LitRPG

History

The literary trope of getting inside a computer game is not new. Andre Norton's Quag Keep (1978) enters the world of the characters of a D&D game. Larry Niven and Steven Barnes's Dream Park (1981) has a setting of LARP-like games as a kind of reality TV in the future (2051). With the rise of MMORPGs in the 1990s came science fiction novels that utilised virtual game worlds for their plots. In Taiwan, the first of Yu Wo's nine ½ Prince novels appeared, published in October 2004 by Ming Significant Cultural. In Japan, the genre started in 1993 with the comedy Magical Circle Guru Guru where the characters lived in a JRPG and the cliches and mechanics of the time were often a source of humor. Later Japanese examples include .hack//Sign in 2002 and Sword Art Online in 2009. The Korean series Legendary Moonlight Sculptor has over 50 volumes.

These novels and others were precursors to a more stat-heavy form of novel. Using a looser definition, a Russian publishing initiative identified the genre and gave it a name. The first Russian novel in this style appeared in 2012 on the Russian self-publishing website samizdat.ru, the novel Господство клана Неспящих (Clan Dominance: The Sleepless Ones) by Dem Mikhailov set in the fictional sword and sorcery game world of Valdira, printed by Leningrad Publishers later that year under the title Господство кланов (The Rule of the Clans) in the series Современный фантастический боевик (Modern Fantastic Action Novel) and translated into English as The Way of the Clan as a Kindle book in 2015.

In 2013, EKSMO, a major Russian publishing house, started its multiple-author project entitled LitRPG. According to Magic Dome Books, a major translator of Russian LitRPG, the term LitRPG was coined in late 2013 during a brainstorming session between writer Vasily Mahanenko, EKSMO's science fiction editor Dmitry Malkin, and fellow LitRPG series editor and author Alex Bobl. Since 2014, EKSMO has been running LitRPG competitions and publishing the winning stories. Most LitRPG books were self-published, with some works in the genre having reached mainstream success, most notably Matt Dinniman's Dungeon Crawler Carl series, which was picked up by Ace Books and has a television series in production. and Travis Deverell's He Who Fights With Monsters series, which was picked up by Aethon Books.