All Updates
Every story, chapter, dispatch, and dossier — in order of release.
Operative Error -Chapter 1
Chapter One Fifteen months in, I'd gotten good at not reading the room. For a man who used to do it for a living, that took more discipline than the living ever had. Holdfast gave me the practice. Out here at the edge, where the Integration thinned to a rumor and everyone's overl…
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…
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…
Fieldwork
Emil Lindqvist has catalogued life on six worlds, and in twenty-four years the Integration has never once named him. Then the ground stands up under his survey team's guard, and the biologist runs at the swarm.
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 …
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…
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 Playthrough
This is Hard Lock. It's a tabletop session recorded in the Integration Era, a science fiction setting where an alien system switched itself on across human space about a hundred years ago and started grading people. Everybody gets an overlay in their mind's eye, with six stats on…
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…
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…
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…
Engagement Criteria - Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Thirteen Nev's back was against the tree as she slid down into a squat, hugging her knees. Her eyes stayed on me, but her shaking shoulders felt like betrayal. She was the strong one, the stoic. I heard Mom move behind me and waved my hand at her. "I'll handle this, Mothe…
Engagement Criteria - Chapter Twelve
Chapter Twelve "I turned one down," Harko said, ten steps later, his footfalls crunching on loose stone. "What?" He kept his eyes on the walkway. "I was offered a designation. Analyst. I declined it." "Why? Am I the only one who wanted a designation? I mean, obviously Nev took on…
Three Hundred Years Before Anyone Had a Stat Line
Human space reached five hundred light-years on jump drive and paper charts, with no way to send a word faster than a ship. This is the map of it. For three centuries the fastest way to send a message was to hand it to a captain. A death in the family, a cancelled contract, a col…
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 …
Books Like Silo
Books like Silo: what to read now that season three is over Ten episodes, one finale, and season four is the last one. Three novels that do what Silo does, sorted by which part of it kept you watching. Season three of Silo wrapped on September 4, which leaves everyone in the same…
She Spent Fourteen Years Not Looking
Meet Senna, who inherited a ship, a debt, and an alien overlay she decided she could go around. The Null Margin came to Senna from her mother, best asset and worst debt in the same envelope, and it still runs. Barely, and with the mechanical personality of a grudge. She has been …