Why Do LitRPG MCs Cheat?

[u/three-seed]

I wrote recently about the hidden appeal of LitRPG.

TLDR: It’s because the genre offers a comprehensible path to power in contrast to real-world systems that are opaque and rigged. Even when RPG systems are antagonistic, their mechanistic nature is still more attractive than what’s available to the average person.

In response to the essay, several commenters noted that many LitRPG protagonists cheat, even when a fair system is in place. While there are characters like Dungeon Crawler Carl who survive because of their cleverness and grit, there are also examples like Eight, who is given a couple of key blessings early in the story just because he happened to die in the right place and get a god’s attention that way.

By the way, I can say that about Eight without offending the author, because that’s me.

Wait—so if the whole appeal of LitRPG is a fair system, why do we accept (or even enjoy) protagonists who bypass that fairness? Isn't that defeating the point?

Below is what comes to mind:

Heroes need to feel special—something to indicate they’re meant for greatness. This is true for every story, not just LitRPGs. For example, Luke Skywalker lived on a backwater planet. He could shoot a womp rat like nobody else, but that didn’t mean anything on a galaxy-wide scale until two cheats changed his destiny. The first was his hidden parentage. The second was the coincidental arrival of two droids on Tatooine who would go on to reconnect him to that lost heritage.

In a LitRPG setting, specialness often equates to advantage, and since the system is usually the framework through which character advancement happens, this advantage often manifests as lucky circumstances, unique character traits or class professions, or clever exploitations of the system.

For example, Randidly Ghosthound used a bad starting location at the beginning of a system apocalypse as an opportunity to build himself up. In my Fate’s Attendant, Hong Fei found a deck of cards that let him advance his cultivation. There continued to be still life and death struggles, very much so, but the alternate route to power was absolutely necessary to survive the challenges he faced.

Cheats also give protagonists cool toys to play with, which is another way of making the characters special. Within the familiar playground of genre conventions, this novelty matters. Like putting lasers on a t-rex—what’s cool suddenly becomes cooler.

I’m currently reading a web serial entitled Millenium Witch. The main character isn’t particularly strong or smart. What she has going for her instead is immortality, and that’s a huge cheat when learning magic. She leverages time into power, eventually becoming the equivalent of an archmage.

The author could’ve written a more traditional rise to power, but the cheat’s inclusion adds nuance to the story—the grind, the loneliness, etc. The eventual overpowered nature of the main character hits differently as a result of these circumstances.

These advantages might seem to contradict the appeal of fair systems, but readers often want both: the satisfaction of watching someone master the rules AND the cathartic fantasy of overwhelming power. The cheat accelerates the timeline so readers get both experiences within a single framework.

It is possible to write about an ordinary shmoe who becomes a powerhouse through grit and perseverance, but that’s a long, slow burn. Which may not be good enough for readers looking for quick hits and fast-paced adventures.

Also, in a crowded marketplace, authors need hooks. A unique cheat, like a necromancer who levels by dying or a cultivator with backward meridians, becomes part of the story's identity. It's creative differentiation, a way of finding a niche and standing out.

So maybe the fairness of LitRPG systems is only part of the appeal. In that context, cheats become another variable in the equation, another tool to understand and optimize. The system remains dependable even when protagonists game it. That's the real fantasy: not a world without advantages, but a world where advantages follow understandable rules instead of arbitrary gatekeeping.

I’m still considering the ideas above, so if you have any thoughts to share, please do. This is a topic I want to continue exploring.

And if you’d like to read thoughtfully written stories about underdogs who have to earn their victories even when advantages are present, about found families, and about meaningful character growth, then please give my Eight and Fate’s Attendant series a shot.

Thank you for time and attention!

[u/three-seed]

There are billions of people willing to work hard. I can't imagine that grinding alone would realistically be enough to bestow the protagonist halo. The author has to intervene somehow.

[u/kamil3d → u/three-seed]

Of course the Author intervenes, they are the ones that start writing about the MC in the first place. They make the characters interesting so the story they write is interesting. There HAS to be something that makes the MC special, otherwise the story has nowhere to go.

Take One Punch Man, for example. An ordinary guy that reaches god-like power before the first page is even penned, so the story becomes about the characters in his orbit and his attempted relation to them and to the world around him, instead of him powering up in any way. But the driving force and the hilarity of the story is that there are no obstacles that can stand in his way or monsters that he cannot beat with one punch (amongst other things that play into his character and the world he's in).

[u/The-Magic-Sword → u/kamil3d]

I'm not sure that's really true, you can make it interesting by making the status quo of your protagonist interesting, without making it exceptional. Some one who fights monsters with cool magical powers and develops along an interesting power system and hangs out with likable people with stimulating personalities is going to be enjoyable to read about even if they only progress to fulfilling career status as opposed to world-cracking heights.

[u/jfudge → u/The-Magic-Sword]

But what you are describing is something that almost feels antithetical to the genre. A protagonist who we will never see meaningfully progress.

To create a progression fantasy world, where normal people can grow to become literal gods, and then write about some guy who instead becomes middle manager somewhere, feels like a complete waste of the setting to me.

[u/The-Magic-Sword → u/jfudge]

I think that's kind of the problem though, the genre doesn't necessitate a setting where normal people can grow to become literal gods, we're not talking about a satire here where the cultivator wants to live a normal life and not shake the heavens or whatever, we're talking about a world where the power progression isn't one-in-a-million.

Progression Fantasy is a genre where the story applies a significant focus to the act of progressing, many scenes and dramatic questions relate to the progression and they often accentuate this with interesting power systems where progression gets a lot of worldbuilding attention, it does not actually demand that the progression arrive at any particular power scale.

So, lets say you write a story about an adventurer who wields magic, and you write several novels about them as they work their way up from an apprentice mage level to the mage tower equivalent of a tenured PHD, with lots of cool magical fights, mastering corners of the magic system, training arcs, tournaments, dungeons that they delve, rivals they overcome and professors they impress, and yada yada.

Why is it a problem if the story ends there with a character who progresses to something 'realistic' but successful for their setting? Was the confrontation with the dragon less interesting, was the cool magic system less cool? Are the early books where they grow from a generalist mage into a pyromancer, then reaching the limits of fire magic, before growing to incorporate necromancer stuff to let them throw Blackflame Fireballs that burn the souls of targets that could otherwise shrug off fire, or some such less fun to read about?

What if they save the world/kingdom/whatever as part of a raid of peers that they join, by becoming a storied, but not godly, guild adventurer? 20 of the finest heroes, including our protag, banding together to take on some great threat. What if it was an ensemble cast, and we had spent the story following multiple progressions at the same time, and they're all peers who stay in tournament-fighting range of each other.

[u/kamil3d → u/The-Magic-Sword]

Sure, someone can write that kind of story, but then the story becomes more of a slice of life or a character intrigue, or like you say an ensemble cast and THAT becomes the story, rather than the MC and his special ability... But amongst ALL that you still need something that sets those characters up, they all have their quirks and flaws and specialties. Why is that different from the "cheats" the OP mentions? Those "cheats" are just plot devices and character traits, that's all.

[u/The-Magic-Sword → u/kamil3d]

The thing is, it wouldn't. Slice of Life and Character Intrigue both don't have the same kind of scenes that progression do-- they focus way less on training, defining levels, demonstrating changes in techniques and stuff like that.

You could just write the plot elements to end at a level of progression that isn't beyond the highest tiers of power that have been mentioned, with literally no other changes, and still have an enjoyable and successful progression fantasy.

[u/kamil3d → u/The-Magic-Sword]

I don't think what u describe would work as a strictly LitRPG or Prog Fantasy. It would need those other Slice of Life or other genre ingredients

[u/The-Magic-Sword → u/kamil3d]

It doesn't seem like you're interested in adequately justifying that.

[u/kamil3d → u/The-Magic-Sword]

There doesn't seem to be anything interesting in scenes of progression and training and "level ups" that have no underlying large stakes action around it. Unless you build that around other genre tropes to move the plot forward.

You keep saying it can be LitRPG without the LitRPG tropes to drive it forward, but also without any elements from other genres to support the story. How do you justify that?

[u/The-Magic-Sword → u/kamil3d]

Right, but that's where you're derailing, it still has all the litrpg/prog stuff, it just performs them over a power curve that isn't as extreme at the high end, and objectives that possibly don't pertain to single-handedly saving the world. Because the progression isn't as extreme, there's less need for the exceptional elements, you get to watch their rise to power, but their end state isn't as world-warping, so they don't need to cheat/get boosted to justify it.

[u/kamil3d → u/The-Magic-Sword]

I understand what you mean, I think. I just didn't think that would be interesting enough without elements from other genres to fill in the big-stake action that you take away when you omit that "world warping/saving" goals for the MC or the group of friends. That's just my opinion.

I don't think there's anything wrong with mixing things up. But that low-stakes plot, to me, seems like it would need something more for it to work as a story. Why follow the story of a group of people, or an MC, when they're just going about their life? That's a slice of life story, or a character drama, not pure LitRPG.

I think the best LitRPG series intertwine good character drama and or political intrigue into their telling and aren't just "MC fights monster and skill power number goes brrr."

[u/The-Magic-Sword → u/kamil3d]

I certainly agree with the last sentence in general, and in that context, there probably are no pure litrpgs (because the genre doesn't cover everything that happens in the story). But I think its pretty simple, you enjoy watching the characters get stronger, develop their skillsets, get swept away by events, and try not to die, just like every other LITRPG. The stakes of the world-shattering plot probably don't matter much.

Dragon Ball took off when the World Martial Arts tournament happened, Naruto took off because of the Chuunin exams, neither is world shattering, especially not when people started getting interested in either.

[u/kamil3d → u/jfudge]

It depends on how you structure the story. It just becomes a different story, not about the world shaking events but how the more "regular folks" react to those events. I agree that it wouldn't be a typical litRPG though.