Polycore
And I feel like I agree with you Will, there shouldn't be too much emphasis on the levels, it's not the interesting part of the story, only some context and eventually motivation for the characters
Will Wight
I wholeheartedly agree, but evidently there are a lot of people out there who really do love the stats and the levels and the stat pages and all that stuff. It bores me, but it seems there are a lot of people out there who specifically like that stuff. Idk why.
For me, the interesting parts of having a world that worked like a game with stats and levels and everything would be how all that junk impacted the story
I mean, I want there to be fewer stats and shorter stat pages so that each of the stats and skills has more impact. When the MC has one level each in sewing, dodging, jumping, leaping, underwater basket-weaving, interpretive dance, hat-juggling, carrot-eating, and everything else they've ever done, I don't want to see that on their stat page.
That's a pretty cool element, I like that.
The pile-up of skills is what turned me off of
Kumo desu ga, Nani ga?, which was once one of my favorites. But she got a point in a skill any time she did
anything for the first time. Literally anything. It drove me crazy. She spins her web into a lasso? Bing, point in web manipulation and lasso-tying.
If there are too many, I can't keep track of them. And if they're not important enough to keep track of,
don't include them in the first place. D&D is actually a great example, because frankly it would make a really good LitRPG. And now we have come full circle to the early days of fantasy novels.