While Matt Dinniman’s Dungeon Crawler Carl has arguably popularized LitRPGs — a blend of fiction and RPG mechanics that features characters who level up like you would while playing a game — there are plenty of books out there that have taken an entirely different approach to porting the experience of role-playing games to the fictional realm.
The following four novels, which range from heartwarming romance to bone-chilling horror (and two of which hit shelves this year), all feature characters who play RPGs (tabletop or otherwise) over the course of their story.
Two to read right now…
Published in 2004, Vivian Vande Velde’s young adult sci-fi novel might have flown under the radar for some, but is not to be missed if you’re a fan of fantasy roguelike RPGs.
Set in a world that is not dissimilar from our own, Heir Apparent begins with teenage Giannine Bellisario heading to a local arcade to celebrate her birthday by playing a totally immersive, single-player, virtual reality game called Heir Apparent.
In the game, Giannine plays Janine de St. Jehan, the illegitimate child of a deceased king who pronounced her the rightful heir to the throne before his death. In order to claim the title and beat the game, Giannine/Janine must survive constant threats to her life for three days. Any time the character dies, she’s sent back to the beginning in an endless loop.
Things take a turn, however, when the game malfunctions, and it is revealed that the only way out without frying her brain in the process is for Giannine to successfully beat the game without dying.
Heir Apparent is available for $7.19 at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Bookshop.org
Anyone who has ever played an RPG before knows that romance often has a very important part in that story taking place. A bard shooting their shot at a local tavern is a tale as old as time. Sadie Brooks learns this first hand in Lenora Woods’s novel, Roll for Romance, when she finally joins her best friend’s Dungeons & Dragons campaign and meets Noah Walker.
In the campaign, Sadie plays Jaylie, a confident and powerful cleric who is fortunate enough to be blessed by the Goddess of Luck. Noah plays Loren, a charming elf bard who wanders from town to town, serenading NPCs along the way.
When the two meet in-game, and in real life, sparks fly and Sadie can’t help but catch feelings for the fictional character and the man who plays him. But as their relationship develops in the game and real life, Sadie starts to wonder if their feelings are real or a work of fantasy.
Roll for Romance is available for $14.11 at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Bookshop.org
And two for your radar…
Life often gets in the way of a group of friends finishing a tabletop role-playing game together, but that’s not the case in Sarah Maria Griffin’s uncanny upcoming novel, Strange is the Light.
Twenty years after refusing to take her last turn while playtesting an RPG, Daphne McSharry and her friends Ronan, Leonie, and Finn find themselves inexplicably drawn back to the table. Back then, each roll they unwittingly made caused irreparable damage to the fabric of space and time itself, and cutting their last game short means there’s a debt to be paid. Now, they have no choice but to finish the game in the hopes of making amends with each other as well as saving the world.
Based on what we know about Strange is the Light so far, it sounds like it might be somewhere between Stranger Things and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin — an action-packed hit poised to rip our hearts out.
Strange is the Light is available to preorder ahead of a Sept. 11 release for $28.99 at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Bookshop.org
Told entirely through the use of documents such as emails, police reports, and personal journal entries, Winkler’s supernatural thriller promises to be House of Leaves for those who love to play tabletop role-playing games.
When Cole and Lorraine agree to playtest a board game called The Ship of Death in order to earn some extra cash, they don’t think much of the NDA they are forced to sign. But as time passes, the sinister and pervasive game begins to take up as much space in their home as it does in their minds until things take a violent turn.
The Ship of Death is available to preorder ahead of a Sept. 29 release for $18.99 at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Bookshop.org
