LitRPG

He's still a complete piece of shit who won the lottery. He is the archtype character of the shitty older brother who is constantly in gambling debts, produces nothing, can't hold down a job, and only has the stupidest ideas of all time to fix his situation. Furthering himself into more debt until his next stupid idea. That is the basis of his character. The supporting characters around him are far more talented, considerate, and hardworking but they fail solely because his dumbass class has such overwhelmingly obscene advantages that they can't do anything about it.

Frank is back, baby!


Audible apparently too.

Right in time too, because I started the Rogue Ascension series, the one where he's a Shade Dragon Rogue, and meh. Don't like the main character much at all. I honestly just want to read more about the siren princess and her people, not this dipshit. I've finished two of them and will probably keep reading after Ripple #5, but if something else pops up I'll likely gladly jump to that.

Shadeslinger/Ripple System, the one I mentioned above with one of the greatest characters in any litrpg series (after Donut), Frank. Book 5 just came out. Fair warning, it is pretty much what it would be like if you lived as an EQ/WoW character and belonged to a high level guild doing raids. The last book was nothing but raids. But it is all worth it for Frank.

I probably ranted about it in this thread previously, but fuck Arcane Ascension right in the ass. The prequel/adjacent books were fairly decent, and the first couple of this series were tolerable, but Book 4 went mega-infinity-woke and on top of that was incredibly fucking boring for the 50% of the book that I read and then (metaphorically) threw it in the trash. I will never read anything by that faggot ever again.

I heartily third/fourth/whatever Dungeon Crawler Carl.

For the scifi stuff, I agree with Bobiverse. If you like that, you might like Murderbot, but I'm unsure if there is an audiobook version. I have to think so with how popular it is.

Void said:

Frank is back, baby!

Amazon.com

Audible apparently too.

Right in time too, because I started the Rogue Ascension series, the one where he's a Shade Dragon Rogue, and meh. Don't like the main character much at all. I honestly just want to read more about the siren princess and her people, not this dipshit. I've finished two of them and will probably keep reading after Ripple #5, but if something else pops up I'll likely gladly jump to that.

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Just finished Ripple System Book 3 (Gilded Ghost), am enjoying it. Listening to Shattersoul now.

Finished Ripple Book 4, enjoyed it.

Defiance of the Fall Book 13 came out, started it. It's as unashamedly self-indulgent cultivation as ever and still might be my favorite litrpg even if I can't recommend reading it this far

I read 5.5 books of Rogue Ascension because I had nothing else drawing my attention. I know that's a lot of books to go through to just end up hating it, but I was bored and I was hoping it got better. It fucking sucked. The clincher for me was that he FINALLY got together with the love interest...and "because they need to stay focused" they are limiting things to kisses on the cheek and headpats. I'm not fucking joking. 19 and 18 year old virgins actually get married, and they aren't pounding each other into paste in bed.

That obviously isn't my sole reason for hating it, as I'd prefer not to read anything beyond acknowledging that they knocked boots, but come on. I'd say maybe he did it to keep it kid friendly, but the violence is clearly not kid friendly. On top of that, he's put out one book a month on KU apparently. While impressive, that also shows how shallow the books are that he pumps them out so fast. I hate the main character, and I was hoping that finally adding the "wife" to the team would make it more interesting, as she was a better character, but nope, she literally just does whatever the main character wants, almost like a robot. Not even a House-type robot, who is awesome. Anyway, avoid, it sucks, no idea why I kept at it so long when I could have been picking my nose or something instead.

After that I skeptically picked up the We Hunt Monsters series because there at least like 9 of them out. Yeah, the name made me pause many times before, because despite its many drawbacks and stumbles, He Who Fights With Monsters is a pretty fucking good series. These are quick reads, I'm starting the 4th one now, and I give them a middling 3/5 overall so far. The main character is a bit of a dick, but not overly so and he kind of has reasons for it (although even with reasons I generally don't like reading unlikable characters), and other than a few massive stat dumps to pad pages it is pretty decent. Not as good as many of the ones we've talked about in their prime, but for a solid time-waster you could do a lot worse, like Rogue Ascension was. At least through book 3, we'll see if it veers into shit territory like so many of them do.

Speaking of shit territory, man Tuco, I'm not excited to hear you talk about the start of DotF 13 He literally just spent like 800 pages cultivating in the last book, how much more can there be?? I will eventually start that book, but if it continues like the last book with no relief in sight, I'm fucking done. What a waste of a good series and some good characters, all for some buddhist/dharma/fartsniffing bullshit. Fuck!

Finished the 9th We Hunt Monsters book. Still mediocrely decent, but as with so many of these series, I'm beginning to actively dislike the main character because he's such a fucking dick. I'm not going to go into detail about why he is a dick, as he has in-world reasons for it, but that doesn't mean I enjoy reading it. On top of that, all of the female characters throw themselves at him, and he wants absolutely zero to do with them because he's solely focused on his mission. Which is also related to why he's such a dick, because if you aren't helping him complete his mission, fuck you, get out of the way. The author clearly knows he's a dick too, as in-world characters periodically tell him what an asshole he is, but he doesn't give a shit.

It is still a pretty good series, but it could have been one of my higher tier one if the main character were even remotely sympathetic. Like Carl will do what needs to be done and murder people, but he tries to be fair and helpful and nice when possible. Or Jason from HWFWM can be cold and arrogant at times, but he actively tries to temper it when it becomes too much. This guy literally doesn't care if you cease to exist if you aren't going to do what he wants you to do, and will tell you as much to your face. I'm actively rooting for his "mission" to end in disaster at the end of the final book, all due to him being such a fucking prick.

EDIT: Forgot to end with, I'm not sure what to read next. All the big series I'm keeping up with are in-between books except for DotF, and I don't have it in me to read more endless cultivation bullshit. It might break me.

Anyone read Randidly Ghosthound? As you can see, I need a character I can at least feel a little bit good about, and the less sitting and meditating the better, so any recommendations of obscure ones would be appreciated. I've likely read most of the common ones that are listed here all the time.