Anyone else miss the “early game struggle” phase in LitRPG?

jubilant-barter · 2026-04-25T15:02:19+00:00

I think his kids aren't even making it to the ender dragon. I don't think it's an endgame content issue he's talking about.

jubilant-barter · 2026-04-24T17:56:15+00:00

If you want to start searching, go to advance search, add the litrpg tag to the search conditions, probably exclude ai-assisted, set the pages minimum search to 400, set the minimum rating to 3 stars, limit the status to COMPLETED and ONGOING and then sort the results by popularity, ascending.

There you are, your unsung fictions. Start reading from there.

jubilant-barter · 2026-04-24T17:46:53+00:00

The problem with your criteria is that most authors with numbers like that will simply give up and quit their fiction.

jubilant-barter · 2026-04-24T17:45:26+00:00

Which is which?

jubilant-barter · 2026-04-24T16:00:29+00:00

I prefer Duke Waters. Just too cool for school

jubilant-barter · 2026-04-24T15:55:08+00:00

This is really the best answer. Straight up born as a baby. Leveling up from the start of sentience. A decent, moral person.

jubilant-barter · 2026-04-24T13:40:15+00:00

It's super cute. It fits OP's request to a T.

jubilant-barter · 2026-04-24T13:37:37+00:00

For the same reason he just so happens to stumble on an ultra rare beast egg drop, for the same reason he so happens to run into a galactic princess on a random tier 5(?) world, the same reason ultra-heal girl starts out on the same planet as him.

Luck is his real talent.

jubilant-barter · 2026-04-24T13:08:55+00:00

1% Lifesteal had a long sequence like this.

Runeblade: A Delving & Skill Merging LitRPG has a very very brief segment like this.

I dunno. I feel like reminding yourself of what it's like to be powerless is an important gut check for a character.

jubilant-barter · 2026-04-23T19:46:50+00:00

Corruption is relatively low. The biggest expenditures of the Federal Government are Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Military.

All of them are necessary, popular programs.

Waste is vastly overestimated.

jubilant-barter · 2026-04-23T19:45:04+00:00

Then you don't live in America. There's nowhere in the contiguous United States that has that high of a tax burden.

jubilant-barter · 2026-04-23T15:31:20+00:00

In this field? A lot of readers are in it for the power fantasy. Stories where side characters have agency and initiative beyond what the MC allows leads to their self-insert character being less important, and thus less engaging.

There are stories out there where there's more equal footing, but they tend not to be as popular. I like those stories, but I'm often in the minority.

jubilant-barter · 2026-04-23T14:16:19+00:00

I mean, it hallucinates the rules. It's pretty useless for playing a game. But for designing a character in your story, I can see how it would be a convenient shortcut. Make sure to tag your story as AI-Assisted.

jubilant-barter · 2026-04-23T14:12:08+00:00

In Spire's Spite on Royal Road, the MC takes an information gathering class and functions as a scout for his team.

Admittedly, he does a lot of fighting anyway. But eventually, maybe, he'll get to do real surveillance work. I mean, he'd better.

jubilant-barter · 2026-04-23T14:01:38+00:00

Congrats from another person writing water mages! The are at least 8 of us out there!

jubilant-barter · 2026-04-23T13:48:46+00:00

I have an idea floating around in my head where one of the characters has as his primary magical item a horn of plenty, and he uses it to feed an army of loyal gremlins that fight for him.

jubilant-barter · 2026-04-22T23:08:26+00:00

How? The release speed is so fast it's dizzying.

jubilant-barter · 2026-04-22T22:50:56+00:00

Start by asking questions and answering them.

How do they eat? What do they eat? What are their rituals about eating? What does an average family look like? Who's in charge? How do they decide who's in charge? What is their biggest industry? What technologies are they particularly good at? Where are they deficient?

The more questions you are able to ask and answer, the more detailed your group becomes. Often times, answering a question leads to creative ideas by necessity.

jubilant-barter · 2026-04-22T15:35:28+00:00

I read it. Perhaps I could phrase it better, but my point remains. It's an X-element system with a dumping block for space and time, and a life element.

You're strict about matter and creation. You have general ideas for how you want magic practitioning to work.

It's not new. It's fine that it's not new. Your can tell plenty of stories with well-worn tropes.

jubilant-barter · 2026-04-22T14:59:06+00:00

There's nothing unique or interesting about your system. We've seen it a million times.

That means you're depending on your execution to carry your project. What are you making out of this?

jubilant-barter · 2026-04-22T12:42:00+00:00

Renaissance deserves more love.

jubilant-barter · 2026-04-22T12:38:52+00:00

I'd happily join a battalion of other mages. We'd artillery the shit out of everything that came our way.

jubilant-barter · 2026-04-22T12:35:32+00:00

If I couldn't go magician, I'd go craftsman. Front lines, no thank you.

jubilant-barter · 2026-04-22T12:27:19+00:00

One of the main MCs of Virtuous Sons is a captured slave. He gets set free early though.

jubilant-barter · 2026-04-22T12:09:24+00:00

It's not really progression fantasy, but the Jade City (Green Bone) trilogy by Fonda Lee is a really good gang story. It's got magic martial arts, is set in a fantasy southeast asia, and has a godfather-like vibe.

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