i havent read any of the books you mentioned and i'm not sure i totally understand what lit rpg is but
try dungeon born by Dakota Krout
and/or sufficiently advanced magic
check them out.
I actually read/listened to both of those. Dungeon Born was pretty amazing and Sufficiently Advanced Magic wasn't half bad either. For all intents and purposes, those are as close to LitRPG as it gets without being an actual LitRPG. It has a lot of game elements without taking place in an actual game.
LitRPG stands for literary role playing game. As a sub genre, it simply means a book that revolves around a game world. It can be a futuristic place where virtual reality and/or immersive gaming is a very common thing. And the protagonist simply plays the game. It can be alien technology. It can be where the protagonist conscious is sucked into a game world. Or the protagonist's soul (or the whole body) is transported to a game world.
You'll end up with quests, skills, stats, and whatever you "should" see in a MMORPG and a book.
For example, in one book, the idea is that prisoners or criminals are a pain to deal with. So they decided to force all of them into pods or capsules and spend their sentence in a virtual game world doing menial tasks, like mining precious ores. That's the background of the book. The protagonist got into a parole and was allowed to enter the actual game world. He enters a town and there's a murder, so he solves the mystery. And that leads to more quests and stuff. And along with all that, you get the typical romantic relationships along with the a**hole/jerk characters.
Let's be honest, you don't encounter a**hole/jerk characters all that often in games, especially not NPCs. But in a book, those are set to the max to stir up conflict and plot development.
Lit rpg is fan fiction for gamers...imo
Yes and no. I jumped on the LitRPG before it was called LitRPG. The whole idea came from fan fictions. It mostly started with the Korean/Japanese light novels. The Legendary Moonlight Sculptor was extremely famous back then. And a lot of people started writing their own fan fiction in the same game world of that novel. And after a while, people weren't satisfied with just using Royal Road (the game world's name) and started to develop their own "original" game worlds/stories. And thus, the start of a new sub genre.
It's supposed to be a very light sub genre. It's easy read and things aren't supposed to be complicated. But when the "originals" came, it was still light and fun. But somewhere down the line, these new authors popped up mixing in the Western/American/English styles of writing, which is whatever you see in every other fantasy books. Usually, the "LitRPG" is supposed to be quest oriented, which stays true to the sub genre. But the new "LitRPG" seems to revolve around players more than the actual game. For example, rather than going through a quest where you have to find hints, solve puzzles, fight monsters, etc., you end up solving evil master plans or a jerk player rallying an army against you.
That's just changing the setting but using the same template from another genre. There are even some books where the author specifically stated that their book focuses on the characters and not so much on the game mechanics. So...basically, the author is just slapping on a game world template and calls it a "LitRPG" without any of the core elements. There's a lot more issues in many of the books out there where I feel like they aren't "LitRPG". They took the idea and inspiration and turned it into something else. And that is good...? Because it's innovative...? But it's not authentic and staying true such a new sub genre. It's like a new plant is starting to sprout, but you decided to prune it, re-pot it, go from indoor to outdoor and use a new fertilizer.
And thus, you get these weird books that people loosely call "LitRPG" without real authenticity to the original source.
P.S. Ignore the Chinese, their "MMORPG" genre is horrible. Like half of the books is where the protagonist either time travels back in time, or gain a cheat ability, and just "win".
