if you write a litrpg, is there any rules you would add?

[Rivertalon]

My question to those who are experienced in litrpg.

So if you write a litrpg, is there any rules you would add?

Like in the most of the litrpg we see mc getting experience just by killing human and monster.

I am not good at English hope you understand what I am trying to say.

 

[Corty]

Depends on how experienced you are. If it is your first work or you are not 100% confident, keep it simple. Don't cling to all kinds of rules, and also, don't introduce too many skills and stats and whatnot. The longer you go, the more and more convoluted it will get. Try to keep it as simple as possible and focus on story elements and not on stats and skills.

Or you will end up with an Excel spreadsheet by chapter 50.

If you have experience with the genre, well, I guess this thread would not have been made. So keep it simple and maybe just copy the typical tropes so you can make it easier for yourself.

 

[ThrillingHuman]

Or you will end up with an Excel spreadsheet

Which doesn't sound threatening at all.

 

[ACertainPassingUser]

I really wish the had pause button.
Complete with map, setting, stat, log, and quit button.

The setting actually works like how a game should act. There should be subtitle to know what people say word by word, and *sfx to know any significant sound from significant characters.

Brightness settings, contrast should be adjustable too. Being able to use unintentional night vision is one of best thing by playing a game, and if there's a dark places that can't be seen even with full brightness 100, it means its shrouded by magical means.

Of course, the quit button would either means death or sent back to homeworld, a 50:50 gamble.

 

[Empyrea]

I agree with Corty. I severely underestimated how much work goes into maintaining balance with skills. You aren't going to use all the skills to progress the story if you have too many, so keep it simple and save yourself hundreds of hours in the long run. I would also suggest against adding percentage based boosts. They add a lot of extra math that's too hard to follow for most readers anyway. I wish you the best of success in however you measure it.

 

[Akaichi]

Keep it simple.... In my novel I already bloated it, and I regret it every time I have to do a level up where I have to keep track of a 30 or so attributes and skills.
When you can't remember which is which even with a custom made app that you spent 15 minuets writing one afternoon, you know you screwed up!

 

[Deleted member 84247]

I don't really get much into most LitRPG's with a few exceptions, but I did try to make one before. The math starts to get wild after a while, and you have to keep track of many different attributes. I would suggestion doing small increments, or do numbers that are easier. Don't make your fookin "Horned Rabbits" give 33.71 EXP!

 

[LunaSoltaer]

This sounds like a perfect opportunity for Milestone Leveling

 

[Syringe]

Consider removing (some) rules.

 

[KrakenRiderEmma]

Yeah, I want to see a LitRPG with a combat system where a combatant can “go infinite” as they say in TCG/CCG gaming circles, though thus should be possible in any sufficiently complex system. This is usually a “broken” (aka boring) way to ensure victory but in a LitRPG it should be more broken than that, since it involves infinite loops. Sanity breaking, reality breaking, law breaking, time and space breaking, heart breaking, system breaking, etc. Maybe somebody’s done this and I just haven’t heard of it.

Alternate idea for finding rules: talk to an indie RPG designer, there are thousands of them out there who do nothing but think of cool rule systems for digital RPGs or tabletop RPGs that are about way more than “kill monster, get experience, level up, HP up, new powerful-sounding very situational skill.” Ask one if you can write a LitRPG using their system, probably get a yes because they’re usually not corporations or even companies, it’s not that different from asking a friend to make some art for a cover. I want to see a PbtA style LitRPG if there isn’t one already

 

[Spactacular]

My question to those who are experienced in litrpg.

So if you write a litrpg, is there any rules you would add?

Like in the most of the litrpg we see mc getting experience just by killing human and monster.

I am not good at English hope you understand what I am trying to say.

Honestly, my 2 bits of advice are 1: Logic, and 2: experience.

To explain what I mean I will go into detail.
In terms of logic, think of it like this, I see SOOOO many novels where they kill say 10 normal enemies, and then gain 10 levels, and say within this this world there are 500 levels. that means that within the space of 5 minutes the mc has managed to climb 1/50th of the way to max lv. By that sort of logic they should be able to reach lv 500 within a year. That to me seems rather broken. So the logic side of things I'm talking about making something believable. Try and balance the number of enemies killed and the xp gained per to allow it to make sense, think of it in regards to a regular person of the world trying to level up, they will take years to increase their levels so the xp per kill should reflect that.

And next, experience.
by this, I mean to experience the 'system and skills' side of thing through games so you can understand how it works. A great example is Genshin Impact which I think is a great place to start understanding how things work. i assure you that 99% of genshin players have no idea what they are doing, so go to youtube first and try to learn how the damage calculations work. a simple version would be ((Base attack stat)Xtotal % attack buff from artifacts) x skill damage %. once you can understand that side of things quite easily, it will make the balancing side of things that much easier. Not to mention, if you pick a game to base your skills off, half the balancing side of things is done for you.

As for additional rules regarding the world, try to keep it simple as many have already said. Things don't need to be too complicated, build yourself a framework, a rough outline of how things work, then add in any rules that might be needed to cover up issues you may encounter. For example 'XP can only be gained by those who participate within a 20m radius of a kill' or something like that.

Hope this helps!

 

[Cipiteca396]

If you're asking what rules I, personally, would add... An experience penalty for killing living or sentient beings. You can only grow through practice and knowledge- no murdering your way to the top.

If you're asking what I think you should add... Just make sure that it doesn't favor the MC any more than another person. Without more info, I can't suggest anything about your story, but that should be pretty universal.

 

[SirDogeTheFirst]

Milestone instead of experience points. I play dnd, and that's why I think milestone is a better progression system than experience. IMO, killing ten thousand or even a hundred thousand rats won't make you strong enough to kill a dragon, it will only make you better at killing rats, but if you steadily take on stronger opponents, harder puzzles, and more difficult problems, and gain you what experienced throughout the adventure as stats that would be more enjoyable in my eyes. Of course, this is one of the least popular opinions in the world since xp is one of the core elements of lit-rpg, but I like milestone mechanics better and use one in my story.

 

[Deleted member 113259]

Have a system but then have the MC not care about it so you have more character work than you have numbers.

 

[melchi]

Don't put stuff in that doesn't get used. If there are 20 stats but only 3 are relevant it begs the question... Why are there so many stats?