I am reading The House at Sea’s End by Elly Griffiths. A Ruth Galloway mystery. It was supposed to be a quick read, but got busy with some stuff, so going slowly.

What about all of you? What are you reading, or listening these days?

Note: So, I posted this last week, but for some issue with federation it didn’t actually sync. So, this will be another one and half week post.

  • dresdenOPM
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    1 year ago

    Ah, litRPG. How are you liking them? My experience with them has pretty much all been in web novels, with one exception of Cradle novels, or is that a different genre?

    • Godnroc@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Honestly, it’s a pretty broad category. Overall enjoyable, but after so many I start looking for the unique aspects between them. Psychokinetic is fairly average so far, but I’m quite fond of Dakota Krout and the puns and terrible jokes.

    • jaycifer@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Technically, Cradle and the preceding series to Dakota Krout’s Completionist Chronicles, Divine Dungeon, are in the cultivation genre rather than LitRPG. That said, the two are so closely related that they can often be interchangeable. The biggest differences would be that cultivation uses energy/essence to gain power while litRPGs use experience points to gain levels. I think cultivation books tend to have looser rules(principles maybe?) binding them whereas litRPGs have more rigid video game constraints/rulesets (although the best litRPGs lay out rules early on that allow for a great flexibility in how a player can operate within them).

      Speaking on both, I think the a lot of people gravitate towards the power fantasy of the genres which has led to them being oversaturated with a lot of sub-par series. There’s some good gems in there. Cradle is pretty good, I didn’t get super far in the series but I respect it. I do think Dakota Krout writes the best series in Divine Dungeon and Completionist Chronicles, although you do have to accept the puns, and that all of the main protagonists have very transactional personalities. The Life Reset series has an interesting premise and town management. If you want straight video gaming, I think Ascend Online is pretty good at capturing the best parts of the MMORPG grind, or there’s Awaken Online if you need to embrace your inner edge-lord.

      • Fumbles@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Cradle is great once you get past book 2. Completionist is one of the best besides the super cringe opening and just like divine dungeon the further it goes the quality seems to be dipping.

        I’ve really enjoyed the Ripple System it’s probably of the same quality as the completionist chronicles.

        It almost feels like a one off, but Jake’s Magical Market was a pretty fun time as well. The scaling gets out of hand pretty quickly.

      • dresdenOPM
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        1 year ago

        I agree with “lots of sub-par series”, which is kind of why I have gravitated away from these. I will look into the recommendation you have shared though. Thanks!

      • dresdenOPM
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        1 year ago

        Cool, subscribed.

        Though, in my personal opinion, instead of creating niche communities, if there is a bigger community that covers the topic, and is not very busy, it’s better to get the discussions going there, and only create a separate community when there is enough people and content. Or when there is too much other discussion overshadowing your discussion.

        Not saying this because I am a mod here, but because there aren’t enough people here (on lemmy) yet, so having too many communities don’t always work well.

        Just my two cents though.