Ranking things is always difficult, and I’ll be the first to admit that I can enjoy a trashy novel as easily as I can enjoy a literary masterpiece. They scratch different itches. This list is less about how good a book is, and more about how well it scratches it’s particular niche’s itch for me - be it OP MC shenanigans, time-loop fuckery, or numbers-go-up progression (or otherwise).
A note about the tiers:
Genre Defining: Books which I consider to have had an outsized impact on PF / LitRPG as a whole, and which I very much enjoyed. (Note: other than DCC I reserve this for finished series.)
Boundary Pushing: Innovative works, or ones that did a particular thing very well in my opinion.
Bread & Butter: These are the staples of their genre, the things we spend the most time reading. They may not be the best, but they certainly aren’t bad. Without them, the genre would be a much more desolate landscape. I enjoyed each of these, but didn’t find them to be as impactful as the above tiers.
Guilty Pleasures: Flawed works that I enjoy despite some issue with them (I tend to categorize “Endless” series like this by default).
Fizzled Out (DNF'ed series): This category is for series I gave up on, but usually only after not really getting into multiple books in a row. In most cases, I really enjoyed early books but lost interest in the series over time for various reasons. I have no regrets in buying and reading as far as I got, but just didn’t feel a need to continue.
Not My Thing (DNF’ed book 1): Books I’m clearly not the target audience for. I gave these a shot, but for whatever reason couldn’t get into them.
TBR: Books on my to-read list that I haven’t gotten to yet. This list expands faster than I can read them. :P
I wrote this: My book! I hope to expand this list soon. :P
Regarding series selection:
This list is populated based on books I’ve read, and those I plan to. I am exclusively an audiobook listener, so everything other than the TBR list (and my own book, currently) is available on audio. A few entries on the TBR list are there because I’m waiting for an audiobook to be released. I have a very wide range of tastes, but I don’t enjoy Grimdark or HaremLit, so you won’t find anything from those subgenre’s on this list.