What a year it’s been, eh? Actually, the last three years have been amazing for me. While I discovered proto-litrpg back in the 80s with Guardians of the Flame, it was in late 2016 that I first heard about LITRPG. I knew I’d finally found my literary home. Over the last three years I’ve published many books under this name and others. Earlier this year, I had a chance to work on the narrative design for GearStorm. That experience got me fired up about making a litrpg-themed game. A few others were already working on games for our genre, but I wanted to do something special to show my appreciation –> Read More

Guest Post by Jon Sprunk Author Jon Sprunk I will never forget the first time I encountered Dungeons and Dragons. It was 1978 and I was eight years old. My family was visiting a hobby shop. While the others browsed the trains and model airplanes, I spotted a cardboard box on a shelf. The box’s top face had an illustration of a dragon battling a warrior and a wizard. I did not know it at the time, but this moment would change my life forever. After some begging, my father agreed to purchase this “game for college kids” for me. I remember opening the box at home and finding paper –> Read More

New guest post by Brokk Martin. He has played D&D for over 30 years. Every game master has had that moment where they look at the pages of prep for game night go out the window in the first five minutes of an adventure.  Although it is recommended to prepare for the session, there are times when you have to go off the cuff. Sometimes, the party goes into the dungeon and instead of going left or right, they just turn around and go back to town leaving hours of dungeon left unexplored.  On other nights, you and three to five of your close friends decide to pick up a –> Read More

Johnathan Brooks has worked in retail for most of his life, but he has been an avid reader of fantasy books since around age twelve. He’s also been playing video games since he got an Atari 2600 when he was five years old. Like many other like-minded people, he fell in love with the LitRPG, GameLit, and Dungeon Core genres when he first learned about them. He currently has 16 books published with more on the way! Dungeon Core & Jonathan Brooks Jonathan brooks was nice enough to answer some questions for us. If you’re a fan of dungeon core, you want to keep reading. When did you first start –> Read More

Next up, we have an interview with narrators Ralph Scott and Kendra Murray from Squeaky Cheese Productions. An award-winning producer with a get-it-done (with a smile) attitude, Ralph Scott produces audiobooks, audio theatre, scripted entertainment commercial spots, or pretty much anything within the live or recorded audio arena. Kendra Murray, the voiceover actor who is never without an audience. Even if she comprises all of the voices in the room! Ralph Scott, Kendra Murray (the 2-shot selfie next to cheese logo)Credit: Squeaky Cheese Productions, LP Can you tell us a little about yourself? KM: I used to pretend I was on the Starship Enterprise in my garage with my brother –> Read More

New guest post by Kit Falbo on why we like to write and read game-related fiction and how it breaks. Call it LitRPG, Call it GameLit, call it D&D or video-game fan-fiction if you are so inclined, but game mechanic based fiction is on the rise.  The stories and novels created that represent the sub-genre have many passionate fans and authors who find it a joy to read and write about aspects of gaming.  But why? Why is it so passionate and fervent? Be it science fiction, portal fantasy, VRMMO, or many of the Wuxia or dungeon spin-offs that have folded into the genre. It’s a glut of reasons that –> Read More

Author C. A. A. Allen lives in San Diego with his wife and six children. He is a freelance writer, local hip-hop mogul, and fantasy e-book author. He writes for many online entities, and has been published in the San Diego Reader, and CityBeat magazines. He has provided back up vocals, and performed as a “Humpty Dancer” for the multi-platinum hip-hop group Digital Underground. When he isn’t writing or spending time with the children, Mr. Allen enjoys horse racing, fine cognac, funk music, and Southern cooking.   When did you first start writing fiction? In 2010 I was managing a hip-hop artist named Young Mass out of San Diego, California. I –> Read More

Our next author interview is with M.C. Planck, the author of The Kassa Gambit. After a nearly-transient childhood, he hitchhiked across the country and ran out of money in Arizona. So he stayed there for thirty years, raising dogs, getting a degree in philosophy, and founding a scientific instrument company. Having read virtually everything by the old masters of SF&F, he decided he was ready to write. A decade later, with a little help from the Critters online critique group, he was actually ready. He was relieved to find that writing novels is easier than writing software, as a single punctuation error won’t cause your audience to explode and die. –> Read More

New guest post by Edwin McRae! I am going to put this to you. What if it’s about the gods? Yes, Aphrodite and Zeus, Thor and Odin. I’m speaking from a strictly western perspective and those are the two pantheons that arise in games time and again. Greek and Norse. These are the examples I’m going to draw on but there are many other divine influences besides them. They’re just the ones that tend to pop up in video games and Marvel movies. Why do we love RPGs? Is it because we want to be ‘godlike’? God of War Game (PS4) Attention During the Viking era, the population of the –> Read More

Author Timothy Ellis lives on the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia; where he constantly battles with his cat for possession of his desk chair, Daleks do guard duty, and he keeps his sonic screwdriver next to his lightsaber and wand. His first novel, ‘Hero at Large’, spawning the long running ‘The Hunter Legacy’ universe, brings together his love of the space genre, spirituality, and cats. When did you first start writing fiction? 2014. I sat down one day to get 20 years of accumulated ideas out of my head before I went totally mad. The major scenes in my first 2 books were all in there, and constantly replaying all the –> Read More