Cozy LitRPG: What It Is, and Why It’s Epic

13 minutes ago

6 min read

If you're a newsletter subscriber or follow me on the socials, you might have seen that I’ve been tossing around the phrase “cozy LitRPG” like everyone knows what it means. Then one of you (because you’re epic) said in my survey, “Don’t really know what that means.”

Fair. Totally fair. I, like many authors, can be guilty of being so blinded by the book biz that we forget that not everyone lives, eats, and sleeps this stuff.

So let’s fix that. Grab a coffee, a tea, or whatever’s in that mug you don’t want to talk about. This will be as pain-free as possible. Which, as you’ll see, is kind of the point.

First up: what the heck is a “cozy” book?

Picture your favorite blanket, or sitting by a campfire, or a beach nap. Now picture that as a story.

That’s cozy fiction.

It’s the book you grab when the world is on fire and you’d like, just for a few hours, for it not to be. Since we can’t do anything about the level of stupid in the world, we might as well go somewhere in our minds where things aren’t falling apart, right? Cozy stories are about low stakes and big heart. Nobody’s trying to blow up the planet. The trouble, when it shows up, is human-sized: Can she get the bakery open before winter? Will the town accept the new guy? Will this pack of misfits ever figure out they’re a family? Think what A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms did to the Game of Thrones world. Picture your favorite episode of Ted Lasso. That’s cozy!

Cozy mysteries have been solving murders over tea for decades, but cozy fantasy exploded when an orc hung up her sword and opened a coffee shop in Travis Baldree’s Legends & Lattes. Turns out a lot of us were tired of the world decaying or burning in every book. Who knew?

Cozy books give you:

Found family
Comfort, warmth, and a sense of home
Characters building something instead of destroying something
Humor that makes you snort in public
A world you’d actually want to live in

It’s the literary equivalent of a deep breath. Like, no joke. I can’t tell you how often Ted Steel’s Player Manager made me ugly snort or find the ability to breathe again.

Okay, now what’s a LitRPG?

This one’s a little nerdier (it’s okay for me to say that; I’m a nerd about a LOT of things. Hell, I keep STATS when I play EA FC (aka FIFA, on my PS5), so stick with me.

LitRPG stands for “Literary Role-Playing Game.” These are stories where the world runs on game mechanics. Characters have stats. They level up. They earn skills, chase objectives, and get little system notifications popping into their vision (and often with attitude) to tell them they’ve done something awesome (or something incredibly stupid).

You know that rush when you finally hit the next level in a video game? LitRPG puts that feeling on the page. You watch characters grow, sometimes in actual numbers. STRENGTH +2. NEW SKILL UNLOCKED. ACHIEVEMENT EARNED: SURVIVED SOMETHING YOU ABSOLUTELY SHOULD NOT HAVE BECAUSE YOU WERE TOO DUMB TO KNOW BETTER THAN TO TRY IT IN THE FIRST PLACE.

At this point, everyone knows a big-hearted dude named Matt Dinniman and his Dungeon Crawler Carl series. I did a recent poll of my newsletter subscribers and it landed as the favorite LitRPG series (hardly a surprise). What was (maybe, maybe not) was that a bunch of you named my Brad the Impaler series as another fave—which, I’m not gonna lie, made my whole week even if it was a distant, diiiiiistant second-place. More on Brad in a bit. So plenty of you already know the joy of watching someone claw their way up the leaderboard while being roasted by a sentient game show.

So what happens when you smash them together?

Magic. Sometimes literal (on the page) magic. You get what I mean.

Cozy LitRPG takes the satisfying progression of a LitRPG (the leveling, the stats, the “ooh, what does that do?” moments) and drops it into a warm, low-stakes world. Instead of leveling up by slaughtering a thousand hemo-goblins (yes, they're a race of creatures Brad and Slash must battle against, & they're vampiric, which makes their name genius, if I do say so myself), your hero levels up by:

Running an inn, a farm, a shop, or a business
Crafting, building, and fixing things
Making friends and earning trust
Turning a struggling community into something special

You still get the dopamine hit of progression. You still get the stats and the snarky system messages. But the stakes are personal, the world is warm, and nobody’s getting disemboweled. (I know. I’m as surprised as you are that I actually enjoy this stuff.) Writing my upcoming Mat Masters series was the most fun I had writing any of my (including those books) 37 novels! I mean it. Even more fun than I had bringing my real-world Chihuahua to life on the pages of Brad the Impaler.

If you want to dip a toe in before my new series arrives, I invite you in. I’d offer you a drink, but I’m not sure if you’re of legal drinking age. Instead, how about I give you a few great places to start:

Beware of Chicken by Casualfarmer: A man reincarnated into a world of ultra-powerful martial artists decides he’d really rather just be a farmer. His chickens have other ideas.
Heretical Fishing by Haylock Jobson: A guy who just wants to fish. That’s it. That’s the pitch. And somehow it’s wildly addictive.
The Wandering Inn by pirateaba: A young woman ends up running an inn in a fantasy world with a game-like class system. Fair warning: it’s long. Like, “bring snacks for a decade” long.
Reborn As A Dark Lord by Timothy Long: A man's day couldn't get any worse. Fired from his corporate day-job, almost dying of a heart attack, he finds himself going from scourge of the realm to a beloved tavern owner.
Beers & Beards by JollyJupiter: A man is trapped in a fantasy world far from home, stuck underground and inside the body of a smelly dwarf with fantastic facial hair. What better time to open a tavern?

Which brings me to The Booker...

Okay. This is the part where I get giddy.

The Booker is Book 1 of my new series, Mat Masters: A Wrestling Dynasty. And yes, it’s a cozy LitRPG about professional wrestling. Stay with me--yes, even you "non-sportsball" people.

Matt Anderson spent years in the ring and has the bad knees and empty trophy case to prove it. When a botched move ends his wrestling career, it doesn’t hand him a sword or a dungeon. It hands him objectives. Find wrestlers. Grow the fanbase. Keep the lights on. Level up. Build a promotion that'll rival the big time companies.

In wrestling, the “booker” is the person behind the curtain who decides who wins, who loses, and what story gets told. Matt’s about to become one, whether his bank account likes it or not.

What follows is a story about a guy who builds a dream, one folding chair, one rented ring, and one sold ticket at a time. Every chapter shows you exactly where Matt stands: his fan count, his bank balance, his roster, and his current objective. You’ll sweat every dollar right alongside him. You'll stress along with him and his found family as they try to spread word about the newest indie promotion to open its doors. And you’ll cheer like an idiot when they overcome impossible odds.

But the real heart of the book is the people. The wrestlers Matt brings in. The community that rallies around a scrappy little promotion. The found family that forms in sweaty gyms and cramped locker rooms. Sure, there’s a rival promoter who’d love to see Matt fail, and a loan shark lurking in the shadows, because what’s a good story without somebody to boo? This is a story about building something together.

Don’t worry. It’s still me. The snark is fully intact. I just traded the blood spatter for body slams.

And here’s the best part: the first two books are already finished. No waiting years between installments. When you fall in love with this crew (and you will), there’s more ready to go.

So when can you get it?

I’m launching The Booker on Kickstarter in early 2027. That means special editions, backer rewards, and the chance to be part of this thing from the very first bell. Join my epic newletter community so you don’t miss launch day.

And if you need a LitRPG fix right now...

Remember Brad? One gamer, one Vampire King, and one Chihuahua with a mouth that’d make a sailor blush. What could go wrong? My Brad the Impaler series, published by Aethon Books, is available now. If you haven’t read it yet, it’s a great way to get your LitRPG legs under you before The Booker hits. And if you have read it, thank you. Seriously. You’re a big reason I had the guts to write Mat Masters in the first place.