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  • Manufacturing Magic: A LitRPG Adventure

  • Jeff the Game Master, Book 1
  • By: Jaime Castle, Troy Osgood
  • Narrated by: Nick Podehl
  • Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
  • 4.0 out of 5 stars (46 ratings)
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Manufacturing Magic: A LitRPG Adventure cover art

Manufacturing Magic: A LitRPG Adventure

By: Jaime Castle, Troy Osgood
Narrated by: Nick Podehl
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Summary

Ten million active players. One Game Master.

Infinite Worlds is the most popular VRMMORPG on the market. Its maps are so vast, developer Hard Rock Data utilizes a network of highly advanced artificial intelligences to control it. But it’s not without problems.

That’s why Game Masters like Jeff Driscoll have jobs. The downside? He’s not allowed to play the game. Something about conflicts of interest and favoritism.

His very boring and tedious job is to help players deal with the occasional bug that slips through the cracks and ensure they enjoy their time playing enough to give a five-star rating. It’s a gig. It pays the bills.

However, when the AIs unexpectedly issue a rogue patch, the game becomes a buggy mess, and Jeff’s role radically changes. He finds himself as the only Game Master around, dealing with more problems than he can handle. It’s up to Jeff to return Infinite Worlds to normalcy...but will the AIs let him?

Manufacturing Magic is a unique spin on the LitRPG genre, not just providing the perspective of the players but also of one of those mystical, magical, all-powerful GMs we all dream of being. Perfect for fans of Luke Chmilenko, Dakota Krout, and Shemer Kuznits. 

©2021 Aethon Books LLC (P)2021 Podium Audio

What listeners say about Manufacturing Magic: A LitRPG Adventure

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

A good pickup

The performance is amazing, and the story has some nice points to it, as a video game programmer I like some of the concepts embodied in it, and how characters talk about game design concepts.

The "Code Magic" as I'm going to call it was fun, it's probably not too far off from what we'll have in the future where we can use intent to write code as we can already see early versions of in modern AI.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

BS-ing programming into magic.

Usually you should investigate and research more into your Main subject, in this case programming.
Talking about programming and seeing code as if seeing someone else's mana/chakra veins is not hooking me in, as I know a little bit og coding.

Talking about pushing your will at code and pulling at code makes me fewl like they should've just cut the coding part completely and it would have been a 10 times better story in my head.

Would only recommend if you have no idea about coding really.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

VRMMO with low stakes but an excellent page turner

TLDR;
VRMMO with low stakes but an excellent page turner.
What's it about?
Jeff works as a GM for an MMO. His role is to make sure that the players are happy, when they glitch or get stuck in a tile he has to get there and try to solve their issue in 15 minutes, writing hot fixes using an intuitive interface, he doesn't even know how to code properly.
The game is called Infinite Worlds and uses AIs to just help maintain the system and all is going swimmingly until one of the AIs decides "You know what, I could write better plot than these humans. The players keep complaining the games to easy, well lets make it harder."
The next thing Jeff knows, all the other GMs are booted from game and he alone is left alone to try and fix peoples gripes, hopefully the game and save his pay check.
Why it's enjoyable.
The straight honest answer is that it is a fun (but not funny) Litrpg. There is no need for trigger warnings, its just an entertaining adventure in a VR world.
The story switches between the perspective of Jeff, a set of adventurers and some other characters as they deal with the change of pace.
Jeff having to solve bugs (and thus learn to manipulate the code) reminds me slightly of Asmiov's short robot stories where the two people are called into bug fix broken robots (though this is less detailed).
I'm assuming that both Jaime and Troy have clocked up a large number of hours in MMOs because the world is nicely designed, but also when the AI is constructing it's own plot, there is a nice reflection on what makes real life MMOs actually fun to play and that what people complain about isn't necessarily what they want.
Jeff strikes as a very real person, he complains about things, he knows when to role his sleeves up and sometimes he is just overwhelmed and does what most of us do and just knuckle down with job. He doesn't come off as whiny, just someone caught in his own bubble with a fair few pressures on him. Taking most problems as a puzzle to be solved, rather than relying on grit and determination, he feels like a good everyman.
Nick Podehl as always is a terrific narrator.
Why might you not like it?
Honestly much the same reason as to why I find it enjoyable. Sometimes I need the more serious reads, sometimes I want something more stats heavy (I'm looking at you Brooks) and sometimes I just want a solid story with low stakes that I can get lost in. If that's not you or you are not in that mood currently, then its likely not the story for you.
Overall,
I've enjoyed it, I've picked up book 2 and look forward to delving in.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

an interesting twist on the lit rpg genre

an interesting insight into both sides of gaming.
wonderfully written an skillfully performed this story has it's share of twists and turns and a fair few WTF? moments.

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