even reaches the 6-hour-read mark, so I just let them move on to another shiny thing while I move on with the story. The version on this site however is that the majority of the stories use "Best of 3" rolling - where the GM//QM allows the players to roll and then takes the best of the first three people to roll. This obviouslly means it is rarely a matter of IF the character succeeds than how well. I tried sticking to one roll for a while, but it adds enough audience participation whent he story is live that I've instead started leaving the roll box open and then using ALL the results for upcoming rolls. I've found the splits the difference between audience engagement and "no really, you can fail" as best as feasible.
Even addictions past masturbation would be more compelling. An OP anime protagonist who can't help but gamble at every opportunity sounds like somewhat fertile ground.
The korean light novel Second Coming Of Gluttony has this as the protagonist's core flaw, especially apparent in later arcs. Seol is a washed-up gambler and initially unrepentant grifter. When introduced to a deathgame LitRPG world, he starts gambling his own life and the lives of those around him - to initial success and then eventual horrible consequences. Pretty much the only regressor-type story I've enjoyed as a person who hates overpowered protagonists. His only major starting advantage is an emotional wake-up call from his future self and a few spots of foreknowledge. Just don't read the manhwa. They butchered it by cutting a majority of the clever foreshadowing and struggling. honestly kind of impressive that they turned such a well-plotted story into just another power fantasy lmao
I feel like the main problem with LitRPGs is that they're usually written by and for people whose only experience with storytelling comes from videogames.
Bofuri does this. though in other settings it's only coincidence that things map to numbers, after all technically they do here like force mass, comfortable pH range, accuracy and speed with various weapons etc. we just don't write them down.
@@stm7810 Tbf in Bofuri the devs do nerf Maple. But they also actually WANT their game to be CONDITIONALLY broken, where strong players haave the opportunity to run into a situation where there power set will let them be a complete bad ass. The whole point is to encourage the players to explore and experiment.
Brave of you to call out an entire webnovel website like that... But you forgot the most important thing in a LitRPG: NUMBERS GO UP Without the sweet, sweet feel of stats increasing, the genre is nothing.
no. That isnt what d and d or any rpg is about either. It's about the story, about the world, about imagination, about characters. The numbers are just window dressing. The system theyre describing to you isnt a system. It's made up on the fly and changes as the writer wants the hero to do different things. In d&d i learned what i loved wasnt matching my numbers vs antagonist dm specifically designed to be ac hallenge but to lose... It was solving problems, learning about an interesting world, finding clever solutions to situations, the other characters. The numbers are scorekeeping etc.
The most important part of having stats and skills, _is to give the MC a way to bypass them,_ so they can cheese their way through problems while others have to solve them the hard way, thats the best method to make them look smart and skillful Moreover, having the MC actively trying to obtain those cheat powers may make him MC look greedy, so its much, much better to give them to him on the initial class, as an inborn ability or obtained by some random accident But above everything ese you must remember: *it doesnt matter what kind of stats and skills there are in the setting,* _the story MUST develop in roughly the same way as all the others_ It doesnt matter if the MC has fire powers, super strenght, antimagic, dragon powers (which are the three of them bundled together) or if he is a crafter, a healer, a diviner, a general, a tamer or a necromancer, have him kill enemies to become stronger, get special powers over the minors of achievements, unlock the special specialness of specialties with ust a little training and reach a level of power nobody believed possible before Original mechanics may scare and confuse new readers, so be sure to stick to the tried and true (i wish i was sarcastic about this one) If you dont know how to do this, *just send them to the battle academy and be done with it,* standarized tests are a simple way to have the MC overcome great odds, teachers are a stand in for systemic issues and classrooms and student clubs will do great as substitutes to actual social dynamics
A litrpg pitch I keep thinking about is having the “op protagonists” are actually the video game’s devs-it would explain them having weird, world-bending powers and maybe some npcs randomly falling in love and accidentally causing a harem (“whoops, found a bug in the relationship development matrix. Gotta patch that …”). They’re op for now, but the plot involves the characters nerfing exploits, so they aren’t getting stronger, they’re just working with a more competent game.
I know that "Trapped as an NPC in a Cursed Game" (webcomic name)/"Trapped in a Cursed Game, but now with NPCs" (webnovel name) has someone on the dev team as the protagonist. The gm team helps out at some points.
LitRPG writer here. In designing these storylines, I've felt that the stats often hold back good storytelling, but it's sold much better than my other work. My attempt to make good material in this genre has been to downplay the detailed numbers and focus on tough choices and world-building. "You may now pick the power to talk to animals OR levitate!" If the world is going to run on game logic, it should look at what happens as a result, hopefully outside of combat. "This nobleman ordered his peasants to only take the Farmer class to min-max crop production, but then he gets sacked when there's a battle to fight." "The hero's got valuable economic news that the young prince has decided to dual-class in Engineer, which will affect national industrial output and the market for magic crystals for decades." I care much more about that than exactly how much damage the hero's gun does. Ideally the build choices are more about personality or gimmicks than numbers, like whether the hero wants to be the kind of guy wielding toxic blasts. So, show me the consequences of whatever game rules you've installed, not so much the numbers! Where that leaves my work weak is in the area of motivation. If the hero's permanently stuck in game-logic world, he can commit to finding a good set of skills/stats/guilds. But if the hero is playing a video game and it's established that no, it's not going to kill you for real or make you a billionaire, then why does the hero care? I did one story where the hero gets caught up in a "Ready Player One" styled contest, but as with a heist movie, it's not really about the prize so much as why he wants it. The AI characters will go on quests with you but they really do that as an excuse to help/manipulate the players. The "why should we care" problem is why I recently did a full isekai scenario rather than a video game. When doing the video game stuff the focus was largely on the interaction between that and the real world -- which might bore people who want more dragon fights. About others' LitRPG work: Reading the stat stuff is sometimes a guilty pleasure when I can fantasize about what I would do in that scenario. But I've found stories where the hero obsesses over build choices, then somehow blows through boss monsters far above his level with sub-par equipment, because his "tactics" and "teamwork" are so good. (They're not. Looking at a certain crusader rat protagonist especially... yet I still liked the series for cool, imaginative fights and hazards.) I also don't like the treadmill of the hero attaining Super Gold Soul Mystic Arts only to get sand kicked in his face by the Ultra Gold Soul Masters... yet I ended up reading several books worth of that, so how much can I complain about it? What I really don't enjoy even as guilty pleasure was when we get the game stats *and* the setting is miserable and depressing and the characters are unlikable. So it can be fun to read even a flawed LitRPG, but it's tough to put together something that can overcome the genre's tropes. (My work includes "Virtual Horizon", "Crafter's Passion", and "Rising World", on Amazon.)
@@krisschnee3151 read all 3 books (listened on audible) and first teo were good, great at times but third one kinda flopped. Not super bad but not good as the first two
i wish i could say i have but nothing on his blog or social media or anything it kinda feels null. im honestly a little worried tbh especially since although he wasnt always consistent with his uploads he still uploaded at some points when it can be reliable for him to upload at all. i just hope the guy’s alright
I wish more stories would play around with the idea that while the MC has extensive knowledge of the game mechanics they stumble a bit over how those mechanics translate to the real physical setting. Giving you situations where the MC's knowledge actually works against them despite normally being a boon.
An alternate way to use that is to let them have the knowledge, and need to figure out how to convey that to others to use, because they can't do it themselves. This also naturally leads to a supporting cast, which is handy.
An idea i';ve had is an ex-special forced guy teaming up with the typical nerdlinger isekai protagonist, and the clash between fiction logic and real life combat logic...reckon that could be a great series
In the realm of edge/needless violence, I made myself a simple 4 question ruling to determine whether or not a violent scene is needlessly excessive to the point of being detrimental to the story. I call it "the Tavernitis Test": A: Does the scene actively add to the plot or to the characterization of anyone involved? B: Is the heinous or potentially "edgy" action something which either would radically feel out of place within the rest of the work to the point where it would be a detriment, or something which comes wildly out of nowhere in terms of characterization? C: Could the action be replaced with anything less aggressively "dark" and not lose anything from the intention behind the scene? D: Is the event in said scene or the scene itself ever mentioned again, or ever referenced past it's initial point? Does it actively create a turn within the story or characterization? If all but A and D is answered with yes, then it's very likely that the scene is simply created as a way to shock the reader without actually thinking of ramifications of the shock itself.
I do like that Edin's Gate turns the herem trope on it's head by having the romantic interests turn away as the main character takes too long to decide and continues to be unfaithful. The series has plenty of problems, but the herem is eventually not one of them
@@chee.rah.monurB it's a litrpg where players die when they put on the VR headset, and their consciousness is stored in the game world, which is powered by a blockchain to keep people from shutting it down. The game is a fantasy world where all the NPCs act like real people, and the players have to get used to the idea that they're not in a game, but are at the beginning of their eternal life with real lifelike NPC characters that they share the world with. And the people left in the physical world have to deal with the fact that there is a controversial device that could kill them, or potentially give them eternal life. It has a lot of cool concepts, and the series has been getting better, but it annoys me when the characters relapse on old mistakes that they should have already learned from for plot reasons. And as realistic as the consequences of taking addictive substances are, they're really uncomfortable to read
Funnily enough, Sleep Deprivation and a deadline was Kayaba’s motive to trapping everyone in the death game in SAO abridged, the infinitely better version of SAO in terms of writing!
My own -crack- Head Canon was that Kayaba used to DM tabletop and the intransigence of his players finally caused him to snap. Heathcliff - "It's enough to make you think that maybe what's needed to keep the game on track is to kill a few people." Asuna - " . . . " Calculates if she can make the door.
Worst part was that I was legit getting invested in seeing where the Sponsorship Wars were going. I really do hope JP is alright though, wherever he may be
I am moderately optimistic and presume that due to Greed's ever increasing demands for fluid animation it takes way longer to make these episodes. Greed's every executive making impossible demands. If it takes until the next year then he's probably dead.
12:40 made me think of a story where a character does find a glitch or something to be powerful, but then it's fixed and the story is how they have to earn their power like everyone else and work their way back up
Reminds me of the Webtoon Hardcore Leveling Warrior. Kind of happens almost exactly like that only he became top of the world through more literal exploits (He's a gambler) and then in chapter 1 a glitch in the system resets him back to level 1. It was actually pretty good though because he never received any kind of random abilities and just used the extensive knowledge of the game he already had to slowly regain power only this time he did it without essentially scamming people and it makes him a better person.
@@noble6752 Yeah, and he does still exploits and broken abilities kinda, but does so, with his new friends. Also it explores why he was that toxic gamer in the first place pretty touching. I mean he sora and darks abilities kinda are broken, through they still have to learn to master them gradually. And its really nice seeing them bonding by scrapping up and go on misadventures. Good characters too.
Bug Eater is a WEBTOON with a similar premise, the MC exploits the shit out of the game for personal gain (he had a good reason) before being demolished by someone with powers like a Game Dev. Story is about him turning things around using his knowledge of the end game and quest progression as well as exploits and how to BEAT them instead of use them.
yeah i noticed that from checking his nebula basically every day for a couple of months. even sent emails to ask about his next upload but idk what happened. i just hope things are okay with him and his video production
dude like jp come back man we totes miss you! i used to check on your channel every now and again to see if theres _any_ kind of new updates but i just feel let down here but regardless i hope your break is serving you well.. well idk what happened but i hope youre all right JP its been seven months already i just hope everything is good on your end!
This video made my appreciate "So i am a spider , so what" even more . JP : Sarcastic good point about a cliche In my head : wait , Spider actually did a good job avoiding that
I literally just started watching that series two days ago. The timing of this video is genuinely coincidental, but FEELS weirdly targeted to me specifically. :)
@@alexandredesouza3692 a Jap litRPG light novel that for some reason got popular enough to get a manga and anime and people think it's good and not cliched trash despite being cliched trash.
@@alexandredesouza3692 'So I'm a spider , so what' is a LitRPG staring a Spider protagonist isekaid into a cave as the lowest species. Who then needs to go up from there.
As a fellow author, I can say you're spot on. You know what I'd love to see you do? A video on bookcovers. Like all the YA book covers that all feature an attractive young woman posing and holding a fireball? lol
I hate when book covers are made by people who clearly haven’t read the book. For example, in the fantasy novel “The Two Princesses of Bamarre,” the titular princesses are described as being biracial. It’s stated that while the older princess, Meryl, has light skin like the king, her younger sister Addie has the queen’s dark complexion. There are two white girls on the cover of the book.
@@tsifirakiehl4250 to be fair, it’s unrealistic to expect Artist McPainter to read your 700 page space opera instead of just reading the title and summary on the back Honestly, if you are an author, you are lucky to even have a comment on the cover art, since it’s the publishing company that controls all of it, and they don’t care about depicting them book accurately, just getting people’s attention
I've really gotten into reading LitRPG's on Royalroad within this year, that place has a lot of great ones. And it shows me how well this genre can work with far slower pacing. For example, the first story I read on this site, Tree of Aeon, it really feels like every level matters. Or a completed great story I read, Vainqueur the Dragon. And by extension these stories tend to have great power scaling with every victory being earned. No matter how powerful the characters become. Dungeon-core also fits into that, but I have only read like one of those types of stories.
Have you read Worth the Candle? If you're looking for RoyalRoad LitRPGs with "far slower pacing", it's just the story for you. Also, it's one of the best things I've ever read.
Overlord Books: Fear, impostor syndrome and world building Anime: Nazarick compilation to sell Albedo figurines and maybe the books too. But mostly Albedo figurines. They have a lot of Albedo figurines to sell and it is profitable. Also half the anime onlies complain loud and proud if there is a deviation from the Nazarick compilation formula in favor of adapting an arc from the books.
Glad to see another one of my genres covered. I did at least realize that I should show off some of my side character's skills more often. Also, math is hard. The more you add at the beginning of your story the more you'll regret the extra work later.
I want one where the protagonist get super OP abusing an exploit, but then get banned by the dev halfway through season one. Turns out everyone already knew about this bug, and just didn’t want to get banned, and now we have a new protagonist.
@@Bustermachinewaste of resources, I assume the company just decided to hard enforce it instead of patching it. Sure, it's a bad long term problem but corporation rarely think long terms
_ Something a lot of light novel author misses is that f your world is governed by RPG stats it's not just gonna affect combat, but everything, every skill, every talen, every job(not just combat job) will have its own stats _ Video game & Table top use video game mechanic because it needs to. A non interactive story usually don't need video game mechanics, in these case the mechanic take you out of the experience & remind you this is fiction. For example HP bar & status effect are used to show the player the condition of the character because actually program every injury(the programmer has no idea what kind of injury a player will encounter so he would need to program everything from the severity to the location of the wound) into the character model & animation is very difficult & impossible in older hardware, but for a story the author decide where & what kind of injury it is & just have to make that 1 injury
*Protag Kun:* "Hello, Cat Girl! I have saved you with my 99 STR/DEX/WIS/CHR/INT powers! You're welcome!" *Elf Chan:* "And I helped!" *Cat Girl:* _Rolls_ "Whoa, Protag Kun, you're so great, I think I love you!" *Protag Kun:* "Woah, that's really-" *Cat Girl:* "Oh, wait, I get a reroll in case of failure!" *Protag Kun:* "-Wait, wha-" *Cat Girl:* _Rolls_ "Whoa, Protag Kun, that slave collar on your Elf is actually a huge red flag! Thanks for the help, but, uh...bye!" *Protag Kun:* "..I KNEW I should have specced into Harem Re-Re Rolls!" *Elf Chan:* "-Wait, wha-" *Protag Kun:* "OH WOAH LOOK ANOTHER CAT GIRL BETTER GO SAVE HER!" *Elf Chan:* "..."
One of my favorite novels ever the death mage doesn't want a fourth time does almost everything you have said, from explanations to everything (including the level/skill system) to what would really happen if some random people suddenly had broken abilities and what would people really do. The novel is awesome, and has variety on races not just plain and simple Tolkien, and they live in tribes as you would expect irl, understandable and sympathetic protagonists and antagonists.
I second this. Death mage uses the stats as a vehicle for the plot and creates intriguing story as well as engaging characters. Stats are secondary to the story of death mage. I agree with this take and put a stamp of approval on it.
And also go in the opposite direction of the monster protagonist by starting more humanlike and slowly becoming a eldritch abomination and we are still rooting for him
As a fan of visual novels, I feel like this video also covers a lot of tropes seen in those, particularly the parts about horniness and wish fulfillment
Speaking of which, I'd love for Visual novels to be covered soon. It's a unique artform that has sprites and background so character and scenery descriptions are no longer a must, but it's not a full-blown film so action and dramatic scenes need to be carefully worded out. I hope JP covers them next. 😅
@@Reydriel I agree. 😅 But just from experience, I think visual novels still have untapped potential as an artform. Hopefully JP covers them since I don't recall any writing channel covering how to write visual novels in general. :)
Much like Isekai, I feel the real popularity of the genre is due to being far more fun to write than to actually read...edit: and from your description, one-handed... Speaking of, when are we gonna get other video-game subgenres? Like Lit-FPS. Or Lit-Racing games. Lit-Mario Party Ripoff could be fun...
Concept is really interesting, I've read one litrpg where they explained why achieving max level and being OP is very hard and in a world they even had special job where person gave you advice what to level up and how depending on what you need. But rest of the story wasn't that interesting imo
One genre that can actually work but will never take off is character action. Basically it’s the only genre in gaming that makes style points a gameplay mechanic. As for why it won’t take off, same reason the game genre isn’t, it unintentionally proves how uncool the guy holding the controller actually is (even when we’re talking about his gameplay performance)
Frigging yes!! Do bear in mind that the king of European Westerns, Karl May, must’ve wrote a ton of fairly nuanced 19th century fiction and a couple of amazing books, because his creation Winnetou made him money.
@@SlapstickGenius23 Karl May is great, there's more than a few amazing books there. And especially for the time it's amazing how he doesn't discriminate. He neither treats Europeans as the good guys, as most of his villains are some version of European, nor does he fall into the noble savage trope, with some of his villains also being native Americans. It's about two sworn brothers of different peoples coming together to fight bad people of all kinds, both with the deepest respect and love for each other. Those novels are great.
@@Arphemius I’ve been searching up some Karl May facts online. Unfortunately, despite his characters being very relatable, he was like Edgar Rice Burroughs’ just as messed up spiritual predecessor, albeit with better meant ideals.
I despise practices like Booktube. Lots of self published, unedited authors giving advice they don't even apply to their own creations. This channel was always my go to. You had fun with this whole "advice" thing and actually gave good examples on how to do things properly that are quickly shot down.😂 Thank you, TWA. I've been writing for about five years now, and this channel was a lot of help during the scary, uncertain times.😁
...Wait, *THAT* is all a LitRPG is?? It's just 'here's a normal book with some statsheets and the mention of numbers going up'?? I thought it was like a choose-your-own-adventure novel...
The 2022 movie The Princess (admittedly not very good) is LitRPG. It has progression and the character is aware of it. The Princess (un-named) is locked in the tower and has to fight to the bottom courtyard. The danger and adversaries get increasingly difficult. She finds and equips herself as she goes. Learns new skills, and exploits them as she goes. There are boss battles every once in awhile, and defeating them results in either equipment, skills, or a path forward/downward. It never mentions stats, but it is peak LitRPG
Oh, you want a battle couple? I highly recommend the Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold. The woman was writing this series back in the 80s, and trust me when I say, it's INSANELY ahead of its time. You want really, really good sci-fi, check her out. She's amazing. It also has a special place in my heart, because, back in summer of 2018, I was in hospital, and my sister thought I was going to die, so ALL SHE DID was eat, sleep, and read this series. She introduced it to me because it kept her sane.
I ironically love the harem trope. Stupid characters doing stupid things. Unintentionally hilarious scenes always come out of it. Several of my favourite moments watching anime is cracking down laughing at a show trying to take itself seriously as the women fumble over the main character. It's like that one scene in trolls "BECAUSE SINGING KILLED MY GRANDMA, OKAY?"
Harem can be really fun, if the main character has the barest of character, and the harem actually has a fun relationship or at least banter. Rosario no vampire actually has a pretty good harem that are friends. And get zoned out for the actual love interest gradually in the end. And are happy for them. Ranma is great but i didnt want to go for the obvious, but yes , harem can be fun, if they are not only about the mc.
Harem can be fun but it's rarely handled well. All too often it becomes rape because the MC uses mind control or charisma powers to convince the women to sleep with him, when they clearly didn't want to before.
Harem can be fun, and lot of my favorite shows are harems, but they’re all comedies who lean into the absurdity of it and utilize it for laughs, while I feel a lot of litrpgs just use it for wish fulfillment, which doesn’t work imo.
What you enjoy is the cringe factor. And while that is bad taste, objecttively, nobody can stop you from giving this trash genre more traction, so keep enjoying it while the rest of us have to deal with the deluge each year...
@@yoursonisold8743 oh no I hate the cringe, the masochism play is the worst part of the trope. I enjoy morons written by people who think they are artistic geniuses
@emilygordbort7300 claimed to have used personal information on JP's social media to determine that he has no death certificate. It was in a reply to the comment of @tobyharrison4702. No clue beyond that.
Creativity trumps game mechanics as written every time; And there is no need to munchkin it when you can make everything in character innovative. One of the ways I stood out in my old DnD group was to use cantrips (that’s lvl 0 freebee spells) to their maximum. Fact is, if you can break the laws of physics, even a little, you can manipulate basically the entire world. Example: Prestidigitation + dungeon spider webs = tiny mailable sticky flammable substances or in other words = floating fire bombs.
I thought I was going to cringe & hurt by watching this as someone who loves LitRPG & wants to write my own, but no, this basically sums up a lot of the reason I don’t like a lot of books in the genre.
You forgot the most important part of having a Monster Protagonist: Giving your protagonist a new human body a quarter of the way through the series.
And then spending a considerable amount of time constantly reminding the reader that the character is a monster despite them spending almost all of their time in said human body.
I really hate that, or even a character just becoming bipedal and more human like when they weren't initially. It really takes out what made the concept unique. The Monster LitRPG's on Royalroad I've read have tended to not do this.
Kinda sick of it. Just have a main character who just happens to be a burly monsters who isnt cursed to be that way
smg4 moment
>I'm in another world as a monster
>Turns into a human and never goes back
>I'm in another world and I'm the weakest
>Gains an OP ability and is now the strongest (or were always the strongest from the beginning, people just underestimated them)
As a Webtoons reader, this is like 99% of the comics in the Action and Fantasy category.
It drove me away from numerous webtoons.
Read Omniscient Reader it's actually good.
Pick Me Up (Infinite Gacha) is good too. From the same studio as ORV
Most of the litrpg webtoons are just pure wish fulfilment which is boring asf. Main character is the most op thing in existence and beats everyone up for 300 chapters. Also everyone is attracted to them.
May I suggest Eleceed? Or The Greatest Estate Developer, for a less combat-oriented story?..
When confronted with a list of options, the protagonist must pitch a temper tantrum and get a secret power. Otherwise the reader might get *bored* watching them actually think.
Always choose the option that unlocks the Edgelord class.
Gotta say, I mostly read Female MCs, but none do it as well as Salvos; it's interesting rather than a temper tantrum! I really like how the options are weighed and honestly, sometimes it's hard to guess what she's picking which is just great in my opinion since 99% of the time the selections are predictable, I'd recommend it to anyone who wants a silly female MC that is fun to read!
@@ribbonquest "Unlocks"? You're clearly doing it wrong if the Edgelord class isn't the default class for your main character. Have isekai taught you nothing? /s
Earlier this year I read one about a sea turtle whose first evolution was a choice between light, dark, and VOID. There is always room for more edgelord.@@MusicoftheDamned
I want them to choose an option and lose hard later because of it's downsides
LitRPG is _especially_ painful in audiobook form because the narrator reads the character sheet every time it shows up in the book.
So what I'm a spider does that too.
completionist chronicles 😔
@@manidavis4126 i mean kinda like that one but dear god those F U C K I N G S T A T P A G E S
I think I remember reading that one's mandated by the publisher. Which doesn't make it any easier to sit through, but they're not allowed to go off-script.
@@lugiae It's more often because of Amazon. They like to have Wjispersync where you can swap between the ebook and the audio where you last left off. If they cut the stat pages then the book and audio wouldn't match.
Don't worry everyone, he's waiting a bit for the franchise to fade out of mind and enter nostalgia-range, then we're going to have a reboot of TWA with poor CGI and a direction that completely misses the original point of the channel.
This better be true 🙏
I’m praying
Some twenty years ago a classmate in my creative writing class wrote a story set in an RPG world. It had all the hallmarks of your standard isekai: a bland protagonist with OP stats, magic high school, female characters fawning over protag-kun. It was terrible and I clowned him for it. I never thought he was actually a pioneer of the genre
Many a teenager back in the 2000s and 2010s were pioneers of this genre that's for sure. Hormones + video games + anime would certainly guarantee that fact.
It lacked copycat a mainstream character
It was fucking everywhere during the early 2010s
You just needed to change hair color in order to get the most original character of the decade
It's been a fanfic trope for a long time.
People love how strong a shonen-style character is by the end of a series with constant power creep; and then write stories not realising it ruins in the attraction of a story if there's no challenge for the MC. Also Peggy Sues, utterly perfect self inserts because when people imagine themselves in the story they wouldn't make mistakes or have difficulty like everyone else did.
I don't think we could ever find who invented the idea, it's likely to have been a thing since early storytelling, just not written down in a way we can see today.
there was a guy in my class 6 years ago.more specifically, he’s my BFF. He wrote a litRPG and it’s really good. The MC is an “anti-god” (kind of god that kills other gods to strengthen), he reincarnated with his friends into a world created by a guy named A (the strongest guy in the friend group) world during an accident. Because A enjoy seeing their power getting nerfed so he doesn’t release them( the world itself is a jail that greatly nerf the power of gods that fallen in it which make them unable to escape without beating the lessen version of A in the world to gain the wish to escape). the MC and his friends actually enjoy living in the world since as Anti-gods, they barely have anything to do and it’s boring but until a random day, A just cause power outage to troll the MC making him mad and he go on the journey with his friends to escape the world and beat A ass up in their god form (in the after story, I learned that they’re unable to beat A after escaping the world). The thing that make it good is the stats actually make sense, no over power abilities or items (the only OP thing is the “2 deaths, 1 win” strategy which was used in one chapter, the strat is to let the sword man guy use counter ability of the true drifter’s katana then let the mage who’s wearing a voodoo necklace use sacrifice ability which do infinite damage to an ally (here is the swordman) the swordman will die (he will get respawn after that) and the same time do a infinite damage sword hit at the mage, the mage will die but will reflect the infinite damage at all enemies in the fight and kill them all. they can’t do that again after the chapter because A patched it by removing the counter’s friendly fire in that chapter). The characters actually have to use multiple abilities in one fight, die and lose multiple times before actually win and abuse a strategy multiple time because it works. The enemies are smart, they don’t underestimate their foes and do really good teamwork, sometimes they even become emotionally, think of master’s words, get the power of friendships or the urge to protect loved ones then full heal, strengthen and then destroy the MC’s team, example: Lux Salvatoris, the hero of all lights which was commanded by the light emperor to stop the MC’s team from wreaking havoc the overworld (yes, the MC’s team were bad guys who do everything to escape the world) Lux was beaten after a long fight but he can’t let that happen so he becomes one with the light (die slowly and explode when died) and eradicate everyone in the team when they’re not ready. there’re a lot more unique things, Lores, mechanics, plots, ect. that I didn’t talk about but those were things that impressed me the most. My friend still writes and send chapters to me up till now (it’s bout to end) he says he may publish it if he feels like it’s good enough.
Oh, forgot to mention a thing that his light novel (or not light as it’s long af, I didn’t ask him if it’s a novel or light novel). It have a lot of fan service… it’s not what you think, it’s brutal violence like the MC slamming a girl’s head who’s trying to charm him at the table rapidly until she die in a bar ( it’s completely fine since 20% of the death in the bar is caused by other causes other than the shotgun roulette game). Any type of those “filthiest love” in his words, he deal with them by making the MC and some of his teammates violence toward things like that. Oh yeah, he also make me draw all the important female characters have the body of a skinny man, all those who have an attractive body usually die like every other unimportant characters(literally flat= strong plot armor)… I love that!!! (apparently he’s into girls like that, no wonder why)
I would unironically love if a book I was enjoying had a sex scene in it, and the whole thing was described with the word "Boobies" just copy pasted over and over again for a page and a half. Then the story just gets back on track like nothing happened.
I prefer to go for the method of purple prose lovemaking
The book I am working on is going to include one prominent lovemaking scene
One web novel i read had sections with the dating characters discussing NSFW things in spoilers. Which i read, but good that there was an option to avoid.
Then there was one sex scene between them, supposedly the most important one. Inside a spoiler. When you open the spoiler, this is just a line saying "and then they fucked".
@@lordbuss thats honestly hilarious
I love how the actual SAO explanation for why the guy trapped everyone there was so bad that even JP couldn't commit to it and sprinkled in a reference to the abridged parody.
Now I'm interested, what was the actual explanation?
@@g.f.martianshipyards9328 that's the funny part, there's none.
@@g.f.martianshipyards9328it was "I already forgot why I did that" or something similar
@@g.f.martianshipyards9328The actual explanation really was “it’s been so long I don’t even remember.” The abridged went for extremely tight publisher deadlines which also made the designer stay awake for 500 hours straight, in which state what he did made perfect sense to him, and then he was just in too deep not to commit to the character.
@@hakairyu1Exactly. They even poked fun of the original ending by having him originally say the same thing only for it to turn out to be a joke when the characters rightfully complained about how bad that was, then he piled on to that before giving a much better explanation which JP referenced of Metacritic roasting his pride and joy, he tried to get an extension but since his publisher was Bethesda, they didn't accept bugs as a reason to postpone the game further so he spent several days straight working on the game, and in his sleep deprived mind, thought that doubling down and holding the players hostage until he figured a way out was the best course of action.
But yeah, in the original it was literally "I don't remember anymore", and that kind of fruit is already 6 feet underground and poking at fruit that low hanging isn't really all that funny to be honest. Especially since the parody did it far better than you ever could.
JP, wherever you are I hope you are okay and doing well. please don't feel pressured to make content for us. though we miss you, if things aren't going well in your life, its good to take some time off. On the other hand if things are going well, so well that you want to focus on those things, that's okay too. we'll still have your old videos, you covered a lot of topics and I always find myself returning to them. Best of wishes from one of your fans
Agreed. I realized lately I hadn’t seen any new videos and was surprised how long it had been. I hope JP is doing well and will share some more writing tips with us. It’s great advice.
He dont know you lil bro u dont gotta write a paragraph
I remember my mom disdainfully describing Harlequin romance novels and the people who obsessively consume them like candy, and litRPG has struck me as the male nerd version of that.
Hahaha thats amazing and sounds accurate.
There's a huge female audience for it too
Ahhh my favorite Genre. A few really amazing books out there in that genre and a lot trash that does every single cliché.
Most Harlequin romance novels are just huffing trash or fluffy little pieces of shit, but they weren’t as extremely terrible as they are now.
. And there is a huge gay audience for the harlequin romance novels, what of it?
It's been a while JP, much longer than the usual wait.
I'm not sure if everything's okay on your end but I wish you all the best, whatever may or may not be happening (and a happy April Fool's day to you, not a joke for once).
What I find worse than "this person is the only one to discover this strat/that this skill is actually OP!" Is when the protagonist bumbles their way into a busted build by sheer accident. Because there's nothing more satisfying in a genre that's purportedly about strategy than watching someone brainlessly fail upwards through dumb luck!
Edit: Yes obviously comedic stories are an exception to this
Even worse is when they take the skills that everyone says are weak but the combo makes them super duper strong. Like one where the guy takes Stealth and Archery. Both of those skills supposedly suck in that story but they become busted when used together.
Meanwhile, in the real world everyone knows stealth archer is a busted build and every single build would have been tried in days after the game came out with entire guilds formed around the idea of testing different builds to find esoteric super combos.
@@starburst98 yeah especially that those combos always are so obvious. Like i'm sorry, but you need to be literal monkey to not realize that skill which gives you permanently increasing HP and skill that deals increased DMG the more HP you have, is obvious combo.
@@starburst98irl people would go shitty classes just cuz they feel like it or are bored XD
Ah, yes, the "Oh noes! I tripped and accidentally grabbed Cleric boobies!" character build.
Like putting all of your points into defense.
There are female-centric harems. They are just usually different, and often just love triangles like Twilight.
the only really good harem is apothecary diaries, where we get to see one in a semi-historical setting
There is also villainess isekai, which is a really good female harem
@@pallingtontheshrike6374Never said what I mentioned was good. Not really sure how to judge that. Just pointing out that it wasn't just a guy thing.
There’s a Netflix series based off a wattpad fanfic called my life with the Walton boys where a girl’s entire family dies and in her moms will she says she wants her to live with her friends family and for whatever reason they have like 10 kids, all boys
A love triangle is not a harem.
Reminds me of in SAO's Gun Gale Online where the sniper girl to my knowledge is literally the ONLY sniper in the game. Like, are you telling me that in this massive online competitive shooting game NO ONE has ever tried to be a sniper before especially when they have such massive buffs, even tethering on GAMEBREAKING such as the first shot ability. Realistically, there would be SWARMS of players roofcamping every single surface of the map.
Given how advantageous that ability is, it'd be on every 'pvp viable' build out there. Heck, why isn't she using an AoE weapon with it like a grenade launcher? Doesn't matter if your trying to be a pistol toting gunslinger, a regular rifle soldier or a sniper, not having prediction line on first shot is an ability that just begs the question 'why would that not be in every build?'
So this is untrue. Sinon isn't the only sniper in GGO. Nor is such ever suggested. She is an extremely good sniper with an extremely high spec sniper rifle that makes her services highly saught after as a merc. But snipers and designated marksman are pretty common. Especially in the AGGO spinoff where, just off the top of my head four or five named characters are fitted out for long range engagements. Heck, Pitohui pulls out a Barret .50 cal and bifurcates a couple poor saps at half a mile during the second Squad Jam.
@@Sorain1 Part of it is that high end, exotic, and support weapons seems to be legit extremely rare in GGO by design. You either get really lucky. Grind really hard. Or shell out a lot of real world money. In the Gun Gale Alternative novels and anime one of the characters, Fukaziroh, is in fact a grenadier and specializes in lobbing her 40mm grenades as pocket artillery for her squad.
Thats what got you?
You cant even imagine the rage i felt when kirito was like "lmao i can port my OP stats from SAO and block bullets with my sword" in a GUN GAME
I feel the anger swelling again
@@mrdasgehtsienichtsan2020 they did that for the third game as well?
He overlooked the Part Betrayal, where the MC is in a party at the start, and is often abandoned and/or betrayed with their lover stolen by their main rival in the party.
This normally causes the MC to strike out on their own and discover their hidden ability. Sometimes the ability has a downside that made them seem week, thus causing the abandonment/ betrayal.
Oh No! And then they Find out that their Suppose Former Love interest is also the One that Started this Betrayal Plan! All for very Shallow and Vague reasons!
There is a messed up Manga that covers this. It is TRULY twisted on another level. But it wasn't so much just his rival, the entire party decided to use him, arrest him on trumped up crimes, then execute him through torture. He was resurrected by a goddess and given OP powers. If I recall correctly, the explanation was he sold his soul and every single person who betrayed him. He destroyed everyone, last chapter I read, destroyed the Devil and now is going to heaven to wage war on the Gods for allowing corruption to run rampant. I can't recall the exact title but remember I am warning you, it is REALLY messed up
I've only seen it (intentinally) done ONCE,and it's Royal Road's The Heart Grows.
With Arifueta,the MC fell in a hole & was presumed dead,noone actually betrayed him.
@@chee.rah.monurB _Shield Hero_ comes to mind, with the caveats that the original party never quite forms and it's the (potential) lover that abandons and betrays him .
It's like a popular subgenre recently with how much I read about it, though mostly it's on generic guilty read I pour through just because I like to feel good one day.
it's been almost a full year... miss you jp. your channel was basically what got me back into writing. hope you're alright
"My Build Was Too OP So the Devs Nerfed It" HAS to be a light novel.
i can name you SEVERAL where this happens
I'm sorry, did you mean "I don't wanna get hurt, so I'll max out my defense"?
For the record, it's actually real and word for word the title of the series
And its hilariously entertaining
@@floricel_112 you wrote about Maple before I did
@@floricel_112 I've heard something about the story and that counfounded me the most.
Why didn't the devs just nerfed her.
As a LitRPG author, I've been dreading/looking forward to this video for years.
Thanks for skewering the genre without skewering me. Couple stabs came close, but I'm feeling mostly intact.
I see someone remembered to wear their plot armor for this video!
Looks like he got him in the spine, cut the nerve's pain response clean out! Good hit, JP!
Criticism can be used towards the improvement of your craft. No reason to be afraid.
I'm an avid reader. Some of them were quite accurate! I really agree with the point about harems, it feels like every male MC I've ever read goes that route which is why I try to avoid them and stick to female lead LitRPGs. So far my favorite is Salvos, but Amelia the Level Zero Hero is a close second. They feel fresh
I was just taking a read through the comments and I'm happy to see Salvos mentioned! It's so good. I also really enjoy Awaken Online, that's a fun one too. @@Xiao457
"Life in a dysfunctional RPG" would be a trip! Having an "In-Universe perspective" of a poorly planned/optimized game as the developer(s) try to make the thing work.
Imagine being a scientist trying to figure out the world but then God drops a patch note that changes the mass of proton.
Its not a bad idea, if protag kun gets the short stick , ot at least has really broken useless things as hurdle that are very badly balanced, against him. And are real and have personality could be fun. Everyone loves an underdog.
Protagonist kun gets transported in some newbie's RPG maker project
Look into "the Magic Circle" It's a video game proper, but it still fits the theme of seeing a bug-ridden mess from inside the mess
SAO Abridged did this. A lot of the comedy is derived from its version of SAO being just fundamentally broken in so many different ways. They even made the developers’ motivation for making it a death game be explicitly that he knew it was too buggy for a proper release and he wanted to delay the inevitable critical backlash.
the funny thing is one of the guys IRL who has a reputation as one of the best swordsmen (Musashi) has a LOT of stories where him being the best translates to "I caught them unawares and/or unprepared and I was smart enough to stay away from anything that sounded like an attempt to ambush me".
So apparently Swordsman is a class governed by the Ambush and Stealth skills and Wisdom as a stat, and the higher levels are locked behind Chaotic Evil.
As expected of the master oarsman
The man was left handed, that’s the REAL reason
Not only, he was aüpearently really that good, but he also was cunning and was known for barely legal tricks like unnerving opponents by coming too late.
Well in life there is no respawn, so the only way to be the best is to not die
"miyamoto musashi, AKA the progenitor of being a hack"
- sasaki kojiro
Once more, the cosmic, all knowing, all mighty, romantic tringular writer decends from the heavens to share a mere *droplet* of his knowledge to us _l o w l y_ pencil scribblers.
i n s i g h t g a i n e d
Hey J.P. I just want to say that I hope you are doing ok. It has been some time and Im getting a little worried. I wish you the best man!
I just came back to this channel because I suddenly remembered it out of nowhere (I used to watch it a lot and religiously waited for the next video). My heart sank a bit when I saw the last video was 7 months ago considering he makes videos every 1-2 months.
@@bindukopparapu2795 Maybe it's just a season hiatus or a really long time skip? (Man I hope it ends soon!🙏)
I’m getting worried, TWA where are you?
Agree
He finally got isekaied
D E P R E S S I O N
Bro probably locked in and is working on his own writing for a while.
Litrpg is such an underrated story idea because its almost always done in a really bad way. Rpg elements in a world would drastically shift the method and means of a given nation to consolidate power, the meaning and process of accrument of wealth, and the societal structures of its inhabitants. How would rpg power logically effect commerce? Social heirachy and interaction? Political, ethnic, and gender conflict?
Now I'm just picturing Wall Street botting Mercantile to 9999 through money laundering
@@williamdrum9899 Wall Street is so rich because they pay people to camp all the best spots to farm gold from monsters
@@williamdrum9899Yeah… depressing 😢
I would recommend "I am a spider, so what?". It´s a light novel, a manga and an anime. Though the later is not a good adaption at least on the human part of the story since that seems to be done by a different studio than the spider parts. But it does it quite well.
I started reading Salvos which is litrpg about demon in hell. I found it quite interesting but author had to take interesting setting and throw it away because that demon got transported into typical fantasy Earth and most of the story is "Let's go grinding" literally. I read quite far but eventually stopped because author was pushing goal further and further away
"We need to kill this thing"
"We killed this thing but turns out we need to find item"
"We found item but turns out we can't use it, we need to get lvl 100"
"We got level 100 but turns out we need lvl 100 specialization"
I wonder if his next video is going to be about hiatuses
People would absolutely pay for a game with real pain. Though I imagine it would start off as an option, then the gate keepers would start screaming you aren't real gamers without feeling your skin get peeled off.
And as usual, they would be right. Counter-Spell that, nerds
@@TheDoctorProfessor *brings ancient stegadon just to counter Slaanesh*
@@TheDoctorProfessor You are watching a comedy wrting video on writing ltrpg's. And you consider yourself a "real gamer". So please stop looking in the mirror because it has no interest in being a strawman for you.
JP is gonna make a video about time skips isnt he
Is nobody else concerned that JP hasn't posted in months when he's been on a pretty consistent 1 video a month streak for more than a year?
Yeah, I noticed that too. I wonder what's up.
Same D: I’ve noticed
Depression strikes again, I guess.
He could have some things to deal with. Job, family, moving, maybe health. Idk, I'm just throwing pasta. I really hope he's doing fine.
I do hope hes alright, hopefully its just life keeping him busy.
I miss you JP! Your content is what got me into writing and literature! If it wasn't for you I never would have been interested in books after school ruined reading for me. I hope you're doing alright, I know content creation can be stressful, but if you could at least let everyone know you're okay!
I like how in Konosuba they make fun of the consequences of reality working off of video game rules, like having a magic school that doesnt actually teach magic since you aquire spells by spending skill points.
I love that , also kazuma has to use his game exploiding skills and tricks to make use of his overpowered but kinda useless and hopeless party . Who also are all friends.
Also it doesn't have hitpoints! a level 40 person still breaks their neck and dies as easy as at level 1.
@@stm7810that's because fall damage works off percentage rather than set value
Edit: joke
@@floricel_112 nah it seems to be very consistant about humans having organic bodies that obey physics, the shittiest cantrips can still cause great pain if used right, alcohol works off body mass, you don't just become more resistant to it through some poison resist and later on in the story ideas from his world are very effective.
An issue that hurts litrpgs is that on sites like Royal Road there are many commenters that want the protagonist to be a gary sue who always wins and always makes the 110% most optimal choice. If the protagonist messes up in any way they go.
"WHY THE FUCK WOULD I WANT TO READ ABOUT AN IDOIT!!?? YOU ARE A HACK AUTHOR!" Not to mention if the protagonist doesn't turn into a violent murder hobo because someone was slightly rude to them they go. "AGH WHAT A DOOR MAT SOI BOY!"
So true, I see far far to many comments on anime episodes about weak protaganists who actually lose fights and don't just win everything. People are used to OP protaganists who never work for anything so when a good writer makes a character earn their strenght people don't understand it and assume the character is just weak and badly written.
It's my experience the story is better off once they inevitably move on. At least on the site I use (Fiction Live), there's always a new power fantasy where the author will get sick of writing before it even reaches the 6-hour-read mark, so I just let them move on to another shiny thing while I move on with the story.
The version on this site however is that the majority of the stories use "Best of 3" rolling - where the GM//QM allows the players to roll and then takes the best of the first three people to roll. This obviouslly means it is rarely a matter of IF the character succeeds than how well. I tried sticking to one roll for a while, but it adds enough audience participation whent he story is live that I've instead started leaving the roll box open and then using ALL the results for upcoming rolls. I've found the splits the difference between audience engagement and "no really, you can fail" as best as feasible.
I have seen much of the second latter.
Maybe keep away from children?
@@FrostHollow(cough) re:zero (cough)
Hope you’re okay, JP
the one time youtube gives me a notification for a channel i have all notifications on and it is 1 second after it posted
That should tell you his power level, he gives the Rothschilds pause.
I keep using this channel as an excuse to not write because i'm "learning useful stuff for when I actually write"
*in J.P. voice* "I'm just studying for when I do write my book! Soon! Eventually! At some point..! When I get around to it..."
Well the channel appears to be on an abrupt hiatus right now, so you're excuse may have finally run out.
Yea, where'd he go? Hope he's ok.
It’s been 7 months, you better be writing something now lol.
@@g.williams2047 I actually am now. ten chapters in
Even addictions past masturbation would be more compelling. An OP anime protagonist who can't help but gamble at every opportunity sounds like somewhat fertile ground.
Kakegurui in a nutshell.
@@oculttheexegaming2509 Kakegurui is more part of the thriller/death game genre tho
The korean light novel Second Coming Of Gluttony has this as the protagonist's core flaw, especially apparent in later arcs. Seol is a washed-up gambler and initially unrepentant grifter. When introduced to a deathgame LitRPG world, he starts gambling his own life and the lives of those around him - to initial success and then eventual horrible consequences.
Pretty much the only regressor-type story I've enjoyed as a person who hates overpowered protagonists. His only major starting advantage is an emotional wake-up call from his future self and a few spots of foreknowledge.
Just don't read the manhwa. They butchered it by cutting a majority of the clever foreshadowing and struggling. honestly kind of impressive that they turned such a well-plotted story into just another power fantasy lmao
Reminds me of the webtoon Hardcore Levelling Warrior. One of his strongest skills was his constant gambling, and making use of even the worse results.
@@olafgurke4699Oh you also read it? The earth game is out as well.
I'm pretty sure he's busy writing the 2nd volume of his book series since it's been ages since the 1st one.
That'd be wonderful. The first book ended with a really neat twist and I've been waiting for years to see what will happen next.
That's what I'm assuming too
Where is JP? Is he safe? Is he all right?
I feel like the main problem with LitRPGs is that they're usually written by and for people whose only experience with storytelling comes from videogames.
Yup.
Indeed
And not from videogames with stories worth telling...
Fear of patching would be a hilarious explanation for why people don’t use exploits, and a funny power limiter
Bofuri does this.
though in other settings it's only coincidence that things map to numbers, after all technically they do here like force mass, comfortable pH range, accuracy and speed with various weapons etc. we just don't write them down.
@@stm7810 Tbf in Bofuri the devs do nerf Maple. But they also actually WANT their game to be CONDITIONALLY broken, where strong players haave the opportunity to run into a situation where there power set will let them be a complete bad ass. The whole point is to encourage the players to explore and experiment.
@@Bustermachine yeah, I love the show for that!
@@stm7810 Bofuri is written by someone who understands game dev enough to understand how to break it.
Dude where the hell did you go? Did the terrible writing advice universe collapse or did you die cuz I haven't heard anything
Brave of you to call out an entire webnovel website like that...
But you forgot the most important thing in a LitRPG:
NUMBERS
GO
UP
Without the sweet, sweet feel of stats increasing, the genre is nothing.
no. That isnt what d and d or any rpg is about either. It's about the story, about the world, about imagination, about characters. The numbers are just window dressing. The system theyre describing to you isnt a system. It's made up on the fly and changes as the writer wants the hero to do different things.
In d&d i learned what i loved wasnt matching my numbers vs antagonist dm specifically designed to be ac hallenge but to lose...
It was solving problems, learning about an interesting world, finding clever solutions to situations, the other characters. The numbers are scorekeeping etc.
The most important part of having stats and skills, _is to give the MC a way to bypass them,_ so they can cheese their way through problems while others have to solve them the hard way, thats the best method to make them look smart and skillful
Moreover, having the MC actively trying to obtain those cheat powers may make him MC look greedy, so its much, much better to give them to him on the initial class, as an inborn ability or obtained by some random accident
But above everything ese you must remember: *it doesnt matter what kind of stats and skills there are in the setting,* _the story MUST develop in roughly the same way as all the others_
It doesnt matter if the MC has fire powers, super strenght, antimagic, dragon powers (which are the three of them bundled together) or if he is a crafter, a healer, a diviner, a general, a tamer or a necromancer, have him kill enemies to become stronger, get special powers over the minors of achievements, unlock the special specialness of specialties with ust a little training and reach a level of power nobody believed possible before
Original mechanics may scare and confuse new readers, so be sure to stick to the tried and true (i wish i was sarcastic about this one)
If you dont know how to do this, *just send them to the battle academy and be done with it,* standarized tests are a simple way to have the MC overcome great odds, teachers are a stand in for systemic issues and classrooms and student clubs will do great as substitutes to actual social dynamics
Don't worry about JP he is writing currently. probably gonna make a next episode later
yeah
A litrpg pitch I keep thinking about is having the “op protagonists” are actually the video game’s devs-it would explain them having weird, world-bending powers and maybe some npcs randomly falling in love and accidentally causing a harem (“whoops, found a bug in the relationship development matrix. Gotta patch that …”). They’re op for now, but the plot involves the characters nerfing exploits, so they aren’t getting stronger, they’re just working with a more competent game.
Working title, "Alpha testing for a Fantasy world"
"Betatesters" maybe
I know that "Trapped as an NPC in a Cursed Game" (webcomic name)/"Trapped in a Cursed Game, but now with NPCs" (webnovel name) has someone on the dev team as the protagonist. The gm team helps out at some points.
@@sdave304 NPC in cursed game? wow, sounds like as my life!
That's awesome I would totally read that story
LitRPG writer here. In designing these storylines, I've felt that the stats often hold back good storytelling, but it's sold much better than my other work. My attempt to make good material in this genre has been to downplay the detailed numbers and focus on tough choices and world-building. "You may now pick the power to talk to animals OR levitate!" If the world is going to run on game logic, it should look at what happens as a result, hopefully outside of combat. "This nobleman ordered his peasants to only take the Farmer class to min-max crop production, but then he gets sacked when there's a battle to fight." "The hero's got valuable economic news that the young prince has decided to dual-class in Engineer, which will affect national industrial output and the market for magic crystals for decades." I care much more about that than exactly how much damage the hero's gun does. Ideally the build choices are more about personality or gimmicks than numbers, like whether the hero wants to be the kind of guy wielding toxic blasts. So, show me the consequences of whatever game rules you've installed, not so much the numbers!
Where that leaves my work weak is in the area of motivation. If the hero's permanently stuck in game-logic world, he can commit to finding a good set of skills/stats/guilds. But if the hero is playing a video game and it's established that no, it's not going to kill you for real or make you a billionaire, then why does the hero care? I did one story where the hero gets caught up in a "Ready Player One" styled contest, but as with a heist movie, it's not really about the prize so much as why he wants it. The AI characters will go on quests with you but they really do that as an excuse to help/manipulate the players. The "why should we care" problem is why I recently did a full isekai scenario rather than a video game. When doing the video game stuff the focus was largely on the interaction between that and the real world -- which might bore people who want more dragon fights.
About others' LitRPG work: Reading the stat stuff is sometimes a guilty pleasure when I can fantasize about what I would do in that scenario. But I've found stories where the hero obsesses over build choices, then somehow blows through boss monsters far above his level with sub-par equipment, because his "tactics" and "teamwork" are so good. (They're not. Looking at a certain crusader rat protagonist especially... yet I still liked the series for cool, imaginative fights and hazards.) I also don't like the treadmill of the hero attaining Super Gold Soul Mystic Arts only to get sand kicked in his face by the Ultra Gold Soul Masters... yet I ended up reading several books worth of that, so how much can I complain about it? What I really don't enjoy even as guilty pleasure was when we get the game stats *and* the setting is miserable and depressing and the characters are unlikable. So it can be fun to read even a flawed LitRPG, but it's tough to put together something that can overcome the genre's tropes.
(My work includes "Virtual Horizon", "Crafter's Passion", and "Rising World", on Amazon.)
Curious about that crusader rat story you mentioned. Got a name?
@@damaskusseraph6046 That's "Dungeons Of Strata" and sequels, by Penman. I enjoyed the two volumes that I've read.
Strata sees you ... I agree with you on dungeon of Strata. The last book is out and it does what your critique points out in the end.
@@krisschnee3151 read all 3 books (listened on audible) and first teo were good, great at times but third one kinda flopped. Not super bad but not good as the first two
"Minmax crop production" This is unironically one of the funniest things imaginable and yet still makes perfect sense.
In "Defiance of the fall" the author decided HP just didn't work with his story, so he dropped it, everyone takes real damage.
hey JP you haven't uploaded in quite a while. Obviously you don't have to, but is everything okay on your end?
Hey guys I’m getting worried, he usually does monthly uploads but uhhhh, has anyone heard anything from him?
i wish i could say i have but nothing on his blog or social media or anything it kinda feels null. im honestly a little worried tbh especially since although he wasnt always consistent with his uploads he still uploaded at some points when it can be reliable for him to upload at all. i just hope the guy’s alright
hey uh JP? you okay, because you dont delay uploading that long. whats up?
I wish more stories would play around with the idea that while the MC has extensive knowledge of the game mechanics they stumble a bit over how those mechanics translate to the real physical setting. Giving you situations where the MC's knowledge actually works against them despite normally being a boon.
Imagine him training for months to throw a super powerful punch and his first fight he loses to an arm bar
Imagine a speedrunner who likes to glitch through walls finding out that doing that for real hurts like hell
Jackal Among Snakes actually has several moments like this!
An alternate way to use that is to let them have the knowledge, and need to figure out how to convey that to others to use, because they can't do it themselves. This also naturally leads to a supporting cast, which is handy.
An idea i';ve had is an ex-special forced guy teaming up with the typical nerdlinger isekai protagonist, and the clash between fiction logic and real life combat logic...reckon that could be a great series
It's been 4 months I hope nothing is going wrong. Really missed your videos.
Same, i got worried on if he is ok, jp is a beacon of light in this trying times
It takes time to animate and find new topics.
@@danielramsey6141 It's all Greed's fault, he hadn't first increased the animation budget.
@@oddtomato1049 damn you greed, such a hateable well written villain
@oddtomato1049 hey do you like Kirby
hey jp is everything okay because you havent uploaded in a while. i hope everythings good on your end
In the realm of edge/needless violence, I made myself a simple 4 question ruling to determine whether or not a violent scene is needlessly excessive to the point of being detrimental to the story. I call it "the Tavernitis Test":
A: Does the scene actively add to the plot or to the characterization of anyone involved?
B: Is the heinous or potentially "edgy" action something which either would radically feel out of place within the rest of the work to the point where it would be a detriment, or something which comes wildly out of nowhere in terms of characterization?
C: Could the action be replaced with anything less aggressively "dark" and not lose anything from the intention behind the scene?
D: Is the event in said scene or the scene itself ever mentioned again, or ever referenced past it's initial point? Does it actively create a turn within the story or characterization?
If all but A and D is answered with yes, then it's very likely that the scene is simply created as a way to shock the reader without actually thinking of ramifications of the shock itself.
GRR Martin wants to know your location..
Wow!
I do like that Edin's Gate turns the herem trope on it's head by having the romantic interests turn away as the main character takes too long to decide and continues to be unfaithful. The series has plenty of problems, but the herem is eventually not one of them
I've never heard of it before.
@@chee.rah.monurB it's a litrpg where players die when they put on the VR headset, and their consciousness is stored in the game world, which is powered by a blockchain to keep people from shutting it down. The game is a fantasy world where all the NPCs act like real people, and the players have to get used to the idea that they're not in a game, but are at the beginning of their eternal life with real lifelike NPC characters that they share the world with. And the people left in the physical world have to deal with the fact that there is a controversial device that could kill them, or potentially give them eternal life. It has a lot of cool concepts, and the series has been getting better, but it annoys me when the characters relapse on old mistakes that they should have already learned from for plot reasons. And as realistic as the consequences of taking addictive substances are, they're really uncomfortable to read
@@LinkingYellow Can you read it anywhere online?Because I was expecting to find it on Royal Road.
@@chee.rah.monurB I listened to it on audible
@@LinkingYellow I stopped reading halfway through the first sentence of your description.
He gonna come back with a video on writing prison novels or something.
"Where has my saviour gone?"
FOR 9 MONTHS
gregnant
Funnily enough, Sleep Deprivation and a deadline was Kayaba’s motive to trapping everyone in the death game in SAO abridged, the infinitely better version of SAO in terms of writing!
My own -crack- Head Canon was that Kayaba used to DM tabletop and the intransigence of his players finally caused him to snap.
Heathcliff - "It's enough to make you think that maybe what's needed to keep the game on track is to kill a few people."
Asuna - " . . . " Calculates if she can make the door.
so THATS what taking J.P so long to make his next video
I'm really hoping he didn't burn himself out by including animations.
JP pulling a George RR Martin and dying before he finishes his epic (The Sponsorship Wars) would be the most meta thing.
Worst part was that I was legit getting invested in seeing where the Sponsorship Wars were going. I really do hope JP is alright though, wherever he may be
I am moderately optimistic and presume that due to Greed's ever increasing demands for fluid animation it takes way longer to make these episodes. Greed's every executive making impossible demands. If it takes until the next year then he's probably dead.
here lies TWA i wish you the best you are one of my favorite youtubers
Hey, what’s up man? No videos in 5 months? I’ll wait, they always make my day.
Agree
12:40 made me think of a story where a character does find a glitch or something to be powerful, but then it's fixed and the story is how they have to earn their power like everyone else and work their way back up
Reminds me of the Webtoon Hardcore Leveling Warrior. Kind of happens almost exactly like that only he became top of the world through more literal exploits (He's a gambler) and then in chapter 1 a glitch in the system resets him back to level 1. It was actually pretty good though because he never received any kind of random abilities and just used the extensive knowledge of the game he already had to slowly regain power only this time he did it without essentially scamming people and it makes him a better person.
@@noble6752 Yeah, and he does still exploits and broken abilities kinda, but does so, with his new friends.
Also it explores why he was that toxic gamer in the first place pretty touching. I mean he sora and darks abilities kinda are broken, through they still have to learn to master them gradually.
And its really nice seeing them bonding by scrapping up and go on misadventures. Good characters too.
Bug Eater is a WEBTOON with a similar premise, the MC exploits the shit out of the game for personal gain (he had a good reason) before being demolished by someone with powers like a Game Dev. Story is about him turning things around using his knowledge of the end game and quest progression as well as exploits and how to BEAT them instead of use them.
1:36 I guess his revenge was a 8+ month long hiatus
Make that 3 seasons.
Haven’t seen you upload in a while, been checking nebula weekly to see if you have
yeah i noticed that from checking his nebula basically every day for a couple of months. even sent emails to ask about his next upload but idk what happened. i just hope things are okay with him and his video production
So much joy watching him tear into this genre. Entirely motivated by spite, I admit. It brings a tear to my eye.
Here’s hoping he returns this summer….
I would love to see a “terrible writing advice” of multiverses.
Where has twa been
dude like jp come back man we totes miss you!
i used to check on your channel every now and again to see if theres _any_ kind of new updates but i just feel let down here but regardless i hope your break is serving you well.. well idk what happened but i hope youre all right JP
its been seven months already i just hope everything is good on your end!
This video made my appreciate "So i am a spider , so what" even more .
JP : Sarcastic good point about a cliche
In my head : wait , Spider actually did a good job avoiding that
I literally just started watching that series two days ago. The timing of this video is genuinely coincidental, but FEELS weirdly targeted to me specifically. :)
What's "So I am a Spider?"
@@alexandredesouza3692 a Jap litRPG light novel that for some reason got popular enough to get a manga and anime and people think it's good and not cliched trash despite being cliched trash.
@@alexandredesouza3692 anime/msnga isekai reincarnation story
@@alexandredesouza3692 'So I'm a spider , so what' is a LitRPG staring a Spider protagonist isekaid into a cave as the lowest species. Who then needs to go up from there.
As a fellow author, I can say you're spot on.
You know what I'd love to see you do? A video on bookcovers. Like all the YA book covers that all feature an attractive young woman posing and holding a fireball? lol
I wanna see a book cover that looks like a Blind Guardian album
Or have no discernible moment relating to the book
Or even recognizable characters
I want a book cover that just looks like a Yes album cover. My dream is to get a Roger Dean painting on the cover of a book.
I hate when book covers are made by people who clearly haven’t read the book. For example, in the fantasy novel “The Two Princesses of Bamarre,” the titular princesses are described as being biracial. It’s stated that while the older princess, Meryl, has light skin like the king, her younger sister Addie has the queen’s dark complexion. There are two white girls on the cover of the book.
@@tsifirakiehl4250 to be fair, it’s unrealistic to expect Artist McPainter to read your 700 page space opera instead of just reading the title and summary on the back
Honestly, if you are an author, you are lucky to even have a comment on the cover art, since it’s the publishing company that controls all of it, and they don’t care about depicting them book accurately, just getting people’s attention
I've really gotten into reading LitRPG's on Royalroad within this year, that place has a lot of great ones. And it shows me how well this genre can work with far slower pacing. For example, the first story I read on this site, Tree of Aeon, it really feels like every level matters. Or a completed great story I read, Vainqueur the Dragon. And by extension these stories tend to have great power scaling with every victory being earned. No matter how powerful the characters become.
Dungeon-core also fits into that, but I have only read like one of those types of stories.
Have you read Worth the Candle?
If you're looking for RoyalRoad LitRPGs with "far slower pacing", it's just the story for you.
Also, it's one of the best things I've ever read.
@@DavidSartor0 No, I've mainly stuck to Monster LitRPG's, but I'll consider this one.
Vainqueur is a comedy tho so it doesn't take the litrpg genre seriously so it doesn't really count
Overlord
Books: Fear, impostor syndrome and world building
Anime: Nazarick compilation to sell Albedo figurines and maybe the books too. But mostly Albedo figurines. They have a lot of Albedo figurines to sell and it is profitable. Also half the anime onlies complain loud and proud if there is a deviation from the Nazarick compilation formula in favor of adapting an arc from the books.
Glad to see another one of my genres covered. I did at least realize that I should show off some of my side character's skills more often. Also, math is hard. The more you add at the beginning of your story the more you'll regret the extra work later.
I want one where the protagonist get super OP abusing an exploit, but then get banned by the dev halfway through season one. Turns out everyone already knew about this bug, and just didn’t want to get banned, and now we have a new protagonist.
Or he is reset as punishment and has to actually work for it, i mean, coulfd be used for character growth.
Why wouldn't the bug have just been patched?
@@Bustermachinewaste of resources, I assume the company just decided to hard enforce it instead of patching it. Sure, it's a bad long term problem but corporation rarely think long terms
It's been a whole 9 months without TWA... please come back 😢
_ Something a lot of light novel author misses is that f your world is governed by RPG stats it's not just gonna affect combat, but everything, every skill, every talen, every job(not just combat job) will have its own stats
_ Video game & Table top use video game mechanic because it needs to. A non interactive story usually don't need video game mechanics, in these case the mechanic take you out of the experience & remind you this is fiction. For example HP bar & status effect are used to show the player the condition of the character because actually program every injury(the programmer has no idea what kind of injury a player will encounter so he would need to program everything from the severity to the location of the wound) into the character model & animation is very difficult & impossible in older hardware, but for a story the author decide where & what kind of injury it is & just have to make that 1 injury
*Protag Kun:* "Hello, Cat Girl! I have saved you with my 99 STR/DEX/WIS/CHR/INT powers! You're welcome!"
*Elf Chan:* "And I helped!"
*Cat Girl:* _Rolls_ "Whoa, Protag Kun, you're so great, I think I love you!"
*Protag Kun:* "Woah, that's really-"
*Cat Girl:* "Oh, wait, I get a reroll in case of failure!"
*Protag Kun:* "-Wait, wha-"
*Cat Girl:* _Rolls_ "Whoa, Protag Kun, that slave collar on your Elf is actually a huge red flag! Thanks for the help, but, uh...bye!"
*Protag Kun:* "..I KNEW I should have specced into Harem Re-Re Rolls!"
*Elf Chan:* "-Wait, wha-"
*Protag Kun:* "OH WOAH LOOK ANOTHER CAT GIRL BETTER GO SAVE HER!"
*Elf Chan:* "..."
Oh its a catboy, hmm is that expanding by horniness in an unexpected way. Way too interesting, to the next catgirl.
It has been months. Where are you
JP is gonna be the next oversimplified
Whenever he rags on Isekai all I can think of is that I've never been more offended by something that I agree with. 😂😂
One of my favorite novels ever the death mage doesn't want a fourth time does almost everything you have said, from explanations to everything (including the level/skill system) to what would really happen if some random people suddenly had broken abilities and what would people really do. The novel is awesome, and has variety on races not just plain and simple Tolkien, and they live in tribes as you would expect irl, understandable and sympathetic protagonists and antagonists.
I second this. Death mage uses the stats as a vehicle for the plot and creates intriguing story as well as engaging characters. Stats are secondary to the story of death mage. I agree with this take and put a stamp of approval on it.
And also go in the opposite direction of the monster protagonist by starting more humanlike and slowly becoming a eldritch abomination and we are still rooting for him
Why haven’t you uploaded in 7 months😢
J-J-J…JP? It’s been 7 months… 🥺
As a fan of visual novels, I feel like this video also covers a lot of tropes seen in those, particularly the parts about horniness and wish fulfillment
Speaking of which, I'd love for Visual novels to be covered soon. It's a unique artform that has sprites and background so character and scenery descriptions are no longer a must, but it's not a full-blown film so action and dramatic scenes need to be carefully worded out. I hope JP covers them next. 😅
This is why we need more Doki Doki Literature club.
It covers a lot of modern anime tropes in general lol
@@Reydriel I agree. 😅
But just from experience, I think visual novels still have untapped potential as an artform. Hopefully JP covers them since I don't recall any writing channel covering how to write visual novels in general. :)
@@sematy4948 It's likely he doesn't read a lot of VNs (not many do) so he probably doesn't have too much to say about it
Much like Isekai, I feel the real popularity of the genre is due to being far more fun to write than to actually read...edit: and from your description, one-handed...
Speaking of, when are we gonna get other video-game subgenres? Like Lit-FPS. Or Lit-Racing games. Lit-Mario Party Ripoff could be fun...
Concept is really interesting, I've read one litrpg where they explained why achieving max level and being OP is very hard and in a world they even had special job where person gave you advice what to level up and how depending on what you need. But rest of the story wasn't that interesting imo
Lit-cooking sim
One genre that can actually work but will never take off is character action. Basically it’s the only genre in gaming that makes style points a gameplay mechanic. As for why it won’t take off, same reason the game genre isn’t, it unintentionally proves how uncool the guy holding the controller actually is (even when we’re talking about his gameplay performance)
@brunoshiffman5343 I mean, i'm sure a lot of space opera dips into that, but I could se that being game-lit, and not just as an after-hours report
@@achmodinivswe9500 Dungeon Menshi
JP are you okay bud? Did you forget your password or something?
Probably retired or something similar? He’s gone completely radio silent, I’d think that you’d at least make a short.retirement video
Would absolutely love a Terrible Writing Advice on Western stories.
Frigging yes!! Do bear in mind that the king of European Westerns, Karl May, must’ve wrote a ton of fairly nuanced 19th century fiction and a couple of amazing books, because his creation Winnetou made him money.
@@SlapstickGenius23 Karl May is great, there's more than a few amazing books there. And especially for the time it's amazing how he doesn't discriminate. He neither treats Europeans as the good guys, as most of his villains are some version of European, nor does he fall into the noble savage trope, with some of his villains also being native Americans. It's about two sworn brothers of different peoples coming together to fight bad people of all kinds, both with the deepest respect and love for each other. Those novels are great.
@@Arphemius I’ve been searching up some Karl May facts online. Unfortunately, despite his characters being very relatable, he was like Edgar Rice Burroughs’ just as messed up spiritual predecessor, albeit with better meant ideals.
@@SlapstickGenius23 Really? That's a shame. Then again it was the 19th century, for that time it was probably very cosmopolitan.
I despise practices like Booktube. Lots of self published, unedited authors giving advice they don't even apply to their own creations.
This channel was always my go to. You had fun with this whole "advice" thing and actually gave good examples on how to do things properly that are quickly shot down.😂
Thank you, TWA. I've been writing for about five years now, and this channel was a lot of help during the scary, uncertain times.😁
...Wait, *THAT* is all a LitRPG is?? It's just 'here's a normal book with some statsheets and the mention of numbers going up'?? I thought it was like a choose-your-own-adventure novel...
oh you are wrong, it's an excel spreadsheet with flavor text.
Thats just a VN or some sorta community voted for story setup on some novel site
The 2022 movie The Princess (admittedly not very good) is LitRPG. It has progression and the character is aware of it. The Princess (un-named) is locked in the tower and has to fight to the bottom courtyard. The danger and adversaries get increasingly difficult. She finds and equips herself as she goes. Learns new skills, and exploits them as she goes. There are boss battles every once in awhile, and defeating them results in either equipment, skills, or a path forward/downward. It never mentions stats, but it is peak LitRPG
@@darkwitnesslxx isn't that more like FilmRPG? Since Lit=Literature? Though I suppose the script would be a LitRPG...
@@5peciesunkn0wn Well, it's definitely genre adjacent.
It's probably too late for this Halloween, but I have an idea for terrible writing advice for next Halloween: mascot horror
Screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
The survival horror video and the bit about lore in the myths video already have that covered
I hope you're okay, JP :(
Oh, you want a battle couple? I highly recommend the Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold. The woman was writing this series back in the 80s, and trust me when I say, it's INSANELY ahead of its time. You want really, really good sci-fi, check her out. She's amazing. It also has a special place in my heart, because, back in summer of 2018, I was in hospital, and my sister thought I was going to die, so ALL SHE DID was eat, sleep, and read this series. She introduced it to me because it kept her sane.
I ironically love the harem trope. Stupid characters doing stupid things. Unintentionally hilarious scenes always come out of it. Several of my favourite moments watching anime is cracking down laughing at a show trying to take itself seriously as the women fumble over the main character. It's like that one scene in trolls "BECAUSE SINGING KILLED MY GRANDMA, OKAY?"
Harem can be really fun, if the main character has the barest of character, and the harem actually has a fun relationship or at least banter. Rosario no vampire actually has a pretty good harem that are friends. And get zoned out for the actual love interest gradually in the end. And are happy for them.
Ranma is great but i didnt want to go for the obvious, but yes , harem can be fun, if they are not only about the mc.
Harem can be fun but it's rarely handled well. All too often it becomes rape because the MC uses mind control or charisma powers to convince the women to sleep with him, when they clearly didn't want to before.
Harem can be fun, and lot of my favorite shows are harems, but they’re all comedies who lean into the absurdity of it and utilize it for laughs, while I feel a lot of litrpgs just use it for wish fulfillment, which doesn’t work imo.
What you enjoy is the cringe factor. And while that is bad taste, objecttively, nobody can stop you from giving this trash genre more traction, so keep enjoying it while the rest of us have to deal with the deluge each year...
@@yoursonisold8743 oh no I hate the cringe, the masochism play is the worst part of the trope. I enjoy morons written by people who think they are artistic geniuses
Are you all right TWA?
whats happened to the channel?!? nothing for 7 months? hope JP is ok!
@emilygordbort7300 claimed to have used personal information on JP's social media to determine that he has no death certificate. It was in a reply to the comment of @tobyharrison4702. No clue beyond that.
19:20 to quote Sword Art Online Abridged: Fuckin' Bethesda.
I miss you. Please come back to me.
Creativity trumps game mechanics as written every time; And there is no need to munchkin it when you can make everything in character innovative.
One of the ways I stood out in my old DnD group was to use cantrips (that’s lvl 0 freebee spells) to their maximum. Fact is, if you can break the laws of physics, even a little, you can manipulate basically the entire world. Example: Prestidigitation + dungeon spider webs = tiny mailable sticky flammable substances or in other words = floating fire bombs.
I thought I was going to cringe & hurt by watching this as someone who loves LitRPG & wants to write my own, but no, this basically sums up a lot of the reason I don’t like a lot of books in the genre.