Over the last decade—especially recently with the pop-sensation that is Dungeon Crawler Carl—LitRPG, Progression Fantasy, and related genres have been growing in popularity, and for good reason. They provide an interesting and divergent entertainment experience for readers. Some, such as LitRPG and GameLit books, incorporate stat screens and often include “blue screens,” much like one would expect to see in video games. They also include quests, and often a “system” (that may or may not be sentient and a character of its own). Other genres, such as Progression Fantasy and Military Sci-Fi, stick to a more traditional literary architecture, though they can include twists of their own and often find a similar fanbase.

Given the rise in popularity, I tracked down as many authors as I could here at Dragon Con and asked them a series of questions. As I have come to expect from the community, they were all fantastic and an absolute pleasure to interview.

The questions asked of each author were: what is your book about, how did you become a writer of LitRPG, what other works in the genre inspired you, what can a book do that a game can’t, and where can a reader find a sample of your work?    

Jordy Rousse, author of Unbound, The Stonebound Saga:

Unbound will be released either late this year or early next year.It’s a light progression novel. When you turn eighteen, you step on a stone that gives you your calling. The main character is a girl who gets a calling that hasn’t been seen in over 100 years and is forbidden. So, we deal with the ramifications. It has an art-space magic system.

I’ve been doing reviews of books on Instagram, under Bookmarked.by.Jordy. I also read 100-150 books a year. As I see the things I really enjoy about books and the things I don’t, I put them together in my own fiction.

[Inspiration:] Name of the Wind. There’re a lot of elements, especially when I write music scenes in the book, that are directly inspired by Kvothe’s musical scenes. [You] can read the first few chapters of my book by looking me up on Instagram and joining my Discord, which has the first five or six chapters available.

Joedan Worley, author of Wayspring Wanderer in The Desert Druid series:

A Marine-turned-druid ends up on a dying desert super planet on an epic quest to save what he’s been told is his dead brother. He finds this world that, although it’s falling apart and the magic is with it, it’s still far beyond anything he’s ever experienced on Earth. As he’s developing his magic, there’s this system that jumps in front of his face, and it’s numbers, and it’s quantifying, and he has this AI that’s talking to him, but it feels so real that over time, he begins to wonder if it’s AI at all.

I was a Navy Corpsman combat medic… I went to Fallujah, Iraq in 2004. We did the 1st assault on Fallujah. On the 17th of September [our convoy was hit.] I jumped out, went running up to try to help. I was also blown up, so now I’m an above-the-knee amputee. I started working in non-profits because my heart has always been in taking care of people. I got my first service dog through “America’s Vet Dogs” (which can be found at vetdogs.org), and “Semper-Fi Fund,” (thefund.org) showed up out of nowhere [with help]. I now work for “America’s Vet Dogs.” They got me moving and taking better care of myself, both physically and spiritually. They train service dogs for veterans and first responders.

When I was injured, I got off my hospital meds after my last surgery within a few weeks. Zoning out into video games, books, and movies…opened my eyes to the fun and joy of video games and books. [When] Guild Wars one first came out, you couldn’t look up guides. When I started crafting my own story, I wanted to write about found family and support systems and hope and fighting through and persevering no matter what.

I think every medium has something different. An example would be games like Dark Souls, where they let you, as the player/reader, do a bunch of the heavy lifting with story. If I say something makes a sound in the night, and you hear a blade scraping across brick, I can stop right there. You’re going to come up with something that’s individual for you that scares you in a way I can’t describe. If I go into great detail, I’m taking away the mystery of it. I trust my readers to listen to my story in the way it’s written. I want my stories to be a journey that we go on [together].

Worley’s novels are available onKindle Unlimited and Audible.

David Sherrer, author of Spellblade (working title):

A character wakes up in a video game with no idea how he got there and realizes he’s the only person that’s actually in the video game. Everybody else is just playing.

 I run a publishing company, Chenoweth Press, and my wife is a USA Today bestselling author. I hang out with authors all the time, and I have all the resources to write books but never tried. This is my first attempt to actually use the skills I’ve gained over time to do something for myself.

I used to be a big World of Warcraft fan. Before that, EverQuest. I’ve done most MMOs, and I love exploring this new virtual world that’s not like our own. That’s the vibe I want to bring with me when I write my own books.

I’m a game designer. I make board games. The best board games are the ones that tell a narrative like a book. The problem is whenever you’re telling a story with a book, they’re experiencing a linear story. You don’t have any way to affect the outcome. If you want to involve the reader or player, games let you have an interactive version. The two mediums are very close.

Spellbladeisn’t released yet, but once it is, it will be available at chenowethgames.com.

CJ Aaron, author of Migration of the Gods:

It’s a coming-of-age epic dark fantasy. I was working as a jack-of-all-trades for a venture capitalist company, doing digital graphic design, packaging, marketing, sales, vendor compliance, logistics, all the fun stuff.

I really enjoyed the Mars series by Edgar Rice Burroughs. I enjoyed Cradle, obviously. Daniel Hilton’s one of my favorites. Calvin’s Riddle was awesome, by him. At some point you get sick of trying to find new authors and things to read. So it was like, “You know what? I’m just gonna write.”

You can find Aaron’s work on Kindle Unlimited and Audible.

Overxelous, author of Spell Weaver:

Magic and portals come to Earth, and they have monsters in them, but the world does not fall apart in an apocalypse. The government bands together and creates something called the Hunter’s Association. You can go in the portals and fight monsters, and if you don’t, the monsters break out onto Earth.

I’ve always been a fantasy reader. I started to write my book [while] doing part-time work for a cybersecurity company. I am now working full-time, but the books have taken off, so I’m writing as much as I can. I’m on Book 5 now.

I really love big classical books like Name of the Wind. Some of my favorites that are a little smaller would be Spellmonger or The Warded Man. I grew up on fantasy books. When reading, you build the world in your own head. The author writes it, but specifics of what things look like are left up to the reader’s imagination. You can get really immersed.

The first three books are on Amazon with audiobooks and can be found on Kindle Unlimited and Audible. Book four comes out next month.

Liam Lawless, author of The Apocalypse is a Side Quest:

It’s the end of the world, and a big blue box appears in front of you with a bunch of numbers. You have skills to assign. The main character of my story gets one-bajillion points. He accidentally dumps them all into fishing. And then he accidentally confirms it. And then he does it again, all by accident. So this is the story of a man going ass-backwards into success, all against his will, despite his best efforts.

I was a student before I began writing. I was lined up to go to Texas A&M to become an officer in the Navy. A few days before I was due to fully accept and head out, I get a message for this side hobby I’ve been doing, which is Apocalypse is a Side Quest, saying Shadow Alley Press wants to publish me. I decided that probably God, or Karma, or the universe was telling me something. I decided to go full in for the next year, doing nothing but trying to write, and see what would happen. It’s been amazing so far.

[Inspiration:] Fanfiction. Fanfiction and LitRPG have a closer relationship than a lot of people realize. Fanfiction was doing LitRPG before it was working. I’d been wondering in the back of my head, “why is it that I can’t get original fiction that scratches that same itch?” I discovered Royal Road, and I was like… that’s it! That’s what I’ve been looking for! Original fiction that is also in the progression fantasy sphere! The first one I got hooked on was Super Supportive, and that made me realize you can write your own ideas, and not only will people read them, they might even pay you for them. “Heck yeah! I’ll give it a shot!” I wrote my first LitRPG, which was terrible and really bad. Then I wrote my 2nd LitRPG, which was less terrible, but somehow ended up making enough money to send me to college!

Games, by their very nature, are interactive and force the audience into the shoes of a certain character. In books, the author is allowed to exercise more control over what the viewer is going to see and how problems are solved. I’m a big fan of hypertext stories, areas where games and books cross over. There’s a series called The Wayhaven Chronicles, which is a modern choose-your-own-adventure game. It takes elements of both progression fantasy and traditional video games.

Find The Apocalypse is a Side Quest on Kindle Unlimited and a new story on Royal Road called Fallen Mage Regressor under the penname Lemonoid.

Cornman, author of Magetank:

A man dies and is resurrected in a fantasy universe. He uses all the magic at his disposal to keep from dying again. It’s told comedically with an outrageous main character in a serious setting. I was a licensed attorney, still am, technically. The main character is also an attorney. I transitioned to full-time writing this year.

[Inspirations:] If we go back far enough, a bunch of the Isekai anime. Then I got into books like Threadbare and City and the Dungeon: And Those who Dewll and Delve Within. Those were my earliest LitRPG, but I didn’t realize it was a genre. Then I found He Who Fights With Monsters and Dungeon Crawler Carl. I stormed through that. And then I was like, “Oh my gosh, there’s a whole genre!” I found Royal Road, which had all these people self-publishing on it. I read everything. At some point, I just went, “I’ve been writing off and on my whole life. I could probably do this.” And it turns out some people, at least, think I can.

Games are limited by programming and specific mechanics in budget. With a book, it’s open-ended, what you can describe and the sort of narrative you can bring to the reader. Playing the game requires active participation. In LitRPG books, you’re along for the ride, and there’s this person, or these characters—this group—who are making these choices, and you’re getting the satisfaction of seeing them work on the world and synergize and do cool things without having to be wholly responsible for everything that’s happening. It also feels like you’re there with a friend or are a part of the group.

Find Magetank onKindle Unlimited and Audible. The first few chapters are free on Royal Road.

William Myrl, author of The Dark Lord of Crafting:

Our guy wakes up naked in a field, and blue screens pop up in front of him. He finds out he’s got access to new abilities. He can harvest materials, craft new items. He hasn’t figured out pants yet, but he’s gonna get there. Nightfall comes, monsters start spawning. A zombie rips his throat out. Fortunately, there’s a respawn mechanic, so he can try again tomorrow. It’s a little gritty in the beginning as he’s trying to survive the world, but as he works his way up a technology tree, he moves into kingdom-building, and we see where the story goes from there.

When I was a teenager, I was like, “I’m gonna be a writer. That seems like an easy way to make money.” It hasn’t worked out so far, but I’m still holding out hope. I self-published some stuff. I didn’t hook up with Shadow Alley Press until 2022. My first series didn’t do terribly well, but Shadow Alley is super supportive. They were, “All right, it didn’t work out. We’re gonna try again. You work on your next story. You’re gonna run some stuff through Royal Road and we’ll figure it out.” It’s been great working with them.

[Inspiration:] Quite a lot of Dungeons and Dragons growing up. It shifted to Pathfinder. I was briefly into World of Warcraft when it first came out, but then I had to stop because it was gonna be my life, and I had to get out of there. I think all of those things connect. [That’s] why LitRPG is attractive. I enjoy the number. I enjoy the systemization of magic. Brandon Sanderson has that whole speech about different levels of magic, soft and hard systems. I really like when the rules are explicit.

A lot of people, when they hear “LitRPG,” ask if it is a choose-your-own-adventure story. Which it is not. A game lets you choose your own adventure. I think a book does the work for you in the same way any other entertainment does. You can be along for the ride, on the roller coaster instead of building it as you go. They’re both great activities, but sometimes you just want to discover something without having to create the world yourself.

[You can find The Dark Lord of Crafting on] Kindle Unlimited. I also have my own website, it’s my name: williammyrl.com

Return to Daily Dragon for Part 2!