LitRPG: how it works and how to create a story
LitRPG, like other GameLit genres, is expanding rapidly, attracting more and more readers and role-playing enthusiasts. Find out more about Lit RPG and how to get started writing your own story.
What is a LitRPG?
The Literary Role-Playing Game, also known as LitRPG, is a literary genre that blends a fantasy world with video game and role-playing mechanics, as well as narrative progression.
In LitRPG, you can find many universes such as Fantasy, Apocalyptic, Science-Fiction or even Psychology. If you're a fan of literature or role-playing games, you'll love LitRPG!
What makes the LitRPG so special?
In the majority of Lit RPG books, you'll find five major characteristics that advance the story, and by extension the characters:
- Character statistics (strength, agility, intelligence, etc.),
- Character levels in line with their progress,
- Various skills and quests,
- A loot system with items found or earned throughout the story,
- Visible game interfaces such as menus and inventories for the character.
Even though the choice of LitRPG novels is not as extensive as that of fiction books, you'll easily find universes that suit you. A complete selection awaits you at the end of this article.
If you like creating universes or want to develop a world you enjoy, you can also create your own LitRPG.
Creating your own LitRPG
The LitRPG genre is accessible to everyone, both in terms of content and creation. Here's a complete guide to creating your own LitRPG story.
Imagine your world
Every good story needs to be anchored in a world. Such a world has its own codes, cultures and geography. Before you begin your story, you need to imagine your world.
If you don't know where to start, you can always take inspiration from a world you already know, such as Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Dungeons & Dragons, Cyberpunk or World of Warcraft.
To properly assemble all the information for your universe, we recommend using worldbuilding software such as Lore, our tool. Thanks to the template system and simplified navigation, you'll be able to organize all your world's key data easily.
Set up a game system
When imagining your world, don't forget to include the game system you want to implement. This can be integrated directly into the Lore software. Here are a few questions to get you started:
- Which statistics should be included, and how do they affect the story?
- How are XP points earned? When can a character be levelled up?
- Can skills evolve? If so, what impact do they have?
- Does the character have access to the quest interface? If so, how?
- What happens if the character dies? Does he lose items or go down a level?
Define the constraints of your universe and the main issues the character will face.
An example of a character page
For example, here we've created the Duke Lirian character in Lore, our universe creation software. In his page, you'll find all the important information about the character.
Write your story
Once you've defined the codes of your universe and the game system, you can start writing your story.
To get your narrative off to a good start, you need an effective opening to the universe, with a main quest. This will serve as a common thread and provide a clear understanding of the character's issues.
Tome is a storytelling software program designed to help you write your story. Our tool enables you to group all the information about your narrative into arcs, chapters and scenes.
To guarantee consistency between the various elements, remember to write down all information relating to experience points, levels, items collected and people met by the character.
Your story in Tome can easily be shared with friends and family if they also have the software suite. We're currently working on a system so that you can share your file in read-only mode, making your story available to the whole world!
Our LitRPG books selection
If you'd like to start reading or writing a LitRPG book, discover our complete selection of novels that will entertain or inspire you.
Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman
A highly acclaimed LitRPG novel in the USA, Dungeon Crawler Carl has become a classic of the genre. In this wild adventure, we follow a man who has only one goal: to get out of an infernal 18-level labyrinth, where he must find the staircase as quickly as possible to move on to the next level.
Primal Hunter by Zogarth
If you like survival stories, Primal Hunter is for you! In this LitRPG novel, we meet Jake and his colleagues, who are dropped into a mysterious forest in which they must survive for 63 days.
System Universe by SunriseCV
Love apocalyptic universes? You'll be thrilled with System Universe! In this LitRPG novel, you follow the adventures of Derek Hunt, a well-trained adventurer who finds himself in an unknown world where all his acquired skills and experience will become useless, and everything will have to be relearned.
If you're interested in LitRPG novels, join our Discord community of worldbuilders and storytellers, and get lots of advice on how to create your own adventure.
