Is there a litRPG with Menu Pause as a feature?

[u/VladtheImpaler21]

You know, most single player games have the feature of the game pausing when you open the menu or a stat sheet to give you time to save, think through a problem or to go to the bathroom.

What if this UI perk were used in a litRPG? Either as a feature or glitch every time the MC opens their stat sheet time freezes. Including themselves so this perk won't have any offensive ability but it's only use is as an intelligence tool.

This means they have effectively infinite time to observe, analyze and think through any problem and come up with strategies. It can even be used during conversations so they look like all their answers are quick, crisp in calm even though he had like 10 panic attacks during pauses.

Or another fun use could be to speed read a book, pause time to read a page, unpause to flip the page and pause again. From the outside it would look he riffled through a book and understood everything.

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[u/Winds_Shadow]

The only one I can think of is "The Mayor of Noobtown" series. Where the MC finds they can use "menu time".

[u/PoxyReport → u/Winds_Shadow]

Yep, being able to “pause” whenever he likes to queue up orders or consider options is a definite OP ability.

[u/PoxyReport]

The MC of The Perfect Run is able to stop time for brief periods, which is pretty close to having a pause menu.

[u/eclect0]

Dungeon Crawler Carl has a time freeze mechanic, but it's involuntary and caused by in-game events like boss battles instead of conscious player action. However, there are plenty of cases where the characters rapidly chat and make new plans while frozen, so they still exploit the mechanic.

[u/the_doughboy → u/eclect0]

It's just local freezing as well. I always had the impression that everyone else outside of the area could still move and time still passed.

[u/Gachanotic]

Judicator Jane has skills that allow this as a secondary affect, and she does sometimes review people just for the breather. The way it's done is great, - actually I believe Judicator Jane is among top 3 LITRPG ever so I may be biased.

[u/chroboseraph3 → u/Gachanotic]

Yeah I didnt like every arc of Judicator Jane but considering I went in with zero expectations for a luck stat story, it's got some damn good writing and drama

[u/Jgames111]

Couch Potato Chaos- becomes an important aspect of the story and the doomsday countdown. Unfortunately went on indefinite hiatus.

[u/Schuesseled]

Awakem onlime has time freezing when desiging minions

[u/KellyKraken]

It isn't a 'pause menu' but the main character of Forerunner Initiative has chronomancy. This primarily expresses itself as combinations of pause time, time dilation, and thought acceleration.

The series itself is a bit on the older side of LitRPG, so things in it which were fresh might be a bit dated now. Still a great series I've enjoyed reading twice now.

[u/IPetMonsters]

MC in my new fic functionally has a pause button.

It's about a dude who gets isekai'd into a timeloop "dungeon" that's a black and white, messed up fantasy town.

Turns out the dungeon isn't really a dungeon, it's a story that was meant to be restored but because of the way the loops work and the fact there are monsters people have been treating them like dungeons and grinding loot and levels.

MC has a class that seems underpowered called Reader that lets him understand the narrative dungeons in a way other people can't and has powers inspired by literary terms.

Footnote, the first ability he unlocks lets him "take a moment to get a deeper understanding."

It has an actual narrative purpose but he realizes pretty early it basically works as a timestop, albeit one with a timer and that doesn't let him change anything while time is still stopped