"Gamer" fanfiction.

[Traab]

Well, here is some more grist for the mill. "The Paragamer" https://forums.spacebattles.com/thre...mplete.496126/ . It is at around 300,000 words and the author has completed Book 1, but has not started posting Book 2 yet. It is set in Worm, but the main character is an original character and the story only moves to Brockton Bay towards the end of Book 1. It looks like Book 2 when it begins will take place in Brockton Bay. It starts the main character off slowly and it takes a while for him to start to gain some power. He tries to join the PRT at first, but since he only really has his "Inspect" then and it is at low levels, they sort of blow him off thinking he just has a very weak Thinker ability. I hope you like it.

Did you ever read "A Bad Name" https://forums.spacebattles.com/thre...-gamer.500626/ or "The Adventures of Harry Potter the Video Game Exploited" https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9708318...Game-Exploited ? I mentioned those in my first post.

JDMSJR

Ive read the harry potter video game one. Too bad its not being updated. I think I will give paragamer a shot next. The one downside is I swear the spacebattle site gives me eyestrain.

[Forum Explorer]

Ive read the harry potter video game one. Too bad its not being updated. I think I will give paragamer a shot next. The one downside is I swear the spacebattle site gives me eyestrain.

No, I get that too sometimes. Check Fanfiction.net or Archiveofourown.org. Often a story will be reposted there and I find those sites much better for reading, and subscribing to the story in question.

[Traab]

So im reading paragamer and wow yeah, slow advancing story. So far his only power, aside from gamer shenanigans like camera control, are

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the clay golems which are at least somewhat useful, but he REALLY needs to get his hands on stonework

As for where im at in the story exactly

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He just got into a fight with the border militia rednecks and got swarmed by cops and capes. He just decided to give a few stat points into luc a try to see if it will help get bus tickets. As an aside, I love how this type of story treats luck. Its either a godly awesome stat or a totally worthless one that the hero doesnt ever put points into after not seeing a return on investment like getting more hp/mp/whatever does.

[GloatingSwine]

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As for the whole big reveal of the evil god and the admins using peoples deaths to gain power. Im not sure what to think about all this. First off, i dont trust the official story told by the elves and the reincarnations former teacher. There has to be more to it than that otherwise there is literally no point in fighting. It doesnt matter if they die strong or weak, every death makes the admins stronger anyways.

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The energy the Administrators take from those who die comes from the skills and titles they had acquired in life. someone who dies without developing any skills doesn't contribute.

That said, the Elves are not in possession of all the facts.

[Traab]

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The energy the Administrators take from those who die comes from the skills and titles they had acquired in life. someone who dies without developing any skills doesn't contribute.

That said, the Elves are not in possession of all the facts.

Yeah but what I mean is,

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Everyone else NOT a reincarnation is earning titles and skills and such so the best they are accomplishing is denying them a larger than usual meal. The admins are already godlike beings presumably far beyond the elves, so denying them a big meal is at best a slight help because all its doing is lessening the power they will eventually absorb. They are still constantly absorbing power and getting stronger. Had the issue been explained like, "You know how as your skills rise in level they become harder to improve and you have to fight tougher and tougher battles to gain points? The admins are like that. As things stand they rarely if ever gain anything meaningful anymore from normal people or even most hero types dying. but the reincarnations are potentially the best chance they have to continue to grow even further. And if they grow even more powerful than they already are, our secret plan to defeat them will be sure to fail." Then that would have been a logical bit of exposition for both the readers and the characters to understand and be likely to accept. But the way it was phrased seemed DESIGNED to make the characters suspicious. Ive taken a short break from reading further to avoid burnout so I havent finished book 5 yet. Im sure more will be revealed as I go on.

[JDMSJR]

In Paragamer, once he takes his bus trip things start to speed up a little.

[Traab]

So I finished The Paragamer. Here are my thoughts.

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For a gamer story its very low power. Im honestly surprised he got that far without getting much stronger. basically everything that let him live was luck and clever last second plans. I spent the entire story wishing he would get the chance to work with stone, but it never happened. I want to see him create some real brute golems, maybe raise his art ability high enough to make them look good. And aside from smart use (abuse) of inventory, thats basically his only real "super" power and its mainly only good for swarming goons and brief distractions where he has it now. Even his stats are barely past regular human for the most part. His only saving grace is his resistances to various types of damage and the avatar gamer body that lets him take awful injuries and not be crippled for the most part. If a second story ever gets done, I would probably want to wait a year before even trying to read it just because it honestly tends to take a significant length of time to get anywhere. Over all, I liked it. The fact that it WAS low power was a new and unique twist on the genre for me.

[GloatingSwine]

Yeah but what I mean is,

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Everyone else NOT a reincarnation is earning titles and skills and such so the best they are accomplishing is denying them a larger than usual meal. The admins are already godlike beings presumably far beyond the elves, so denying them a big meal is at best a slight help because all its doing is lessening the power they will eventually absorb. They are still constantly absorbing power and getting stronger. Had the issue been explained like, "You know how as your skills rise in level they become harder to improve and you have to fight tougher and tougher battles to gain points? The admins are like that. As things stand they rarely if ever gain anything meaningful anymore from normal people or even most hero types dying. but the reincarnations are potentially the best chance they have to continue to grow even further. And if they grow even more powerful than they already are, our secret plan to defeat them will be sure to fail." Then that would have been a logical bit of exposition for both the readers and the characters to understand and be likely to accept. But the way it was phrased seemed DESIGNED to make the characters suspicious. Ive taken a short break from reading further to avoid burnout so I havent finished book 5 yet. Im sure more will be revealed as I go on.

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Yeah. But then also consider what a low opinion the Elves in general and their leader in particular, from whom this information proximately comes, has of basically everyone and especially humans. They're not lying well because he doesn't think the people he's lying to are worth any better.

Even the "hero". When they're planning the battle at the start of book 5 they completely dismiss anything the humans say as irrelevant because how could any human help the obviously superior-in-every-way elves.

Plus there's quite a lot of emphasis in the world on skills and what people's relationship with them should be. The World of God church is all about getting skills to hear the voice of god and there's the sect in Sariella that Shun had just passed through who are all about sacrificing their skills. So the world is sort of primed for this sort of expectation to be acceptable, even if Shun doesn't quite trust it that's mostly because of other actions of the messenger (what he now understands Oka to have been doing) not the actual message.

[Traab]

So I just reached the end of book 5 of im a spider.

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Well now THAT was interesting. She was almost a spider deity taking care of a town, elves are apparently magitech warriors. Or at least the king is. His style of combat fits in well with his stated stance on opposing the admins. He seems to shut down most skills magic and abilities and relies on tech to fight. The demon lady is infected with our main characters personality to an extent. Looks like only one mind attacking her soul wasnt enough to do the job, just enough to muddle their spirits together a bit. Makes me wonder what would have happened if there had been two minds sent in there. Would she actually think she WAS the demon lady? Is that still a possible issue? It doesnt seem that way. It seems like it was suggested that the blending is complete and the demon lord is still mostly herself, just with some of our main characters personality and memories included. She has found a way to survive being destroyed thats interesting. And has decided to join the demon lady out of self preservation because this demon isnt aware that her ability to come back from soul destruction magic isnt something she can just endlessly repeat. And of course vampire reincarnation and her first minion vamp are tagging along for the ride. I have to admit im curious to see where things go from here.

Humans are apparently abundant mountains of exp for no effort so if she has more evolutions to work through all it will take is another battle or two and there you go. And without that she will still get tons of levels. The fact that she can casually obliterate most humans without even being there due to evil eye abilities is a TERRIFYING amount of strength. Really earns the nightmare title. I cant wait till the space warping evil eye levels up to max. Insta black hole attack with no warning anyone? Seriously though, be anywhere in her territory when she is in a killing mood and enjoy being dead before you realize you are under attack unless you have ABSURD magic resist or nullification abilities. And even then she may be able to get around that with her stat sealing evil eye shutting down your resistance when its at max. You just get to live a little longer is all. Final note, those baby spiders sound like they will be an issue. A whole bunch of "her" not under her command and sounding very much so opposed to her and her demon boss.

[GloatingSwine]

So I just reached the end of book 5 of im a spider.

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Looks like only one mind attacking her soul wasnt enough to do the job, just enough to muddle their spirits together a bit. Makes me wonder what would have happened if there had been two minds sent in there. Would she actually think she WAS the demon lady?

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The link with Ariel was only one way, so nothing travelled back. But if more of the minds had gone across it might have either crippled or killed Ariel or altered her personality more. (And not in a good way, I think, at least the three "main" parallel minds have somewhat different personalities, and the magic minds are a bit colder and more logical than body brain).

That said, the influence of body brain is, I think, one reason the plot goes the way it goes from here. From what we briefly see of Ariel at the end of book 5 it's clear that she's ordinarily extremely risk averse and may not have actually gone through with the plans she does without a little bit of proactiveness from Kumoko.

[Traab]

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The link with Ariel was only one way, so nothing travelled back. But if more of the minds had gone across it might have either crippled or killed Ariel or altered her personality more. (And not in a good way, I think, at least the three "main" parallel minds have somewhat different personalities, and the magic minds are a bit colder and more logical than body brain).

That said, the influence of body brain is, I think, one reason the plot goes the way it goes from here. From what we briefly see of Ariel at the end of book 5 it's clear that she's ordinarily extremely risk averse and may not have actually gone through with the plans she does without a little bit of proactiveness from Kumoko.

I phrased it badly, what I meant was,

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Would demon lady have been overwritten with her mind and personality to the point where she basically believes she is our main character rather than just having her personality change to the extent it did. Or would the parallel minds have actually taken her over, if thats not just splitting semantic hairs. I think more likely what would have happened was the queen taratect situation all over again because multiple parallel minds kept them from blending and focused on draining. In fact, it might have been the reverse. These extra minds would have themselves absorbed a bit of ariels personality while draining and devouring her soul and brought that issue back with them when they eventually rejoined our mc. Causing a more obvious multiple personality split between them than there already was. A couple more coldly rational and risk averse minds added to the gestalt. Iirc that was actually an issue after the queen fight right? She didnt agree with the other minds but was afraid to say anything.

[thethird]

LitRPG and Xianxia/Cultivation tales are two genres that sadly squander their potential more often than not.

The Wandering Inn is a good example of the former, and Forge of Destiny is a good example of the latter, if anyone's taking suggestions.

I am enjoying the legendary mechanic which is an intersection of the two genres (and isekai, and regression stories, it mixes a lot of stuff).

Related but not really in the genre I really like Overgeared. Yeah I like crafting.

[GloatingSwine]

I phrased it badly, what I meant was,

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Would demon lady have been overwritten with her mind and personality to the point where she basically believes she is our main character rather than just having her personality change to the extent it did. Or would the parallel minds have actually taken her over, if thats not just splitting semantic hairs. I think more likely what would have happened was the queen taratect situation all over again because multiple parallel minds kept them from blending and focused on draining. In fact, it might have been the reverse. These extra minds would have themselves absorbed a bit of ariels personality while draining and devouring her soul and brought that issue back with them when they eventually rejoined our mc. Causing a more obvious multiple personality split between them than there already was. A couple more coldly rational and risk averse minds added to the gestalt. Iirc that was actually an issue after the queen fight right? She didnt agree with the other minds but was afraid to say anything.

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I doubt Ariel would have been overwritten, her own memories don't appear to have been modified in the process, just her personality and decisionmaking.

If enough of the parallel minds had gone across she might have died, probably taking them with her because they would have no way to escape. They couldn't go back, because the only link was through the Queen who is now dead.

[Traab]

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I doubt Ariel would have been overwritten, her own memories don't appear to have been modified in the process, just her personality and decisionmaking.

If enough of the parallel minds had gone across she might have died, probably taking them with her because they would have no way to escape. They couldn't go back, because the only link was through the Queen who is now dead.

Can you imagine what the level up bonus for that would have been at this stage of the story? Assuming she got credit for the kill when it happened.

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At the very least it probably would have been enough to get her to arachne, or if she was already there at the next evolution, assuming there is one, which i do. Thats like beating an end game raid boss at level 1. Thats a lot of exp! Makes me wonder if it could roll over. She evolves, then gets another couple dozen level up notifications lol. Probably not, it seems to freeze at the point of evolution. She is already an army killer, having that chunk of exp added to where she is now would just make it even scarier. She can literally wipe out armies by LOOKING AT THEM. Assuming she doesnt casually one shot a significant percentage with a single spell like she did in book 5. Can you imagine it? She hangs out on a ridge overlooking the battle and just slowly looks around as everything she wants to die just keels over with no sign of whats happening. Nightmare indeed.

[GloatingSwine]

Can you imagine what the level up bonus for that would have been at this stage of the story? Assuming she got credit for the kill when it happened.

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At the very least it probably would have been enough to get her to arachne, or if she was already there at the next evolution, assuming there is one, which i do. Thats like beating an end game raid boss at level 1. Thats a lot of exp! Makes me wonder if it could roll over. She evolves, then gets another couple dozen level up notifications lol. Probably not, it seems to freeze at the point of evolution. She is already an army killer, having that chunk of exp added to where she is now would just make it even scarier. She can literally wipe out armies by LOOKING AT THEM. Assuming she doesnt casually one shot a significant percentage with a single spell like she did in book 5. Can you imagine it? She hangs out on a ridge overlooking the battle and just slowly looks around as everything she wants to die just keels over with no sign of whats happening. Nightmare indeed.

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Yeah, taking down Ariel would be a massive XP boost with all her skills.

There would have been... consequences to that though...

[Traab]

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Yeah, taking down Ariel would be a massive XP boost with all her skills.

There would have been... consequences to that though...

I only just got started on book 6, but im sure there would be. Meanwhile

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She is such a cute baby puppetmaster! lol Its kind of funny just how much of a social shut in she is. Its early on and she has a hard time even explaining why she is marching an infant around and feeding it poison. Its quite a shocking change from how she acted in the labyrinth. At least this helps make it clear why our vamp progenitor is going to be such a BEAST in the next 10-15 years or so. Grinding those base stats way up before she can even start gaining levels is going to make those level ups super scary. Iirc your stats like hp defense mp, etc, all are raised by a certain amount and increased by multipliers of how high specific skill levels are. So she is going to be getting LOTS of bonus points every time she levels up at this rate. Not even counting whatever other bonuses she might be getting as a vamp progenitor.

No need tot ell me if im right or not, I will find out eventually. Btw, on an unrelated note, I have actually read Kill Them All, the worm gamer story several times. I quite greatly enjoy it. I also like that one of the stories I linked earlier, My Hero Playthrough, got a couple new chapter updates. I love the disgaea dungeon setup it has. Being able to spread the benefit out to group members is an awesome addition, and the fact that they already finished the overhaul arc is kinda funny.

[Traab]

I started Solo Leveling yesterday, im up to chapter 78 atm. For those who havent read it, basically its set on earth, there are people called hunters who have to fight inside of what seems to be randomly generated dungeons called gates. Our main character is a south korean man who is infamous for being pretty much the weakest hunter ever. During a strange gate clearing he ends up awakening Gamer powers. He is determined to keep it as quiet as possible as long as he can so he has the peace to grind up skills and levels before anyone realizes because its unusual to get a power boost, but unheard of to continually get stronger.

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This is an interesting one. What I like is you can feel the cultural difference here with how the main character and everyone else for that matter behaves. Its... different, in many ways that are hard to point out. I am enjoying the fact that its surprisingly low skills so far. He has a few but until he got his class levels he basically relied on pure stats to win fights and it worked fine. Now he has a powerful army of shadow beings to fight for him and its hilarious how this changes things. I bet he doesnt regret not getting an assassin class anymore. Being able to deal with armies of enemies by unleashing your own army is a lot safer than doing sneaky stealth kills and hoping to survive.

Im at the part where he just finally went to get his rank reassignment done and the uproar he is blissfully unaware of for the moment. Im still waiting for the other shoe to drop. To see what sort of downside there is for his amazing powers, what big threat there is he may have to deal with, that sort of thing. Im also curious to see what happens once he becomes publicly famous. Dude seems to be slightly oblivious and uncomfortable with attention. I can see him joining a guild with the proviso he be allowed to run A-B ranks solo or something of the sort as he tends to be very much a loner who is able to back it up.

[JDMSJR]

Well I finally got my internet fixed after living for a week as a snowbound caveman, so to celebrate, here is another recommendation. A Gamer in South Blue https://www.fanfiction.net/s/1326040...-In-South-Blue . This Gamer story is set in One Piece and has an original character protagonist. It currently has 24 chapters and almost 145,000 words. The author has put it on a temporary hiatus since the submarine he is stationed on has been deployed on a patrol and he will be gone and mostly underwater until around April/May. All in all a good story so far and I am looking forward to the author resuming writing.

[Red Fel]

Well, setting aside the isekais in this genre, I think there are - broadly speaking - two general categories.

One is the more general "my life has been gamified" type - protagonist wakes up to find life has taken on video game aspects, or alternatively protagonist dies and gets a GAME OVER screen and must restart with knowledge that life is a video game. A number of those have been suggested above. I'll throw one in: Naruto: Game of the Year Edition. It was one of the first fics I've read in the genre, and one of the better ones. Sadly, like so many others, it is on hiatus.

That's understandable. Writing a video game is hard.

The second category is actually more of a crossover fanfic. Its genesis was linked upthread - The Gamer, a Korean webcomic about a protagonist who wakes up to find that his life has been gameified. (By the way, the official translations can be found here.) That's a bit of a simplification - it's actually about a protagonist who finds that he has awakened to a secret world alongside ours in which people have a special power. Because his interest is games, his special power is to experience everything through game mechanics - so injuries are never debilitating unless they're lethal, exhaustion and hunger don't really work the same way, and skills can be leveled up by reading books.

Well, The Gamer inspired a lot of fanfic - not just of The Gamer itself, as its world kind of lost some depth after awhile, but of other series in which a character receives the power of The Gamer. Someone mentioned The Games We Play upthread, and it's excellent - compelling, dark, well-written. It's a RWBY fanfic in which Jaune receives the power of The Gamer, and promptly considers, "Wisdom is common sense, right? I should put points into that." (As an aside, while the FF.net version was linked upthread, you can find the complete story on Spacebattles here.)

Another example is Naruto: The Game of Life (yes, another Naruto fic, it is the second most popular on FF.net). In this one, Naruto awakens to the power of The Gamer, and it actually fits really well. The canon character is both easily distracted and utterly oblivious, and having a literal game prompt in front of his face reminding him of what he needs to do and informing him of areas in need of improvement really helps to address his canon issues.

I'd offer more, but there's this weird glowing text in front of me that says something about a quest I have to accept. The last time I did this a giant four-foot rat tried to kill me. We'll see.

[Traab]

So now im ticked off at Solo Leveler. Why? Because it just skipped from chapter 90ish to 130. I missed SO MUCH STUFF in the interim. There had been a section before this where that happened, though not to the same extent but this? This is nuts. I hope there arent too many more gaps in the series like this. Its an interesting story and im enjoying it for a variety of reasons large and small, but a 40 chapter gap is pretty freaking terrible.

[thethird]

So now im ticked off at Solo Leveler. Why? Because it just skipped from chapter 90ish to 130. I missed SO MUCH STUFF in the interim. There had been a section before this where that happened, though not to the same extent but this? This is nuts. I hope there arent too many more gaps in the series like this. Its an interesting story and im enjoying it for a variety of reasons large and small, but a 40 chapter gap is pretty freaking terrible.

why did you skip those chapters? Were they missing where you were reading them? Try here..

[Traab]

why did you skip those chapters? Were they missing where you were reading them? Try here..

I didnt do it by choice. The site I was reading it on just decided to go "Ehhh, eff this, I dont feel like posting these 40 chapters" I did a quick search to find them but didnt locate the missing chapters, for example one place seemed to be a web comic form. Thanks for the link, this is far superior in quality as the other one i had to manually go back to the index and select the next chapter each time.

[thethird]

I didnt do it by choice. The site I was reading it on just decided to go "Ehhh, eff this, I dont feel like posting these 40 chapters" I did a quick search to find them but didnt locate the missing chapters, for example one place seemed to be a web comic form. Thanks for the link, this is far superior in quality as the other one i had to manually go back to the index and select the next chapter each time.

For what is worth I like the webcomic too, the art is very good. That site is pretty good and useful to read this kind of novels, I tend to have at least two tabs of the site open on my phone at any given time.

[Traab]

So I went back to where it left off and am now all the way up to 153. So far this story is really interesting. I can see there is a big twist coming up, the source of his power, or possibly what his powers are attracting, SOMETHING big is going to happen. To talk more specifically I will spoiler it.

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So our intrepid main character is now allowed to run high level dungeons solo. And already its getting hilarious. He is now going from buying all the C ranks to buying as many of the A ranks as he can. Im curious to see where all his skills will go from here. What sort of stupidly powerful shadow warriors he will get, what new abilities his old class skills have now that they are level 2 (I like how the author purposefully left the new skills each one got a mystery) Im also wondering how long it will take for the S rank gate in japan to become something he will go after, and how that will go. yeah he was able to handle the anthill mostly solo but will this be the same? And what will he get from it with his new ability to double the ranks of his army? I imagine filling it up with s rank dungeon level monsters will be a nice boost to his skills, and maybe make that black key dungeon that has a timer on it till he can go more easily handled. Also, the idea of him actually going in to an S rank solo and clearing it will be hilarious to see the world reaction to it. Im pretty sure they will at least grant him that special rank whose name im currently blanking on if he does it again.

[Traab]

Aaaand finished.

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First of all, I really did suspect it was going a Games We Play route, so that wasnt a very big shock to learn, though the details were very interesting. Secondly, Ant Marshal Beru is best boy. Now and forever. Thirdly, I liked the drawn out epilogue, it was neat, wrapped up a lot of loose ends, gave us a sense for the future, but didnt leave me on a cliff hangar. I give it top marks as it knew when to end itself and spent the right amount of time getting to that point. Im keeping it favorited in case I want to read it again.

On a related note, Gamer of Blades got an update. And.... yeah, its basically gone full bore deluge of classes, skills, stat boosts, powers, relationship levels, to the point where I literally ignore all of that to focus on whatever is left to the chapter thats devoted to story. Solo Leveler did it right, it kept the number of skills low, focused on stats making meaningful improvements, and focused primarily on skill and story elements rather than endless lists of ten thousand abilities getting marginally better.

[Rynjin]

I had the same reaction trying to read Inexorable Chaos, which is inexplicably the top voted story on TopWebFiction ATM.

The amount of EXPOSITION in that series is egregious, with every character telling each other their motivations and current feelings, and that is only broken up by big blue statblocks of worthless info.

To add insult to injury, the class formatting/leveling system is shamelessly (and admittedly!) cribbed from The Wandering Inn, without any of the elements that make that series great.

People on Royal Road have been demonstrated to have absolutely zero taste before, but this is a new level IMO.

[The Glyphstone]

As a semi-tangent to this topic, I've recently run across my first 'Dungeon Core' novel, which seems to be a sub-sub-genre of sorts of the LitRPG sub-genre in itself. Are these common enough to warrant inclusion in the 'gamer fiction' umbrella?

[Corvus]

I'm sure I read actual published novels of this genre back in the 80s - and like a lot of 80s fantasy they were kind of gloriously terrible.

[Kitten Champion]

As a semi-tangent to this topic, I've recently run across my first 'Dungeon Core' novel, which seems to be a sub-sub-genre of sorts of the LitRPG sub-genre in itself. Are these common enough to warrant inclusion in the 'gamer fiction' umbrella?

I assume you mean the "person becomes dungeon" or some concept similar to an RPG dungeon master? I don't see why not, really.

On another note, I read - listened to, technically - a LitRPG that I actually ended up liking. It was the first book of Eric Ugland's The Bad Guys series.

If I were to describe it, it's relatively standard Isekai kind of stuff. Man, who was living his life as a burglar, decides to save the family in a house he was robbing from a fire, ends up in hospital with heavy burns, gets messaged on his phone to play a RPG, winds up in a another world as the character he created. He decides to be a Robin Hood-esque chivalrous thief, and the story of the first book is him settling into the world and going through the initiation into the local thieves guild.

It avoids a lot of the major pitfalls of LitRPGs, at least thus far. There are no egregious info-dumps, no vapid harem, there aren't loads of characters and details thrown in which aren't used within the story he's actually telling, the main character isn't overpowered and only has a few spells/skills that are described clearly and are used consistently to deal with conflicts, the setting does have some personality to it and there is some effort put in to give the characters some life and the world some verisimilitude, and the main character is usually quite likeable with both flaws and virtues.

The world is very much a cross between The Elder Scrolls and Dungeons & Dragons. There's stamina/mana/HP and he periodically learns skills after practicing them somewhat like TES, but the spells and the magic items are very D&D.

It also does the "snarky interface" thing the OP mentioned, skills and level-ups get announced with some degree of sarcasm thrown in.

It is, I think, ultimately a fun traditional fantasy adventure story where the gamest elements don't overwhelm the narrative. Though I can say nothing about the rest of the series beyond what I've read, obviously.