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.

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.

LitRPG is _especially_ painful in audiobook form because the narrator reads the character sheet every time it shows up in the book.

As a Webtoons reader, this is like 99% of the comics in the Action and Fantasy category.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

"My Build Was Too OP So the Devs Nerfed It" HAS to be a light novel.

There are female-centric harems. They are just usually different, and often just love triangles like Twilight.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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!"

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.

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.

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

Fear of patching would be a hilarious explanation for why people don’t use exploits, and a funny power limiter

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

*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:* "..."

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.

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.

In "Defiance of the fall" the author decided HP just didn't work with his story, so he dropped it, everyone takes real damage.

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!

I keep using this channel as an excuse to not write because i'm "learning useful stuff for when I actually write"

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.)

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.

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

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

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

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.

hey JP you haven't uploaded in quite a while. Obviously you don't have to, but is everything okay on your end?

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'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.

So much joy watching him tear into this genre. Entirely motivated by spite, I admit. It brings a tear to my eye.

hey uh JP? you okay, because you dont delay uploading that long. whats up?

In cultivation/xianxia novels, the problem of overpowered characters floating around the story is solved by restricting their actions and basically only making them appear very late in the story, now this is represented as the 8000 chapters meme, but in cultivation mythology this kinda makes sense since most cultivators have to go through "Tribulations", that is, literally heaven or "the system" trying to kill them for being too powerful, and when a character truly becomes too powerful the character is straight up transported (also known as killed and reincarnated) into a higher state of existance due to being too powerful, and so they start up from the very bottom again.

Whenever he rags on Isekai all I can think of is that I've never been more offended by something that I agree with. 😂😂

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

19:20 to quote Sword Art Online Abridged: Fuckin' Bethesda.

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...

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.

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 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?"

_ 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

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.

...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...

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.

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.

LitRPG is my favorite type of story if done well, but it's mostly brought down by other genres being hamfisted into it without any thought of how to combine them correctly(also power creep is huge in litRPGs)[There has been a few stories I felt did the stat element of litRPGS decently like Reincarnation Paradise, but overall it is a matter of extreme balance and world building that few authors do right, especially if they go the complete LitRPG way]

Are you okay?

Lit RPG but it's an anime that's HoI4-like "Now watch as I add ONE LIGHT ARMORED BATALION TO MY INFANTRY DIVISION! *PREPARE TO BE DEFEATED BY THE POWER OF THE ARMOR STAT!* " "Smart move player-kun, however YOU DIDNT BUILD AA SITES IN YOUR BUILDING PROVINCES! MY STRAT BOMBERS LEVEL YOUR ENTIRE INDUSTRY! YOU HAVE NO TANKS, BAKA!!!"

It would be funny if an oblivious male protagonist had a whole harem after him only for it to be revealed at the end that he’s gay. Of course the whole thing would have to be a comedic parody

hey jp is everything okay because you havent uploaded in a while. i hope everythings good on your end

"How can the ladies resist the temptation of a box" I was expecting to see a thousand year old white haired elf with a staff

"Afterall, a lot of the men also meet grisly ends in the story." This makes me wonder if there's any LitRPGs written by bisexuaI authors.

Battletech does their novels well. They do not spell out the action like a game log, but you can imagine how each attack would appear on a unit's record sheet, as well as the implications of critical hits.

It's funny how not!Kayaba mentioning sleep deprivation and deadlines is literally his motivation in the abridged series.

My favorite litrpg is where abolitionist john brown get isekai'ed to a typical fantasy world. Its explore the real inpact slavery has on sociaty, as well taking jabs on common isekai/manhwa/wuxia tropes and cliches. Good read worth checking out.

Dungeon Crawler Carl series is my call for best example of the genre. It has everything. An insane god AI with a warped sense of humor running the dungeon. A talking cat companion. High tier magical heart-y boxer shorts that grant Carl abilities too good to give up, even if they require his not wearing pants for the magic to function.... Oh, and he is not a horndog =p

I would really love a specific review of something like SAO, because I'm curious what SPECIFICALLY works for TWA and what doesnt

Overlord is definitely an exemplar for lit rpg's, more focusing on the implications of the setting than anything else

I think Sword Art Online Alicization is a pretty well done LITRPG, the reason nobody exploits the RPG mechanics of the world is because the main villain of the story arc forbids it to prevent anyone from ever becoming stronger than her.

Haven’t seen you upload in a while, been checking nebula weekly to see if you have

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.😁

Sometimes it is good and intended to have a character fly off the graph in chapter 1. Satou in Desumachi accidentally kills a dragon god in the first chapter and the rest of the novel is him trying to spend his time in another world as though he's on vacation, but with great power comes great responsibility. 😂 Ainz in Overlord is powerful enough to conquer countries from chapter 1, but the story is about the limits you set for yourself based on what you personally find valuable.

Hooray! Subtitles! It's important because many russian LitRPG authors tend to follow JP's every advice... to the letter.

Ah man as an amateur author whose dabbled in litrpg before I laughed so hard at this video for its perfect accuracy that i think I woke my neighbours up. 10/10 did so many of these things during my first story that I can only look back on it now and smile, nice work J.P probably one of my new favourite videos that you've done.

The three stories that I've seen handle this best, at least when it comes to my own tastes, are Chrysalis, He who fights with monsters and The Primal Hunter. In Chrysalis the character sheet condesnses at one point, with all the characters abilities and powers getting rolled up to be included with the species he's evolved into. Nice change of pace from the eventual text wall that some of these become. He who fights with monsters instead of giving hard numbers had letter rankings with a bit more vague power scaling, but hard limits that slowly improved as the story went on. Primal hunter loves its numbers and crazy abilities, but those can change and evolve with the character. What all of these have is 1. STRONG CHARACTARIZATION. 2. Interesting plots that center around the main character. 3. Don't let character sheets or large sections of math bog down the narrative.

In terms of romance, there is one part of sao i think people don't give it the credit it deserves. Kirito and asunas relationship on a personal level an for the story. They meet, they split up, get close, MARRY and stay together (haven't watched past season 2, ever, but all i know that noone ever calls into question who the romantic partner is, even with a quadi-harem including his halfsister), and adopt an ai child. No will-they-won't-they bullshit.

You should do an episode on writing speeches and political writing, i quite like those things and i think an episode on them would be nice

After a few years of being on Royal Road,I think I'm an expert on numbers,blue boxes,dungeon cores,arcs of proving to be "NOT like those other evil X",and harems. Also,I should point out that "Dungeon Life" by Khenal HAS a good justification for exploits & being overpowered: Since the Dungeon Core is a reincarnated engineer,he understands modern physics... ...As such,he knows that you can freeze water by removing all heat via pyromancy.He even teaches a zombie,goblin,& white deer this process,& other processes! Stuff is made of stuff!

God, this was a treat, but it also goes to show how the people who write these storys and dont fall into the pit falls most of the time are genuinely trying to think of all that they can. One of my personal favorites of this genre is "Infinite Leveling in Murim", where the protagonist while yes does get an overpowered ability in the leveling system it's not as uniqe as he would think since in later chapters it's revealed that someone he knows has a similar ability with no possible cap, but where they differ is that the guy has to barley train at all. But for the protagonist he has to train constantly, and push his limits to keep up with the others, and he repeatedly says that the only thing thats he is good at is hard work. The whole thing is a kind of a antithesis to most of the others in the similar genre where yes they do train it gives him much more so of an uphill battle. In other words check it out if your interested or don't if it's not your cup of tea.

16:35 In their defense, haptic suits exist and people buy them

Please do videos on the following: Maguffins, Fantasy Quests, Martial Arts, Writing about Sports, Fantasy Weapons, Stories taking place in High School/ College, NaNoWriMo, and just for giggles writing for Disney Channel Original Shows/Movies.

I would love to see a “terrible writing advice” of multiverses.

Thank you for all the hard work for this year J.P . Happy new years.

*(From the description) "Oh? You thought LitRPG would be about storytelling with video game mechanics? Me too..."* I felt that. I hate how I've gotten in the habit of literally skipping pages of Web Novels because I'm not reading someone's D&D Character sheet if we're not playing a campaign together, especially when it doesn't come up again.

If a LITRPG wanted to use a comparison between RNG class or options you get stuck with at birth versus genetics or the family you were born into in real life, that would at least be interesting.

5:09 I think could be intriguing writing space to have multiple competing theories in the story about what the rules are and have one of the lesser goals of the protaginst be to figure out what's the case.

i was jst writing some random story ideas to write.. And i see you posted after month(s) !!! i luv when you post im glad i found ur channel

Happy New Year to JP and everyone involved in the TWA expanded universe. Thank you for making such awesome content.😊 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

LitRPG was invented by someone who tough power levels where the best part of Dragon Ball Z and keep calculating power levels long after the characters stopped using scouters.

This is actually peak writting I need to know more sources for this 😭😍

I'm always so excited when these come out! I wish we got them a little bit more often.

Love your videos TBA! Just wanted to make a quick topic suggestion: that one chapter/episode where the heroes mess up and are captured. Could be linked with jailbreak sequences and interrogation/torture scenes! Convenient!

Danmachi treats *the ability to level up itself* as the most important part of its LitRPG component, which is really, dare I say, the only interesting take in the genre.

The place I usually go to for checking books and authors decided a year or two ago that they needed to split LITRPG into GameLIT and HaremLIT. This video is pretty on the nose as to why. There was one I read recently which was a pretty funny non-haremLIT which made fun of the trope a fair bit. Isekaied son finds his father who was seperated and kidnapped by cultists when the whole family was portaled over. They have a conversation like this: "Son, why is your whole team made of attractive women?" "Relax Dad, they are married. "....Why did you feel you needed to marry 3 women?" "They aren't married to me!!" "You think that makes it better?" and later "Dad, next thing you are going to tell me is that girl you just rescued isn't secretly hundreds of years own." "Son....I think I am turning into an anime protagonist."

Thank you! This is exactly what I needed. Hard to find information as well.

Don't forget to consider things that would totally break the immersion and not provide new ways of looking at the litRPG genre: - The log off and log on mechanics - the protagonist talking about their background - the mention of game companies who developed and published the RPG respectively - The characters questioning the game developers' decisions to add things like the "objectification of women" and "die in the game, die in real life" mechanics - Social commentary, especially about any bigoted -ism - the protagonist having any kind of bias that they need to improve on, like their stereotypical views of NPCs - An exploration of what the protagonist does outside of gaming - The protagonist getting hopelessly addicted to the game, thus negatively impacting their relationships in the real world - Moral guardians decrying the game's addictive, violent, and sexual qualities in the real world