As a LitRPG author myself, I read a lot of work from the genre, and I think about it quite a bit too. One weakness of the genre is, sadly, women.
It’s actually uncommon for women to be actively treated poorly by popular authors. Most authors – especially the successful ones – are nice people who want to do right by all their fans. What is common is for women to simply be missing, with 80% of characters being male unless there’s an active reason for them to be female, or for women to be present only in background roles with little personality to them.
It’s a genre that tends to focus heavily on a single protagonist, so if most protagonists are male, the absence of women is somewhat understandable… but that doesn’t mean I’m not delighted when I find excellent portrayals of female characters!
To make this list, a book or series has to feature at least two memorable and interesting female characters. This is easiest for the titles with female protagonists, but several male-led books made the list as well. And MANY excellent titles didn’t make the list. This is a celebration of books which treated women well, not a criticism of other books.
It’s also not an exhaustive list. As much as I read, I still haven’t read everything. I’ll add more as I find them! Please let me know if you have any other suggestions. I’ll put them in to my to-read pile 😊
Titles on this list: Forever Fantasy Online Series, Last Chance Series, New Game Minus Series, Heroic Bunny Saga, Wandering Inn, Dungeon Crawler Carl, Beneath the Dragoneye Moons, Alpha Physics, This Trilogy is Broken, Haley and Nana’s Cozy System Armageddon, Tower of Somnus, Whispering Crystals
Forever Fantasy Online by Rachel Aaron
Complete, 3 books, on Kindle Unlimited
This one’s going out to all you MMO players in the crowd! The main character of this story is a woman who leads one of the top raiding guilds in the Virtual Reality MMO, Forever Fantasy Online. The name suggests a Final Fantasy clone, but as a former World of Warcraft player, the setting felt plenty familiar to me.
As “Roxxy” gathers her crew for another attempt on a difficult endgame boss, something very strange happens. Has the game suddenly become… real? She always loved being an intimidating stone titan in-game, but she’s not at all sure she wants to live her life that way, and the burdens of leadership have gotten much heavier now that the cost of a raid wipe seems permanent. Odd things seem to be going on with the game’s NPCs as well.
Should be good fun for any MMO fan, but may feel a little “too real” at times, as it doesn’t ignore the sexism prominent gaming women frequently face.
Last Chance Series by K.T. Hanna
Ongoing, two books available, on Kindle Unlimited
Dare, the main character, suffers a horrible and fatal accident, but is offered enrollment in the mysterious “Last Chance” system. The game-interface-like Last Chance system grants supernatural powers and will allow Dare’s life to continue, but Dare will have to perform strange and sometimes dangerous tasks at the system’s request.
Interestingly, at least in the first two books of the series, Dare is never explicitly gendered as male or female. I read Dare as female, but you could easily read the character as male or nonbinary. Stunningly, Hanna manages to avoid applying pronouns to Dare without making her writing horrifically awkward, a difficult feat.
New Game Minus Series by Sarah Lin
Complete, three books, on Kindle Unlimited
This one’s a strange one, but delightfully dark to me. The main character is male, a powerful lich named Bloodwraith who finds himself waking up in a living male human body and being welcomed as a hero. The series is a fun adventure story, but it’s also kind of a deconstruction of how ignoble the acts of “heroes” in videogames would be if the videogame’s world was a real and living place. How horrific would it be if someone could really go from hated to beloved by you by dropping off a thousand herbs, for example?
Trigger warnings: topics of rape, consent, and lingering trauma are dealt with. While Bloodwraith, Scourge of the Living, is not guilty of rape, one companion has extensive past trauma that is explored.
Heroic Bunny Saga by Richard J. Hansen
Ongoing, two books available, on Kindle Unlimited
The main character is a bunny dungeon monster who rises beyond her humble origins. The pacing is very slow, but enjoyable. I like the author’s immersion into a rabbity mindset (with the notable exception of not being reproduction-focused, which I also appreciated).
Wandering Inn by Pirateaba
Ongoing, 7 books out on eBook, more as free web serial, not on Kindle Unlimited
Do you like slice-of-life interspersed with edge-of-your-seat bouts of adventure and calamity? Do you get delighted by expansive worldbuilding and a large cast of quirky characters, each with their own stories that slot into the overarching plot? Do you get sad when you run out of words to read? This book may be for you.
It’s essentially a portal fantasy book, initially focusing on a young human from Earth who finds herself lost and alone in a dangerous magical world. She stumbles into a dilapidated abandoned inn and cleans up a corner to sleep in. When she falls asleep, she gains the class [Innkeeper]. While she levels, gains abilities, and grows in strength, her strength to change the world is largely social in nature.
The Antinium are my favorite fictional race.
Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman
Ongoing, 5 books available, on Kindle Unlimited
Ohh, this is a book about a man, right? It’s right in the name, right? Carl? Yeah, no. Carl is the viewpoint character, but his deuteragonist Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk steals the show. A prizewinning persian cat who belonged to Carl’s ex-girlfriend, Donut lucks into receiving sentience at the beginning of a catastrophic event that kills off the majority of earthlings and earth animals. The remainder are sent into a gamelike hellscape for the entertainment of the spectating aliens.
While it’s a comedic series, and Donut is a comic character, it’s clear as time goes on that she’s a rich character as well. The rest of the world features interesting women as well: a space fish who represents the people running the “game,” an elderly goatherd who rises to top-tier power, a tanky shapeshifter, and more.
Warnings: Sexual humor, crudeness. The game system acts like it has a foot fetish, and likes the feet of the main character, leading to… very creepy interactions.
Note for audiobook lovers! I have heard from a number of people that the audiobooks for this series are top notch.
Beneath the Dragoneye Moons by Selkie Myth
Ongoing, 7 books available as eBook, more as free web serial, not on Kindle Unlimited
The book opens with a human soul in a formless void being picked up by a capricious deity who erases much of their “problematic” Earth knowledge before reincarnating them on a second, gamelike world. The main character, Elaine, realizes after some time that she still remembers Earthly knowledge of things like anatomy and bacteria, which is a big deal when people are still talking about bodily humors! She is initially worried about sharing her knowledge and making her otherworldly knowledge obvious, but, following a traumatic event, makes an oath accepted by the world’s system which is very similar to the Hippocratic Oath that empowers and limits her.
She’s far from totally nonviolent, but healing is her focus, which is fun and unusual for a story.
Alpha Physics by Alex Kozlowski
Complete, 6 books, on Kindle Unlimited
A gamelike apocalypse has taken over the real world! People get abilities, monsters are everywhere, and our plucky hero is on a quest to reunite with family!
Okay, caveats, first off: this series has a male lead, and he spends most of the first book in a somewhat trippy orientation session with an artificial intelligence who communicates entirely in pictures. I’m repping it anyway, because a lot of the side characters are women, and generally not to provide any kind of romantic or sexual tension. There’s the berserker woman who craves personal strength, the respected city mayor, three separate and distinct mafia leaders, some of the alien shopkeepers… and several more. It’s like this story is just set in this crazy fantasy world where women just… exist! And do things! If you see a thing, a woman might be doing it!
This Trilogy is Broken by J.P. Valentine
Complete, 4 books, on Kindle Unlimited
This comedy “trilogy” is set in a world where everyone gets a Life Quest, which can range from knitting the coziest sweater ever known to defeating an evil beyond the might of mortal men. The protagonist, Eve, gets what ought to be a pathetically easy quest – to fetch a loaf of bread from a neighboring town – but for some reason, the quest has legendary difficulty. At first, this seems like a glitch or a mistake, but as mishaps accrue and Eve comes to terms with her breadless life, it’s clear that something more is going on.
Haley and Nana’s Cozy System Armageddon by MCA Hogarth
Complete, Kindle Unlimited
This series is a cozy YA take on a LitRPG apocalypse. The stakes always stay relatively low and the community comes together well. The title characters are adorable, but the series features plenty of other memorable ladies as well.
Tower of Somnus by Cale Plamann
Ongoing, Kindle Unlimited
Aliens think humanity sucks too much to join the space cool kids club, which is kind of fair because in the future this world is set in, corporations control the world and keep everyone in near-slavery. Humanity allowed into the Tower of Somnus, a sort of shared gamelike dream that grants powers in real life… but very few people have access, and if you die in Somnus, you lose access. Our protagonist lucks into access, makes some alien friends, and starts powering up, while using her daylight hours to run dangerous corporate espionage missions.
Very different and enjoyable, in spite of some apparent plot holes. (Why do the crime lords with access not spend the majority of their time in-game getting more of their flunkeys into Somnus? It seems doable, if irritating.)
Whispering Crystals by H.C. Mills
Complete, Kindle Unlimited
Woo, this series is a trip. The protagonist is swiftly whisked to an alternate plane of reality and is “lucky” enough to survive the initial transition. Of course, that’s only the start of her troubles. Good thing someone removed one of her eyes and smacked a crystal into the socket that a helpful guide can use to communicate with her, right?
Loads of interesting characters, in a series that isn’t afraid to change things up or take on difficult topics or have the MC not always be fully justified in her actions. She’s flawed, alright?
Whispering Crystals has characters wrestle with their own sexuality and homophobia in what felt like believable and touching ways to me… but I’m a straight woman. I’d be interested in the opinions of queer readers on this element.
Looking for more great women in the genre?
My own series, Apocalypse Parenting, features a female lead! Additionally, while I can’t personally vouch for them (yet!), the following are series readers have suggested:
Azarinth Healer, The Calamitous Bob, System Apocalypse: Australia, Power Series by Jay Boyce, Doll Dungeon, Salvos, Dungeon Crafting, Stork Tower, Valhalla Online, Seeds of Chaos, Metamorphosis Online, Stonehaven League, Somnia Online, Eternal Online, Fated to Fall, Cinnamon Bun, Stray Cat Strut, Electrified, A Jaded Life, A Dragon Idol’s Reincarnation
Azarinth is on amazon now so you can read it there or on audible. You should certainly read it. The MC ends up being one of the strongest characters I’ve ever seen and the fights are described well.
Phase Shift, by Kyle Johnson, has a male protagonist, but he quickly teams up with a woman who has a major presence in the series (and gets her own book).