Okay, so I seem to have decided to go with UNO as my next book. I have a basic plot worked out, sort of, and a setting, sort of. Then I thought… What if?
Most LitRPGs I’ve heard of are based around a fantasy setting. LitRPG-style anime is the same. UNO is also currently a sci-fi world hosting a fantasy game. Magic and all that. I could go with a sci-fi game. Well, a fantasy-sci-fi game. We’d be talking Outriders, Destiney, and Borderlands rather than Final Fantasy, Dragon Age, or, for that matter, D&D (which shall be forever damned for introducing the idea of levels which video game designers think are required).
I’m asking for input. Now’s the time for a change in setting. I haven’t put finger to word processor. Everything is fluid. I don’t even have solid character designs done yet because I’ve been working out the game mechanics. (Even if I won’t focus heavily on those, I need to know how the game works to make this ‘realistic.’)
What do you think? Stick with the fantasy tropes? Go with something a bit different? Let me know what you think in the comments below! (If this was YouTube, I’d ask you to like and subscribe. Thankfully, it’s not.)
Witches and Ray-Guns 
i personaly have sean litRPG both in fantasy and Sci-fi settings and i think a destiney like game world would be a very good seting for suche a book. the other thing pro fantasy sci-fi is that one can easely explain magic or magicesque abilitys via sience or as the quote gose: “any sufcently advanced tech is inditinguishable from magic”.
i personaly enjoy books more if the charackter diverge from the beaten parth in class, Job or how ever you want to call it as well as playstyle
I’m only passing familiar with Dragon Age and Final Fantasy, but by inference I’m guessing what your broadly referring to is high fantasy. I’m going to suggest something along the lines of urban fantasy set in Victorian England with some possible steam punk elements thrown in if you think you can get into the correct head space to pull it off. I know you mentioned in the past that that gave you trouble when writing the Unobtainium books.
If not that then maybe frontier western fantasy, although I know you had some other ideas involving frontier western themes. Ultimately, of course, if you write it and put it out there I’ll read it. Your work just really works for me.
I’m fairly open on fantasy rules etc when it comes to my reading, so I’m not gonna comment on what you should write, I like most of your stuff so I’m open.
But for fantasy world based on rules….. have you ever read Andrew Rowe? “Sufficiently advanced magic” ( love the A C Clarke ref) was his first and he has a whole manager type/numerical/dungeon system
why limit yourself to a single setting when you can go the League of Legends route and have multiple setting all in the same world it can allow for some very interesting storytelling and a lot of freedom from the shackles of a single setting
Honestly, I’m torn. I kind of want to see your take on fantasy LitRPG, but when you get right down to it there’s probably a lot more of it out there than what you might call SF LitRPG (leaving aside the strict definition of SF that used to get a university friend all worked up every time).
Either way I’ll be happy.
On balance, perhaps go with fantasy? Otherwise you’ll have a sci-fi game inside a sci-fi world.
How about making something old new again. Take the resurrection mechanic, and the cultivation mechanic, and add Phoenix style reincarnation (not the Marvel version). So you gather power until you burn up. The power purified and upgrades you as well as resets your personality. You are informed by past lives but have no emotional attachment.
I’ve read what I’d consider good LitRPG and some not really very good LitRPG. You’ve written both fantasy and SF, so I don’t really have a preference either way. That said, a solid Outriders or Nier-style post-apocalyptic setting wouldn’t be bad for a LitRPG novel. The only thing I’d ask is that if you do present character sheets, please consider the formatting – I’ve seen too many that overlap pages and make it difficult to comprehend.
I do not plan to present character sheets. If someone did that in a book, I’d probably want to throttle them..
For a game that would give you a merger of a fantasy world play experience in a sci fi setting, you might want to browse through the info on the world of Numenera for inspirations. Far, *far* future post apocalypse, and not just post-apocalypse, but post-8-apocalypses, where you have humanity rising again in a world littered with the ruins of 8 previous civilizations, all of which reached fantastical technological peaks. The society of the world is at a medieval fantasy level, but its magic is the still functioning technology of previous ultratech civilizations fallen into ruin, different races are the offspring of previous eras’ genetic engineering projects, and so forth.
Ah, you beat me to it! I was going to suggest the same setting – without the rules-set (which I do not like).
What about TORG? Multiple settings with different physical rulesets. One hard SF, one scienceless fantasy where technology doesn’t work at all, one horror, etc.
Ah, no that is a great idea.
How about two worlds crashing into each other, one fantasy one sci-fi. Lots of possibilities there.
I hope you use Fox Akh as basis for character build:
biological bodys= Hardware, the Mind/soul = the software.
Stats split in thinks the body do (str, agi, perception, Int[processor]) and the mind do (wisdom, intuition/hunch, dexterity[hand to eye], reaction).
Skills split the same: Body = regeneration etc. Mind = knowledge
good flexibility in the system without leveling,
but i need to ask: book= playing in a rpg, living in “real world” or living in a rpg world? last would be a interessting start with a frozen brain ^^
Basically, this is going to be an immersive VR MMORPG and we will get to see the players and the characters they play. The players’ abilities (especially mental ones) affect the characters (which is what happens with current games, really, but more directly). So, physical characteristics are essentially in-game attributes, except that the player’s dexterity/agility has an effect which the game can throttle down for a player who wants a handicap.
And I’m over-explaining. It’s not Akh, but it’s going to be a neural-link-style connection to the world. With a twist. A *secret* twist.
Cue evil laugh
Any setting that inspires you is better than any setting that doesn’t. For real, it’s not the details of a story that matter, it’s how much it was alive in the author’s mind before being written down.
You could always have a necromancer in a fantasy world using soul magic to make an interface to a sci-fi world or reality
You gave me an idea. Not exactly that specific idea, but thanks for the inspiration.
Ive only read a few sci fi LitRPG, and honestly enjoyed them alot simply because they werent yet another fantasy setting. Also, the more sci fi take on magic like psionics, and a necessity to understand the science behind something in order to create an effect. Like knowing that in order to create a fireball you actually need air and to know that vibrating molecules is what creates the heat.
One that I read, but cant remember the name of just now, ignored levels and made everything equipment based with no magic equivalent. Wanna do more damage? Get a better gun. Lose an arm? Cybernetics.
For a LitRPG book, try to keep the game mechanics as unobtrusive as possible. A good example is Siphon by Jay Boyce, a horrible bad example is Winterborn 3 Shadow Blade by Stuart Grosse where over half the book is game mechanics.
I was planning to. I think there will be player chatter about game mechanics, but the main stream of the in-game story will be written like a fantasy/sci-fi story.
I do have this near-uncontrollable urge to have the characters announcing whatever attack they’re using at the top of their lungs, but I don’t think that’s really a (video) game thing and it’s not exactly a mechanic.
And I may control the urge.
I like both of those books. I wouldn’t read Winterborn on a kindle but the biggest hook for that series is actually following the D&D 3.5 ruleset.
Ah yes, the *good* D&D rule set.
Maybe go halfway… Instead of fully immersive LitRPG, go with some sort of augmented reality with real world cyber enhancements? Maybe the world is a mix of AR and VR?
Yeah, as I said above, I want to go with showing both sides of the RL/game world, so the players will be hooking in through some sort of immersive VR.
I think Pokemon Go would have been banned if there was an actual potential for players to stab bystanders, so I don’t think AR is going to happen. 🙂
Okay. Keep posting comments if you have them, but I think I have this worked out. I went with…
Well, have to wait for the book to be ready to find out. 😀
As that Saying Goes – “Tally Ho!.”
Well I read a ton of LitRPG and I think SF with fantasy elements is fine, one of the most successful works of Litrpg play in worlds like that.
Cores of a great fireelement as an energy plant reactor core….
Personally some observations, don’t go Gamelit but a world with gameing rules. (way more popular overall the trapped in game stuff is always relatively unrealistic and else it has no stakes aside from some personal ones and then it’s usually only money or love or health.)
second when you do the game make sure to keep it relatively simple if you don’t want to go with a very long story. It seems a kind o hidden skilltree that builds on what one has done before with some options for advancement work best.
third make sure the economy makes sense to at least some degree it’s always jarring if the world has no obvious good ways for crafters and the the like to gain levels when you find Ares Golem fragments or imperial Hexguns everywhere
Monsters dropping level cores or quest systems can be helpful for that.
I published a story in 2013 about a world of sorcery that had barely avoided being conquered by a nasty group of humans with WWII level technology. Admittedly, it took a human who became a dragon to stop those nasty scum, but still…
Fantasy and sci-fi CAN coexist. It is a LOT of work. I never went into deep world building for that one, probably more in the sequel if I ever manage to get it finished. :((
I was thinking about Clarke’s “law” about advanced technology. Remember the techo-mages in Babylon5? Your advancement in the system would not only be due to your skill, but how much you were willing to modify your body. It seems like in order for pure magic to exist the technology level needs to be medieval. I doubt even the strongest mage could stand up to a modern depleted uranium tank round shot from a mile away. I love Chris Nuttall’s Schooled in magic series but Void and Emily will be in deep trouble when their world moves from muskets to Kentuckey Long Rifles.
As I’m writing it, the technology/magic aspect of Necromance is of much debate among players. There are things in the world which magic can’t explain (they say), but super-advanced technology could. Is it all down to strange, ancient machines hidden from sight? Did I read ‘The Dancers at the End of Time’ when I was younger? Why yes, I did.
I think some of the OP anime protagonists of isekai fantasy (and UNO is a form of isekai fantasy) could handle a tank round with relative equanimity. Ains from ‘Overlord’ would probably laugh. Albedo from the same series is canonically able to take any three attacks per day and just soak them. Rimaru (from TTIWRAS) would likely swallow the thing and learn how to make armour-piercing rounds.
However, the way typical magic systems are designed, it’s usually harder to defend than attack. The baseline system I use to model my characters confounds me to no end because you can build an attack that can shatter just about any defence for far less than it costs to create anything able to stand up to it. So, under less OP conditions, yes, magic usually requires that there aren’t modern weapons around to counter it.
But that’s just straight attack and defence. Magic (or some superpowers) are able to generate effects it’s far harder to deal with. Taking Nava from Death’s Handmaiden as an example: she’s a total beast in combat thanks to being seriously OP, but she *could* turn her magic to more subtle effects which would be amazingly hard to counter and perhaps do more harm. That’s despite facing enemies with modern-or-better weapons. Then again, if she had to shield against a tank round, she couldn’t do it. Of course, under the circumstances, she’d destroy the tank before it could fire, but she’s seriously OP.
Sorry for the long reply.
The beauty of a game vs real life setting is that you can ignore things that don’t make sense in order to balance the game. For example your player doesn’t have to worry about getting ambushed while answering nature in a game setting. One thing which drives me nuts in MMOs is line of sight. Wadda ya mean no line of sight? I can see his shoulders and head above the wall.
Will your players have the ability to use alts? Trying to be a dick and camping a low level player can backfire. The low level comes back with his main that has god like abilities and armor and then turns the table.
Most multiplayer games don’t feature a pause button. You *can* get ambushed while you’re answering nature’s call (unless you’re a druid). This is why professionals use catheters. I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether I’m joking.
Yes, the, uh, main protagonist (there’s two) is actually taking a holiday from his main, playing a character he created a couple of years ago and dropped after getting to level 5. His main is a max-level character and could probably take care of griefer if he wasn’t a continent away… Except there’s instant travel… Hm… Have to see how I resolve that one.
No joke, actually.
Astronauts and cosmonauts use diapers generally. (I have also heard about fighter pilots using them too, and I believe it!) Less chance for infection and easier for non-medical people to use. That said? You HAVE to change them regularly. If you can’t? Ugh.
Waste disposal is not something that gets a lot of press in fiction, because, lets face it, it isn’t pretty. The human body makes lots of messes and they can be very hard to clean up in closed environments. Catheters would make sense in some settings, but not all. Without far higher technology than we have at the moment, all kinds of REALLY nasty problems can result.
To be clear for those wondering about the ISS’s waste disposal system, astronauts and cosmonauts use diapers *during spacewalks and such*. There’s a more normal means of going to the toilet available when you’re not sealed into your own personal spaceship.
Though ‘how do you go to the toilet’ is apparently one of the most common questions asked about life aboard the ISS. And the answer is always ‘suction.’ It’s all about sucking.
There’s also an entire video on YouTube about the lack of toilets in Skyrim.
If you’ve ever read ‘Neuromancer,’ there’s a scene where the protagonist is about to start a really long session hooked into the net. The guy guarding him is a little disgusted that one of the preparations is inserting a catheter. And I can certainly understand his feelings.
Having had one put in and left in for a while, I can TOTALLY understand that. (Long, painful story!)
Needed, but not fun at all!
One mess that could be nasty to clean up is the residue from sex. Some of the stories I read the protagonist should have drowned in his pod from all the sex he had.
“Sorry dudes. I have to log off and empty the hazmat bags. I am getting a clog indication. I let my cousin borrow the rig and who knows what he did in it”.
My mind is refusing to think about that.
If you could live in accelerated time while gaming you could get in a whole campaign in an afternoon. Star Trek borrowed that idea a few times. The one I remember is Picard living a whole life in a few hours. It would reduce the problem of bodily functions and nobody showing up for work.
I live in a city(Vegas) designed to give you the maximum experience in the minimum amount of time.
Necromance has a day-night cycle four times as fast as Earth. It’s not super fast, but it does mean people don’t have to wait too long if a quest can only be done at night, for example.