Transmissions

Hard Lock Episode 3

Hard Lock Episode 3 The Rift gets wider, and the first two things it takes from the party are healing and shields. One wave down on Keller-9, and the containment clock reads thirty percent. The system has already paid the four recruits once. It picked each reward on its own read …

Subscription Bombing Hit My Phoenix LiveView App

Bots used my newsletter form to bomb strangers' inboxes On September 29, the login page on integrationera.com went from 2 to 6 views a day to 60 to 80. The sign-up page climbed to about 40, and total traffic roughly tripled. The bots behind it were typing strangers' email address…

Best crafting LitRPG, sorted by what the work gives back

Crafting LitRPG is about the work: forging and enchanting, and getting better at both. Four books, sorted by what the work gives back to the crafter. In Jared Mandani's True Smithing, Angus Bjornson was a master blacksmith until one accident too many left him disabled. His kids g…

Hard Lock Episode 2

Hard Lock Episode 2 The teaching wave. It's meant to be survivable, and it's where the system first decides the recruits are worth paying. The bore on Keller-9 went three hundred meters past its permit line and struck a sheet of Architect material no one on the rock knew was ther…

Deep Access // File 05 — Conscription Infrastructure

// CLEARANCE Your profile carries six numbers. You've spent four files raising them. A civilian analyst named Naleth Corin once sat down to work out what all six are actually for. She was the kind of analyst who finishes the query she started. When the case closed, she did not sl…

Best dungeon core books, sorted by what the dungeon wants

The protagonist is the dungeon, and the heroes are the ones walking in. Four dungeon core books, sorted by what each dungeon wants from its visitors. In a dungeon core book, the main character builds the hallway the heroes die in. Here are 4 to start with, sorted by what the dung…

Hard Lock Episode 1

A mining rock on the Fringe, four new recruits on night watch, and a deep bore eleven hours into its shift. Keller-9 is a knot of metal and ore dust clamped to the inside of a fractured moon. The gravity is light enough that the crew put a hand out when they turn a corner. The ai…

Hard Lock: Hear the Whole One-Shot Played Before You Run It

A free Integration Era tabletop module, and a five-episode scripted play-through of one night on Keller-9. The deep bore on Keller-9 had been grinding for eleven hours when it went three hundred meters past its permit line and hit a layer that rang instead of cracking. That's the…

Best Cozy LitRPG: Where to Start and Why

The shelf people reach when they're burned out on everything else. Four books, what each is actually for, and who should walk past the whole thing. Ask a cozy LitRPG reader how they found the shelf and you'll usually get a story about burning out on something else. That's worth k…

You Can Date the Repairs by Hand

A Fringe freighter carries four generations of fixes, and every one of them is somebody deciding how much to trust the system. There's a scar down the forward flank of the Null Margin that no paint covers. It's crazed and iridescent, the plating burned and burned again where a Fl…

Deep Access // File 04 — What Six Hundred Years Buys

// CLEARANCE Every raise you buy on this site costs more than the one before it. That's the prime curve. It runs your profile, and it runs the whole galaxy on the same arithmetic. You have a way out of a profile you regret. Sit the quiz again. It measures you from nothing, and ev…

The LitRPG subgenres, explained.

Cultivation, dungeon core, cozy, kingdom-building, VRMMO, system apocalypse. What each shelf actually promises, and which one fits what you already like. The genre has a naming problem, and it costs you a month. Someone tells you they love LitRPG. So you go find LitRPG. What you …