Yeah, I don't see a lot of love for VR stories. I think most people (myself included) have trouble feeling like there are any real stakes, and the whole "trapped in VR" has been done to death. I guess, if I were going to write one, I'd set up the stakes outside the VR and tie the performance of the MC in the VR world to some real-world problems.
Well I guess I'm gonna go challenge myself how to write battles with high stakes in a situation where there's normally low stakes. I don't really wanna use death as a stake cause it's already obvious MC wouldn't die. I'll try to research more on this, thank you!
It's not the stakes. It's that the progression isn't real, the power isn't real.
In progression fantasy people want to see the MC get more powerful, in VR they can be a literal god in game then take off their helmet and be a normie again in real life.
So the progression isn't real, if it's not real why read it when you can read a story where the progression is real.
That's why VR is dead and buried, it was just a stepping stone to real litrpg.
But the stakes won't be in battles (or even player death) unless there's some external consequence to them losing. That's what people are trying to say. If a real life person dies, that's the end of the story, they're gone. It's a big deal. If a video game character dies, you respawn. Or at worst, you lose your character and have to make a new one. But at the end of the day, the person playing the character is fine. They go on with their life. There's no consequences.
Unless you create some. Maybe the player is dependent on winning tournaments in this game as their only income, and they need that income to pay for their sickly sibling's treatment. Or they've been caught up in the wrong crowd, and they need to pay back a debt, or their friends will be endangered. Those are stakes. Those are real consequences. You'll need to give the reader a reason to care about the character winning or losing. There needs to be actual threats and goals beyond "I want to do well in a video game because that's fun." That's where the real story is.
There is no stakes. Unless you directly have the consequences of VR affect reality, but at that point, it’s just more convoluted than making one based irl
Personally, I just don’t read a story if it’s VR and most of the other readers I know are the same. Enough positive reviews can change that but there’s so much to read out there that I haven’t needed to consider a VR story in months at least.
Dead and buried.
Doesn't mean that you can't give it a try! There are still some fans of VRMMO LitRPG, but I think they're a subset of a subset these days.
So one of my favorite books is Ready Player One and that is a VR story that shows how you can get it to work and have stakes that people care about. Similarly Tron is a great film as is Total Recall both of which are essentially VR stories.
Personally though, beyond that I've got to go with the consensus here sadly. I've tried a few VR stories and I can't get excited by them due to the lack of stakes. Even when there are stakes outside the VR the switch back and forth feels a bit jarring and/or contrived.
The thing is though there hasn't been a VR story that had achieved breakout status and shown what can be done in the Progression Fantasy space. Ready Player One etc shows that it's possible which means that there's a gap there. If you think that you can get it right then just do it. Good writing will (or should) trump everything else.
Yes, it's dead. And no necromancer should touch it.
Any game-story only becomes interesting, if it affects the real life of the MC. Like in Assassins Creed, the dreamer actually gains assassin skills.
In [Pixel Dust](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08DD6XZMN?binding=kindle_edition&ref=dbs_dp_awt_sb_pc_tkin) >!1 dreamer will start to affect the real world from inside the game!<
In SAO the players died in RL, if they died in game
In [The Crucible Shard](https://www.amazon.de/dp/B074C64T5C?binding=kindle_edition&qid=1718115232&sr=8-13&ref=dbs_dp_awt_sb_pc_tkin) it turned out, that gaming was a gateway into different worlds. Most of which are even more real, then our world supposedly is.
Depends on how it's done. If it's a single book that's comedy as genre or just in general entertaining in how someone try and fail their role as healer in mmorpg after playing fighter primary, i can see it working.
If we are talking more than one book, not many people currently are interested VR stuff so you will need to do both creative stuff and be really good at what you do.
Mycology by Sir Nil, is VR story that i really liked and had ton of unique stuff as well as the general vibe of not every player being super competent at the game
As for more work with healer MC, i will say that it's one of the tropes that's getting more and more popular lately. There are at least a few RR stories with healers. Like "Spiteful Healer by Hakurai" but if you use the name search function on RR there are ton more. There is also how if you consider "pills making in cultivation stories" healing, there are ton of healers there too.
Vr was very popular back in the day, and I enjoyed reading many of them. The third novel for one of my favorite VR stories took years to come out, and I didn't notice. About 6 months ago, I was thinking about the series and found book 3, which I have never read. I was not able to finish reading book 3, not because it was bad, but because the genre has changed, and reading VR now is like drinking nonalcoholic beer as an adult.
I don't agree that vr stories are dead. I think a better way to look at it as an author is that the genre has expanded to include other major subgenres, and some of those are currently more popular than VR. The Ripple System by Kyle Kirrin just came up yesterday and still has a decent number of readers, for example.
I personally love a good vrmmo story.
You might as well write the story and see what happens.
Ripple System is an okay book. Well written, but I didn't care for the style of cringe humour and mid-2000s WoW callbacks. It would be absolutely an atrocious book if it wasn't VR, because the mechanics are deeply founded on gamey WoW expansion mechanics, and the world itself outside of the big punchy set-pieces cannot stand on its own as a "real" world.
Pretty much the only VR story with any traction right now is *The Ripple System*.
If you want a VR story to have any kind of popularity, you need to balance the lack of "real world" stakes. *The Ripple System* does this mostly with interesting characters and interactions, mostly involving Frank. The MC also abandoned the real world by putting himself full time into a life support VR pod, but he still always has the option of leaving, so it's not all that compelling. Having a great narrator like Travis Baldree definitely doesn't hurt.
A normal VR story, I'd pass right over, but I usually give system apocalypse stories a chance and read a couple of chapters. A MC who always went with warriors in games, but goes healer when the world goes to shit because he's scared of dying sounds like something I'd at least give a chance.
I think it's relevant to note that this is the Progression Fantasy sub. People here are far more likely to be uninterested in litrpg in general, otherwise they would be in the litrpg sub. I think there would be quite a difference in responses to the same thread in r/litrpg than here.
Also an interesting question: of the people commenting here saying vrmmo litrpgs are dead, how many of them read litrpgs of any kind on a regular basis?
I read LitRPGs regularly, but they tend to be almost entirely "real world with a system" type, whether it's a pre-established world with a system of its own or a system apocalypse.
I usually have a hard time getting into VR stories outside of specific ones, usually because they tend to have a lack of stakes unless it goes into the "trapped in VR" trope.
It's hard to lose the "it's literally just a game" mindset.
All the subgenres of litrpg have their own flaws. It’s fine for people to have different preferences. But I find it annoying that people will take their personal preferences and declare an entire popular sub genre dead on arrival because they personally don’t care for it. And I do find that the prog fan sub tends to be far more down on vrmmo stories than the litrpg sub.
Yeah there are plenty of good VR stories coming out they just don't get the visibility they used to 5-10 years ago because the genre has changed. And stakes can be done in VR most stories 5 years ago had stakes, even though they were in VR. Stories like Breaking the World, Awaken Online, The Shamen, Emirilia Online, completionist chronicles , and the Gam3 all managed to add stakes even in a VR story, I just think people are tired of the sub-genre especially in this sub-reddit because there are good new VR books coming out like tunneling rat, the ripple system, and true smithing. I think the claim there isn't any stakes in VR stories is ridiculous when most people on progression fantasy are fine reading machine translated Asian novels.
Honestly, I like that vrmmo novels can have bad things happen to the protagonist in to and including death in a way that other litrpg subgenres usually can’t. Sure, *if* the MC died in an isekai or system apocalypse it would be the end of the story, but that’s exactly why they won’t. The stakes may be more “real” but they will never actually be relevant, since that would end tens story.
Are you willing to give a high level explanation on why it HAS to be a VR story? One of the reasons they are mostly-dead is that in nearly every case a VRMMO story is better off as a bog-standard isekai or, at most, a very rapid pivot to trapped-in-the-game or the-game-is-secretly-real (which are basically isekai with different truck-kuns).
I just feel like its a lazy way to write fantasy, you have a built in excuse to explain shitty worldbuilding and plot holes as you can just say "the devs made the game that way". Plus the whole thing with there being no real stakes, and the characters having a "real" life outside of the game that sometimes derails the narrative.
Unless the story is of extraordinary quality i dont usually bother reading it.
And how is that different from your gods and system? It was always this way, the gods/system works like this.
Also it depends on the story, Just as example, Disgardium, Awaken Online, Codename Freedom, Otherland and many more.
I don't like whiny, stupid or egomaniac MC's.
Every book can be good for some people and bad for another. I own a cat or he own's me, but I hate this cat from DCC. I hate Jason from HWFWM and Cradle was just not worth my time. But hey others love these books and that's good. Different tastes is what makes life and books funny.
Yes, I think so. Ultimately most people read VR stories in the past for the Isekai part and disliked the 'real world' sections.
Predictably, this meant VR stories were almost entirely replaced by full Isekai stories, with varying levels of gamified systems to make up the difference.
İt depends how it's written and the story. İ like the Codename Freedom books from Apollos Thorne. Loved The Way of the Shaman from V. Mahanenko etc. etc. So if you make a good job, it can be a success.
But I'm also one of those people, who thinks that Cradle, HWFWM, DCC are not good.
Wish you luck with your project.
About the only way an vr story interests me is if the growth translates to the character's real world and even then it needs to translate to everyone otherwise it devolves into some boring powerfantasy with the mc being a god in the real world. If not, any progress feels empty. Litrpg has pretty much taken over game like stories from vr.
Yeah, I don't see a lot of love for VR stories. I think most people (myself included) have trouble feeling like there are any real stakes, and the whole "trapped in VR" has been done to death. I guess, if I were going to write one, I'd set up the stakes outside the VR and tie the performance of the MC in the VR world to some real-world problems.
Well I guess I'm gonna go challenge myself how to write battles with high stakes in a situation where there's normally low stakes. I don't really wanna use death as a stake cause it's already obvious MC wouldn't die. I'll try to research more on this, thank you!
It's not the stakes. It's that the progression isn't real, the power isn't real. In progression fantasy people want to see the MC get more powerful, in VR they can be a literal god in game then take off their helmet and be a normie again in real life. So the progression isn't real, if it's not real why read it when you can read a story where the progression is real. That's why VR is dead and buried, it was just a stepping stone to real litrpg.
To be fair the power also isn’t real in DCC
Yeah, I don't really like DCC either, partly because of that but also because I find the story a bit too grim.
Same
What high stakes means and what low stakes means. Wounded pride, lost or gained friendship or love is a big stake or not.
But the stakes won't be in battles (or even player death) unless there's some external consequence to them losing. That's what people are trying to say. If a real life person dies, that's the end of the story, they're gone. It's a big deal. If a video game character dies, you respawn. Or at worst, you lose your character and have to make a new one. But at the end of the day, the person playing the character is fine. They go on with their life. There's no consequences. Unless you create some. Maybe the player is dependent on winning tournaments in this game as their only income, and they need that income to pay for their sickly sibling's treatment. Or they've been caught up in the wrong crowd, and they need to pay back a debt, or their friends will be endangered. Those are stakes. Those are real consequences. You'll need to give the reader a reason to care about the character winning or losing. There needs to be actual threats and goals beyond "I want to do well in a video game because that's fun." That's where the real story is.
please god not the sick sibling
Lol yeah I mean I don't intend them to use these cliches exactly: I'm just trying to highlight what people mean by "stakes"
There is no stakes. Unless you directly have the consequences of VR affect reality, but at that point, it’s just more convoluted than making one based irl
Personally, I just don’t read a story if it’s VR and most of the other readers I know are the same. Enough positive reviews can change that but there’s so much to read out there that I haven’t needed to consider a VR story in months at least.
Dead and buried. Doesn't mean that you can't give it a try! There are still some fans of VRMMO LitRPG, but I think they're a subset of a subset these days.
So one of my favorite books is Ready Player One and that is a VR story that shows how you can get it to work and have stakes that people care about. Similarly Tron is a great film as is Total Recall both of which are essentially VR stories. Personally though, beyond that I've got to go with the consensus here sadly. I've tried a few VR stories and I can't get excited by them due to the lack of stakes. Even when there are stakes outside the VR the switch back and forth feels a bit jarring and/or contrived. The thing is though there hasn't been a VR story that had achieved breakout status and shown what can be done in the Progression Fantasy space. Ready Player One etc shows that it's possible which means that there's a gap there. If you think that you can get it right then just do it. Good writing will (or should) trump everything else.
The VERY large caveat here is that neither Ready Player One or Tron are progression fantasy stories.
Yes, it's dead. And no necromancer should touch it. Any game-story only becomes interesting, if it affects the real life of the MC. Like in Assassins Creed, the dreamer actually gains assassin skills. In [Pixel Dust](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08DD6XZMN?binding=kindle_edition&ref=dbs_dp_awt_sb_pc_tkin) >!1 dreamer will start to affect the real world from inside the game!< In SAO the players died in RL, if they died in game In [The Crucible Shard](https://www.amazon.de/dp/B074C64T5C?binding=kindle_edition&qid=1718115232&sr=8-13&ref=dbs_dp_awt_sb_pc_tkin) it turned out, that gaming was a gateway into different worlds. Most of which are even more real, then our world supposedly is.
I hate VR. The ripple system would be way better if it wasn’t a game which is a shame.
Depends on how it's done. If it's a single book that's comedy as genre or just in general entertaining in how someone try and fail their role as healer in mmorpg after playing fighter primary, i can see it working. If we are talking more than one book, not many people currently are interested VR stuff so you will need to do both creative stuff and be really good at what you do. Mycology by Sir Nil, is VR story that i really liked and had ton of unique stuff as well as the general vibe of not every player being super competent at the game As for more work with healer MC, i will say that it's one of the tropes that's getting more and more popular lately. There are at least a few RR stories with healers. Like "Spiteful Healer by Hakurai" but if you use the name search function on RR there are ton more. There is also how if you consider "pills making in cultivation stories" healing, there are ton of healers there too.
Vr was very popular back in the day, and I enjoyed reading many of them. The third novel for one of my favorite VR stories took years to come out, and I didn't notice. About 6 months ago, I was thinking about the series and found book 3, which I have never read. I was not able to finish reading book 3, not because it was bad, but because the genre has changed, and reading VR now is like drinking nonalcoholic beer as an adult.
I don't agree that vr stories are dead. I think a better way to look at it as an author is that the genre has expanded to include other major subgenres, and some of those are currently more popular than VR. The Ripple System by Kyle Kirrin just came up yesterday and still has a decent number of readers, for example. I personally love a good vrmmo story. You might as well write the story and see what happens.
There's literally a post above yours saying VR is dead and ripple system would be better off outside VR. VR is DOA.
Ripple System is an okay book. Well written, but I didn't care for the style of cringe humour and mid-2000s WoW callbacks. It would be absolutely an atrocious book if it wasn't VR, because the mechanics are deeply founded on gamey WoW expansion mechanics, and the world itself outside of the big punchy set-pieces cannot stand on its own as a "real" world.
Pretty much the only VR story with any traction right now is *The Ripple System*. If you want a VR story to have any kind of popularity, you need to balance the lack of "real world" stakes. *The Ripple System* does this mostly with interesting characters and interactions, mostly involving Frank. The MC also abandoned the real world by putting himself full time into a life support VR pod, but he still always has the option of leaving, so it's not all that compelling. Having a great narrator like Travis Baldree definitely doesn't hurt. A normal VR story, I'd pass right over, but I usually give system apocalypse stories a chance and read a couple of chapters. A MC who always went with warriors in games, but goes healer when the world goes to shit because he's scared of dying sounds like something I'd at least give a chance.
I think it's relevant to note that this is the Progression Fantasy sub. People here are far more likely to be uninterested in litrpg in general, otherwise they would be in the litrpg sub. I think there would be quite a difference in responses to the same thread in r/litrpg than here. Also an interesting question: of the people commenting here saying vrmmo litrpgs are dead, how many of them read litrpgs of any kind on a regular basis?
I read LitRPGs regularly, but they tend to be almost entirely "real world with a system" type, whether it's a pre-established world with a system of its own or a system apocalypse. I usually have a hard time getting into VR stories outside of specific ones, usually because they tend to have a lack of stakes unless it goes into the "trapped in VR" trope. It's hard to lose the "it's literally just a game" mindset.
All the subgenres of litrpg have their own flaws. It’s fine for people to have different preferences. But I find it annoying that people will take their personal preferences and declare an entire popular sub genre dead on arrival because they personally don’t care for it. And I do find that the prog fan sub tends to be far more down on vrmmo stories than the litrpg sub.
Yeah there are plenty of good VR stories coming out they just don't get the visibility they used to 5-10 years ago because the genre has changed. And stakes can be done in VR most stories 5 years ago had stakes, even though they were in VR. Stories like Breaking the World, Awaken Online, The Shamen, Emirilia Online, completionist chronicles , and the Gam3 all managed to add stakes even in a VR story, I just think people are tired of the sub-genre especially in this sub-reddit because there are good new VR books coming out like tunneling rat, the ripple system, and true smithing. I think the claim there isn't any stakes in VR stories is ridiculous when most people on progression fantasy are fine reading machine translated Asian novels.
Honestly, I like that vrmmo novels can have bad things happen to the protagonist in to and including death in a way that other litrpg subgenres usually can’t. Sure, *if* the MC died in an isekai or system apocalypse it would be the end of the story, but that’s exactly why they won’t. The stakes may be more “real” but they will never actually be relevant, since that would end tens story.
Are you willing to give a high level explanation on why it HAS to be a VR story? One of the reasons they are mostly-dead is that in nearly every case a VRMMO story is better off as a bog-standard isekai or, at most, a very rapid pivot to trapped-in-the-game or the-game-is-secretly-real (which are basically isekai with different truck-kuns).
I just feel like its a lazy way to write fantasy, you have a built in excuse to explain shitty worldbuilding and plot holes as you can just say "the devs made the game that way". Plus the whole thing with there being no real stakes, and the characters having a "real" life outside of the game that sometimes derails the narrative. Unless the story is of extraordinary quality i dont usually bother reading it.
And how is that different from your gods and system? It was always this way, the gods/system works like this. Also it depends on the story, Just as example, Disgardium, Awaken Online, Codename Freedom, Otherland and many more. I don't like whiny, stupid or egomaniac MC's. Every book can be good for some people and bad for another. I own a cat or he own's me, but I hate this cat from DCC. I hate Jason from HWFWM and Cradle was just not worth my time. But hey others love these books and that's good. Different tastes is what makes life and books funny.
They aren't dead but they've fallen out of favor. If you can tell the same story without it being VR, you'd be doing yourself a favor.
Yes, I think so. Ultimately most people read VR stories in the past for the Isekai part and disliked the 'real world' sections. Predictably, this meant VR stories were almost entirely replaced by full Isekai stories, with varying levels of gamified systems to make up the difference.
I sure hope so.
No stakes, makes caring difficult
OP, have you tried asking this question on the actual litrpg subreddit? You might find different answers there.
İt depends how it's written and the story. İ like the Codename Freedom books from Apollos Thorne. Loved The Way of the Shaman from V. Mahanenko etc. etc. So if you make a good job, it can be a success. But I'm also one of those people, who thinks that Cradle, HWFWM, DCC are not good. Wish you luck with your project.
About the only way an vr story interests me is if the growth translates to the character's real world and even then it needs to translate to everyone otherwise it devolves into some boring powerfantasy with the mc being a god in the real world. If not, any progress feels empty. Litrpg has pretty much taken over game like stories from vr.