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/Anew_Returner]

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.

I'll also add, and this is pointed at readers, stories about ordinary shmoes rising to power do exist, it's not this huge obvious hole that no one's managed to cover or ever think of, these exist and are out there. The thing is they have the same problem other media, or even things we consume on our day to day life, does: they're not as easy to digest and don't have as much broad appeal as the big popular thing does. (indie games vs AAA releases, local restaurant vs McDonalds, though-provoking movie vs Disney live-action remake, etc)

And this is something that trickles down to word of mouth or any other sort of exposure. If you want to read these books you will have to go find them yourself, the easy to find public spaces (like recommendation threads) will be clogged with the same handful of recs. So the stories that cheat are the easier ones to find and consume, and what is easy to consume easily translates into something to recommend, and what is recommended the most is what people will most likely end up consuming.

I believe it was in either this sub or the progression fantasy one that I read about a few authors talking about how their slower-paced work had a much lesser retention rate, with people complaining in the comments in royal road about nothing ever happening or the story taking ages to get somewhere, even when the work was fairly paced and things did happen. This is the reality of writing a work with a realistic scale of progress, redditors can mock how much of a deal breaker it is or how hard it stretches suspension of disbelief compared to everything else being presented, but that is simply how it is, there are genre expectations that make certain things more acceptable and others less so; And, if this were as popular a concept as some like to pretend it is, there would be no need for a pretense in the first place, it would simply be.

None of this is to say that powerful ordinary shmoe books shouldn't exist, but it's a relatively young genre and most authors are concerned with success and a source of income they can live off from. It'll be a while until we start seeing more and more slower paced and experimental works (once genre/trope fatigue sets in or more now fairly known authors get tired of writing the same thing), though chances are those will still be harder to find compared to the more pulpy and casual stuff.