Fantasy's New Sub-Genre Explained

[00:00:00]Hello there. Now, if you're like me, and you've been to Barnes & Noble recently, and you've seen any of these three books there, and you've been interested, they piqued your curiosity, Dungeon Crawler Carl, He Who Fights with Monsters, or Cradle, but you don't know what the heck they are, that's what we're here to talk about today. We're going to be talking about the difference between LitRPG, which is what Dungeon Crawler Carl and He Who Fights with Monsters is, and progression fantasy, which is what Cradle is. So, let's start out with LitRPG, because LitRPG kind of a little bit predates progression fantasy. It's a little debatable. I actually I don't think it is debatable. I think it definitely definitively predates progression fantasy. So, LitRPG is a concept that's not really fresh. It's been around for about the last 40 years, ever since role-playing games have been popular with Dungeons and Dragons being kind of the cornerstone of that, right?

[00:00:48]You have Dungeons and Dragons inspiring the first, what many people consider be the first LitRPG, which predates the actual coining of the term LitRPG by about three decades. Quag Keep takes a group of D&D players, and they transport them into D&D itself, and they have to fight to escape that world. Now, that kind of sets the foundation for a lot of LitRPGs to go forward, but the term LitRPG wouldn't be used until 2013.

[00:01:16]And it was actually, fascinatingly enough, coined by a bunch of Russian nerds that were writing their stories online that followed LitRPG elements, and they were like, "What do we call this?" Because it's not really fantasy, it's not really your typical fictional novel. What do we call this? And they came up with the term LitRPG. Now, before this, the actual genre became popularized in East Asia, Southeast Asia, primarily, mostly Japan, but also Korea has a lot of LitRPG inspiration going into it as well.

[00:01:47]Japan has a lot of manga that are centered around LitRPG, right? Your main character gets transported into a world, or they're stuck in a world, and they have to fight to get out. One of the most famous examples of this is Sword Art Online, which is a very popular anime / manga that was released in 2009.

[00:02:05]It follows Kirito, who is a character that gets trapped in this virtual reality world and he has to fight his way to the top in order to survive.

[00:02:16]Anybody that dies in the VR world dies in real life. And that's kind of the common thing in these novels is that when you die in the game, you die in real life, right? So, that kind of sets the tone for LitRPG's. The thing that sets it apart is that it uses role-playing game elements to define itself. They have character progression is marked by levels. So, you are a certain level. You have character stats.

[00:02:44]You have usually an interface that you can look at your character stats. They have skill trees. You have different subclasses. All these different RPG elements that are inspired by D&D, Final Fantasy, all of your RPG's out there.

[00:02:58]Now, the peak of LitRPG's, and I'm biased because I love Dungeon Crawler Carl, but kind of culminated with Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman. Dungeon Crawler Carl follows a guy named Carl. He's a normal dude. He's in the Coast Guard or Navy, if you know, you know. Carl and Donut, his ex-girlfriend's Persian cat, get caught into this game called Dungeon Crawler World after the end of the world. Yeah, the apocalypse happens just before the start of the series. And what's funny about that is although it's very important, it's kind of like a side note. The series is all about Carl and Donut going on to at first surviving and then thriving. Carl and Donut level up and they eventually kind of become the hope for humanity. Great series, great characters, hilarious moments. If you're going to start anywhere with LitRPG, I would start with Dungeon Crawler Carl.

[00:03:54]It is by far the most palatable. It is hilarious. There are moments that have you laughing out loud, but also as you get deeper into the series, there will have you moments that are tearing up.

[00:04:04]There is so much heart in these books.

[00:04:06]If you're a typical fantasy fan, if you're a Brando Sando fan, which obviously, I mean, I am. Love Brando Sando. Don't let the lit RPG elements keep you from the series because it is so easy to get past. The series itself is incredible. Highly recommend listening on audiobook because Jeff Hayes, the guy that narrates these, phenomenal phenomenal voice acting. In fact, when this becomes a TV show, Jeff Hayes better be voicing Princess Donut or I will riot. Now, this is your first time watching one of our videos. We're the Amee Bros. My name's Jay. We've been doing this for about a year. We're still pretty small. We're about a thousand subs right now. We're hoping to get to about 2,000 by the end of the year. It would help a ton if you could just leave us a like. Comment down below, maybe a suggestion for new people that are interested in lit RPG and progression fantasy or maybe give give me a question that I can answer later on. It would greatly It would help us a lot and I would greatly appreciate it if you would consider subbing if you're if you're into this. All right. Going on to progression fantasy. Now, progression fantasy actually finds its roots with the author of Cradle, Will Wight, and the author of The Arcane Ascension, Andrew Rowe, kind of scratching their heads going, [music] "Okay, our books, they're not lit RPGs, but they're brought up often alongside other big RPG lit RPG names. But, we want to make sure that it's clear that these aren't lit RPGs. These are more of a traditional fantasy, but the sole focus is on the progression of your characters. Think like Dragon Ball with Goku, where Goku starts out as like normal base street level character and by the end of the series he's fighting universal cosmic threats. Cradle is the example I'm going to use to help explain this. So, Cradle centers around this guy named Wei Shi Lindon. He's unsouled, which means he's kind of like in this fantasy world he's powerless in a lot of ways. He can use madra but it's not as strong. He doesn't have a set path and a lot of people look down on him. He's the lowest of the low. People don't think he's a capable of anything. They treat him like a burden. And one day an angel comes along and gives him a vision of what's going to happen to his home. He realizes that there are much bigger powers in the world than in his little village and in order to get to that level he has to leave his village. And this starts this whole journey of Wei Shi Lindon going from the very bottom and progressing to the top. And this series is a ton of fun. Now, I will admit you kind of have to get through the first book in order to actually enjoy it. I trudged my way through the first book. By the end it had me a little bit. The second book definitely picked up the pace. If you're not into it by the third book, I would I would suggest calling it. But if you're into it, it is a very fun series and also on audiobook great [music] narrator whose name's Travis Baldree, I believe. But again, don't let the fact that these aren't your typical fantasy books stop you from reading these. These are a ton of fun. They have a lot of heart and they break a lot of the rules that traditional fantasy sets. It is a very fresh take on fantasy. I'm excited to see how it goes going forward. Thanks for watching. Peace.

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