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anilEhilated posted:e: Not any more, turns out these things can't be easily All but one (The Gam3) of the books named in this thread (well, and the one pulled from Amazon) are on Kindle Unlimited.
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Jul 18, 2017 17:58
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'd and gently caress if I'm paying for that. Is any of the (within realm of possiblity) decent stuff on Kindle Unlimited?
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anilEhilated posted:Is that the fisherman book? I'm kinda tempted to try the fisherman book. Good news everybody! The author of Dominion of Blades is giving out review copies in r/edh if you promise to do a review on Amazon. To further incentivize people on Dominion of Blades, the third protagonist has advanced levels in the Crying skill. Victorkm fucked around with this message at 19:32 on Jul 18, 2017 |
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Jul 18, 2017 19:26
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Victorkm posted:To further incentivize people on Dominion of Blades, the third protagonist has advanced levels in the Crying skill. Is that a perk or a flaw?
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Jul 18, 2017 22:38
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Benson Cunningham posted:Is that a perk or a flaw? This goes back to my initial review of the book - The main characters have an insanely high skill in Fishing which led to bonuses to other skills making them very strong even though they were just supposedly NPC fishermen. The third main character was an NPC whose main activity was crying so all their bonus skills are related to Crying.
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Jul 19, 2017 01:31
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Jul 19, 2017 02:21
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Quick question - are you including professionally produced material, or is this for straight-to-Amazon poo poo only?
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Jul 19, 2017 06:27
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Added Space posted:Quick question - are you including professionally produced material, or is this for straight-to-Amazon poo poo only? I mean, its pretty much just Ready Player One for more professional LitRPG, isn't it? And even then its a debated topic in the subreddit and the community whether RP1 counts.
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Jul 19, 2017 14:08
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Added Space posted:Quick question - are you including professionally produced material, or is this for straight-to-Amazon poo poo only? Anything qualifies so long as the work is a "book" (however defined; webnovels or graphic novels would be accepted) and arguably within the "Litrpg" genre,, i.e., set within a video game and with the experience of playing said game as a subject matter focus of the work. Portal fantasy with characters entering video-game worlds or the like doesn't necessarily qualify unless the game itself (rules, mechanics, etc) is a focus of the novel. Similarly, I suspect that the Scott Pilgrim comics would not qualify, because while it calls on a lot of video game tropes, the main character isn't living in an actual video game with fixed rules that are a focus of the work. Something like the Lone Wolf gamebooks would also not count, because those are books that are games, but they are not set within games. If you pick a work that is only arguably within the genre, just be sure to make that argument somewhere in your analysis or review or Let's Play. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 14:35 on Jul 19, 2017 |
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Jul 19, 2017 14:18
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So I read Lore Online: A Game Alive LitRPG Series. For full disclosure, this was a 12,000 word short story, but I didn't realize it til I finished and wondered why it was so short. Rob Salter, the protagonist, is a college dropout who quit school when he realized that automation killed his intended career path. He receives a mysterious package that turns out to be a super-advanced VR-style machine called an ISR (Immersion Enhancing Sequencer), and tries out the hit MMORPG, Lore Online. He creates a character RodKnightly, and after being cheated out of the clothes on his back, he runs into one of the top players, StaceyDangerfield, who takes pity on the loser and gives him some free items. Before I get started, I’ll say that I hated the cover art for this book quite a bit. It was aesthetically ugly, and shows you absolutely nothing about the book, except that there’s a knight in it. Character-wise, this story was lacking. The plot twist at the end that his brother is the one who sent him the ISR and also the guy who has been playing his character while he’s asleep was barely foreshadowed at all, and didn’t land. Stacey has no character, being more a plot device than a person, and Rod’s ex-roommate Caleb was so unmemorable, I had to search the book for his name. Rod himself is the closest thing the story has to an actual character, and he’s insufferable. He spends most of his time complaining about the fact that he has no money, or that the people playing the game don’t have any chivalry, or that automation destroyed the world. He comes off as a bitter jerk at best, and a whiny brat at worst. Story-wise, there was no real major plot. Rod gets the ISR, and he starts playing the game. There’s more backstory than story in this, and characters don’t so much have dialogues as they have plot dumps. The story ends abruptly at the reveal above, and it doesn’t feel so much like Ellington felt the story was finished so much as he had to write it to a quota and just stopped when he had hit the required number of words. Writing-wise, this book was a mess. The author misspelled enough words that I am pretty sure he didn’t even put this through a spellchecker. Some of the words he gets right are wrong anyway! For example, he refers to “Scotch” people. Additionally, his phonetic writing of accents is distracting at best, and terrible at worst. His grammar was atrocious as well. I’m writing this review more or less stream of consciousness and I’m pretty sure my grammar is better than his was. I believe that, if Ellington had written a bit more, or given us a reason to care about Rod and his brother Brad, there might be people out there who would like this. There is a kernel of a good idea in this story, but I feel that as it stands, it is too unfinished, unfocused, and uninteresting for me to recommend this story for anyone, let alone anyone who wants a good story. It’s like if I stopped at 500 words, then this review would both be unfinished and unsatisfying. All in all I cannot for the life of me recommend this book to read, even if it’s just to read how bad it is. 1/10, for having a good idea at the core of the story.
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Jul 19, 2017 16:07
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Victorkm posted:I mean, its pretty much just Ready Player One for more professional LitRPG, isn't it? And even then its a debated topic in the subreddit and the community whether RP1 counts. Wouldn't Yahtzee's garbage count?
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Jul 19, 2017 16:10
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Lightning Lord posted:Wouldn't Yahtzee's garbage count? I never actually read Mogworld. Owned in paperback forever but always had something else to read.
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Jul 19, 2017 16:43
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Victorkm posted:This goes back to my initial review of the book - The main characters have an insanely high skill in Fishing which led to bonuses to other skills making them very strong even though they were just supposedly NPC fishermen. The third main character was an NPC whose main activity was crying so all their bonus skills are related to Crying.
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Jul 19, 2017 18:40
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DACK FAYDEN posted:What even has synergy with crying? Staying hydrated for long periods? Ventriloquism? +5 to Sad Puppies
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Jul 19, 2017 18:55
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DACK FAYDEN posted:What even has synergy with crying? Staying hydrated for long periods? Ventriloquism? Healing. Empathy. Deception. Acting. Lying. Breathing. Anything related to water, i.e. crying up a river. It's a bit of a stretch but you could probably extend it to anything related to emotions. Also, if you're crying all the time and never run into anything you probably have great eyesight!
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Jul 19, 2017 20:44
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LLSix posted:Healing. Empathy. Deception. Acting. Lying. Breathing. Anything related to water, i.e. crying up a river. It's a bit of a stretch but you could probably extend it to anything related to emotions. Also, if you're crying all the time and never run into anything you probably have great eyesight! I cannot even tell if this is sarcasm or not
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Jul 19, 2017 20:46
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Mel Mudkiper posted:I cannot even tell if this is sarcasm or not Cast Insight or Detection. I think you only need a d10, but they may have some hidden defenses.
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Jul 19, 2017 20:48
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My eyes glaze aggressively over when I try to read any summary of these novels.
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Jul 19, 2017 20:50
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LLSix posted:Healing. Empathy. Deception. Acting. Lying. Breathing. Anything related to water, i.e. crying up a river. It's a bit of a stretch but you could probably extend it to anything related to emotions. Also, if you're crying all the time and never run into anything you probably have great eyesight!
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Jul 19, 2017 21:43
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Victorkm posted:I never actually read Mogworld. Owned in paperback forever but always had something else to read. I read the sample. It's very bad and instead of reading it you should consider hurling it out your car window on a Texas freeway
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Jul 19, 2017 22:40
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:My eyes glaze aggressively over when I try to read any summary of these novels. Hence, the challenge
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Jul 19, 2017 22:47
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DACK FAYDEN posted:...Actually, yeah, I can accept acting, lying, breathing, and eyesight. I really hope the dude didn't end up being a waterbender. But I guess this genre is lovely enough it could be anything. It could even be a boat! (up a river of tears) The skills bonuses actually sort of work that way as written (related to his fishing skill, the main character is given the title "The Flounder King" which ends up being very relevant later on, and the ability to see sunken treasure on his map, etc), but the author sort of leaned more towards berserking and war cries and stuff for the crying skill. I hate to spoil it as the reveal is pretty great in the book but the 3rd protagonist character is a 6 or 7 year old girl named Poppy, but the person who is actually in the avatar is a blue collar 40-something family man. And he/she ends up carrying around a battle axe bigger than the character. I've made it further into this awful Total Recall rip off litRPG book Arcadia Unlocked. Its weird. The author I guess decided to set a rule where the main character can't go to I am not really looking forward to finding out the cool one liner that will replace "See you at the party, Richter," since no actual bad guy has been introduced and I'm pretty sure Richter was all over Totall Recall by this point. Victorkm fucked around with this message at 04:53 on Jul 20, 2017 |
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Jul 20, 2017 04:41
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 Overlord is a Japanese light novel series by Kugane Maruyama. There is an English translation available through Yen Press. I'll be using a fan translation from a blog, to avoid copyright issues and due to the barely better than machine quality of the official translation. Prologue & Chapter 1 We begin in media res with the most common of superhero introductions, a gang of thugs attacking a young woman. Prologue posted:The knight in full plate armor stood before the girl and her little sister, his sword raised high. The primary fault of this series is being very dilute. There's a whole lot of needless exposition and lack of dramatic tempo. Still, the opening is reasonably effective at showing the monstrous appearance and power of our lead character. "But this is fantasy, not LitRPG!" you poor hapless fools cry? Just wait for the next sentence. Part 1 posted:In the year 2138 AD there was a term: DMMO-RPG. Yep, all of this information is completely irrelevant. Japanese is a far more compact language where a single symbol can represent an entire word, so maybe needless padding like this reads faster or is necessary to pad your page count. quote:A gigantic table carved of gleaming black stone sat in the center of the room, surrounded by 41 luxurious chairs. We get a picture of our main character. Instead of the usual teen in a game, he's a demure middle-aged salaryman. This is in keeping with the intended demographic of older men as well as the wish fulfillment nature of the narrative. quote:Momonga stared at the seat Herohero had occupied until just now, and then turned to look at the other 39 seats. Those were the places where his old comrades had once sat. After going a circle around the table, Momonga returned his eyes to Herohero’s place. We don't get a name for our lead, but I'm going to call him Takeshi. It's a common name in keeping with his passive, demure nature - plus he owns a castle that has never been defeated. Takeshi is a "nice guy" type who puts others before himself, and thus has gotten chewed up by Japanese corporate culture. quote:Momonga muttered like he was trying to convince himself, and then he stood up. He walked toward the wall, where an elaborately decorated magic staff was kept. I've had to leave MMOs in my time, and it is an emotional experience. You spend enough time in a place and with people, however tenuously, it leaves an effect on you. He probably seems like a dope to the average person, but as someone who's been there I find him sympathetic. quote:Everyone had adventured every day, with the sole purpose of assembling the guild weapon. Then again, watching someone moon over a virtual item in a video game can quickly induce hate. I refuse on principle to play any game where buying silly hats is a key monetization feature.
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Jul 21, 2017 08:30
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