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<blockquote data-quote="GnomeWorks" data-source="post: 9605470" data-attributes="member: 162">They are effectively the same, but that loses some nuance.Take something like The Wandering Inn, where the system is limited to handing out classes, levels, and &quot;skills&quot; (I think a reasonable D&amp;D equivalent would be... feats, probably?). That's the full extent of the system: there are several instances of people getting skills and having to figure out what they even do. There's no deeper mechanics: for the most part, physics and biology operate largely like you'd expect. Early on a character cuts her hand open, and it bleeds and gets infected, like you'd see in real life.On the other end of the spectrum would be something like Harry Potter and the Natural 20, where the character imported from a (3e) D&amp;D setting into HP very clearly operates with D&amp;D mechanics as his physics while everyone else operates normally, and he's very aware of said mechanics and openly refers to things like hit points and whatnot. Said character gets sent to the medical ward several times, and the nurse freaks out because his wounds spontaneously heal after exactly 8 hours of bedrest.So there's a spectrum, here, and some works are going to fall on different parts of it, and often in different ways.&nbsp; &nbsp; Some of the other main complaints about badly-written LitRPG are the &quot;dreaded blue boxes,&quot; an obsession with numbers, and excessive level-up notifications.Like, imagine if every time someone leveled in Order of the Stick (also LitRPG, btw) we got a comic-length update of nothing but the character's character sheet being updated. Every time, without fail. Possibly with the character giving commentary on their choices, and a good chance that if there's commentary, it'll include something about how there's a difficult choice between some options to be made, possibly without context of what those options do.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="GnomeWorks, post: 9605470, member: 162"] They are [i]effectively[/i] the same, but that loses some nuance. Take something like [i]The Wandering Inn[/i], where the system is limited to handing out classes, levels, and "skills" (I think a reasonable D&D equivalent would be... feats, probably?). That's the full extent of the system: there are several instances of people getting skills and having to figure out what they even do. There's no deeper mechanics: for the most part, physics and biology operate largely like you'd expect. Early on a character cuts her hand open, and it bleeds and gets infected, like you'd see in real life. On the other end of the spectrum would be something like [i]Harry Potter and the Natural 20[/i], where the character imported from a (3e) D&D setting into HP very clearly operates with D&D mechanics as his physics while everyone else operates normally, and he's very aware of said mechanics and openly refers to things like hit points and whatnot. Said character gets sent to the medical ward several times, and the nurse freaks out because his wounds spontaneously heal after exactly 8 hours of bedrest. So there's a spectrum, here, and some works are going to fall on different parts of it, and often in different ways. Some of the other main complaints about badly-written LitRPG are the "dreaded blue boxes," an obsession with numbers, and excessive level-up notifications. Like, imagine if every time someone leveled in [i]Order of the Stick[/i] (also LitRPG, btw) we got a comic-length update of nothing but the character's character sheet being updated. Every time, without fail. Possibly with the character giving commentary on their choices, and a good chance that if there's commentary, it'll include something about how there's a difficult choice between some options to be made, possibly without context of what those options do. [/QUOTE]

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