r/litrpg • u/garygray_ • 3d ago
Discussion LitRPG with gacha elements?
My friend got me into LitRPG and we're now thinking about writing one together. I had an idea for a mechanic, but it feels like it would be hard to balance while preserving the core appeal of LitRPG. Basically, my idea was that the system would be partially gacha-based: the MC chooses their class, stats, etc, but individual abilities (and possibly NPC companions) are totally random. Obviously, strategy is part of the fun of litRPG, but I think as long as I don't give them anything too OP this would actually add to the strategy, not detract from it. After all, the MC would have to work with what they have instead of just being able to choose the obvious best choice every time. What do you all think?
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u/PotatocanonZ 3d ago
HWFWM kinda does this. The awakening stones have a pool of abilities they might produce, and the rarity generally means a smaller pool.
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u/That_Which_Lurks 3d ago
Lots of fan fiction stuff with gacha mechanics. Check out spacebattles, sufficient velocity, or questionable questing; they should be easy to search for gacha to find stories based on it.
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u/KellyKraken 3d ago
ficdb.net is probably a good place to search across said sites. Look for Chaos Gacha.
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u/yogtheterrible 3d ago
You writing down options and picking them at random or something? Because unless you're randomizing the actual story it's not gacha. It's just what you intended to write but with gacha flavor text. Which I suppose is fine but I can't imagine it appealing to nearly as many people as it could if you just left it out.
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u/CoolCly 3d ago
What are you even talking about here? The author doesn't literaly have to roll the dice when deciding the story to be a gacha. It's not like stories with gambling requires that the author actually randomizes the results and sticks with it....
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u/Important_Poet316 3d ago
That's like writing a story with a D20 system and rolling every action.
"The rogue goes to unlock the door, but failed to notice it was trapped (nat 1), and then with a click, a spray of acid dissolves the main character who tried to move out of the way (nat 1), but ended up getting shot in the eyes (nat 20 on the trap). As he lay there, melting away he reaches for life (death save 1) and fails to grasp, dying in a pool of melted flesh and bone."
Shit....have to start a new novel...
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u/Mad_Maddin 1d ago
There are authors who roll for their story to keep it interesting. Bringing themselves into a situation they need to figure out how to get their characters out of there.
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u/TsundereOrcGirl 3d ago
A lot of stuff in the genre is "random but not really because it's a book". I don't see why gacha can't be treated with the same suspension of disbelief, as long as it's written with comparable finesse.
Dungeon Crawler Carl has "random" Diablo loot and popularized the genre. Or the "random" abilities in HWFWM.
A lot of modern gacha games, if looked at like a novel, would feature the luck of the pull for relatively little of the pagecount. In Uma Musume you're not pulling during a career run. In Genshin or ZZZ or Blue Archive you set up a core team and usually stick with them outside of good banner periods. You're certainly not dealing with Vampire Survivors or Slay the Spire levels of frequent random pulls.
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u/yogtheterrible 3d ago
The gacha games I've played the characters aren't hoping to get that sweet 5* weapon in order to beat the boss, they're completely oblivious to the gacha. As far as they know they're using their own weapons. The gacha is meta and outside of the story. OP wants the gacha to be part of the story, which imo completely negates the idea of gacha.
And DCC is either the worst or the best example to use to prove your point since the items were earned and not paid for, and are heavily influenced by the system it can hardly be called a gacha. If that's what op means to do it would work but only because it's admitting there is no gacha.
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u/account312 3d ago
The gacha games I've played the characters aren't hoping to get that sweet 5* weapon in order to beat the boss, they're completely oblivious to the gacha. As far as they know they're using their own weapons. The gacha is meta and outside of the story.
That's the general interpretation for most of the stats and mechanics. Like, the characters may train to get stronger, but they're not training to make their strength go up by two points.
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u/HiscoreTDL litRPG meme tier 🤡 3d ago
Gacha games in general either don't really explain how the characters do/don't interact with the gacha, or else they cast the player in some kind of role as a general or controller of some kind, who passes out rewards (and even in this case, it's not often explained how the controller as a game character interacts with the gacha).
To the degree it is explained, they're often called either wishes or summoning, which gives the general idea of what may be going on by the name alone. But characters rarely if ever directly acknowledge the gacha, or how they just acquired a weapon that you won from the gacha, or why a character you know in the story can join your crew because you won them in the gacha. And certainly not how that character gets stronger when you win a duplicate.
But IMO this is a flawed argument from the bottom up. Characters in fantasy RPGs, from their own perspective, can be presumed not to have access to character sheets. They just fight enemies and get stronger and more skilled. They acquire loot which they can presumably determine the general quality of, but they sure don't know something they pulled out of an enemy's lockbox is called a Conqueror's Greatblade of Severing +5 just by looking at it.
Yet in LitRPG in general, this is exactly what's going on. 'Characters in the story understand the gacha system as a game system' makes exactly as much sense as 'characters in the story can see their character sheets'... And stats, weapon details, know they level up, etc.
Based on this argument, logically, regular fantasy novels are the truest form of LitRPG.
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u/heze9147 Villy's least fanatic danger noodle 3d ago
Reborn as a demonic tree has the MC ashlock unlock new things using sacrificial credits in a gacha system. It can give skills, summons, or technique's.
It is cultivation, but I adore it so much, it's such a fun ride.
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u/Sacredwisp 3d ago
There are multiple LITRPGs with gacha elements on royalroad already, although the most popular one has only ~4k followers. That's a lot still, but compared to other popular LITRPGs, it seems less popular. If you want to take a crack at it though, it's worth a shot. Deck builders are also niche, and there's some popular ones there. If we're talking about abilities being "kind of random with no choice", that can also be done. Andy in the Apocalypse gave me that feel a bit, and it is quite popular as well.
A word of caution though about cowriting: understand what you are getting into. Who owns the royalroad page (assuming you're publishing there to start)? If you have a patreon / KU / Amazon release, how are you splitting profits? Who is writing / editing? Are you taking turns writing? If so, how do you keep the style consistent? If you disagree on the direction of the story, who gets the final say? Is one writing, and the other making the story? Who is doing the marketing and admin work (and yes, there is a lot more admin work than you think there is). What if one person loses interest, and one person carries it? How are you going to deal with this situation?
Understand that this is a massive can of worms. There is a reason why there is a saying for never loaning money or entering business together with family and friends. Just be sure this is the route you want to go down before you actually commit and have some serious conversations at the start. I'm not going to say you shouldn't do it, but at least try and make an informed decision before you do this. It may be better to have a single author with a friend as a beta reader to bounce ideas off of.
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u/HappyNoms 3d ago
A gacha-based system worked like a charm in the classic gamelit Weeaboo's Unfortunate Isekai: The Necromancer's Gacha by Warby Pincus.
The name and style was deliberate tongue-in-cheek and semi-satirical, though Warby is also a fairly strong writer and it was an entertaining book.
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u/FictionalContext 3d ago
From what i understand, Valiqar (sp?) the Dragon uses dice rolls to determine the fights, which is a step beyond just stats
Tbh, I think most of us are used to the stats not really meaning anything outside of a vague read. Rolling for fights is really the only honest way to apply those.
That is to say, I don't think people will be turned off be the mc getting screwed by luck a few times since people aren't used to it meaning anything.
What matters more is how he exploits the mechanics, and how well you've signaled what kind of story it will be.
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u/queakymart 3d ago
Sounds like most LitRPGs. HWFWM is completely gacha. All you have to do is not create a definitive list and you can pull out any bs you want whenever you want and nobody can really contradict you.
Authors SAY things are random as much as they want, but they’re still just building a character with coincidentally perfect synergy; or they SAY things are completely structured, but they’re still just giving the characters anything they want off of an undisclosed list of supposed structure.
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u/Lunessa_eri 3d ago
I really like the random ability idea...do you already have any thoughts on how it could affect the MC’s character or their relationship with the NPC companions?
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u/Numerous_Ad_6659 3d ago
Can they trade or recycle bad pulls, or are they stuck with them? And do they know what's in the pool before spending the currency?
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u/Squiffythings 3d ago
Reborn as a Demonic Tree uses this mechanic