u/IdDeleteIfIWasSmart

Not quite system apocalypse, not quite portal fantasy, part of LitRPG but more specific than that.

Popular in Korean manhua, with our world or a world close enough to ours that has people with video game magic, guilds, raiding dungeons, monster incursions, but the world isn't necessarily ending.

I know this is a blurry line because some of these series then go on to have the world end, or near enough, like Apocalypse: Regression, but I feel like this is its own genre districts from "the system came, remade out entire world, and now we struggle to survive in the aftermath" that usually defines system apocalypses.

I feel like this is an under explored sub-sub-genre of the LitRPG sub-genre of the progressions fantasy genre.

I would like to see more people explore what life's like in a world where the system came but didn't turn the whole world upside down and step on it or kidnap the entire population and make them fight its war or whatever.

Why do people choose to fight monsters, what's it like living with a definitive, numerical measurement of your value, how does a society endure and adapt when some people are just normal people and some people can kick a mountain at you because they're in a pissy mood?

If anything the billion and one of these portal/guild urban fantasy stories Korean manhua have made really don't get that imaginative in what they try to explore.

They'll try to differentiate themselves from Solo Leveling and the like by having the main character only be able to level in some weird way or it being about a sentient dog or whatever but then just tell the same story. Or they forgo anything like that and just say this is a story about running a pastry shop in a dungeon or something quirky.

Anyway if anyone knows what this genre is called, and better yet if any stories set in them really explore what this version of earth would be like, let me know please.

I'm making textures for some wood planks. I've got the wood texture done in Designer (not good but acceptable for a first try I think) and I want some textures for large nails/bolts that I'll put over it in Painter. The nails come out pretty meh, low resolution because I'm shrinking them down a lot I guess, but otherwise okay. Only when I put that layer on the texture it makes a deformation over the wood texture from height and smoothness and all that. I know I can use masks, but is there a way in designer to make it so I don't, like an alpha node that will make the greyscale outputs have a see through area?

The descendents of the emperor who manifest their powers as immortality, chaos free warp powers, and being very good people, are they still cannon?

They feel very old lore, with their ties to the star child and them being a genuinely good group of people because of their connection to the big E. Not to mention if they were new lore their immortality would probably be them being perpetuals, not just ageless humans.

But I tried looking it up and didn't see anything contradicting them existing. Are they just forgotten old lore not officially retconned but not really a thing anymore?