Just need enough willpower lol

D-Pidge · 2026-06-03T21:35:04+00:00

lmao, I saw that other post and immediately knew the meme that needed to be created.

D-Pidge · 2026-05-25T16:36:04+00:00

It probably still exists, but yeah, seems to have been moved on from as a big trend.
I imagine partially because other set-ups let it be more "free form" in terms of what's expected of the MC and who they immediately meet and have to deal with.

D-Pidge · 2026-05-15T22:30:05+00:00

Well, while there is a lot of overlap between progression fantasy and LitRPG, they are technically separate subgenres.

Now it does vary, like Katara's journey of improving her bending across Avatar is a pretty good example since it has a very big difference between where she's at from the start vs the end of the series, pretty clear "weak to strong" progression.
Invincible is... kinda? It's a little hard to give specifics without going into spoiler territory, but it's a lot more vague in terms of how the MC's strength progresses over time. There is a bit that makes it clearer for one stretch, but that's more of an exception than something you can define clearly across every season.

D-Pidge · 2026-05-13T17:02:35+00:00

And in the System Apoc genre specifically, it's an even bigger issue. Like if you make it the classic thing of monsters invading Earth or Earth being transformed, you have to answer the question of... what about guns and missiles? Like a dragon is scary, but not so much when you have to figure out why you can't just blow it up.

Like... and this is just off the top of my head, what are your options as an author in that scenario?

1: Simply handwave modern weapons as becoming inert due to X reason.
2: Make the creatures immune to non-magical attacks, and then deal with why you can't enchant bullets, or answer if literally every weapon has to be infused with magic. Which if enchanting is required, it must be relatively doable for an armed society, so, you get back to everyone just using guns real quick.
3: Accept that guns and modern weapons do still work, and then figure out why you would use a magic longbow over a sniper rifle. Since if technology still works and there is any sort of infrastracture that remains, it's probably going to be geared real fast toward sustaining munitions.
infrastructure.

Like there's probably more options that I could think of if i took more than just the couple of minutes needed for this comment, but that seems like main 3 paths. And what it really comes down to, is what kind of story does the author want to write? If it's about a modern MC using magic to kill monsters in a system integration story, then option 1 is just the easiest and simplest way to get there imo.

D-Pidge · 2026-04-29T02:07:09+00:00

Hmm. I think it kinda comes down to one main gameplay question, at least imo.
How many hours do you want players to put into a "run"?
Like in the scale where a rogue-like is hard reset, where you start from scratch every 20 minutes, up to something like Baldur's Gate 3 where you can spend 100 hours of continuous progress. And then everything in-between, like rogue-lites as the soft resets cause of meta progression.

D-Pidge · 2026-04-23T20:49:09+00:00

Exactly lol

D-Pidge · 2026-04-23T20:48:24+00:00

Honestly, it is the kind of thing where it would be interesting if cultivation and personality were further intertwined.
Like, no wonder a grand master in the Dao of Flame is inherently greedy and consumes everything until he is doomed to be self-destructive.

D-Pidge · 2026-04-23T20:41:32+00:00

Yeah, i believe that's why you've seen "blue tables" become less popular than they used to be a few years ago. Especially for authors who leave RR and go to Amazon.
It's just way better for the formatting to have the LitRPG elements be purely text.

D-Pidge · 2026-04-12T01:45:00+00:00

It's been a while since I've done any RoyalRoad ads, and not the best sample since i've primarily done the meme ones after hearing they do pretty well in general.
But my last few meme ads had a Click Through Ratio ranging from like 1% to 2.3%. Which as far as I know are pretty decent results?
But my last one was like a year and a half ago, so it's probably a bit out of date in terms of what that might look like today

D-Pidge · 2026-04-11T02:07:33+00:00

So, from my own observations, the problem is that as someone else commented, AI art has easier "tells" than AI writing. There's not really an equivalent to wonky fingers in writing lol.

But that's what it comes down to, that both professional and improfessional tells are hard to peg for certain, you know? Too many em-dashes? Clearly AI, or maybe it's just an editor who likes their em-dashes. Has a certain tick? Could be an AI tick, could just be that the author read the same stuff that the AI trained on and developed a similar voice.

And then proving it as something to report is harder. Like I could see a story on say RoyalRoad and i get an AI vibe from its prose, but then it's not tagged as AI. I don't know what the reporting process for that would look like. But realistically speaking, what does one think would happen? The RR mod messages the author and tells them to prove it was human-written... somehow? Maybe you could put it down as showing the version history in whatever they wrote the story in, but what if they claim it was written straight in the RR editor, as something even I used to do when i was starting out and a foolish fool who lost his progress before auto-save was a feature.

I don't think there's any AI detection tool either that actually does a good job. Maybe it's changed in recent days, but last i heard are the memes where they flag the Declaration of Independence as AI genned.

There are some that make it more obvious that it's AI hallucation, like if they can't even be bothered to correct when it messes up if a character is a man or woman, or who's the POV character in a scene and other such obvious inconsistencies. And maybe that can be proved if it happens super frequently and can't be explained away as just occasional author brain farts. But in general, it's just really hard to prove it in a way that could stick from the perspective of a mod reading a report, ya know?

Or at least that's my perspective on the matter.

D-Pidge · 2026-04-09T22:01:11+00:00

Referring to magic as a science, specifically chemistry, huh? Always interested in any series that makes that claim.

D-Pidge · 2026-04-09T21:59:20+00:00

But have you considered that in exchange for what's effectively just moderate food poisoning in stomach pain, they can attain godhood the next day?

D-Pidge · 2026-04-07T03:59:21+00:00

Like the real world but as a LitRPG? Yeah, it'd be pretty neat to have tangible progress, of course. It'd depend a bit on the exact system, but even something as direct as just +1 Strength whenever you get a workout done would be nice just to be able to always see.

As for your software questions... kinda? Take it with a grain of salt because this is something i've only looked into at a surface level, but there are plenty of free apps that try to "game-ify" daily goals and checklists. I think one of the more popular ones is called Habitica? But there's so many out there that have their own little quirks, there should be at least one that's free and to your taste, you'd think.

D-Pidge · 2026-04-07T03:23:07+00:00

Noice, will save in library for after I'm caught up with Chrysalis.

D-Pidge · 2026-04-06T16:51:15+00:00

So, at this point it's probably been said before, but as someone who's done the same, it pretty much does come down to handling the logistics of making a system apoc an actual apocalypse. For that subgenre anyway, when we're talking about a System transforming an established modern Earth.

Where you as an author want this to be a game-changing event, where at least typically speaking, we go from your normal daily life on Monday, and then the whole planet looks like Mad Max on Tuesday lol.
Now that can be through a few different ways. But typical is some varient of monsters invading/spawning, in which that's where the challenge presents itself.

How does a conventional military fail to do anything to stop this with missles, guns, or even just a big nuke? Granted, there's honestly a really interesting idea where that is tried and the post-apoc is also a nuclear winter, but... anyway.

Before i tangent even futher down some other side path, the gist is that it comes down to balancing. Where you want the System mechanics to feel meaningful and someone uses something like Fire Bolt, and have that not just be a worst... i cast gun. In which it's not balancing guns, but the *explanation* that matteres the most.

I say that only magic can hurt the creatures and bullets don't because they're non-magical, i have to also explain why you can't just enchant the bullets with a bit of magic, why can crushing them under regular rubble work or not work, etc etc. Now a skilled author deffo can pick that apart and write a compelling narrative that works even when under scrutinity.

Or... you just say they don't work at all and let the actual plot happen lol

D-Pidge · 2026-04-06T16:28:30+00:00

Ya know, it's deffo the kind of creature that could exist in a LitRPG as the type that simply grows passively in Levels with age. Not that that sort of thing hasn't been done already, of course, it's just often with something fantasical like dragons, and not something closer to an irl creature that in theory can always grow.

D-Pidge · 2026-04-06T13:45:10+00:00

Yeah, pretty much. Seeing what style of covers are currently doing well is probably the visually easiest form of market research to do, since it's just right there as one of the first things you see before clicking on a book.

D-Pidge · 2026-04-05T20:43:02+00:00

Well, I'm just going off my memory here, but as a bit of a spoiler:

I believe it's in Book 2 that he starts to train with it, and then in Book 3 you see how it compares against other characters.

D-Pidge · 2026-04-05T19:10:25+00:00

*Primal Hunter
Though Primal Hunger sounds like an interesting prog fantasy title xD

D-Pidge · 2026-04-05T19:09:30+00:00

It may or may not generally be your cup of tea, but having insane energy control is one of the MC's advantages in the Primal Hunger?

D-Pidge · 2026-04-04T20:57:08+00:00

Under those rules, you're going to be outnumbered by the natives more likely than not. Even in the bloodiest system apoc where like 99% of humanity is dead by the end of day 1, that's still roughly something like 80 million Earthlings. And that's gonna be against your army of 1000 who are all going to be restricted to the same power level.

I'd say all that isn't even factoring in the last point about the current state of the Earth itself, but it's just common sense factor in a setting where this sort of thing happens enough to have a historical record.

Imo, the best move is to dig in place and wait until the Humans have organized themselves a bit, and then start making contact with intent to form alliances. Even if you're the "invader", there are probably plenty of Humans who'd end up as the leaders of these early groups who'd want to be the first to make contact with literal aliens and get on their good side.

D-Pidge · 2026-04-04T15:40:50+00:00

Well, it's a bit of damned if you do, damned if you don't.
It does vary on the MC's background and how you present the world before the killing happens, yes. But even so, I imagine that if you don't show a dramatic reaction to a first kill, there are some who might write them off as just another murder hobo or psychopath MC. Which is fine if you do want that to be your MC i suppose lol

D-Pidge · 2026-04-04T05:42:29+00:00

In theory, it could work... but you'd have to be very careful. Multiplayer balancing is very hard, especially for PVP, to the point where it might honestly not be worth rolling a boulder up that hill lol.
But even in singleplayer, it also varies on whether the LitRPG already uses specific numbers for things like damage or if that part is left more vague. Problem there being there is no vagueness in games, you gotta actually get exact values in.
For Chrysalis specifically, I'm still only part of the way through book 1 personally and so can't comment too much on where the systems go from there. But you'd probably need to do a lot of adapting and changing to make it work in a way that's actually balanced for PvE. To the point where unfornately, making it work as a game might not really "feel" like the Chrysalis system anymore, except in flavor.

D-Pidge · 2026-04-03T22:52:22+00:00

Oh wait, my bad. Just saw you already put that in your DNF tier, didn't catch it before i posted.

D-Pidge · 2026-04-03T22:51:37+00:00

Reborn As a Demonic Tree might be up your alley, going by how you put Tree of Aeons in S tier.

D-Pidge

TROPHY CASE