The Broken System Trilogy (LitRPG)

Information

Status

Ongoing

Year

2023

Author

DWinchester

• Ch. 88 - Alone at Last
  Apr 2, 2024
• Ch. 87 - Go Time
  Mar 29, 2024
• Ch. 86 - The Night Before
  Mar 26, 2024
• Ch. 46 - Light at the End of the Tunnel
  Dec 22, 2023
• Ch. 45 - Midwinter Workout
  Dec 19, 2023
• Ch. 44 - Snow Day
  Dec 15, 2023
• Ch. 4 - Everything he Was
  Sep 28, 2023
• Ch. 3 - Pieces of You
  Sep 28, 2023
• Ch. 2 - We Need Your Help
  Sep 27, 2023
• Ch. 1 - End of the World
  Sep 26, 2023

What readers say about The Broken System Trilogy (LitRPG)

• “Benjamin and his friends find themselves thrust into a realm beyond their comprehension, their identities altered by mysterious forces. As they grapple with their newfound abilities and the relentless erosion of their former selves, Benjamin must lead the c…”

  PunpopeRoyal Road5.0 / 5

• “RR likes to divide reviews into four parts. Personally, I don't get too upset about grammar... so long as it doesn't make my eyes bleed.  But for those who care, the grammar is good. I also don't care much about the style... so long as it doesn't make me wa…”

  SiliconWolfRoyal Road5.0 / 5

Reviews

Community Reviews(10)

• PunpopeRoyal Road

  ★★★★★ 5.0

  Benjamin and his friends find themselves thrust into a realm beyond their comprehension, their identities altered by mysterious forces. As they grapple with their newfound abilities and the relentless erosion of their former selves, Benjamin must lead the charge to restore his friends and confront the dark forces threatening their existence. With each step, they face daunting challenges and heartbreaking sacrifices, navigating a broken system that threatens to consume them all. Join Benjamin on a journey of resilience and determination as he battles against otherworldly magic and fights to preserve the bonds of friendship in the face of overwhelming adversity. Perfect for fans of fantasy and adventure seeking a captivating and emotionally charged narrative of courage, sacrifice, and the enduring power of hope.
• SiliconWolfRoyal Road

  ★★★★★ 5.0

  RR likes to divide reviews into four parts.
  Personally, I don't get too upset about grammar... so long as it doesn't make my eyes bleed.  But for those who care, the grammar is good.
  I also don't care much about the style... so long as it doesn't make me want to ragequit.  But for those who care, the style is fine.
  Plot I very much do care about.  And this story's plot has caught my interest.  It's not amazing, nor unique, or any other wowness adjective.  But it is solid.
  Character is the other half of what I need in a story.  I'm... concerned.  The side characters are interesting, but the main character is a bit bland.
  MC is currently overloaded by dealing with a new world, full of monsters, and monstrous humans, he's damaged, his friends are in danger, he has no idea what to do.  So is he destroying himself?  Maybe.  He's struggling.  He's lost.  He's terrified.
  In other words, the mc is in crisis mode.  And he's still in crisis mode.  Which makes sense!  But at the same time, the crisis mode is not showing us any personality quirks or hobbies or anything I feel like I can use to like or hate him.  Right now, he's a little bit Gary Stu + insert yourself here character.
  Leaving review at 4 stars, will edit review once I decide if I like or hate mc.
  Update at chapter 76: I'm surprised I made it this far, as I hadn't been connecting with the main character.  But these last chapters have stopped feeling like 'crisis mode', and I'm starting to like the mc.
  Another update: so the story feels like it's coming to an end.  And I enjoyed it.  So bumping my review up to 5/5 stars.
  TL;DR - If you don't mind a story where the side characters are more interesting than the main character for the first 70 chapters, or if the eventual promise that the main character will start to be interesting is enough for you, then you should like this book.
• EnourmousLettersRoyal Road

  ★★★★★ 5.0

  I stuck with this story longer than usual because 75% of the authors other works have turned out to be excellent to my personal tastes. Dwinchester’s stories tend to have more contemporary pacing where the shape of the story isn’t perfectly clear in the first 2-3 chapters, but takes longer to develop. I’d say this becomes it’s own reward by chapter 50 of each story though, as apparently ‘actually having an idea of where your story is going’ significantly improves the quality of a story long term. Who knew!?
  Anyway, Broken System has litrpg elements, but is clearly trying to tackle it in an interesting way rather than just bolting numbers on a progression-fantasy that didn’t need them. The characters have proper conversations and already show a capacity for change when confronted by trying circumstances.
  Don’t be scared off by the ‘magic-as-coding’ tag. It’s not done in the stupid ‘no one in this whole world understands coding so now its my OP power’ way. It looks like its going to be an interesting exploration of a runic magic system.
  Did you know advanced reviews have to be 200 words and this review was only at 179 words at the start of this sentence, but now it’s up to 209?
  Which means the submit button now works.
• HenryTSRoyal Road

  ★★★★★ 5.0

  And while it's certainly not an easy trip for Benjamin and his friends, they certainly have a weapon with the potency to topple an empire.
  Warmly recommend this story for those who enjoy fantasy, magic as programming, stories of fae, and of course protagonist who get a single cheat that they must use to their advantage to come out on top against much more powerful, numerous, and experienced enemies.
• DoseiRoyal Road

  ★★★★★ 5.0

  I've read a lot further than what my RR thingy says, since I was one of the lucky people who got to beta-read this crazy ride of a story.
  The start of the story originally threw me for a loop because it felt like some mind-bender System Apocalypse, but it's actually just a mass teleportation to another world, instead of the usual trope of one guy getting transmigrated by himself. Most Isekai focus on just one main person dragged from the real world, so it's honestly nice to see a twist on the tried-and-true start.
  The MC is a complex hero and definitely hard to like at the beginning, but also very relatable for most people, as he's hung up about his unrequited love and the jealousy that follows that sort of thing, even amidst his entire life being turned upside down. But I think it's great to start from a place where the MC has so much room to grow, and hoo boy does he grow...
  STYLE:
  If you've read Winchester's stories, you've got a good grasp on his style, but he always makes sure it fits the exact story he's writing, so you can find variations in the narration and pacing, with something like Tenebroum being more of a cold indifferent narrator, and in Broken System having a much more familiar and up-close emotion-packed feel.
  GRAMMAR:
  It's Winchester, there's nothing to complain about grammar-wise.
  STORY:
  The story feels like a confusing mess, but as it progresses, you start to see the red-thread. There are some red herrings that might lead you to believe one thing is happening, before a twist so hard you neck nearly snaps blows your mind. The premise and atmosphere of Broken System is crazy, I mean, soul-warpingly crazy. But it never takes its feet off the ground and goes off the rails, because it retains its relatability in the way the characters react and change to the story.
  CHARACTERS:
  As I say above, the MC is a tough fella to like from the start, but as he grows into himself and matures with the trauma he experiences, he becomes pretty damn cool I think. He'
• Polip1337Royal Road

  ★★★★★ 5.0

  Style:
  DWinchesters style truly shines in this one. Each new paragraph is interesting and often witty. The story flows great and its a pleasure to read. Descriptions are vivid enough to imagine what is happening without going into too much detail. Certainly there is more showing than telling going on so that's also a plus.
  Story:
  I got hooked instantly, the story begins with an earthquake and the suspense only grows from there. I quickly got interested in what is going to happen next and the scene in the tent has the tension of a Tarantino movie. Don't want to spoil anything but great core idea and wonderful execution. Action is fast paced and definetly above average. Even with only this many chapters there have been some twists already. So I totally recommend this.
  Grammar:
  Didn't notice a single mistake, high quality work.
  Characters:
  With 7 chapters there is not enough space for the characters to fully shine but Benjamin seems competent and quick to adapt. The characterisation of the relationships between the friends in the first chapter is the best I have seen. Really interested how the MC is going to grow and what is going to happen to his friends.
• StainedGlassThreadsRoyal Road

  ★★★★★ 4.5

  One of the problems I have always had with LitRPG is how, precisely, the skills and stats works. Typically, a human must learn a skill personally before being able to use it with any adequacy. Some Litrpgs I've tried reading have tackled this aspect to varying degrees, making the protagonist more powerful than other characters because they fully mastered the basics of a skill rather than simply purchasing it with skill points.
  Broken System deals with this issue a different ways: by taking all the unexplored existential horror inherent in a Litrpg system, magnifying it, and adding on a traumatizing dose of mindscrew and mind control. In this world, messing with skills can mess with one's memory, badly, and returning a deleted skill may not necessarily return the associated memories. On a surface-level it's hard to compare to the Matrix, but I nonetheless still feel it's a good comparison in terms of vibes. Particularly darker moments early on like when Neo is rendered 'unable to speak'.
  Personally, I enjoy this concept a lot. If you're looking for a gritty and unique LitRPG with some horror elements, consider giving this one a shot. As other reviewers have said, however, it may take a little while to properly hit its stride. It begins by following several helpless characters caught in the crossfire between two fairly unsympathetic opposing forces, and only around chapter 20 does the protagonist begin properly taking control of his situation. There have also been some complaints about Benjamin's thought process not being explained well enough, which the author is now taking taking steps to address. Now that this has been achieved, however, personally I find myself looking forward to Benjamin trying to salvage the scraps of the relationships he had with his friends, and deciding whether survival, or losing who he had been on Earth, is more important to him.
• ThaliaNoxRoyal Road

  ★★★★★ 4.5

  An interesting twist on the standard isekai, with a side of mind control which is oddly compelling. I also found the horror of watching the main character literally bargain away his own memories and skills for survival to be creepily addictive. We’re still early in the action here, it’ll be fun to see where this one goes.
• jumpsplat120Royal Road

  ★★★★ 4.0

  Just as a heads up, we read this on Amazon, so all of our comments refer to that version the story.
  Our MC gets pulled into a war he knows nothing about, all his friends minds get wiped, and he barely escapes with his life. It's a compelling start, and the feeling of walking a knife's edge never really goes away. The MC is constantly having to choose between. and worse, but luckily the story doesn't last long enough for it to really become a downer. My main issues are threefold.
  First, there are quite a few mistakes for a published fic. Not small ones either; repeated phrases, tense issues, missing words... hell, at one point the main character is called Lucas (his name is Benjamin; there's no one in the story called Lucas at all!). It's pretty jarring at times, to be honest.
  Second, the ending feels incredibly abrupt. There's so many hanging threads at the end of the story that when I finished, I had to triple check there wasn't a fourth book in this trilogy. A few loose threads is fine, but it honestly didn't feel like we'd reached any sort of end at all.
  Third, the worldbuilding is interesting,  but we get so so few pieces of it that it's hard to have a great understanding of all the moving parts. Part of that, I think, is because we're following the MC exclusively, and he's also always working on little info. But some of it is just because the story doesn't spend enough time on any one thing. It's constantly at jog; not so fast that it's impossible to tell what's going on but quick enough that we never really get the chance to sink our teeth in.
  That being said, I do really like the story. The characters were great; I could really feel the change in personalities over time, which is always a hard thing to do. No one ever felt 2D, although a bit more flesh wouldn't've hurt. The coding as magic was neat, although a little vague at times. The character sheets truly had no impact, although I understand they sort of had to be there for the framing device they were.
  O
• Leahcim ZanathaxRoyal Road

  ★★★★ 4.0

  This is a well written story.  I love the setting.  The villains are appropriately villainous.  The grammar and spelling are all well done.
  Sadly, the MC makes me want to beat my head against a wall until I fall unconscious.  The author has him stuck in a perpetual state of decision paralysis while things keep getting worse and worse for both him and his friends.
  I have some empathy for him, as the MC really doesn't have any obvious good choices to make... but him being stuck in that position are due to the author's writing choices.
  Frankly, its frustrating enough that I find myself not wanting to read it any further, so I've decided to stop doing so.
  Other readers, better able to stomach the situation the MC finds himself in might enjoy this story.  It has a lot of good stuff to recommend it.  Its just not for me.