Are litrpgs modern pulp fiction?

[CountVanBadger]

I was bored and googling random stuff today (don't pretend you don't do it) and I happened upon a definition for "pulp fiction." They're stories that were designed to be written quickly for a rapid release schedule, were usually formulaic and derivative, and focused on giving readers an addictive source of instant gratification that will entice them to keep buying the books as they come out. They're usually short so the reader can finish them before the next instalment comes out, and cheap to produce and sell to further entice people to keep paying for them since they're so inexpensive.

It struck me as I was reading that: switch a few words around, and you've pretty summed up the litrpg market. Replace "buying new books" with "subscribing on Patreon" and it's a pretty dead on match. That's not to say that creative and well written litrpgs don't exist (I hope mine is one of them) but I don't think any of us will deny that the vast majority of what's out there is pretty derivative. Just look at what's on Rising Stars on Royal Road if you want proof that people wholeheartedly embrace trends. Just, instead of cowboys, hardboiled detectives, and sex, the addictive qualities are "number go up," "acquire rare class," and sex.

What do you think?

 

[LiteraryWho]

They are also similar to the japanese light novel.

 

[JordanIda]

No.

 

[YukieSama]

I wouldn't say litrpg's specifically more like webnovels in general. Another comparison would be pulp fiction publishers usually paid their writers by words and webnovels usually get paid by chapters i.e patreon or even webnovel where it's literal.

 

[BearlyAlive]

Webnovels as a genre totally are a kind of modern pulp fiction. Constant releases, specific target audiences, quick to instant gratification of targeted fantasies or desires...

The shoe does fit.

 

[thegingernut]

I think they're one grandchild of many. They are sibling to the lightnovelalike, daughter to the mary sue self insert fanfiction and cousin to the mills and boon.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

Pulp Fiction's first child still survives (though has moved to be partially digital in recent years) - the humble comic book and it's less-humble cousins the manga, manhwa and manhua.
Though the birth of serial fiction can be traced back even farther, to the "penny dreadfuls" (books sold for a penny a chapter, usually about 20 pages long or so, frequently horror novels but also sometimes "adult" fiction, or what the Victorians considered "pornography").
Early examples of "LitRPG" were closer to traditional novels than serial fiction/webnovels - according to Microsoft CoPilot,

The term "LitRPG" was officially coined in 2012 by Russian authors, marking a significant moment in the genre's history. The first widely recognized LitRPG novel is "AlterWorld" by D. Rus, published in the same year. This novel established many conventions that are now staples of the genre, such as explicit RPG statistics, experience systems, and character progression.

BUT... Joel Rosenberg's Guardians of the Flame and David Bischoff's The Gaming Magi trilogy were definitely, at least, influential, as were the Lone Wolf and Fighting Fantasy game books, which themselves grew out of the Choose Your Own Adventure books.

 

[Assurbanipal_II]

Yes. Though, LitRPG is just the most recent trend of it.

 

[JordanIda]

No. Just... no.

Fundamentally dissimilar. Cripes.

No.

 

[CountVanBadger]

No. Just... no.

Fundamentally dissimilar. Cripes.

No.

You're supposed to be a writer. Use your words to explain why, or stop acting so annoyed with the rest of us for not reading your mind.

 

[JordanIda]

Not annoyed at all. (Well, with you, a little.)

There's a fundamental difference that doesn't seem to be obvious or apparent to anyone, so no one will agree. I didn't think I needed to explain, but I guess I will.

Pulp fiction and LitRPG (as practiced on Web Novel venues) are both serial in nature, it is true. But even that isn't much of a similarity, because the serialization is executed on different scales.

Pulp fiction novels did repeat serially, but each volume adhered to the novel form. We don't have to get all pedantic about what that means. One attribute matters most: every installment finished. Each volume had a satisfying ending. That is what kept readers coming back.

Some pulp serials were effectively never-ending, just like Web novels. How many pulp westerns did Louis L'Amour publish? Hundreds! I won't look it up, someone else feel free. But each volume caught the bad guys, saved the maiden, jailed the cowpokes, and so on.

Editorial boards made sure that every volume ended. Editors also enforced a loose system of peer review. Even serials were accepted or rejected. Loose standards were enforced, before trees were committed to the enterprise.

Web novels? In contrast? And LitRPG in particular? Back in the day, the first precursors to the genre were novels. Subject to editorial review. They developed, climaxed, ended. But no more. That's gone. The Patreon system is antithetical to the novel form. Now these "web novels," almost universally and with rare exceptions, are never-ending stories. They are not serial in terms of stories. They are serial in terms of chapters. Never-ending chapters that develop toward nothing and lead nowhere. Most of them do not finish until the drip feed runs dry or until the writer loses interest.

They are not peer reviewed, so there is no counterbalancing force to check them. Anyone can "publish" anything.

Pulp fiction? Not the same. There were hundreds of Nancy Drew Mysteries. Maybe even thousands. And yet, each and every one solved its case. Each one finished. Each one had an editor who made damn sure of it.

 

[Corty]

The whole webnovel platform is pulp fiction, then.

Wherever else do you see daily chapter releases? Nowhere. No matter the genre inside it, because the fact that we write, chapter by chapter and drop a story if it doesn't pick up traction is even worse than pulp fiction. Those books, at least, are finished, while 2/3 of webnovels never get an ending.

We suck, as a collective, and anyone else saying otherwise is huffing copium.

 

[Ellie_in_Pink]

I mean ... I guess they can be? As much as any other genre? Romance, horror, adventure, fantasy ... they've all had their pulp eras. I think LitRPG is just a subsect of the fantasy genre Which tells you the flavor of the story, more than anything about its construction. That being said, it is very popular right now. Which inevitably means you get a lot of pulp versions of it.

 

[Arkus86]

The whole webnovel platform is pulp fiction, then.

Wherever else do you see daily chapter releases? Nowhere. No matter the genre inside it, because the fact that we write, chapter by chapter and drop a story if it doesn't pick up traction is even worse than pulp fiction. Those books, at least, are finished, while 2/3 of webnovels never get an ending.

We suck, as a collective, and anyone else saying otherwise is huffing copium.

Even 2/3 might be a generous assessment. Not long ago I checked the numbers on RR and SH. Over 70% of novels here are on hiatus or abandoned, and only roughly 1/10 are marked as complete.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

Not annoyed at all. (Well, with you, a little.)

There's a fundamental difference that doesn't seem to be obvious or apparent to anyone, so no one will agree. I didn't think I needed to explain, but I guess I will.

Pulp fiction and LitRPG (as practiced on Web Novel venues) are both serial in nature, it is true. But even that isn't much of a similarity, because the serialization is executed on different scales.

Pulp fiction novels did repeat serially, but each volume adhered to the novel form. We don't have to get all pedantic about what that means. One attribute matters most: every installment finished. Each volume had a satisfying ending. That is what kept readers coming back.

Some pulp serials were effectively never-ending, just like Web novels. How many pulp westerns did Louis L'Amour publish? Hundreds! I won't look it up, someone else feel free. But each volume caught the bad guys, saved the maiden, jailed the cowpokes, and so on.

Editorial boards made sure that every volume ended. Editors also enforced a loose system of peer review. Even serials were accepted or rejected. Loose standards were enforced, before trees were committed to the enterprise.

Not strictly true - the "cliffhanger" ending so popular in movie serials came from the pulps, and a lot of pulps had long-term story threads weaving throughout. For example, The Black Bat had the history of his future father-in-law and the secret society he worked for threading through his stories (and it eventually came out that the thug who created Black Bat by throwing acid in his face, acted under the orders of said future father-in-law, when the character was merely dating his daughter and working as an increasingly frustrated District Attorney - because he felt the character's love of Justice over Law, and believed that the acid would trigger special abilities in the man, abilities his Secret Society could train him to use to fight for true Justice). Or the Domino Lady had her hunt for the mob boss who killed her parents threading through all of her stories, along with the story of her detective boyfriend who was sworn to bring The Domino Lady to justice for her many crimes (she made The Punisher look like a saint - and rarely used guns, just knives and throwing stars and martial arts to do it).

Web novels? In contrast? And LitRPG in particular? Back in the day, the first precursors to the genre were novels. Subject to editorial review. They developed, climaxed, ended. But no more. That's gone. The Patreon system is antithetical to the novel form. Now these "web novels," almost universally and with rare exceptions, are never-ending stories. They are not serial in terms of stories. They are serial in terms of chapters. Never-ending chapters that develop toward nothing and lead nowhere. Most of them do not finish until the drip feed runs dry or until the writer loses interest.

They are not peer reviewed, so there is no counterbalancing force to check them. Anyone can "publish" anything.

Pulp fiction? Not the same. There were hundreds of Nancy Drew Mysteries. Maybe even thousands. And yet, each and every one solved its case. Each one finished. Each one had an editor who made damn sure of it.

Pulp Fiction gets its name from the ultracheap paper it was published on - and that was the ONE defining trait. Short stories, usually complete in one volume or maybe two parts (until the magazine format came along and sometimes a story would be serialized over several issues - some of Robert E. Howard's less coherent stories came about this way - not that they're BAD but parts contradict other parts or other stories because he often rushed them to the editor who was under deadline and didn't go over them as thoroughly as they should have; among other things, this resulted in three distinct versions of Conan existing - all impressive, all similar but each with a few odd quirks setting them apart), in small volumes with card stock covers (often with glossy art that either said nothing about the story - just text and one or two objects - or had a lurid image that suggested something sexual, whether the story contained anything like that at all or not).

LitRPG are part of the current equivalent to the pulp fiction format (cheap, easily-consumed fiction, often read by commuters or those experiencing long waits like at a medical office), but they are not the "be-all/end-all" of it, and are not even the leading element of it, just a part. System novels, slice of life, isekai - all the web novel staples are the modern pulp fiction. And some do have editorial oversight, while some of the pulps did not, or it was minimal at best when they did.

 

[JordanIda]

The whole webnovel platform is pulp fiction, then.

But you said it in your post: this platform serializes chapters. Not books. With rare exceptions that prove the rule, web novels don't end. There's a disincentive to ending them. We want the readers tossing coins into the Patreon tip jar. Ending a book closes that spigot. While it's possible to use the web novel platform to publish hundreds of serialized novels, each of which develops and finishes, this is rarely ever done in practice. (Frankly I can't think of anything that resembles pulp fiction in terms of that fundamental characteristic.)

And then there's the other fundamental difference: Absence of editorial review. Pulp fiction has a rep for being a trash medium, but this is unfair. Most of it was quite good. Hell, fine literature, by today's standards! Not just anyone could pen 150,000 words and go to bound print. Most work was rejected.

Today? Any darned fool can self-pub any fool thing. Some of it is good. Most of it would never make it out of the front office slushpile. If such a thing existed.

 

[Jerynboe]

Not litrpg specifically, but I will say that out of academic curiosity I decided to go back and listen to three hearts three lions on audible (last I checked it’s still free) and was incredibly shocked at the degree, to which every plot beat would fit perfectly into a shonen light novel if you strip away all the differences in presentation because it was released in the 60s

Smart guy Isekaied to a magic version of Europe and one of the first five people that he meets is a hot redhead that almost immediately attaches herself to him for very little reason.

He was sent to another world in the middle of a firefight with Nazis, presumably because Truck Chan was deployed in the pacific theatre.

 

[Corty]

web novels don't end

That's what people get wrong.

That's just wrong. Full stop. (I get the reasoning, what you mentioned, but it is a faulty mindset instilled into people, sadly.)

Without an ending, a story is worthless. You can't stretch anything out endlessly because it will turn into nothing but slop. In the end, people will turn away, and when the author finally axes the 4,000-chapter-long story, nobody will bother reading the next book they put out because nobody wants to get through another 4,000-long slog to get nowhere.

Congratulations, you played yourself for a short-term goal. You may have earned a living for 4-5-6 years, but then what? Back to put the fries in the bag.

 

[JayMark]

The whole webnovel platform is pulp fiction, then.

Wherever else do you see daily chapter releases? Nowhere. No matter the genre inside it, because the fact that we write, chapter by chapter and drop a story if it doesn't pick up traction is even worse than pulp fiction. Those books, at least, are finished, while 2/3 of webnovels never get an ending.

We suck, as a collective, and anyone else saying otherwise is huffing copium.

My books with endings don't get readers.
My long form sagas don't get readers.
My short stories don't get readers.
I've never stopped putting fries in the bag, it's all I know.

 

[Corty]

I've never stopped putting fries in the bag, it's all I know.

I feel you. I'm also doing that.