LitRPG Podcast 254 - Ben's Damn Adventure, Pizza Mage, A Grim Demise and Even Worse Resurrection, Biomedical Self-Engineering : Book 2, I’m an Evil God, The Guild Core 1, Sixth Realm Part 1
LitRPG Podcast 254 - Ben's Damn Adventure, Pizza Mage, A Grim Demise and Even Worse Resurrection, Biomedical Self-Engineering : Book 2, I’m an Evil God, The Guild Core 1, Sixth Realm Part 1
Dec. 4th, 2020
Hello everyone, welcome to episode 254 of the LitRPG podcast. I’m Ramon Mejia.
I’m here to bring you the latest LitRPG news, reviews, and author interviews. We have 8 new reviews just for you.
Tew who recommended Ben’s Damn Adventure to us to read.
New Releases and Reviews:
Ben's Damn Adventure: The Prince Has No Pants (14:07)
Readers seem to either hate it or enjoy it
Score: 7.4 out of 10
Pizza Mage: Chapter One of a LitRpg Saga (22:03)
So many issues
Score: 4 out of 10
Promising Premise Didn’t Pay Off
Score: 6 out of 10
Biomedical Self-Engineering : Book 2 (33:36)
More obstacles adds more triumph
Score: 7.5 out of 10
I’m an Evil God (38:20)
The Evil God scores
Score: 7.8 out of 10
https://mangadex.org/title/44409/i-m-an-evil-god
Ian’s (Eye-Ann) Picks of the Week (43:09)
(Pic 0)
New Segment from Ian Mitchell a long time LitRPG community member who reads and reviews as much as me. He was nice enough to agree to join the LitRPG Podcast family as a new reviewer.
(Pic 6)
The Guild Core 1: Dragon Bourne (A Dungeon Adventure)
Don't skip the stuff at the end
Score: 8.9 out of 10
Sixth Realm Part 1: A LitRPG Fantasy Series (The Ten Realms Book 6)
I like the characters
Score: 7.8 out of 10
(Play Music 2)
LitRPG News
The SBT app is now available for Android on the Google Play store! If you've already purchased productions from their website, you can now download them directly to your Android and play them through the app! Apple/iPhone Users – don’t worry, you too will have an SBT app in the very near future.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mobile.soundbooththeater&hl=en_US&gl=US
The very popular novel Battleborne will be on Amazon Prime Reading in the UK and Australia, which means if you’re an Amazon Prime member you get it for free. This is different from Kindle Unlimited and hopefully means more exposure for the novel.
United Kingdom: Dec. 1st - March 2nd
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Battleborne-Dave-Willmarth-ebook/dp/B08C4Y9DV7/
Australia: Dec. 1st - June 2nd
https://www.amazon.com.au/Battleborne-Dave-Willmarth-ebook/dp/B08C4Y9DV7/
Annual Gamelit Society Fundraiser, organized by author Blaise Corvin, is happening again. The fundraising has gone on for the last four years and this year its being dong
Last year they raised $4500 for sick kids. This year they will be donating to Shriners Hospitals for Children in memory of Paul Campbell Jr., a well-known member of the GameLit and LitRPG community, who passed just last month.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/gamelit-society-philanthropy-2020
In other philanthropy news, author Dave Willmarth announced last week that he’d be donating the next $1,000 is royalties from his books to charity. Thanks to the suggestions of the community, reader support, and his own research, those funds have been donated to the Wounded Warrior project and See International.
https://www.seeintl.org/about/
https://www.woundedwarriorproject.org/
Out Now!
Windwalker: An Epic LitRPG Adventure (Ciphercraft Book 2)
Sixth Realm Part 2: A litRPG Fantasy series (The Ten Realms Book 7)
The Twilight Hatchling: A LitRPG Adventure (Dream Stream Reality Book 2)
The Broken Battlemage: The Doomsday System book 1, a LitRPG series
The Mischievous Merchant: A Bard's Tale (A LitRPG Story)
DLC: A LitRPG Adventure (Beta Tester Book 4)
In Service of the Pharaoh (League of Losers Book #2): LitRPG Series
Afterlife The Tower: A LitRPG Dark Fantasy (Pandemonium Book 1)
Hallowed Bones (Elemental Dungeon #3)
New LitRPG Audiobooks
The Idle System: The War A LitRPG Series, Book 6
The Enchanter: Project Stellar, Book 2
Caesar's Shadow - A LitRPG Series (Gods & Kings Book 1)
Alterlife III: A Suspenseful VR Thriller
The Rules: The Complete Series A LitRPG Epic
A Bond Broken - The Infinite World, Book 2
Derelict: Book 2, Counterattack
The Song Maiden - A LitRPG Journey (Uniworld Online Trilogy, Book 1)
Another Online - All Hail the Queen
Upcoming LitRPG:
Retribution: The Rise Of Resurgence Book IV (Dec. 8th, 2020)
The Tribute (Project Stellar Book 3): LitRPG Series (Dec. 10th, 2020)
The Dungeon Destroyer: A LitRPG Level-Up Adventure (The Dungeon Slayer Series Book 2) (Dec. 13th, 2020)
The Keepers of Limbo (The Range Book #1): LitRPG Series (Dec. 14th, 2020)
Drawing the Line: A LitRPG/GameLit Novel (The Underhill Chronicles Book 2) (Dec. 15th, 2020)
Dinosaur Warlord 3 (Dinosaur Warlord a 4x LITRPG Series)
(Dec. 15th, 2020)
Couch Potato Crisis - (Couch Potato Chronicles Book 2) (Dec. 15th, 2020)
Dungeon Heart (The Singing Mountain Book 1) (Dec. 15th, 2020)
The Dark Champion (Interworld Network Book #3): LitRPG Series (Dec. 16th, 2020)
The Guild Core 2: Core Sworn (A Dungeon Adventure) (Dec. 17th, 2020)
Sidekick: A Superhero LitRPG Adventure (Henchman Book 2) (Dec. 18th, 2020)
Alpha Zero (Alpha LitRPG Book 1) (Dec. 21st, 2020)
High Gloom: A LitRPG/GameLit Adventure (Bad Guys Book 6) (Dec. 22nd, 2020)
Dungeon Seeker: A Reborn Online LitRPG Adventure (Dec. 23rd, 2020)
Small Unit Tactics (Volume #2): LitRPG Series (Dec. 28th, 2020)
Keys of Four Elements (Primacy Online Book 5) (Dec. 30th, 2020)
Labyrinth of Fright (Underdog Book #5): LitRPG Series (Jan. 4th, 2021)
Carl's Doomsday Scenario: Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 2 (Jan. 6ht, 2020)
Reborn: Evolution: A LitRPG Series (Warlock Chronicles Book 2) (Jan. 12th, 2021)
Shadow Seer (Rogue Merchant Book #3): LitRPG Series (Jan. 18th, 2021)
The Call of the Forces: A LitRPG Wuxia Series (The Heavenly Throne Book 4) (Jan. 19th, 2020)
Watcher's Repose: A LitRPG Saga (Life in Exile Book 4) (Jan. 19th, 2021)
Player Reached the Top. LitRPG Series. Book IV (Jan. 20th, 2021)
Underpowered Howard: A LitRPG Adventure (Jan. 26th, 2020)
Rifleman: A LitRPG / LitFPS Adventure (Battlegrounds Online Book 1) (Jan. 26th, 2021)
Spear of Destiny: A LitRPG Dragonrider Adventure (The Archemi Online Chronicles Book 5) (Jan. 30th, 2021)
Ascension: A LitRPG Journey (Legends Online Book 8) (Jan. 31st, 2021)
True John Crusade: A Dark Fantasy Gamelit (The Adventures of Dan Book 2) (Feb. 2nd, 2020)
Eat, Slay, Love (The Good Guys Book 10) (Feb. 4th, 2020)
The Great Centurion: Punic Wars 2 (A Real LitRPG Roman Series) (Feb. 5th, 2020)
Dagger of Doom: A LitRPG Adventure (Beta Tester Book 5) (Feb. 17th, 2020)
Path of Spirit (Disgardium Book #6): LitRPG Series (Feb. 17th, 2020)
Jeff the Game Master: A LitRPG Series (Feb. 23rd, 2020)
Wasteland [RealRPG Wuxia Series] Book #1 (Feb. 25th, 2020)
Onto New Releases and Reviews
(Play Music 3)
New Releases and Reviews
(Picture 1)
Ben's Damn Adventure: The Prince Has No Pants
A comedy.
All life on Earth has been stolen away by The System, transported to another world at the behest of a distant galactic empire, who lived in terror of humanity's potential.
Ben was a normal, slightly above average man, and had been about to go on the first real vacation of his adult life. Now he must contend with danger and mystery in a world of monsters, magic and treasure, armed with nothing but his wits, and the special item given to him by The System.
This is his adventure.
Welcome to The World.
My Opinion: 267 pages, $3.99, Not Available On Kindle Unlimited
This is a pretty solid story whose reviews seem to either really like the story or really dislike it. I can understand the divide since much of the fun of the story relies on getting the sense of humor of the writer. If the humor lands, you’ll like it. If not, it’ll be a skip.
The story is a super slice of life and it feels like the serial story that it is with more of it being available online. There’s a vague plot about humanity escaping the dimension but it mostly focuses on the MC and his sometimes crazy and weird adventures figuring out the rules, fighting some monsters, a little dungeon diving, and some rather odd interactions with the beings that live in the dimension.
The story is a Transported to RPG world, where everyone one on earth is sent to a new dimension. The setup takes a good bit to get through (like 15%) and the main character (MC) spends another 30% in character creation or in a too long introduction to the various locations he’s not going to and oddly a good bit in the ocean. On their own, the scenes could be boring, but the snarky dialogue and the humor that puts humanity as the most deadly biological entities in the universe pulls me through. But I can absolutely see other readers not sticking around past these scenes.
After the 50% mark when the RPG aspects show up they’re not super heavy, but there are levels, classes, races, and lots of twists that keep you guessing what’s going to happen next. The game stuff reminds me of the way the RPG system is handled in The Wandering Inn with classes and special abilities rising when the character does things related to their class, but it also being handled in a more fantasy way without clearly defined XP.
Overall, the beginning of the story doesn’t feel like LitRPG, maybe more light gamelit. But the humor and dialogue were just interesting enough to keep me reading until that started and then I was more entertained. Entertaining if you’re ok with the serial feel of the story.
Score: 7.4 out of 10
Ben's Damn Adventure: The Prince Has No Pants
Pizza Mage: Chapter One of a LitRpg Saga
Join Dave as he lands a new job at Fantanic, the worlds leading gaming company testing state of the art and fully immersive gaming hardware as an in-game goblin and the 8th newest player to the realm of Spectacle Online.
My Opinion: 23 pages, $2.99, Available On Kindle Unlimited
This short story has an original RPG class and decent premise. But nothing is really done well. There are numerous technical writing issues like dialogue without quotes, shifting tenses, and missing capitalizations, run on sentences, and other issues. It ultimately feels like someone's first time writing something.
On the story side, nothing really exciting happens. Half the story described the main character (MC) as a pizza delivery man and how he gets recruited to test long term immersion gaming. It takes half the short story to get to the game world. The MC chooses to be a goblin mage and fights a few monsters. Too much time is spent on the MC being amazed about the pain sensations, the realism of the game, or basic game mechanics. The ability to create pizza comes in the last few pages and then it just ends.
Score: 4 out of 10
Pizza Mage: Chapter One of a LitRpg Saga
A Grim Demise and Even Worse Resurrection : Boneknight Series Book 1 (A Dark Fantasy LitRPG) (Bone Knight)
Max's coworkers treat him like hot garbage and his manager is a superficial dolt. It might be worth it if he made any money but he doesn't. Unfortunately for him, his fate was sealed before he was even born and it's way worse than working part-time in a coffee shop.
Confronted out of the blue by a cackling demonic entity from another world, like a lot of things in his life, Max doesn't take it seriously. So when he's yanked by his bones into that world, he's given every disadvantage the demon can dish out.
Finding that he's fallen feet first into an old RPG game his dad played on the NES back in the 90s, Max is immediately given two quests: Find the imprisoned girl with the green eyes, and survive. He's not sure which one's worse.
My Opinion: 210 pages, $0.99, Available On Kindle Unlimited
-Premise Didn’t Pay Off-
There were some technical issues with reading on the phone but they've been straightened out. So if you had missing pages and gave up, you might try it again.
The main character is sent to a retro video game world as a Monster Main Character (MC) with a series goal of saving the world before time runs out. So the MC starts as a level 1, 1 HP, skeleton but he has access to all the jobs available in the game. He just has to stop getting killed by low level monsters to level up enough to take advantage of this boon.
I really liked the setup. Access to all the classes, even with a weak starting body. I expected the MC to utilize that to switch classes and complete quests to unlock more classes to switch to, like in FF Tactics. Instead, the story is mostly slice of life adventuring and leveling with video game joke nods. The MC is a skeleton, but it isn't used as well as I hoped it would be. I'd expected some monster evolutions or special monster abilities. But beyond him not being poisoned, it didn’t amount to much. The fact that the MC can access all the classes wasn’t developed at all except as a novel goal. Instead, the MC picks a Bruiser class and trudges along with it even though it only increases his vitality stat a point a level and leaves the rest of his stats at 0, which to me should mean he does no damage. Also that the MC can be killed but doesn’t really die, he revives after a short time, lessened the tension and consequence of him being weak early on.
There’s a pretty decent sense of humor in the story and the characters weren’t uninteresting. But there’s way too much talking and not enough doing and not nearly enough action for most of the story. Especially if there is a story goal of level grinding and advancing classes.
Overall, the promising story setup didn’t pay off and while the adventuring wasn’t bad, it wasn’t particularly good either. It just didn’t end up working for me. Though if you are looking for something with more dialogue the story might work for you.
Score: 6 out of 10
Biomedical Self-Engineering : Book 2
Carl thought his life was on track, until disaster struck. Now he looks like a 35 year-old and is out of points, so he needs to scramble to change the situation before any one finds out the truth.
The question is, what should he do next? Buy more businesses, or focus on his love life? And always in the background is his family, wondering what happened to their father and grandfather and if he will ever talk to them again?
Biomedical Self-Engineering is a LitRPG slice of life adventure, following Carl as he discovers new ways of living when he is nearing the end of his own. There are no explicit scenes, very little swearing and no harems.
My Opinion: 418 pages, $4.99, Available On Kindle Unlimited
The start of the story could have used a little bit of a recap, and while it starts in the same slice of life manner the previous book did, it also grows as it goes on. In book 1, the progression system was fresh but the main character (MC) had few obstacles which made his endeavors feel less triumphant. In book 2, the author really went out of his way to throw in some problems that MC had to overcome, including medical issues, relationship issues, and other speculators. It made the story a bit better with some antagonists in the story.
A few small things that bugged me. The quotes at the start of each chapter bugged me. They had little or nothing to do with the chapters that followed and were sometimes whole pages long. They distracted rather than added to the story. Second, I would have liked a clear villain that opposed the MC. There were more challenges and obstacles for the MC which made the victories sweeter, but some clearer antagonists to overcome and defeat would have been even better.
Overall, while the emphasis to gain points lessened as the story went on, the other aspects I liked about the story progressed well and there were more obstacles and challenges for the MC. Enjoyed the slice of life story a bit more than book 1.
Score: 7.5 out of 10
Biomedical Self-Engineering : Book 2
I’m an Evil God
By Shidai Man Wang
Across the realms, is the manliest and most handsome evil god in history! The peerless beautiful man Xie Yan crossed over and fell into the vixen’s lair. In order not to be drained of his entire life-force, he travels between various realms, cuts down a son of god, and repels the confederacy Yang Yi… This is the story of how he eventually becomes an evil god.
My Opinion: 96+ chapters, FREE - Weekly updates, No English Publisher
This was recommended to me by LitRPG author Charles Dean, and I thank him for it. It’s a combination of Reincarnation, Cultivation, Wuxia, and RPG system. The main character (MC) dies in our world and reincarnates into the body of a low level loser on a cultivation martial arts world who is soon to die from being drained of his essence by his cultivating wife. It's a whole thing about the type of cultivation she does. Regardless, the MC not only has to survive this drain in the future but learn how to cultivate and become powerful enough to live in this world where the powerful rule.
Thankfully the MC has a RPG like system where he can collect points for strong emotions directed towards him and then purchase levels in any cultivation, martial, or spiritual technique he’s learned. The story follows the MC as he does good, bad, and devious all to make people feel strongly towards him and collect points. Additionally, there’s a sub system that lets him travel to parallel universes where he can complete quests to gain more techniques and points. These parallel universes range from ancient china to modern worlds and have a variety of problems, and cultivation levels. It’s a good break from the Wuxia main world and allows for some weird and interesting side stories.
Overall, it’s a very fun read that has regular updates.
Score: 7.8 out of 10
https://mangadex.org/title/44409/i-m-an-evil-god
Ian’s (Eye-Ann) Picks of the Week
(Pic 0)
New Segment from Ian Mitchell a long time LitRPG community member who reads and reviews as much as me. He was nice enough to agree to join the LitRPG Podcast family as a new reviewer.
(Pic 6)
The Guild Core 1: Dragon Bourne (A Dungeon Adventure)
by TJ Reynolds
Don't skip the stuff at the end
I loved this one. Something about level of detail I think. Often descriptive text feels bolted on. Not here. Feels organic. The part of the story in Ban's dungeon really impressed me. A bit like perfect accessories, decor, spices. A lived in hobbit home vs. the living room with plastic covers on the couch. So Ban and Kai's meeting/training montage was a joy to read/fun for me and not just filler I want to skip. I love Jonathan Brooks various dungeon core books and I like this one aspect of TJ's book better. Personal preference like me preferring bowling over golfing. The multiple POV's didn't bother me (they often do). That was handled well. Hmm. I think this is enough. Not my top 5 (wasn't intense enough for that). But I had a great time reading this.
Score: 8.9 out of 10
The Guild Core 1: Dragon Bourne (A Dungeon Adventure)
Sixth Realm Part 1: A LitRPG Fantasy Series (The Ten Realms Book 6) by Michael Chatfield
I like the characters
I like Rugrat, Eric, and what they've built. Especially at the beginning, the POV jumped around way too much for my taste. It seems strange for me to say I had character overload. There's a tournament, which I rather enjoyed. Also some raids on Orcs in a sixth realm dungeon. A decent continuation. Rugrat and Eric are fun characters. The skeleton, not so funny any more. The many sub threads made things feel more diffuse. I felt this way in later Emerilia books as well.
Score: 7.8 out of 10
Sixth Realm Part 1: A LitRPG Fantasy Series (The Ten Realms Book 6)
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(Music 4)
Music Credits
"Blip Stream" "Mighty Like Us" "Big Shift" "Vivacity"
Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/