Author Reck Well - Interview #4

A LitRPG doesn’t have to be a power fantasy to hit hard. Live from the chaos and magic of JordanCon, we sit down with author Reckwell, the voice behind Stumbling Up: The Loser’s Guide to Progression, a LitRPG comedy that swaps flawless heroes for lovable strugglers who keep moving anyway.

We talk about why Cole and his friends feel so recognizable: the self doubt, the constant comparison, the sense that everyone else got the instruction manual. Reck Well shares how personal career pivots and real loss shaped the core message, that progress is often messy and nonlinear, and that “loser” is usually just a temporary story you tell yourself. If you’ve ever wrestled with imposter syndrome, this conversation makes the case that progression fantasy can be more than escapism, it can be a mirror.

Then we get nerdy about craft. Why give the party an animal companion who’s intentionally useless, sarcastic, and somehow unforgettable? Enter Richard, the fanged banana slug. Reck Well breaks down the audiobook choices with narrators Jeremy Fraser and Jessica Threet, the decision to stay in first person, and the “creamy not crunchy” approach to LitRPG mechanics, with just enough levels and loot to satisfy without burying the story in math. We also unpack grind, pacing, and how a system that rewards what you practice can turn self criticism into an actual in-world skill.

If you love character-driven LitRPG, progression fantasy with heart, and stories that earn their wins, you’ll want this one in your queue. Subscribe, share the episode with a LitRPG friend, and leave a review, then tell us what you prefer: light systems or crunchy spreadsheets?

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Welcome back. Once again, we are coming to you live from the chaos, creativity, and absolute magic of Jordan Con, where the stories are bold, the fans are louder than the panels, and today we've got something special. We're sitting down with author Reckwell, the mind behind stumbling up, a lit RPG that flips the script on the genre. This isn't about chosen ones or flawless heroes. This is about the journey, the missteps, the painfully real climb of someone who's not supposed to win, but keeps going anyway. And that's exactly where we want to dig in today. We're talking about what stumbling up says about failure, resilience, and what it actually means to level up in a world and maybe a life that doesn't play fair? We'll get into Reckwell's journey as a writer, the stories and influences that shaped their voice, and what they're really trying to do with their work in a genre that's often more about power than humanity. Because here's the real question we're chasing today. Is lit RPG just escapism? Or can it actually tell the truth about who we are when things fall apart?

SPEAKER_01 2:09

Hi everybody, I'm Rec. I'm a professional slug wrangler and author of Stumbling Up The Loser's Guide to Progression, my latest lit RPG comedy release that released here a couple months ago. My next book's out um June 19th, and it'll be book two in the series.

SPEAKER_02 2:25

And we absolutely loved Stumbling Up. It was amazing. But it isn't it's your first Lit RPG, but not your first novel in general. If you want to plug the latest and the greatest, but also give a shout-out to what else you've written.

SPEAKER_01 2:37

Yeah, so in uh fantasy, I've written Potions and Perils, which is a sapphic Swamp Witch cottage core book, kind of legends and laws, but Swamp Witch. Um and then I've got a sci-fi pen name, um MJ Douglas, where I've written a dystopian, a couple dystopians.

SPEAKER_00 2:53

Awesome. So do you have the name for your second book yet, or are you unwilling to share it?

SPEAKER_01 2:58

Yeah, you know, I went through, you know, like maybe it's stumbling up a uh Goth's guide to progression, or like, you know, but I really I'm I'm sticking with Cole's perspective. So we're just gonna go stumbling up to a loser's guide to progression and keep the keep it kind of he who fights with monsters-esque in that regard. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 3:16

Uh I know that we did an episode talking all about your book, but why don't we do another brief synopsis in case people ever get an interview before they get the episode? So do you want to do that?

SPEAKER_01 3:26

Yeah, sure. So my book is I it's really a a love note to that friend group you have in like high school, college that you just like hang out with and like play DD or games or like do your thing. Um, and you're like kidding with each other, and you know, you don't know where you're going in life, or life's just kind of paused, right? And you have that moment where you're like, we need to make something of ourselves. So my characters get drunk and they sign up to be adventurers, and it's it's kind of like a military recruit, you know, like you become an adventurer and then suddenly like you are thrust into the adventurer life. Most people in the world train for years to be adventurers, they have sponsors, they have training, they have mentors. And so these three lovable losers are just like way in over their head. Um, they get adopted by a fanged banana slug named Richard, which is, you know, a dick joke. Yeah. He um he's a bit of a jerk, um, and he claims to be immortal because nobody's killed him yet. So he he uh he has that sarcastic side comments uh on the team. Um and then also when they enter their first dungeon, they are uh teamed up with a girl who's kind of mysterious, and you learn that she is um somebody from our world that's been portled into their world, and her aesthetic is goth, and she doesn't really understand the world. Uh she's very grounded in our world. Um, but the system that's in control of everybody looks at her aesthetic and it doesn't really know what to do with her, so it's just like, you know what? I'm just gonna make you this like overpowered death knight, right? Because that makes sense. And yeah, she helps save the day.

SPEAKER_00 4:59

So totally makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 5:01

Yeah.

Becoming A Full Time Author

SPEAKER_00 5:01

So you said love that that friend group you had. I guess I want to ask you, did you always know you wanted to be a writer? Were you that kid that had no idea what you were gonna do? Not that you were the loser kid, but you know, we all face that. What are we gonna do with the kids? What am I gonna be good at? What am I gonna be good at? And I know I told you that my 11 and 12-year-old boys heard our podcast on this, and they both wanted to start reading it because immediately they felt like, well, we'll be able to identify with these characters as well.

SPEAKER_03 5:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:34

And my 12-year-old, I have to tell you, is autistic, and so he's very much neurodivergence, and he has those experiences. My 11-year-old has other things going on, and and so they both gravitated by the way to this loser's guide to progression and just these kind of quirky characters that were going on. So, where's your inspiration with that personally?

SPEAKER_01 5:53

Yeah, well, I mean, I the joke is it's like, yeah, like I'm a loser, right? Like we're all like we all have that moment in our life where we're we're just unsure about the world and our place in it. And I think everybody can identify with that feeling of like I'm a loser. And and the joke's on us because we're not, like nobody is, right? Um, but you know, I really had a tough time trying to figure out where I belonged. Um, I'm queer, and there's like layers that go with that, but um also like I ended up getting my undergraduate degree in forestry, which is awesome. You know, I worked as a social worker, I've worked in IT, I've I've jumped careers quite a bit. And one of the things I realized as I've gotten older and I've experienced loss in my life is that um, you know, if if you're not gonna take a chance on yourself, nobody else is, right? And so that's what you know, I've always kind of in this back of my mind. I've written a little bit throughout most of my life, and I was like, you know what? I like I this is this is the moment I'm gonna I'm gonna go all in and do this and follow the stream because I'm gonna regret it if I don't.

SPEAKER_00 6:52

Right. Absolutely. And so how long have you been doing this? Like what what career were you in right before you started writing? Yeah. And like how long have you been writing?

SPEAKER_01 7:00

Yeah, so I I'm also pretty analytic. So I had this plan, I was an IT, I was a very successful IT uh director at one point, and I had this like four-year plan of like I'm gonna write a couple books and figure out the publishing industry. So I've that's my sci-fi uh pen name, wrote potions and perils, and um I had a pretty dramatic thing happen in my life, and I was like, you know what, I had this like five to ten year plan, and I was like, you know what? I'm just gonna go for it last year. So I've been a full-time author. May will be a full year. And so I've written like 300,000 words since then, which is maybe not Jay Krauss' numbers, but it's it's de it's good. Yes, it's brilliant.

Building Richard The Slug

SPEAKER_02 7:42

Yeah, that was incredible. Congratulations for going full-time. Thank you. That's awesome. Yeah, uh, I think we overuse the word cozy sometimes in talking about this genre and fantasy. However, I think what it means is to me like is heartwarming. And this book, though uh a traditional fantasy adventure with you know real stakes, um, it's very heartwarming. Yeah. And one of the quintessential elements of these heartwarming fantasies seems to be the animal companion. And so uh Richard showing up wasn't a huge surprise. Him being a banana slot of all things.

SPEAKER_00 8:17

With fangs.

SPEAKER_02 8:18

With things, is why, like, where on earth did you get the idea for it to do.

SPEAKER_00 8:24

Besides the dick jobs. I was just gonna do it. Yeah, yeah. So I mean it. That came second.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

That came second, right? You know, um, yeah, so we were like we were the main character Cole is um I knew I wanted to give him uh an animal companion. My friend and I were talking about like what would be the most useless animal companion you could give somebody because everybody's like, oh, dragon, or like, you know, unicorn or like you know, like all these like dark cat. Yeah, right. Um and we have this like dire wolf joke that kind of goes in. Um, but you know, we're like, well, what about a slug? And then we're like, oh, doesn't really want to look at a slug. And I was like, what about a banana slug? I used to live out west for part of my life, and you know, banana slugs in um like the Olympic Peninsula, you don't see them too often, but there are out there, and it's like this like mystical banana oh, I saw a banana slug on the spike. Um so it was like, and then the you know, how big is the banana slug and all the rest of the you know jokes kind of wrote themselves, right? Yeah. Um, but I wanted an animal companion that matched the kind of loser energy of the team because I don't I didn't want the the animal companion to be overpowered and saving them. You had to have like an animal companion that matched the power level that the characters are at, or else it would just be the animal companion saving them all the time because they get a lot of them. Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:39

Right, which is awesome. And I love the voice for Rachel. Who voices Rachel?

SPEAKER_01 9:43

Yeah, so um Jeremy Fraser is my narrator. So it's Jeremy Fraser and Jessica Threet, and Jeremy does such a good job. We had um we had a couple options, and we went with, for those of you who are a little bit older, if you know Hollywood Squares, like the Paul Lind voice, so just kind of this like old school Hollywood judgy, you know. He does a great job.

SPEAKER_00 10:06

He does. I kind of I think in our podcast I described him like as a perverse Jimney Cricket. You know, like he has that conscience, but it's that gravy, like judgy conscience in the background who's like telling Cole all these things. Yes, you do suck. What do you do?

SPEAKER_01 10:21

Yeah, because you know, Richard, he he whether he's immortal or not is still a mystery, right? They don't know, but he has been alive for a long time and they've seen a lot, right? And he he's kind of like, ah man, you put me with like the the freshman at the babysit the kids, you know, kind of attitude. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:38

It's awesome. One of the things we said about these characters that I thought was actually really poignant um was uh that they don't see themselves very well at all. And that's very relatable, although I think it's easier to see the value in others than in ourselves. And and that that is very apparent in that each one of them thinks they're not enough and they're not adding anything to the group. Uh Cole, especially, because we're inside his head. Yeah. And the irony is it's just so obvious to me and to anybody reading that he accomplishes probably the most in all the situations they they wind up in. I mean, yeah, at least I feel like he does. He's the one throwing himself inside the belly of a monster to to save his roof and all that.

SPEAKER_00 11:20

And it may not always be like perfect at what he's doing, but he's trying.

SPEAKER_01 11:24

Yes. Yeah, and I mean that's my meta on like today in time, we compare ourselves to people all the time. I mean, even you look at this con, right? You have authors comparing sales, comparing how they're speaking, comparing how well they did in panels, and it's all like subconscious or whatever. But um, I think we just like in today's society, we get hit a lot with that, you know, that imposter syndrome, the comparison self-criticism. And I wanted to have a character that is like living that we read a lot of stories about the like overconfident hero that's like, I'm just I'm just gonna like take him out with a harder punch and I can do it, you know. And I wanted a character that was maybe a little bit more flawed and relatable and less self-aware. Um, you know, my daughter is 22, and she's maybe way more self-confident than Cole, but like, but I wanted to something that, like, you know, when you're unsure about your place in the world, it takes you a while to step into your own. And I wanted to show people a flawed character that has that like maturity progression to when they get to the end of the series, you're like, oh, I could see myself getting there. I see that like the problem was I just didn't see myself correct this whole time. You know, I want people to have that journey.

Writing Process And Skill Design

SPEAKER_00 12:33

Right. Well, that's awesome. Okay, I've got to ask you just about your method with writing, because there are just these brilliant moments of stumbling up. And I think one of the ones we talked about was um Cole's constant spiraling and how some of the spirals that he has turned into skills that he has, like that, you know, self-criticism, you know, the critiquing that he does all the time, and that triggers and then he spirals down with the critiquing. When you were going through your writing, do you have all that plot and out? Did you have an outline that included his skills? Or are those things coming to you in the moment as you're creating the character, just kind of sharing, especially for our listeners that want to write and want to kind of break into this? What is your writing method?

SPEAKER_01 13:15

Yeah, so I have um, I'm a I'm more of a pantser, but I have like milestones that I'm trying to hit. So I know kind of where the arc of the series is going, and I know kind of the things I have to accomplish. But a lot of the skill sets are um just kind of on the fly or like linked. I knew that I wanted to have like self-criticism. I wanted to have the world and your actions in the world really influence, you know, how you get powers and how you move about, right? And and that's real, right? Like we self-sabotage all the time, right? And I wanted to be, I wanted, I wanted to put it in the system to be like, hey folks, when you self-sabotage in your head, you are literally hitting self-criticism and you're sabotaging yourself, right? And so there's some things that were very much like when I got how I like really thought about like how do I want this mechanism to work and how do I want Cole to overcome it or to succumb to it, you know. So those are where I spent a lot of time. Um, but a lot of the story is very pantsy, you know. It's just it's coming as as we're running.

SPEAKER_02 14:16

Yeah, but that's very insightful because every time you really hash a negative habit, you really are rehearsing it. You're practicing it. Yeah. And it does become your skill, in a way. You're so good at being self-critical. Uh, so that's very cool. Um now, this is uh set in a lit RPG world and it's fantasy. However, it's a little quirky. Like we have monster ducks, and the first dungeons inside of some mouth, and they're attacked by molars, okay? Whoa what on earth were you thinking? Like because I'm expecting mimics and dragons and but I don't know if we're gonna get attacked by a chicken next, you know.

SPEAKER_01 15:00

Yeah. Um, I wanted to have a world that was unique. I mean, we all in Lit RPG, I I also read a lot of lit RPG books, and you know, you get the rats, I have the rats in a sewer example, right? When you play, you know, it's like how many rats in a sewer do we have to fight?

SPEAKER_03 15:17

Right.

SPEAKER_01 15:17

You know, and so I wanted the intro especially to be a lot more unique um and put a lot of creativity into the type of dungeon that they're doing. Um, and uh that quirkiness is just kind of extended down the line for the series. Um, I think that it's just gonna be part of the signature of something up, which is maybe gonna make it a little bit hard to write like book nine of like, okay, now what new quirky, you know, dungeon do I have to think of next? But you know, a challenge is good for us. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:45

So in book two, can we expect to see a lot more of the storylines of some of the other characters? Because we're definitely still seeing from Cole's perspective, but we're gonna expand on some of the others.

SPEAKER_01 15:55

So um I had uh as a reader a really, I don't know, like a low opinion of a first person perspective for a long time. And um when I wrote the in the first chapter of Stumbling Up, I wrote it like four different times, and three of them were in third person, and this one was in first, and everybody was like, nope, first person, I want to be in their head. So we're gonna stay with Cole, but we're you're getting a lot more storylines from the other characters. There's flashbacks, he gets into their like their dreamscape a little bit. Um, and so you're gonna get more flushed out um thoughts about the other characters. But the fun thing with sticking in first person that's been great, is that Cole is a bit of an idiot. So there's things that go on that we see as readers, or you see as Meredith see, and he just doesn't realize what's happening. So you've got this kind of metagame where, you know, um, we all know that Meredith and him are never gonna work out, right? But he is just so infatuated with her. Um, and so it's it's really fun to play along around with that.

SPEAKER_00 16:54

Right, right, right. It's just terribly awkward, and yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:57

And of course, it's the first person that lends so much strength to all of those relatable psychological inner turmoils that you delve into. So I think that was excellent. Um, so now a lot of people who haven't really read too much Lit RPG mainly tolerating Dungeon Carl and Carl, but they're like, oh, I'm not really into the gaming element of it.

SPEAKER_01 17:16

How would you describe your approach to the gaming element of Stumbling Up? Yeah. So in in LitRPG, we have this idea of like uh crunchy has lots of numbers and math that goes along with it. So if you're like your rules, the rules jerk on your um, you know, DD campaign, right, maybe like really crunchy about how they think about the system. Mine is on the creamy side, I think creamy peanut butter. Um if you have heard of The Wandering Inn, I love The Wondering Inn, it's one of my inspirations. It's like maybe one of the lightest lit RPGs from a system perspective. And I wanted to go lighter because I didn't want people to be thrown out right away by, you know, here's the rules of the game, you know. Um that being said, there's definitely definitely like level ups and loots and like things that are transparent, but I want it to be in a way that is like hits that like analytical part of your brain. That like, well, what did happen? Well, here's the little note about like what was that monster, so you know. Um, so I think I do a pretty good job of keeping it lighter, but also like have it be low RPG where you get the system kind of integrated with you.

SPEAKER_02 18:20

I think it's interesting that the lit RPG elements are directly tied to these characters' emotional progression, really. I mean, because you tie the skills so much to who they are, to the personalities and stuff that they are. Uh, and there's some very uniqueness, like for example, Cole's skill that allows him to sort of basically have a cockroach skill, right? He's he's nearly a killer, or he can die and come back once, and also it comes with a cost. Yes. I thought that was a fascinating idea. Yeah. Um and uh as far as crunch goes, yours is perfect for me. I do not like crunch at all. I I'm I'm a gamer, but I just talk sometimes. It gets so tedious. So thank you for that. I also discussed a little bit on a panel here at Jordan Grind about grind. And that was another thing that I think you handled well. So your approach to grind is kind of what?

SPEAKER_01 19:10

Yeah, so the so let's define grind a little bit. Like grind is the kind of the the process by which people level up. Um it's the it's the journey, right? And so you can get really grindy and have to kill like a hundred goblins to level up, or you can kill like a bog quacker, right? Right. So um I think that uh I try, you know, we have I think limited ourselves sometimes on the creativity. Like we get to build these worlds like from scratch. Like we don't have to rely on DD, we don't have to rely on Diallo, we don't have to rely on these like touchstones. We can just make the system really customized to um what our characters are doing, right? Which is why you get such customization for each character from me. Um and I think that's like magic. Like the first lit RPG I wrote or I read, I was like, oh my gosh, they leveled up their running by just running. So whatever they did, they could level up, and then the character just like ran around running, leveling up, running. I was like, you can level up anything and you're just running everywhere, you know. Yeah, so I wanted to have it um uh have that customization. But um if we So one of the things that the book tries to tell people is that what you practice is what you get, right? Like if you practice criticizing yourself, you're gonna get a self-critic skill. But I didn't want us to get bogged down in just watching somebody self-criticize themselves over and over and over again. But we like, we see it, but we don't go like grind through it. You know, the story's gonna move. And and you've gotta have, I don't know, my favorite moments are kind of the the points between the grind, like the family scene, the the orphanage, like you know, some of the some of the conversations the characters have. Um I don't know. You've gotta like split up the grind, or else it just it's just like I'm gonna punch things a lot, right?

Stakes That Feel Real

SPEAKER_00 20:57

So you mentioned, of course, yeah, book two coming out. How long do you how long do you think this series will expand? What's your plan for the series as a whole?

SPEAKER_01 21:06

Yeah. So I um I've got enough content like mapped out in my head for like seven, eight books. Um, my spine art is actually gonna build a picture. And when I commission that, my artist was like, how many books? And I was like, ah, and I'm like, well, I'm gonna round up and say tens, 10 books worth of spine art. Um and so I've got 10 books worth of spine art um and like seven books worth of story. But like I will say, when I write and I edit, um, the world, it gets I think I'll be fine with 10 books. We'll have enough content to get there.

SPEAKER_00 21:40

And so I'll say this. I think book one, and I think we talked about this in the podcast, to me, it was very character and relationship building. And I think you mentioned that, like the time between the grind with the conversations and the times of the orphanage and moments for characters for building. How much world building do you see yourself doing as we go through these 10 books? Yeah. For you know, foreseeably. So the world building come in. Yeah. How much of that do we think you'll be doing?

SPEAKER_01 22:08

Quite a bit. Um, the main characters you start with this really narrow perspective because they're kind of the country bumpkins that are, you know, they just don't have a lot of insight into the world, and they're as they're exploring the world, you're getting to explore the world, and the stakes really do raise. I think that's something with Lit RPG that you know, you've got to raise stakes to be kind of monumental for the the world or the city or the whatever. And we're gonna see that happen. And you get like little hints in book one, and then it, you know, it gets a little bit bigger as they they travel around and they do things. So, yes, you're the world's gonna be pretty big. I've got a map that I've hand drawn in this ugliest in, but I've got this like continent level map, and they're kind of slowly, you know, discovering what I've already got written out. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:50

Some awesome exciting.

SPEAKER_02 22:51

This story just felt so real to me, just so realistic to me. And not just because the characters were very relatable and there was probably something that each character did or said that someone was like, oh my god, I see myself in that. But also because of the way the story progressed. Because, and this is one of the reasons why I don't think I even noticed the grind. Uh I know they took a couple of rat killing quests, right? But really, it just always seemed like they were doing the next thing that they had to do. Everything really felt purposeful and it went in a direction, but it wasn't like, you know, they were off to kill the demon king or anything like that. You took very like this is what their life really is approached. What inspired you to kind of, you know, keep it so real?

SPEAKER_01 23:34

Yeah, I think uh the that's a good question. I I think part of it is because I'm writing about um losers that aren't very powerful, right? So you can't throw them against the Demon King right away. I mean, the challenges that they have are very challenging for who they are right now. And so you kind of have to keep the stakes lower to start with so that they don't just die more than once within you know a time period, right? So part of it is just trying to keep them alive, but like also every time I read a story and it it's you have this like 13-year-old that like picks up the sword and like goes off to slay the demon king, like part of me dies inside and is like, really? Like we're trusting a 13. Have you raised a 13-year-old? Like, you know, so I wanted it to be, I wanted the progression to be there, but slow enough and real enough that we feel like you don't have to be the chosen one to be the hero, that you can take these steps and put one foot in front of the other and make decisions that change your life that lead to the dream that you wanted for yourself.

SPEAKER_00 24:33

Yes. I think that it's both painful, and then there was something that was funny about it at the same time, which I hate to say, but when they were in the trial dungeon and they would die and get spit back out and like regenerated, you know, in the beginning, I was like, that is just horrific. And then kind of funny and horrific all the same time, you know, that they were going through this horrible situation, and then they'd watch someone, oh, here comes so-and-so, you know, there's Maredz, she's finally coming back out again, you know, um, at the end, and they you know, they're going through this trial, then, oh my goodness, that's just a lot.

SPEAKER_02 25:09

Well, y'all getting spit out in pieces and then putting back together. Yeah, oh god. The images were just I got the picture of him kind of sitting there kind of hugging his knees, you know. Yeah, yeah. Oh god, oh god, oh god, man.

SPEAKER_01 25:21

I mean, it's it's funny. One of my beta readers is like, yeah, it's the wreck, like, you know, comedy with grossness, you know, like a little bit. Um, you know, I think Yeah, you know, part of it too is uh I wanted it to feel I wanted you, the reader, to kind of feel as shocked as the characters would be, right? Because they've really just been like thrust into the war zone and like here's my friend like recongealing, you know, and it's like, oh, right? Like, we're really here. What did we do to ourselves? Like, crap.

SPEAKER_00 25:50

You just signed up for this.

SPEAKER_01 25:51

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:52

I'm still on my RPG journey, and I read several series now, not everything, but this was the most unique of all that I've read so far. It had elements that I had not come into contact with yet. First of all, the characters are based in Little RPG world, with the exception of the cider characters that they meet along the way. Um, that was new to me. Uh also why do they die if they don't become adventure? I never occurred. That was high states. When they signed up, that was life or death, succeed or fail. Why? What gave you that idea?

SPEAKER_01 26:28

Yeah, I, you know, like I think it part of it is just we have these stories where life and death is on the line and um and then everybody lives, right? And you know, part of it is I wanted to be like, hey, death is like here, it's knocking. Um, but that am but then like you can't kill people, you can't kill your main character, right? So then the stakes have to be emotional and relationship-wise, or you know, I really hate one of my like most hated tropes is when you threaten the loved ones of the I think as a parent, I just can't take that. Like I just can't say. Yeah. So I wanted I wanted to keep the the stakes of the story like in the party and in the relationships that they have um with each other and and have that emotional, that progressive mistake, like stakes, right? And so that's why I built the progression system to be nonlinear so that like as they make mistakes, as we all do, you know, maybe they lose a skill or they lose a quest or you know, they lose a little. Um, but that's part of their journey and that they can always gain. You know, like I think we think that when we fail, it's done. But like really, when we fail, you just you put that next foot in front of the next, you know, like in front of you, and you just do something, like do something else, try something else. And I wanted to have that. Um, but you know, you gotta threaten that they're gonna get eaten or die, or you know, yeah dangle a little bit of that. Yeah, dangle the danger, right? Or the grossness.

SPEAKER_00 27:54

Okay, so man, I'm you know, and I'm not in my lit RPG journey, but I've gotten a good amount of reading done so far. So when someone asks me what my favorite lit RPG is, and I explained Dungeon Farrell Carl, we all have to, right, yeah. My answer is startling up.

SPEAKER_01 28:15

Oh, I feel a bit thank you. Both of you have been very kind.

LitRPG Recommendations And Farewell

SPEAKER_00 28:19

So I am that it really just reached out and grabbed me. I just really love it, and I'm so excited for the books you're going to be writing. So, but now I have to ask you. So, excluding Dungeon Carler Carl and your own work, what would you say would be your recommendation for someone reading what RPG you would say would be the next book series that you would point people to?

SPEAKER_01 28:42

Yeah, that's I mean, um, so I love The Wondering End. If you read The Wondering End and you want to talk about it, it'll be a four-hour conversation over coffee. Like I love the series. It is so long though, that if like I took two, I took two years away and just read The Wondering End. Like it's very, very long. Um, but it is the heartfelt like isekai journey that like I wanted, like slice of life journey. And the leveling, it's very like creamy on that crunchy scale, right? Um, and the care it's very character-driven, and I just love it. Um so wondering in, but I mean, there's so many good books to choose from. And you know, LitRPG is just expanding. So it just it depends. Do you want dungeon core? Do you want post-apocalyptic? Do you want, you know, your cozy slice of life? Do you want your isakai or cultivation? There's just, it's like, it's very hard to pick a favorite because there's just so many options out there.

SPEAKER_03 29:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 29:35

And for those of you listening who don't know this already, wandering in is actually getting physical copies of the books made for the very first time. So you will start seeing it and have access to it more than ever before.

SPEAKER_01 29:45

So check it out. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:47

Where can people find it now?

SPEAKER_01 29:49

So I really suggest if you are a slow reader, check out the audio. Andrea Parsno is a narrator. She is my all-time favorite narrator. Shout out to Andrea. Um, but yeah, check it out. Um, it's on Amazon. Um, but Pirate is one of those unique authors. She had a different business plan than all of the traditionally more published Amazon route. Um, she has the entire series on her website for free, so you don't have to pay anything to access it. It's just it's a web serial that's been going on for like six or seven years. I think it's like 20 million words long-ish at this point. So it's very long.

SPEAKER_03 30:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:23

And another thing, I want to make sure that listeners who are not only considering stumbling up, but that outreaching in general, even though I said crunch, I prefer it light. Some of my favorite series of all time, like He Who Fights with Monsters, is probably the crunchiest you probably can get. So sometimes that story is just so good, it really doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_01 30:45

He who fights with monsters is probably like second place, like very top top tier literature. It's one of my favorite books. Yeah. So this is a great genre. Whatever your taste.

SPEAKER_03 30:55

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 30:55

And I'm so glad you joined in. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it. You guys, yeah. Thanks for having me on the show. And I'm I'm so glad that we've got voices um like coming to the table to help authors like talk about their books and like bring bring things to light. Um, I think a lot of us are doing it on our own, and it's a very lonely, it's a very lonely profession, right? And so like you dragging us introverted uh souls out of our little writing caves is really important. So thank you for the work that you're doing for all of us.

SPEAKER_00 31:25

And thank you for being willing to come and share with us. So we've enjoyed talking, Kate.

SPEAKER_01 31:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:30

All right. And hopefully we'll talk to you again when you get that next book after.

SPEAKER_02 31:33

Oh, absolutely. All right, awesome.

SPEAKER_00 31:34

Until then.

SPEAKER_02 31:35

Keep reading.

SPEAKER_00 31:36

And keep thanking. Talk to you later.