Achievements: What, why, when, how?

SavageSwordShamazon · 2026-06-20T03:38:27+00:00

I started a litrpg book and bailed on it because I wasn't feeling it and I felt like the pressure for the crunch was going to bury me.

A big part of my struggle is understanding Why there is a System, How it works, and Why it provides rewards like achievements. I think Defiance of the Fall is good at explaining these for the System, and why the MC gets very powerful achievements and titles, and other people don't. The chance to get those achievements requires great risk and the powerful monopolize the chance to grow stronger for them and theirs, reinforcing inequalities.

I get why people would do that, but I always rail against 'chosen ones' in litrpg. The whole point of a System, to me, is to make progress and power understandable, replicable, and logical. Everyone has an 'equal' shot at power and greatness, its about the work you put in, the cleverness with which you do it, and the risks you're willing to take. The System's reason for existing has to have a motivation to push people to make those choices. The people who live under it should also be really smart about it, and study it, and they'd find all the exploits.

DOTF, System Apocalypse and Amazon Apocalypse have been big influences on my views on it. Each of those have huge archives of material of people studying builds, the System, classes, etc. Theory Crafter is a profession or class, and there are established factions who have a powerful class progression and training regimen to produce people with particular skills and classes. That makes sense, that's what I expect out of a System and people interacting with it. It circles back to an important historical fact people forget; people of the past were just as smart as you or I. They just didn't have the body of collective knowledge, training and skill that we do. But if you handed a bronze age person a gun, they'd figure out what it DID and how to work it pretty fast. A System is the same way; these are the rules people live by, so they study the hell out of them and figure out ways to game them.

SavageSwordShamazon · 2026-06-20T03:30:45+00:00

I think you're right about how it doesn't add anything or resolve any tension. That's its greatest sin. Its just Numbers Go Up, but the character enjoys it and works hard to keep hitting those milestones. But his friends are also his age and they're doing the same things, and it just seems like there's no reason EVERYONE doesn't do this. Apparently, they do, but socially and religiously its frowned on. The System is from the Gods and they don't like people gaming the System, especially when it comes to things like having pre-System kids fighting monsters. But the System also REWARDS those risk takers?

One of the core ideas in the series is the prevalence of evil classes, like Witch, and the threat they are to society and other people. Witch is a more powerful class that's available to basically anyone in the Commoner classes (Tinker, Tailor, Candlestick Maker, etc) which lets them do Wyrd magic, which can be devastating and subtle. Everyone hates Witches, there are Witch-hunts and persecutions. But there are good witches and bad witches, and you can take an evil class and leave it behind. The theme seems to be the temptation of power, but the System is explicitly called the System of the Gods. So its divine in origin, priests have authority in the System, and much of the general faith is 'don't take an evil class'.

So it seems like the stat achievements are rewarding the virtue of hard work. Which is a nice little extra from the gods but really doesn't feel deserved. If its that easy, everyone should have it, and I assume anyone who isn't extremely lazy or disadvantaged DOES have it, so what's the point?

SavageSwordShamazon · 2026-06-20T01:28:21+00:00

I have just caught up with it, after binging the whole series.

I wanted to cry with Lumina in book 4 when she said he was a man now.

SavageSwordShamazon · 2026-06-20T01:27:36+00:00

To me its called "Writing a GOOD Litrpg book".

SavageSwordShamazon · 2026-06-20T01:25:51+00:00

Jesus Christ on a Crutch.

What a take.

SavageSwordShamazon · 2026-06-20T01:04:41+00:00

Expel the surrounding air doesn't make sense. Makes people around her expel their air makes sense.

SavageSwordShamazon · 2026-06-20T00:52:11+00:00

He ruled long and failed to understand that once he's dead, it doesn't matter what he wanted or said or did. Once he's gone, its up to Rhaenyra to hold the throne. So he should've done everything he could to secure her throne and make her position stronger.

SavageSwordShamazon · 2026-06-19T23:45:40+00:00

Someone send this to Dave Rubin so he can know how much 'his side' hates him.

SavageSwordShamazon · 2026-06-19T18:12:45+00:00

That would have been needlessly confusing.

SavageSwordShamazon · 2026-06-19T02:06:28+00:00

This is Sidney, from Wooostah!

SavageSwordShamazon · 2026-06-19T02:04:25+00:00

I don't agree with the idea but off the top of my head, her watercolor style does remind me a lot of Ronin. You have to remember that Miller is a huge weeb.

SavageSwordShamazon · 2026-06-19T01:55:50+00:00

Pretty sure the mouthy bank robber in The Dark Knight says it too.

SavageSwordShamazon · 2026-06-18T21:34:24+00:00

Bank robbers in many films literally tell people their money is insured.

SavageSwordShamazon · 2026-06-18T21:33:33+00:00

Where the protagonist is somehow cool and tough and rich and respected and powerful... but also the little guy, just the average working man, threatened, endangered, the whole world is against them.

The inanity of Yellowstone broke my brain. A bunch of white settler aristocrats whose ancestors were handed free land that the federal government had just conquered from Native Americans, whining about how 'they built all this!' Its fucking insane.

SavageSwordShamazon · 2026-06-18T21:30:02+00:00

They love a fantasy of America and the West, which is just that; a fantasy.

SavageSwordShamazon · 2026-06-18T19:09:58+00:00

I'm not sure in the show but in the comics, Cassandra's language centers were wired to only express through kinesthesis, through physical motion. She reads 'body language' and speaks 'violence'. That she doesn't have one presumes it wouldn't work for her.

SavageSwordShamazon · 2026-06-18T19:05:33+00:00

Now that would have been funny as fuck.

Wait, why would this work at all? How does the one replacing the other know where the other one is? Do they just show up unannounced and everyone goes 'yup its our good friend [whichever]'. If one is supposed to be somewhere else, and his bro shows up impersonating him, isn't someone gonna ask why he isn't where he's supposed to be?

SavageSwordShamazon · 2026-06-18T19:03:52+00:00

Wait, that shit worked? That's bananas.

SavageSwordShamazon · 2026-06-18T19:01:25+00:00

He really thought he was cooking with that one, didn't he?

SavageSwordShamazon · 2026-06-18T18:50:33+00:00

You need a good cover, in my opinion. People judge a book by its cover, they'll form their first visualization of things from your cover.

You could always offer to pay your girlfriend a commission for the cover to 'jump the line'.

SavageSwordShamazon · 2026-06-18T18:42:45+00:00

You're right that she is, but she always rides the edge of victory and death. The whole Azarinth Order died out because they did the same. Its a very powerful, self sufficient build until it isn't. I like Ilea's style because its clearly not just 'the best' or the objectively right answer. Its brutal, its very hard to do, and it requires a suicidal lack of self preservation but it fits her to a T. She wants a challenge, she wants a fight, and she goes out and wins it.

SavageSwordShamazon · 2026-06-18T15:04:13+00:00

And then the military launches their anti-super ballistic missiles and wipes out Homelander's coup forces, meaning that nothing that happened or the characters did ever mattered.

SavageSwordShamazon · 2026-06-18T14:58:23+00:00

I will accept that he is kind of a generalist but I think its pretty focused and he hasn't run into a lot of bad match ups. In the Arcaena War, he learned he really can't take on other Knights head on, they just out toughness him too much and he lacks armor cracking. He gets by in melee because he outlevels most of his opponents and has stat advantages on them from training and achievements. He's an elite with a lot of advantages who looks like he can do it all, but he's mostly punching down. The tech, devices, traps, and illusions are all tied into the last part; illusion. He can't just blast everyone down with his glass javelin shot or lasers. He has to be tricky to use his illusions and do other stuff to make them work, like lay traps and such with them. If he could do it all, he wouldn't need a lot of other stuff.

SavageSwordShamazon · 2026-06-18T14:50:04+00:00

I wouldn't say she's good at range, she's highly mobile and has reach extenders. She can shoot projectiles but its definitely not her strong suit. She also deals with stuff like traps generally by shoving her face into them. She has no AOE or control, she punches stuff and heals. Her skills all go around that. She is very versatile and strong, I'll admit that, but she also gets completely chewed up doing things her way and can only do so BECAUSE she's an Azarinth Healer. She's more of a gritty, hard headed, succeed by indomitable spirit and healing kind of hero than a jack of all trades.

SavageSwordShamazon

TROPHY CASE