LitRPG

LitRPG is the main sub-subgenre of the GameLit subgenre. It’s so common some people use the terms interchangeably.

Simply put, LitRPGs use the game mechanics common in role-playing games. There is no actual role-playing on the reader’s part, there aren't multiple plot lines for readers to explore. It’s just the system mechanics.

Note: this is not a setting. It has nothing to do with how someone got the system, or where that person is when they discover it, just what the system is.

The two most common settings for a LitRPG are isekai and apocalypse, with isekai being far, far more popular. To the point that some people think all isekai stories must be LitRPG, or that all LitRPG stories must be isekai.

This is not the case.

To be a LitRPG, a story must simply have a visual representation of what the characters see, and what they see must be similar to stat sheets and notification prompts found in common RPG games.

And how is that accomplished? Traditionally, through spreadsheet boxes or by making text bold and putting it in brackets.

Like so:

Or so:

[Fireball: 17 mana

A ball of fire shoots from your hand and travels 10ft in the direction your palm is facing.]

[Mana: 23/40]

Due to RoyalRoad’s default spreadsheet feature having a blue background, both are commonly referred to as “blue boxes”. They don’t have to be blue, but people rarely change them.

There are a few variations, such as using italics instead of bold, or leaving out the brackets and making the text centered. But these are the main formats.

How do people access these magical stat boxes? Usually by thinking "status", or some variation of that word. Possibly by saying the word out loud. In settings where the characters are in a VR game, hand motions are common. There are other methods, but these three are tried and true.

And what do we find in those boxes and brackets? Numbers! Many, many numbers. Numbers that go up as the story goes on!

Where do the numbers come from? The System. How does the System work? Simply put, it watches the characters do things, and gives them points or levels when they've done enough. Character punches a tree? +1 Strength! Character stabs a guy? +1 Stabbing! Character casts Fireball? +1 Magic!

Of course, which stats, spells, etc. the characters have depends a lot on the author and the needs of the story. The basic stat sheet is usually a variant on D&D’s character sheet. D&D has been around for fifty years now, and they’ve streamlined most of the important things that makes up a character (any character) into a nice 2-page pdf.

Most people, though, don’t want to write out two pages of stats, spells, and class features, so they cut out what their story doesn’t need.

For anyone unaware of how Dungeons and Dragons quantifies things, here’s a D&D character sheet I stole off Reddit:

For LitRPG, lots of stat sheets start similarly. Name, class, level, race, experience points. Then we get armor class and hit points. We aren’t playing a game, so things like death saves and initiative can be left out. The one thing D&D has that’s commonly swapped out for more video game-like things is spell slots. This sheet doesn’t have spell slots shown, which is fine because usually a LitRPG sheet will have mana or magic points or something similar that can have a 100/100 number or bar next to it.

For attributes: strength, dexterity, and constitution are usually kept. Although dexterity is often replaced by speed or flexibility, and constitution can be called resilience or stamina with no one batting an eye.

However, charisma, intelligence, and wisdom are more controversial. Usually the author has to define what these three mean in-world, if they use them at all. Is high charisma basically mind control? Does low charisma mean someone can’t read the room, or that the room hates them for existing? Can someone gain intelligence from reading a book? How does one use intelligence? How does one gain and use wisdom? Up to the author! In a lot of stories I’ve seen, wisdom ties into how well characters can use magic. But in that case you might as well swap it for a “casting” attribute and be done with it.

For skills as D&D describes them, most people don’t bother differentiating between them and attributes. And usually they aren’t explained. Which ones are used and which aren’t is up to the author and what they need in their world. More often, when LitRPG says “skill”, it means a special magical ability. And it will come with a full description.

As far as where to put the sheets in the story, usually full stat sheets are reserved for special occasions. A major level-up or the gaining of a new amazing skill. Readers (the vocal ones, at least) appreciate if a full sheet is placed in a spoiler at the end of every chapter. But most authors don’t have time for that. Instead, every five or ten or so chapters is fine*.

*Unless you're writing for NaNoWriMo or RR's Writeathon or anything else that has a wordcount goal. Then you add the full stat sheet as many times as you can manage.

For some real-story uses of stat sheets, I’ve asked permission to use these three from Cinnamon Bun, Beers and Beards, and Threadbare.

Cinnamon Bun uses a static box, with everything listed simply and logically:

Beers and Beards goes for a more dynamic approach, with some things not explained until the character asks it to be explained. This helps reduce the size of the “basic” stat box whenever it needs to be shown in full:

For Threadbare I’m showing more a stats-in-action scene than just a box. The author uses bolding instead of boxes, and the effect is clear:

Write your text here...

Which leads me to the in-story use of levels and skills.

While some authors painstakingly put every last number on-screen and in a box, most find shortcuts.

Quite often during battle scenes the narrator will mention hearing a “Ding!” of something leveling up, but the author has previously established that they won’t see the stats until the battle is over for whatever reason. This helps keep the flow of the story going without anything being “hijacked” by numbers.

Outside of that, when just one number is changed, either they’ll use the doublespace-bold text-doublespace method to show it, or have the narrator say “Carl saw his Perception go up one and suddenly he could hear better”. Both common methods, but the former is known as being “crunchier” for reasons I’m still unclear on.

I haven’t really gone into spells and magic, because those do vary wildly. It’s the “magic” part of this “magic system”, and it’s where authors can truly tailor the blue boxes to their world.

For instance, Beers and Beards has at the very top “Status: Provided by the Firmament”. What does that mean? Ooh, mystery! He’s also got Blessings, implying god magic, but there isn’t any magic-specific attribute. So readers can assume just from one box that magic in his world ties into a couple different things and is fairly divine-being-based.

In Cinnamon Bun you can see she’s got Jumping. Most 16-year-olds can jump, but the fact that it’s listed implies there’s some sort of magic added into her jumps. She’s got 105 Mana, so we can assume she can put mana into her jumps and jump super high. Or possibly she can jump super high by putting Stamina into her jumps, since she’s got 125 of that. But Archeology is also a skill. So how is that skill activated? Does it use Health, Mana, or Stamina? Or something different? The author knows, and we need to keep reading to find out.

Threadbare has one of the more complicated systems I’ve seen. There’s dozens of moving parts that make up that magic system, and not all of it is explained. Like the Innocent Embrace skill the character unlocks in the scene shown. It does a number of different things, but as far as I can recall, the readers never see a description. Everything it does makes sense and becomes clear as we learn about the world, but it’s never described in-story. And the author ties not describing things (only giving them levels) into the plot.

So you can see things with the same base, that use some of the same words, being extremely versatile.

This has gone on far too long, so I dearly hope I’ve covered everything.

Tldr:

Numbers. Go. Up.