Complicated Opportunities: A Cosmere RPG Podcast
Aug 5, 2026 · 1 hr 14 min · 6 segments
While the guys were at GenCon this past week (it was AWESOME), we figured we would share the rest of the interviews that Kyle did at JordanCon, well most of them. Join us as LitRPG writer Erin…
Erin AmpersandGuestKyleHost
Sarah MadsenGuest
Critter XDGuestWelcome to Complicated Opportunities, a Cosmere RPG podcast with a couple of GMs.
Today, though, I have the privilege of being joined by Erin Ampersand.
She is a writer in the lit RPG genre, and honestly, I'm fascinated by the genre because it's something I'm just now starting to get into.
So when I saw she was going to be at JordanCon, I wanted to reach out and see if she'd be down to sit down.
So, we're going to go through some of her history, talk about her books, and let her get on about her convention day.
So, Erin, go ahead and introduce yourself.
I write the LitRPG series, Apocalypse Parenting, which I self-published a few years ago and recently got picked up by Tor Books for physical publication starting this summer, August 18th.
congratulations
yeah i'm excited to see them on shelves so awesome well so go ahead and just tell me how you got into it because we were talking a little before and i was like we need to hit record this is great
okay so you know i wanted to be an author since i realized that books were written by people and not manifested from the heavens uh yeah i don't know what i thought in kindergarten it was i distinctly remember though finding out that books were written by people at age seven and i'm like holy cannoli i need to do this uh my ambitions did not play out as smoothly as perhaps tiny me would have it liked but uh we've gotten here eventually um so i've i've always been trying to write always been into fantasy sci-fi big sanderson fan myself of course um But round about the pandemic, I started really getting into lit RPG just because it's a really, I don't want to say a lighthearted genre, because there's a lot of dark things that happen.
But I would say an uplifting genre because lit RPG and its sort of sister genre, progression fantasy, which a lot of Sanderson's works get put into, It has this sort of underlying framework of growth, of progress, of no matter what bad things happen, you can improve in ways that can't get taken away.
And I don't think it's insane to look around the world and see why that appeals to so many people.
And what I was talking with Kyle about before we started recording, there's...
Welcome to Complicated Opportunities, a Cosmere RPG podcast with a couple of GMs.
Today, though, I have the privilege of being joined by Erin Ampersand.
She is a writer in the lit RPG genre, and honestly, I'm fascinated by the genre because it's something I'm just now starting to get into.
So when I saw she was going to be at JordanCon, I wanted to reach out and see if she'd be down to sit down.
So, we're going to go through some of her history, talk about her books, and let her get on about her convention day.
So, Erin, go ahead and introduce yourself.
I write the LitRPG series, Apocalypse Parenting, which I self-published a few years ago and recently got picked up by Tor Books for physical publication starting this summer, August 18th.
congratulations
yeah i'm excited to see them on shelves so awesome well so go ahead and just tell me how you got into it because we were talking a little before and i was like we need to hit record this is great
okay so you know i wanted to be an author since i realized that books were written by people and not manifested from the heavens uh yeah i don't know what i thought in kindergarten it was i distinctly remember though finding out that books were written by people at age seven and i'm like holy cannoli i need to do this uh my ambitions did not play out as smoothly as perhaps tiny me would have it liked but uh we've gotten here eventually um so i've i've always been trying to write always been into fantasy sci-fi big sanderson fan myself of course um But round about the pandemic, I started really getting into lit RPG just because it's a really, I don't want to say a lighthearted genre, because there's a lot of dark things that happen.
But I would say an uplifting genre because lit RPG and its sort of sister genre, progression fantasy, which a lot of Sanderson's works get put into, It has this sort of underlying framework of growth, of progress, of no matter what bad things happen, you can improve in ways that can't get taken away.
And I don't think it's insane to look around the world and see why that appeals to so many people.
And what I was talking with Kyle about before we started recording, there's...
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