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"I'm gonna brag," said Matt Dinniman at this year's Emerald City Comic Con 2026, "There are 15 spots on the New York Times Bestseller Monthly Audio list. My name is on 8 of those spots."

To be fair here, Dinniman has every reason to brag. His series, Dungeon Crawler Carl, is part of a global phenomenon that's sweeping the literary world - LitRPG, the fantasy subgenre that works elements of video game RPGs into a prose format. At ECCC '26, Dinniman joined fellow authors Tao Wong and Jim Zub at the Lit RPG OMG panel, where the veterans of fantasy joined fans to chat about where this new literary hurricane came from.

And perhaps even more importantly, where it was headed.

Asked about what lies in store for the LitRPG genre by the panel's impishly fetching host (me, friends and readers), Dinniman, Wong, and Zub had much to say.

"First off," the author said, "Trad [that is, traditional prose publishing] has finally noticed. Their first attempt at it was trying to get some of their authors to write it, and that didn't do so great."

"Because they didn't know what they were doing," said Zub.

"I think what's happening," continued Dinniman, "Is so many of my friends who have been working in the trenches for years and years and years are finally able to get the recognition they deserve. [LitRPG] is moving out of the Kindle Unlimited/Royal Road Series website into more and more bookstores. Five years ago, that was unheard of. [...] As a result, we're gonna see wider demographics becoming interested in the genre and passionately writing novels that knock it out of the park in ways we've never thought about 

"Think of gaming as a whole," said Zub, who has a pretty important role in modern fantasy as the guy who writes the Conan the Barbarian comics, "Critical Role is selling out Wembley stadium for people to watch people play table-top role-playing games! [...] There's this wonderful transformation; we're all more nerdy, we're all more integrated, we're all more vulnerable and excited and bringing our passion into this which is nuts."

Wong, whose 12-book progression fantasy series A Thousand Li is just about to get a rerelease from Ace Books, says that he, too, sees the future of LitRPG as being "more books in typical bookstores," but that the road to get them there won't always be a smooth one.

"There are probably going to be a lot more failures as they launch them," he said, "There's a literal flood coming in."

"Thats the thing," said Zub, "Now that you've proven it can sell, you're just going to see a glut."

"Theres gonna be some failures out there," concluded Wong, "But along with that, I think we're gonna find some really interesting stuff that I wouldn't write, that Matt wouldn't write, that Jim wouldn't write. But that will really change how the genre looks at itself."

Dungeon Crawler Carl, A Thousand Li, and the Conan the Barbarian comics are available now.

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Can't get enough? Here is:

• How to watch the ECCC 2026 Main Stage livestream for free!
• Popverse's daily ECCC 2026 newsletter
• Follow along to the official DC Comics: What's Next panel if you're a member
• Where to find Popverse at Emerald City Comic Con 2026!
• The ECCC Artist Alley creators we're most excited for (and how to commission them to draw something for you!)
• The ECCC Exhibitor booths we're going to first
• The ECCC panels we're most excited for