All the Skills

Through most of the story, All the Skills is less focused on the “deck building” aspect and more on the “skills”. 12-year-old Arthur gets his hands on a Legendary card that grants him unique access to a skill system. He starts out learning basic cooking skills and cooking is a surprisingly big part of the story throughout. Other skills he picks up are based around gambling and thievery, but with his card he develops into a jack of all trades.

He journeys from his destitute village with a trade caravan, encounters this world's monsters, and meets dragons. So many awesome dragons.

This book would be a great entry point to LitRPG for middle grade readers but doesn't fall into the middle grade tropes that might annoy an adult reader. It falls on the lighter end of the LitRPG/Gamelit system mechanics range.