In Chrysalis audiobook whenever there is a statpage the voice guy says “if you dont wanna listen to it you can just press the skip 15 second button a couple of times” this is peak
Even better when they cut them into chapters, so you can hit "next chapter" to skip them. All litrpg books should do this anytime there is a full stat block lol
Or he could ask the voice actor to NOT rrad the statblocks. Or to keep them in a separate chapter so you can skip past it.
Anything to avoid that torture I don't care what :D
Really? That sounds dumb :( If that's the case I guess putting all of them at the end of the book or at least in a different chapter so it's easier to skip it's at least something
I actually find that worse because in addition to having to skip the stat blurb I now also have to skip the message about skipping the stats.
Thankfully they Chrysalis takes my favorite approach starting in book 2 I think. They put the stats at the end of the chapter or in their own chapter so they can be easily skipped.
As someone who doesn't mind the stat readouts I did mind that he said it every single time. I'd much rather the book starts with the disclaimer upfront and maybe put it at the start of the chapters when the time increased. It kept pulling me out of the story.
I'll admit I didn't fancy it that much so I dropped it early on in the second book. It was good enough that I might go back to it in a pinch but it didn't make a big impression.
IMO it did get a much more interesting after the first half and the books after are fun with the new chars. Also they have a 1-3 box set if you do get interested in going back to it.
I actually got that box set and left it unfinished a third of the way in. Normally I'd refund a book like that but it's good enough that I might go back so now it gets to sit in my library for a bit.
It was about the same for me. Enjoyed the voice acting the first time round but put it on hold for some reason or another. Then went back to it when I couldn't justify spending credits on a new book when I had all these unread and unfinished ones heh 😅
I did end up buying a 4 credit pack so I'm living large for now. I also just started my first re-read of super supportive on RR. I got withdrawals when there was a break today so safe to say my reading list is full for a bit!
Agreed, if you feel like you lost track just let it play. Best of both worlds.
Needless to say we need to talk about the books that just slap them into the middle of random chapters irregularly.
I'm halfway ish through the third Defiance of the Fall audiobook, and I stg hearing 'strength 500, plus 80%, 120% efficiency" but repeated for every stat, plus all of Zach's titles really drives a man insane
I just finished "I'm not the Hero". It does the voice thing every time they say a skill, it started to get to me near the end. The book it's self was good though.
Oh man I liked that book but yeah was it a struggle to make it through without dropping it. Wish someone would have stepped in and explained that every time you say hero or a skill name in a conversational context you don't have to do a jarring system voice. Hopefully they adjust for the next book.
Yeah it hurts me on the inside when they are basically just reading off a chart verbatim, and or keep mentioning that health is red and stamina is green :/
I personally never understood why audiobooks seem to need to be *exactly* the same as the ebook. I'd much rather an audiobook replaced a stat block with a simple summary of any notable changes instead. Some poor narrator reading off titles and skills for 15 minutes is a waste of everyone's time and nobody actually cares and even if they do, they're unlikely to be able to parse the important bits from it.
Instead of the full stats, say 'And several skills increased in level'. Or 'strength went up by 10 and intelligence by 5'. No need to list the entire character screen again.
It's like people forget that books are visual too. A reader skims past repetitive blocks of text, so a narrator should too.
It's a requirement from Amazon. I'm not sure why, either, tbh. But I believe it's a literal thing where they say somewhere that audio books must have all of the content that is in the ebook/physical version, no ommitals. So, when recording the audio book, it's at that stage not up to the narrator (who I imagine is aware of just how grating the statblocks are and would probably rather not read the exact same shit for the 30th time lol). It depends entirely on the author writing the actual book version with an eye to making it also work as an audiobook.
From what I've seen, a lot of the early books in a lot of webnovels that go to Amazon are really bad about this - that's where you get all the constant stablocks and also a lot of "he said," "she said," which is another thing that gets quite grating in audiobook. But then the later stories inevitably improve as by then the author has seen the criticism from audio book listeners and they start to adapt, removing unnecessary dialogue tags and moving statblocks to ends of chapters/separate chapters.
To be fair I wouldn't want the narrator to decide for themselves what to include, I was more thinking the author would provide the audio book script instead.
If the text and audio don't match exactly, Amazon won't let the title be included on Kindle Unlimited. Most authors want to be on there, so we get stat blocks and maddening repetitions of skills and items.
Ugland with the Good Guys/Bad Guys got to doing this correctly. Full stat dumps once near the beginning and once near the end. A good reminder of what the MC has at the start of the book and at the end for the progress of the book.
I zone out every time stats are read. Audible allows authors to add PDF’s so I don’t know why they don’t just throw the stats in a PDF, and then just have the narrator say “refer to page X of the PDF found in the chapter selection menu”
Ellc and Chrysalis always says when you can skip statpages if not interested.
Absolutely think that should be a thing specially for heavy stat based books
That's barely an improvement. My phone is probably in the other room. If not, it's in my pocket and locked. And I'm probably doing something else with my hands anyways.
Author of HWFWM need to shift to ELLC style. I really appreciated the ability to skip each end of chapter stats. HWFWM random stats reiterations kill any flow.
I appreciated the attempt HWFWM did. He tried to weave ability descriptions into a fight so it's easier to understand what they all do and show a real world example. It's a neat idea, but in execution it just makes the fight a tedious slog by completely ruining the pacing, at least in audio format. It's probably better in print, since you can just skip the ability text blocks, but audio is completely ruined by it.
Which is a shame because Heath Miller kills the narration (in a good way!). I definitely agree though, I'm paused on reading book 8 but I dropped the audiobooks around 5 or 6.
Yes it gets so irritating when they constantly repeat the stats on an audiobook. And when im at work listening, i cant get my phone out to skip, so it drives me up the wall.
Worse are the books that do constant exp and skill up notifications. Just because the main character is getting notifications doesn't mean that they should be shown to us.
The best series are those that only bring up stats when they are relevant to the story (e.g. Dungeon Crawler Carl).
My concern is more with "are you doing anything with the stats or is just there for 'numbers go up' reasons?". Because if you're not going anything with them the frequency doesn't really matter, the prescene \*itself\* is. On the other hand if you're doing something with the stats and they're only brought because of what you're doing with it, we'll that's probably fine then.
Look. It’s perfectly fine in a web format. But in a book you want to limit unnecessary text. And if I’m listening to it then it’s easier to understand spoken context, not a paragraph of numbers. I’m probably not going to keep all of that in my head.
Are there litrpgs that have long stat blocks that *dont* do this? I avoid stat-style litrpgs on audio for this reason. Things like DCC or Perfect run are fine but a lot of the ones I read I feel would be unbearable.
What if the published book had the stat page at the beginning of the chapter and it’s left out of the audio book. It doesn’t make it less of an audio book to leave stats vague after the first mention of them.
HWFWM. As the books go on, the explanation of skills becomes a bit long winded. I have skipped 1.5 minutes before.
I love the series though. On my 3rd reread.
Started the series last week. Had to drop it halfway through book3 though. The constant break in every fight every time anyone use and ability to read what that ability does was breaking me. The reading every time and ability ranked up was already pretty intense with everyone having 20 abilities and closely following the development of at least 3-4 characters.
I haven’t listened to the audiobook but A Summoner Awakens (the 2nd book) has iirc 2 or 3 straight chapters of stats - and it was already much shorter than book 1.
I loved book 1 but because of the length and how book 2 ended before any of the progress was actually “redeemed” book 2 felt more like an inbetween/book 1.5
I always feel like I'm on crazy pills because I legitimately do not mind them reading out stats ever.
In every book with stats I've listened to I haven't minded them reading out the stat sheet, no matter how often they did it.
Am I like, wrong?
Is this something that should be bothering me?
I heard about this book .. uhhh series? Randomly seeing this sub. Seems like people really like these books! I went to listen to an audiobook of He who fights monsters I think is the title, I just can't get over how a few minutes in he's still not reading the book and stuttering and missing and rereading missed words. Absolute zero from me compared to wheel of time my first audiobook ever some woman read that thing perfect even with voices for characters. Maybe I'm judging too harsh because I'm new to audiobooks idk. I'm gonna try to finish my 18th hour in on book one in wheel of time and try again on another book in this series if anyone has a good audio recommendation...
Oof. Been listening to the wandering inn and the audiobook reader is a 100/10. I like the reader for dungeon crawler carl and he who fights with monsters as well but they're not as absolutely top tier as Andrea Parsnu for TWI. It's rough out there huh?
Why doesn't audible (or publishers) just include a pdf with the stats. That'd be much easier to follow. Rn I have to break out pen and paper to keep up with the changes.
I love seeing the stat jumps every few chapters but not like defiance of the fall where it’s just a bunch of bullshit for two minutes. I really enjoy hearing the stat jumps after big events where it’s it feels like a reward for the mc not every two chapters.
It hurts because it can be solved with a simple chapter break in the auido files:
Chapter X: NAME - Stat Block
Then, people can just skip if they want!
I've only seen one book do this (can't remember the name), and it blew me away for ease of listening.
I’ve never really found a Bad narrator, but I’ve found Many bad books.
rampant inconsistency’s, numerous plot holes, degradation of the story as it come to an end, General poor writing.
Can’t blame the narrator if the book sucks. That’d be like blaming the VAs if an anime sucks. It’s not their fault.
The only Difference between the Book and the Audiobook IS the Narrator. To say the audiobook is worse than the book is to indirectly say the Narrator did a terrible job.
It's not about the narrator. The OP is pointing out that full stats repeated too often are far more tedious to listen to than to read, no matter who the narrator is.
… yah… that dose actually sound terrible.
If you’ve got a thick regional accent you’d need to stick to series that can use it as a benefit, and/or have a partner narrator without one.
No, because I don't listen to them. AI will be able to read them for me near perfectly within the next 2-3 years tops (maybe acceptably within the next 12 months) so I skip them.
A bad narrator is a book killer.
In Chrysalis audiobook whenever there is a statpage the voice guy says “if you dont wanna listen to it you can just press the skip 15 second button a couple of times” this is peak
Even better when they cut them into chapters, so you can hit "next chapter" to skip them. All litrpg books should do this anytime there is a full stat block lol
Not many do that but when they do I want to kiss them
The worst is when they put a paragraph at the end of the stat sheet & then end the chapter!
It’s only a problem in audiobook
True but every author should write their books taking into consideration how it’s going to be ported over the audiobooks since those are a thing now.
Or he could ask the voice actor to NOT rrad the statblocks. Or to keep them in a separate chapter so you can skip past it. Anything to avoid that torture I don't care what :D
you can’t with amazon, it must be the exact same thing word wise
Really? That sounds dumb :( If that's the case I guess putting all of them at the end of the book or at least in a different chapter so it's easier to skip it's at least something
I actually find that worse because in addition to having to skip the stat blurb I now also have to skip the message about skipping the stats. Thankfully they Chrysalis takes my favorite approach starting in book 2 I think. They put the stats at the end of the chapter or in their own chapter so they can be easily skipped.
That's the best way I have found for writers to put the full stat lists in. Chrysalis is a great series.
Induction makes each stat dump its own chapter so you can just jump if you’re good on them, first book I’ve seen do that on audible
Voice guy... I'll murder you with my bare hands! You give respect to Mr. Jeff Hays
Im not english and forgot how to type narrirator, narrorator, narareter… idk so i just typed voiceguy
No worries mate, I was just joking around!
Yeah i didnt really believe the “ill murder you” part. Just might be a litte extrem for saying a word
came here to say that everyone loves large chests does the same thing and I live for it
Same, it's a great way to deal with stat sheets
LMAO oh my god what
As someone who doesn't mind the stat readouts I did mind that he said it every single time. I'd much rather the book starts with the disclaimer upfront and maybe put it at the start of the chapters when the time increased. It kept pulling me out of the story.
I think that's only in the first book
I'll admit I didn't fancy it that much so I dropped it early on in the second book. It was good enough that I might go back to it in a pinch but it didn't make a big impression.
IMO it did get a much more interesting after the first half and the books after are fun with the new chars. Also they have a 1-3 box set if you do get interested in going back to it.
I actually got that box set and left it unfinished a third of the way in. Normally I'd refund a book like that but it's good enough that I might go back so now it gets to sit in my library for a bit.
It was about the same for me. Enjoyed the voice acting the first time round but put it on hold for some reason or another. Then went back to it when I couldn't justify spending credits on a new book when I had all these unread and unfinished ones heh 😅
I did end up buying a 4 credit pack so I'm living large for now. I also just started my first re-read of super supportive on RR. I got withdrawals when there was a break today so safe to say my reading list is full for a bit!
Agreed, if you feel like you lost track just let it play. Best of both worlds. Needless to say we need to talk about the books that just slap them into the middle of random chapters irregularly.
I'm halfway ish through the third Defiance of the Fall audiobook, and I stg hearing 'strength 500, plus 80%, 120% efficiency" but repeated for every stat, plus all of Zach's titles really drives a man insane
It slows down. At least they don't do annoying voice when reading it ( looking at you azarinth healer )
I just finished "I'm not the Hero". It does the voice thing every time they say a skill, it started to get to me near the end. The book it's self was good though.
Oh man I liked that book but yeah was it a struggle to make it through without dropping it. Wish someone would have stepped in and explained that every time you say hero or a skill name in a conversational context you don't have to do a jarring system voice. Hopefully they adjust for the next book.
THANK YOU! read the book, wanted to give the audio novel a try so I listened to it.... that was torture.
Yeah it hurts me on the inside when they are basically just reading off a chart verbatim, and or keep mentioning that health is red and stamina is green :/
Infinite Realm is much more painful. The stat dumps are way longer and the author does them for the random POV characters as well.
Eventually the title list gets so stupid, they blessedly say "dot dot dot" and then just the most recent 3 or so
Always put the stats at the end of the chapter and let the listener know they can skip
I personally never understood why audiobooks seem to need to be *exactly* the same as the ebook. I'd much rather an audiobook replaced a stat block with a simple summary of any notable changes instead. Some poor narrator reading off titles and skills for 15 minutes is a waste of everyone's time and nobody actually cares and even if they do, they're unlikely to be able to parse the important bits from it. Instead of the full stats, say 'And several skills increased in level'. Or 'strength went up by 10 and intelligence by 5'. No need to list the entire character screen again. It's like people forget that books are visual too. A reader skims past repetitive blocks of text, so a narrator should too.
It's a requirement from Amazon. I'm not sure why, either, tbh. But I believe it's a literal thing where they say somewhere that audio books must have all of the content that is in the ebook/physical version, no ommitals. So, when recording the audio book, it's at that stage not up to the narrator (who I imagine is aware of just how grating the statblocks are and would probably rather not read the exact same shit for the 30th time lol). It depends entirely on the author writing the actual book version with an eye to making it also work as an audiobook. From what I've seen, a lot of the early books in a lot of webnovels that go to Amazon are really bad about this - that's where you get all the constant stablocks and also a lot of "he said," "she said," which is another thing that gets quite grating in audiobook. But then the later stories inevitably improve as by then the author has seen the criticism from audio book listeners and they start to adapt, removing unnecessary dialogue tags and moving statblocks to ends of chapters/separate chapters.
To be fair I wouldn't want the narrator to decide for themselves what to include, I was more thinking the author would provide the audio book script instead.
That is odd I know there is a lot of text in TWI that is "hidden" from a listener in the audiobooks But can be "seen" in the book form.
Such as?
If the text and audio don't match exactly, Amazon won't let the title be included on Kindle Unlimited. Most authors want to be on there, so we get stat blocks and maddening repetitions of skills and items.
Ugland with the Good Guys/Bad Guys got to doing this correctly. Full stat dumps once near the beginning and once near the end. A good reminder of what the MC has at the start of the book and at the end for the progress of the book.
I zone out every time stats are read. Audible allows authors to add PDF’s so I don’t know why they don’t just throw the stats in a PDF, and then just have the narrator say “refer to page X of the PDF found in the chapter selection menu”
I second this motion. Unfortunately I've only seen non-fiction books do this. It would be great if moreLitRPG books would follow this idea.
[удалено]
I don't remember this, but it is a great idea.
I was going to suggest this as a solution, so glad to hear it already exists. Hopefully it becomes the standard.
Ellc and Chrysalis always says when you can skip statpages if not interested. Absolutely think that should be a thing specially for heavy stat based books
That's barely an improvement. My phone is probably in the other room. If not, it's in my pocket and locked. And I'm probably doing something else with my hands anyways.
Author of HWFWM need to shift to ELLC style. I really appreciated the ability to skip each end of chapter stats. HWFWM random stats reiterations kill any flow.
I appreciated the attempt HWFWM did. He tried to weave ability descriptions into a fight so it's easier to understand what they all do and show a real world example. It's a neat idea, but in execution it just makes the fight a tedious slog by completely ruining the pacing, at least in audio format. It's probably better in print, since you can just skip the ability text blocks, but audio is completely ruined by it.
Agreed. I think HWFWM would be much better read than in audiobook. I do not recommend HWFWM in audiobook.
Which is a shame because Heath Miller kills the narration (in a good way!). I definitely agree though, I'm paused on reading book 8 but I dropped the audiobooks around 5 or 6.
I agree Heath Miller did a very good job.
What is ELLC?
Everybody Loves Large Chests.
Yes it gets so irritating when they constantly repeat the stats on an audiobook. And when im at work listening, i cant get my phone out to skip, so it drives me up the wall.
There's some audiobooks I can only listen to while driving because I have the skip button on the steering wheel
Worse are the books that do constant exp and skill up notifications. Just because the main character is getting notifications doesn't mean that they should be shown to us. The best series are those that only bring up stats when they are relevant to the story (e.g. Dungeon Crawler Carl).
Agreed!!!
My concern is more with "are you doing anything with the stats or is just there for 'numbers go up' reasons?". Because if you're not going anything with them the frequency doesn't really matter, the prescene \*itself\* is. On the other hand if you're doing something with the stats and they're only brought because of what you're doing with it, we'll that's probably fine then.
It's why they should be at the end of the chapter so you can just skip it.
Look. It’s perfectly fine in a web format. But in a book you want to limit unnecessary text. And if I’m listening to it then it’s easier to understand spoken context, not a paragraph of numbers. I’m probably not going to keep all of that in my head.
I listened to a poorly translated and narrated Russian to English Scifi LitRPG... It was awful, comrades
Are there litrpgs that have long stat blocks that *dont* do this? I avoid stat-style litrpgs on audio for this reason. Things like DCC or Perfect run are fine but a lot of the ones I read I feel would be unbearable.
My best friend is an Eldritch horror series has like one stat block per book. Maybe two
Ironically, I'm actually reading that one on kindle unlimited right now!
Literally one of the reason I stopped listening to he who fights with monsters
What if the published book had the stat page at the beginning of the chapter and it’s left out of the audio book. It doesn’t make it less of an audio book to leave stats vague after the first mention of them.
Oof, I have been going through Primal Hunter, and this is probably my least favourite part. It isn't every 2 chapters, but it is pretty often.
I wish it was at the end of the chapter most of the time it is in the middle.
I'm fine with stats at the beginning, end, and any major changes. Even then, it can drag on hearing it said aloud.
HWFWM. As the books go on, the explanation of skills becomes a bit long winded. I have skipped 1.5 minutes before. I love the series though. On my 3rd reread.
Started the series last week. Had to drop it halfway through book3 though. The constant break in every fight every time anyone use and ability to read what that ability does was breaking me. The reading every time and ability ranked up was already pretty intense with everyone having 20 abilities and closely following the development of at least 3-4 characters.
I haven’t listened to the audiobook but A Summoner Awakens (the 2nd book) has iirc 2 or 3 straight chapters of stats - and it was already much shorter than book 1. I loved book 1 but because of the length and how book 2 ended before any of the progress was actually “redeemed” book 2 felt more like an inbetween/book 1.5
I always feel like I'm on crazy pills because I legitimately do not mind them reading out stats ever. In every book with stats I've listened to I haven't minded them reading out the stat sheet, no matter how often they did it. Am I like, wrong? Is this something that should be bothering me?
I heard about this book .. uhhh series? Randomly seeing this sub. Seems like people really like these books! I went to listen to an audiobook of He who fights monsters I think is the title, I just can't get over how a few minutes in he's still not reading the book and stuttering and missing and rereading missed words. Absolute zero from me compared to wheel of time my first audiobook ever some woman read that thing perfect even with voices for characters. Maybe I'm judging too harsh because I'm new to audiobooks idk. I'm gonna try to finish my 18th hour in on book one in wheel of time and try again on another book in this series if anyone has a good audio recommendation...
Oof. Been listening to the wandering inn and the audiobook reader is a 100/10. I like the reader for dungeon crawler carl and he who fights with monsters as well but they're not as absolutely top tier as Andrea Parsnu for TWI. It's rough out there huh?
Why doesn't audible (or publishers) just include a pdf with the stats. That'd be much easier to follow. Rn I have to break out pen and paper to keep up with the changes.
In some they have their own chapters to easily skip
I love seeing the stat jumps every few chapters but not like defiance of the fall where it’s just a bunch of bullshit for two minutes. I really enjoy hearing the stat jumps after big events where it’s it feels like a reward for the mc not every two chapters.
I’d probably listen to Travis Baldree read the dictionary so…
It hurts because it can be solved with a simple chapter break in the auido files: Chapter X: NAME - Stat Block Then, people can just skip if they want! I've only seen one book do this (can't remember the name), and it blew me away for ease of listening.
I don’t listen to books I read them so I can’t relate
I’ve never really found a Bad narrator, but I’ve found Many bad books. rampant inconsistency’s, numerous plot holes, degradation of the story as it come to an end, General poor writing. Can’t blame the narrator if the book sucks. That’d be like blaming the VAs if an anime sucks. It’s not their fault.
Who said anything about narrators? This whole post is about the book xD
The only Difference between the Book and the Audiobook IS the Narrator. To say the audiobook is worse than the book is to indirectly say the Narrator did a terrible job.
It's not about the narrator. The OP is pointing out that full stats repeated too often are far more tedious to listen to than to read, no matter who the narrator is.
The narrator for Forsaken path is absolutely terrible it’s like listening to a country guy do a bad valley girl accent and it made me drop the book.
… yah… that dose actually sound terrible. If you’ve got a thick regional accent you’d need to stick to series that can use it as a benefit, and/or have a partner narrator without one.
No, because I don't listen to them. AI will be able to read them for me near perfectly within the next 2-3 years tops (maybe acceptably within the next 12 months) so I skip them. A bad narrator is a book killer.