That’s a Genre?

LitRPG. What the heck is that?

I was sitting in a conference in Las Vegas talking to a few authors and asking them what genres they write in. One guy who was there told me that he writes, “LitRPG.” Huh?

I decided to do a little research on LitRPG because what he described to me just sounded like a fantasy novel. Turns out that this new (at least new to me) genre is a subset of fantasy where the main character experiences the story a lot like a role-playing game with leveling up, point stats, and game systems. As it states on the website, litrpgreads.com, it is “a literary genre where games or game-like challenges form an essential part of the landscape.” Apparently the term was created by a Russian publishing company in 2013.

I haven’t read anything in this genre yet, but I’m curious to go through one of these books and see how it differs from the fantasy stories I am used to. It’s amazing to me that, even now, after centuries of literature in the world, new genres of books are still being invented.