LitRPG is relatively new science fiction category. Most of the genre is hard science fiction, meaning that the science in the stories do not violate any known laws of physics and may be feasible in the near future. The key element is that some or all of the action takes place in one or more virtual worlds. Since these worlds are generated by computer, the virtual experience may be any desired by the programmer. Thus the story may have many fantasy elements – for example, a character may play a magic user in a world with elves, dwarves, orcs, and trolls – just as in our world people play fantasy games such as World of Warcraft and other massive multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPGs).
At the time of this writing, my personal favorite example of this category is The Way of the Shaman. I’ll write a review about it shortly. Another popular example is the Play to Live series. However, while the Play to Live series is one of the primary examples of litRPG – literature about role playing games – I wouldn’t classify it as hard science fiction since some of the players get transformed into their avatars (player characters) and the programmed worlds become real and develop an existence outside of the computer servers. Thus the new category of litRPG consists of both hard and soft science fiction novels. However you classify them, many are a lot of fun to read.
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