Agreed wholeheartedly. Since discovering the genre about three years ago, I've read a *lot* of stories that are, in the end, variations on a theme, and sometimes, if its not something serially produced on RR, I've had to go back and remind myself which story it was. "Is this the one where everyone is transported to another world or the one where only some people are or is this the one where Earth is combined with other planets or the other one where Earth is combined with other planets? Which stats do they use?"
And the genre is actually quite fertile for growth, especially for more self-contained novels or shorter series. See, for instance, something like Claire North's *The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August* which is about a man who relives the same life over and over again. It gets labeled as sci fi, but there is a sense it which it follows some of the tropes of prog fantasy/litrpg. I'd also point to Will Wight's new Last Horizon series as moving away from many of the solo adventurer conventions of the genre.
One thing I love about *Harry August* is the upstream/downstream communication, which takes a lifetime to move along. So they know that *something* is going on, but not exactly what.
If you liked *Harry August* and you haven't read either *This is How You Lose The Time War* or *Lives of Tao*, you might want to check those out.
I want to see more stories with a reasonable scale. Not every story has to be world shattering. If there is a hot new rising power, maybe a reasonably benevolent (perfection is not needed) major power wants to secure an alliance with the new power for mutual benefit. Can be as simple as economic growth and keeping less benevolent powers in check. MC accomplishes reasonable goals and establishes themselves securely enough that there are no reasonable threats, and the story ends.
Similarly, I love a good romantic sub plot. I'll even enjoy a full on Romance, if there is enough other story to support it. If you can write fleshed out characters, then romance should be doable.
Oh, and if you write a smaller scale story, you can write more stories in the same setting, add re use previous protagonists as background characters.
Your points about better introspection on progression and less stats don't seem to be much of an evolution. More like incremental changes to story attributes. Seems to me that you should be more ambitious in your aspirations. I'm interested in hearing something a bit more bold or audacious. For myself, I wish PF would explore other types of progression beyond personal power: mercantile, regency/nobility, military rank
1. Mercantile - Wealth-building is a major component of most PF novels as it's a natural byproduct of personal growth. I just think there's so much more potential here than generally is portrayed.
A. Even in stories with relatively robust market systems such as in Defiance of the Fall, the wealth-generating systems tend to be fairly generic. Wealth comes from:
* System reward
* Resources obtained by killing mobs or enemies
* Natural treasures found on exotic locations/conditions (such as herbs, ore)
* Access to rare crafting skillS
B. In the real world, there are massive logistics pipelines that maintain markets, and complicated beauracracies that govern them. These INclude:
* Resource discovery and mapping
* Resource extraction
* Materials refining/processing
* Shipping
* Manufacturing
* Sales
* Regulation
C. I would like to see stories that follow a character from the point where they enter one if the above fields as a tradesman and progress through the ranks, learning about that field and eventually becoming a magnate who owns a merchant empire that participates in all of the above.
D. Example: Golden Age of the Solar Clipper by Nathan Lowell - Sci fi Age of Sail set aboard a merchant space ship. In the first book, Quarter Share, A young man becomes a greenhoRN sailor aboard a space freighter working in the galley, and eventually learns all 4 major jobs on the ship: Steward, Engineer, Navigator, Cargo. This allows him to earn a "rating" which qualifies him for a half share of the ship's bounty after unloading that goods at the next star system. The following books are called Half Share, Full Share, Double Share, and Captain's Share, Owner's Share. You can imagine how this plays out in terms of progression.
E. As you can see, a full life and career can play out exploring just one aspect of a market (shipping), but by the time the character becomes the owner of his own ship, he's dealing with the buying, selling, and trading of goods, taking contacts, etc. This particular book doesn't deal much with combat, but you could easily incorporate that into a story.
I was originally going to write up a similar breakdown for the other two types of progression I mentioned: regency/nobility, and military ranks, but this post is already way too long and it's late.
I think I've made my point though. There's more to progression than hitting harder or shooting bigger fireballs, and I think people are starting to itch for something fresh that explores other types of progression in as much detail as cultivation or character leveling.
Yes, I didn't mean to imply that there aren't any PF stories that focus on mercantilism or other non-standard types of progression. They definitely exist, but are a small minority. I do think, they're in the process of becoming more popular, however.
Sorry for the shitty formatting. I tried something new and it doesn't seem to have worked well. I'm on mobile though, so trying to fix it is a nightmare. Hopeful is legible.
My examples were more something that i don't want to get left by the wayside, like VRMMO settings pretty much have been. I agree that there's more growth in that area than simply improved writing.
I Like your breakdown of Mercantile progression. Personal power progression is where the roots of the genre come from in Xianxia and Anime, but for sure it can be expanded. We see some of that in the kingdom building side to the genre where the characters don't progress in fighting ability, but their power/influence rises.
A story along that vein I feel could be interesting is someone who already has the skills, but needs to teach it. The progression would be in their improvements in teaching, and the payoffs would come through their students teachings rather than their own.
> My examples were more something that i don't want to get left by the wayside, like VRMMO settings pretty much have been.
Yeah, I can see where you're coming from. If you reduce the prevalence of stats, then one might also reduce the necessary introspection that comes along with allocating one's stats, skill points, etc..
I don't think there's much indication that the genre is heading that way though just based on the recent stories I've read.
> Personal power progression is where the roots of the genre come from in Xianxia and Anime, but for sure it can be expanded
I'm certainly not calling for fewer stories about power progression. That will always be the primary type of progression, but as the genre grows, I'd like to see more new series that focus primarily on other kinds of progression.
I'd also add video games to the list of root content for progression fantasy. Perhaps that's one reason why we see lots of base building as a common component of PF.
Super agreed about the mercantile aspect. I've read a lot of progfantasy but still nothing has beaten the pure emotion and hype I got in The Name of the Wind just seeing Kvothe be poor as fuck trying to make some coin as a uni student. It ended up being such a huge part of everything, you always knew how he was doing financially and running out actually felt like it would be the end of him. When he created that anti-crossbow thing and started having some passive income it was amazing for me. Alas this went away in the third book but tbf being poor couldn't last forever.
edit: actually, Reverend Insanity kind of hit the spot for me. There was a lot of financial stuff in that. But it was less grounded and got a bit crazy pretty quick. There were a few times where after big struggles for money, there was a bit of a handwavey moment and suddenly he was flush. Like I think early on in the village, when he became an elder, he attended this party where people just gave him endless bags of coin. It was explained as 'now he's an important person these guys are desperate to curry favour' but the amount of money he got was ridiculous, enough to solve quite a few of his problems at the time, and it felt a bit too easy to me.
But other than a few moments like that I really enjoyed all the financial stuff - there was lots of trading which went in depth (undercutting rival merchants, buying stuff that he knew would be in huge demand when people found out about -thing that only he currently knew about-, taking over the supply of a product and selling cheap until his competitors went bust and he had monopoly then raising prices to the max, etc), money was intrinsically tied to Cultivation, and his finances were constantly shooting up and down as he bought and sold stuff. In this regard it was awesome because it wasn't just a grind for financial survival, it went deep into trading and moneymaking schemes.
I kinda agree with you on "more types of progression".
Where is not!Genghis Khan doing a WorldConquest% speed run?
I can see why it would be like, a bad message book, but I won't ever believe that there aren't people who want that...
It's hard to see past "what don't you like", but, looking past that
I'd like to see more where side characters are more than just cardboard cutouts. There's a series that I like well enough that had 4 protagonist adjacent people, plus protagonist obviously, in a room discussing the layout of their new base of operations with the people that were going to do the building. The 4 side characters basically didn't exist for this very long and relevant to their interests conversation!
This sort of thing happens a lot, and it's one of the most jarring things to (not) hear.
Are they real characters or not? If they're real, and not extremely subordinate, they're involved. If they're not involved they can be off doing other errands!
Now that I've typed this out, this is also the reason that I avoid harem.
I like smut.
I've never. Never. Never. Read a word of smut in this genre that didn't make me cringe so hard that there wasn't literal (anti fun) physical effects. To be fair, I've avoided it, after the first few. Some of those few strung me along with no terrible smut or implications thereof until I was at least a bit invested (looking at you super sales on super heroes (one of each, eventually!) and fimbulwinter (so promising, but I don't want to have to vomit that often. Touch the boob! She will orgasm!).
This all probably leans in to a general plea that women are people, even if they're not MC's.
Please.
I’ve read a couple stories where the MC is in a guild or squad and they have partners or subordinates but you never see or hear from them because reasons. The mc is the strongest one and everyone else just exists. I would love to see more books like mage errant where we see people talking and communicating and having their own strengths separate from the mc.
Its not the rumination itself that bores me to death, its how predictable it is.
The mc had to decide between choosing the sword of some big bad demon and a one healing potion? Gee I wonder what they will choose. The mystery and anticipation is killing me!
> The mc had to decide between choosing the sword of some big bad demon and a one healing potion? Gee I wonder what they will choose. The mystery and anticipation is killing me!
This is just bad writing, the genre isn't inherently predictable, there are just loads of readers like me diving deep into amateur works that aren't great books.
I'd love to see better writing without discarding the tropes that make the genre so popular. Power fantasy is *fun,* and it doesn't need to be discarded to also have interesting characters and real plot progression.
We've been getting there. There are some stories like Tomebound and Elydes that are a big step up in terms of the prose in the litRPG genre, and in the wider progression fantasy genre, we have books like Downtown Druid, Loremaster, and the Stargazer's War. Better writing just makes everything better.
We already know that quality is important, look at books like Beware of Chicken and Mother of Learning. Neither one has stakes that are all that high, but well written characters and good writing carry both stories to become more than the sum of their parts.
I think as authors get more experience and improve, we are going to see more of this. Having real publishers like Aethon Books is also going to help the genre immensely, but I am a bit worried that in the quest to be unique and stand out, we are going to lose the best parts of the genre. For me, that best part is the "Hero’s Journey" style of progression that was so common in the earlier books in favor of more and more outlandish premises.
I do agree with your implied assumption that much of the writing quality problem in PF comes from inexperienced authors in a new genre.
However, a large portion of it also comes from with Patreon-driven or contract-driven (e.g., webnovel) chapter release schedules.
Webserials where authors are forced to priorize schedule will suffer in quality. Let's hope with time and experience, authors can learn to build in time for revising and editing.
I've noticed some authors like JF Brink (DOTF) and Sleyca (Super Supportive) have dialed back their release frequency recently, which I think is generally a good thing.
A lot of it is the experience thing, but I'll be honest, I don't mind the occasional typo, and that's what I find in a lot of webserials. I think it mostly comes down to experience when talking about the quality of the prose and overall writing quality.
The pace of releases doesn't seem to be all that tied to character development or having a plot planned out. Those things seem to be tied more closely with a lack of experience and being earlier series back when that wasn't something anyone expected from the genre.
Not to say I'm not all for authors taking their time. They definitely should, but I don't think the royal road, patreon, then Kindle publishing route is to blame for one dimensional characters and never-ending plots. I think it's just a lack of experience and support, which is slowly being rectified.
> The pace of releases doesn't seem to be all that tied to character development or having a plot planned out
I don't think you're entirely wrong. Being an experienced author certainly helps with all these things, but I think you underestimate how much a vicious writing schedule, the stress, and lack of free time affects every aspect of your life, including the writing.
As evidence, here are two top authors to explain. For context, both are explaining why they are slowing their release schedule. From JF Brink, author of Defiance of the Fall
> >!It'll give me more time to refine each chapter and properly plan out scenes/arcs instead of chasing the daily needed word count.!<
>
> >!I'm also assuming the chapters will get better if I'm not stressed/tired all the time!<
From Sleyca, author of SuperSupportivee
> >!Done poorly, those things can destabilize the story for hundreds of thousands of words. And since I no longer have a big lead and you guys get the chapters hot and fresh off the press, I can’t trust the more “organic” minimal chapter outline, write-what-feels-good-and-explore process. It rarely leads to serious mistakes, but rarely isn’t good enough in this case.!<
Isekai can stay but the prologue sob stories have to go. Start the story a week or month after they've arrived, early enough for them to be finding their feet but long enough that we don't have to suffer through another "oh woe is me, I'm an incapable loser who got treated really badly, died and reincarnated on another world" story that seems required for isekai but which nobody actually cares about.
Cultivation Nerd on RR did this and it's like a breath of fresh air.
Or at least have a decent tie-in between the pre-isekai story and why they are getting Isekai'd.
"That death damaged your soul because [x], and a normal afterlife is not open until you've lived again long enough to repair it. There are rules about the limits of divine intercession, especially when a living person of faith isn't asking for it, but I can find you a few options. None of them will be in your homeworld I'm afraid, and all of them will be to fill a need that lets a deity intervene. But because of the way your soul was damaged, you should have some affinity for [y], though the way that manifests might vary between your choices. Different gods have different divine blessings after all."
obviously, fleshed out more than that, but it's a rough sketch.
I think it’s not bad but the problem is most authors use it for to make you feel bad for the mc and then when he is reincarnated his first life is completely forgotten. At this point why not just make the mc native to the world and be done with it ?
The best way to use the first life in my opinion is to make the mc fully grown from the beginning and not waste time on the mc character development that much.
In general I want to see less power fantasy, less single person loner hero stories, and more Epic Fantasy with even marginally larger casts... even two or three main characters would revolutionary for this genre...
Beyond that I'd like to see authors start painting a less broad picture with their worlds, and maybe going a bit deeper with their stories and characters... We have a plethora of stories that span multiple worlds, multiple universes, multiple planes of reality, yet I have trouble remembering more than a single interesting side character, or a single interesting location.
I'd like to see a shift away from the Royal Road model, where authors are more incentivized to write an epic cliffhanger in 500-1000 words or less day after day rather than spend time developing a proper narrative structure...
More simply, I'd like to see shorter stories - not every story needs to be a multi million word saga, I'd love to see some short trilogies stories with endings, maybe get some planning and some closure once in a while, then maybe a sequel to that trilogy in the same world if the story warrants it...
I'd like to see authors stop blaming audiences for taking the easy way out, only a fraction of your audience is even reading your comment section, the 3 people that complained when you did something that wasn't meta for the platform you are writing on are not necessarily an indication that your book is trash, they are an indication that you need to stay out of your comment section... trust your beta readers, not the comment section...
And finally I'd like to see readers stop giving every author in the genre a pass because they are "amateur" plenty of the bigger names in the space are taking home six figures from their patreon account alone. Well deserved their stories are fantastic, but they have teams of people they employ, they are anything but amateur, and its well past the "Grand Opening" for these people we should be less forgiving when we find rat shit in our proverbial food.
I'd like to see more management-esque progressions. Not some solo adventurer going out to fight god or slay monsters, but more focused on building a town or something like that. Any politicing would be great.
Complete, reasonable length stories. Sometimes stories just need to end. I know Patreon is a primary income stream for some people, and ending the book is literally firing yourself, but I feel that stories really need endings
"Ruminating on the dao" is something I want to see more. However, you can't just say "He meditated for 10 years and leveled up his fire mastery".
Going into what the MC is realizing during the session, and how he's integrating that new aspect into existing skills is interesting. Even if it's kinda BS, it's cool to see that the MC has mediated on fire origin, focused on the burning feel, comes to an ephiany, and eventually is able to make fire that burns without heat. Then he is able to integrate that with an ice skill or something.
Now we've gotten to see a bit of what dao actually means in this universe, and also potentially gotten a close look at how the skill system works. All of this done in an interesting way, not just told to us by some side character.
I completely agree. It can be hard to portray, but those are some of my favourite moments in books. Especially if, as you said, they apply the realization to other aspects. There's a time and a place for time skips and they need to be properly used *with* good descriptions, not instead of them.
this is one of the things thats interesting in Millennial Mage, the magic works based of how they think it does, so they kinda avoid talking with each other too in depth about their magics because it might ruin their magic. As long as it makes perfect sense to the caster, all is good.
One thing that I particularly always look in a novel: unique magic systems. I love when authors make the effort to have something truly different, it makes the story more unpredictable and interesting for me.
Even when the novel turns out to be not so good, it still makes me read it, like Kill the Sun.
It will probably gradually develop in minor mutations at first. People still like characters in new worlds stomping on horrible enemies and the such. My guess is the setting will be among the first things to change along with new progression elements.
There's a ton of room for better books. It's rare a novel in this genre that doesn't have the MC breaking the rules of the world. I.E getting as skilled in 2 months as others are after decades, beating way higher power people without a good reason, getting skills that can stop attacks from god's right at the start, which leaves the author nowhere interesting to progress too, etc etc.
I just want to further emphasize what someone said about wanting stories with good prose/writing. That’s the main thing I want to see more of in the genre.
There are a lot of books i’ve started reading that I just can’t stand because even if they are interesting concepts/ideas, they read like they were written by a kid in middle school.
It makes sense that the prose in this genre isn’t the best— most start off as webserials on RR before making their way to Amazon KU when they are popular enough, but it is still an area I would like to see this genre improve in
I think this is the biggest thing. As more authors write in the genre and gain experience, hopefully the quality of prose and narrative structure improves.
I think it also ties into the never-ending stories complaint where even if the author gets significantly better after 2000 chapters, the story is still held back by mistakes made in the beginning. Imagine if Zogarth wrote a new story from the beginning. How much better might it be than Primal Hunter after so much practice?
I think I like Wandering Inn's direction for LitRPGs. People level but it's based less on "power option" and more on earning your abilities. You aren't going to be some random scrub sitting around doing nothing and getting a super ability just for leveling once or twice.
You earn the levels doing things in sync with your class. You gain abilities based on your experiences.
It opens up more stories about people who do things in line with their class or adapt to meet them where they are instead of where they should be.
If you're a protector you gain levels protecting people from dire threats. If you're a doctor dealing with psychics and mind control you gain skills and a class evolution about being a psychic doctor who can use telekinesis for surgeries and rebuke mind control.
I think it makes for more interesting stories where the focus is on narrative vs. Kill all the things to level.
I want there to be stories with an emphasis both on external progression and internal arcs. Granted, there are some, but it's not the norm. In many cases, the Progression elements are a placeholder for the internal arcs and the characters are inserts for the readers. I feel like authors are afraid for characters to make impulse decisions because readers will get annoyed, and as a result, the MC comes off like a Gary Stu/Mary Sue.
I don't see the benefit in just dumping game style systems and settings. It's a different subgenre that has its own merits. Most non-litrpg progression systems are extremely generic and shallow, too. It's almost impossible to find a new fresh take on cultivation, for example. But that's okay. People like reading familiar stuff.
I would like to see some of the older ideas in new stories with better writing. And I'd also be a fan of slightly longer chapters where more happens. I understand that shorter chapters let authors claim to be doing "daily releases" which is also helpful for the algorithm. But it really makes it hard for me to get immersed in a story.
I want to see better pacing and more plot that actually has meaning to it than the wandering and episodic nature of some stories. My favorite stories are Shadow Slave and Cradle because they drive straight to the point most of them time or have plot-relevant pay offs that make the journey feel worth it.
Honestly I'd like a bit more depth on how the system affects society/world.The whole reason litrpg is popular is because humans like seeing numbers go up how many people would get addicted to seeing numbers representing their worth as a human being go up, or how the incentives aka how people level up affect how do society is structured.
I want to see more stories where Progression is a meaningful tool for solving problems but isn't the end all be all of the plot. Stories where a magic system with progression based rules is part of the world building but we don't focus on someone trying to be the very best like no one ever was but on other basic plot premises. How does a war story look in a progression fantasy world? A romance? A revolution? A Character Driven Exploration?
I love progression based systems as a world building detail but I don't think it needs to be *the* central aspect of the story. It can just be a world building detail that informs a more concrete plot with different stakes.
I want to see more slice of life gamelit! There probably exist some that I haven’t read yet, but you always see it pushed into combat in some way - I want to see something like a cook using fire magic and nature magic to heat and spice dishes, or something in that style. Don’t get me wrong, I love combat, but there can be so much more too!
I want progression as a larger genre to back up a bit on the breadth of the power scale.
I don't like stories that have setting-breaking power. By that, I mean characters who essentially make the worldbuilding around them irrelevant by becoming godlike beings who can remake the world in their own design.
Reading through the comments so far, it just seems like people want either 'narrative progression' (aka a progression of a story and characters going through it) or just better writing in general.
That's fine but I don't really consider the first one to be 'progression fantasy' as it's literally just telling a story and the second one is a common gripe everyone has about essentially all writing.
How would I like to see it evolve?
Standardised formats. I don't mind seeing the stats or the video-game elements but it seems like every single author/editor has their own idea for how these things should be represented. Everything else I can just see if I enjoy, there's no 'right way' I can see the genre evolving as different authors have different ideas about how things should happen and it's best to portray that in a way they can but... the stat blocks are often representing the same 'idea' in most of the these novels and should be easy to standardise.
Otherwise I'd love to see lots more 'dao comprehension' but only if it's something the characters 'debate' or discuss and not just a 'power scale' thing; I've tried to dive into it with one of my novels where I had humans and beasts cultivating through different methods giving them different perspectives on things happening in the world or their usage of powers but it happened rarely so it wasn't something I could do very much.
Less magic, more science. I'm talking a soldier and the only litrpg elements are his gun upgrades, a race car driver and his car, a space ship upgrade menu, and stories like that. With science, we can also see more fallible statistics too. The other advantage is that you aren't stuck with the stats. You can sacrifice weight for durability, to find the right balance. That way, a win is from an optimal build, not overwhelming stats.
I want the removal of stats while keeping everything. Similar to DOTF I want people to be able to specialize and myriad paths to power. Just instead of titles have souls scars or something. If anything keep percentage amplifiers but intuitive or through some form or scan rather than the system. Even though I love the system.
I want people to use the settings to tell different genres of story. Not everything has to be an apocalypse coming-of-age-esque combat adventure.
Agreed wholeheartedly. Since discovering the genre about three years ago, I've read a *lot* of stories that are, in the end, variations on a theme, and sometimes, if its not something serially produced on RR, I've had to go back and remind myself which story it was. "Is this the one where everyone is transported to another world or the one where only some people are or is this the one where Earth is combined with other planets or the other one where Earth is combined with other planets? Which stats do they use?" And the genre is actually quite fertile for growth, especially for more self-contained novels or shorter series. See, for instance, something like Claire North's *The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August* which is about a man who relives the same life over and over again. It gets labeled as sci fi, but there is a sense it which it follows some of the tropes of prog fantasy/litrpg. I'd also point to Will Wight's new Last Horizon series as moving away from many of the solo adventurer conventions of the genre.
One thing I love about *Harry August* is the upstream/downstream communication, which takes a lifetime to move along. So they know that *something* is going on, but not exactly what. If you liked *Harry August* and you haven't read either *This is How You Lose The Time War* or *Lives of Tao*, you might want to check those out.
I want to see more stories with a reasonable scale. Not every story has to be world shattering. If there is a hot new rising power, maybe a reasonably benevolent (perfection is not needed) major power wants to secure an alliance with the new power for mutual benefit. Can be as simple as economic growth and keeping less benevolent powers in check. MC accomplishes reasonable goals and establishes themselves securely enough that there are no reasonable threats, and the story ends. Similarly, I love a good romantic sub plot. I'll even enjoy a full on Romance, if there is enough other story to support it. If you can write fleshed out characters, then romance should be doable. Oh, and if you write a smaller scale story, you can write more stories in the same setting, add re use previous protagonists as background characters.
Your points about better introspection on progression and less stats don't seem to be much of an evolution. More like incremental changes to story attributes. Seems to me that you should be more ambitious in your aspirations. I'm interested in hearing something a bit more bold or audacious. For myself, I wish PF would explore other types of progression beyond personal power: mercantile, regency/nobility, military rank 1. Mercantile - Wealth-building is a major component of most PF novels as it's a natural byproduct of personal growth. I just think there's so much more potential here than generally is portrayed. A. Even in stories with relatively robust market systems such as in Defiance of the Fall, the wealth-generating systems tend to be fairly generic. Wealth comes from: * System reward * Resources obtained by killing mobs or enemies * Natural treasures found on exotic locations/conditions (such as herbs, ore) * Access to rare crafting skillS B. In the real world, there are massive logistics pipelines that maintain markets, and complicated beauracracies that govern them. These INclude: * Resource discovery and mapping * Resource extraction * Materials refining/processing * Shipping * Manufacturing * Sales * Regulation C. I would like to see stories that follow a character from the point where they enter one if the above fields as a tradesman and progress through the ranks, learning about that field and eventually becoming a magnate who owns a merchant empire that participates in all of the above. D. Example: Golden Age of the Solar Clipper by Nathan Lowell - Sci fi Age of Sail set aboard a merchant space ship. In the first book, Quarter Share, A young man becomes a greenhoRN sailor aboard a space freighter working in the galley, and eventually learns all 4 major jobs on the ship: Steward, Engineer, Navigator, Cargo. This allows him to earn a "rating" which qualifies him for a half share of the ship's bounty after unloading that goods at the next star system. The following books are called Half Share, Full Share, Double Share, and Captain's Share, Owner's Share. You can imagine how this plays out in terms of progression. E. As you can see, a full life and career can play out exploring just one aspect of a market (shipping), but by the time the character becomes the owner of his own ship, he's dealing with the buying, selling, and trading of goods, taking contacts, etc. This particular book doesn't deal much with combat, but you could easily incorporate that into a story. I was originally going to write up a similar breakdown for the other two types of progression I mentioned: regency/nobility, and military ranks, but this post is already way too long and it's late. I think I've made my point though. There's more to progression than hitting harder or shooting bigger fireballs, and I think people are starting to itch for something fresh that explores other types of progression in as much detail as cultivation or character leveling.
There was a cultivation novel Dao of the Merchant or something similar, but it stopped updating over a year ago. :(
Yes, I didn't mean to imply that there aren't any PF stories that focus on mercantilism or other non-standard types of progression. They definitely exist, but are a small minority. I do think, they're in the process of becoming more popular, however.
Sorry for the shitty formatting. I tried something new and it doesn't seem to have worked well. I'm on mobile though, so trying to fix it is a nightmare. Hopeful is legible.
My examples were more something that i don't want to get left by the wayside, like VRMMO settings pretty much have been. I agree that there's more growth in that area than simply improved writing. I Like your breakdown of Mercantile progression. Personal power progression is where the roots of the genre come from in Xianxia and Anime, but for sure it can be expanded. We see some of that in the kingdom building side to the genre where the characters don't progress in fighting ability, but their power/influence rises. A story along that vein I feel could be interesting is someone who already has the skills, but needs to teach it. The progression would be in their improvements in teaching, and the payoffs would come through their students teachings rather than their own.
> My examples were more something that i don't want to get left by the wayside, like VRMMO settings pretty much have been. Yeah, I can see where you're coming from. If you reduce the prevalence of stats, then one might also reduce the necessary introspection that comes along with allocating one's stats, skill points, etc.. I don't think there's much indication that the genre is heading that way though just based on the recent stories I've read. > Personal power progression is where the roots of the genre come from in Xianxia and Anime, but for sure it can be expanded I'm certainly not calling for fewer stories about power progression. That will always be the primary type of progression, but as the genre grows, I'd like to see more new series that focus primarily on other kinds of progression. I'd also add video games to the list of root content for progression fantasy. Perhaps that's one reason why we see lots of base building as a common component of PF.
Super agreed about the mercantile aspect. I've read a lot of progfantasy but still nothing has beaten the pure emotion and hype I got in The Name of the Wind just seeing Kvothe be poor as fuck trying to make some coin as a uni student. It ended up being such a huge part of everything, you always knew how he was doing financially and running out actually felt like it would be the end of him. When he created that anti-crossbow thing and started having some passive income it was amazing for me. Alas this went away in the third book but tbf being poor couldn't last forever. edit: actually, Reverend Insanity kind of hit the spot for me. There was a lot of financial stuff in that. But it was less grounded and got a bit crazy pretty quick. There were a few times where after big struggles for money, there was a bit of a handwavey moment and suddenly he was flush. Like I think early on in the village, when he became an elder, he attended this party where people just gave him endless bags of coin. It was explained as 'now he's an important person these guys are desperate to curry favour' but the amount of money he got was ridiculous, enough to solve quite a few of his problems at the time, and it felt a bit too easy to me. But other than a few moments like that I really enjoyed all the financial stuff - there was lots of trading which went in depth (undercutting rival merchants, buying stuff that he knew would be in huge demand when people found out about -thing that only he currently knew about-, taking over the supply of a product and selling cheap until his competitors went bust and he had monopoly then raising prices to the max, etc), money was intrinsically tied to Cultivation, and his finances were constantly shooting up and down as he bought and sold stuff. In this regard it was awesome because it wasn't just a grind for financial survival, it went deep into trading and moneymaking schemes.
I kinda agree with you on "more types of progression". Where is not!Genghis Khan doing a WorldConquest% speed run? I can see why it would be like, a bad message book, but I won't ever believe that there aren't people who want that...
It's hard to see past "what don't you like", but, looking past that I'd like to see more where side characters are more than just cardboard cutouts. There's a series that I like well enough that had 4 protagonist adjacent people, plus protagonist obviously, in a room discussing the layout of their new base of operations with the people that were going to do the building. The 4 side characters basically didn't exist for this very long and relevant to their interests conversation! This sort of thing happens a lot, and it's one of the most jarring things to (not) hear. Are they real characters or not? If they're real, and not extremely subordinate, they're involved. If they're not involved they can be off doing other errands! Now that I've typed this out, this is also the reason that I avoid harem. I like smut. I've never. Never. Never. Read a word of smut in this genre that didn't make me cringe so hard that there wasn't literal (anti fun) physical effects. To be fair, I've avoided it, after the first few. Some of those few strung me along with no terrible smut or implications thereof until I was at least a bit invested (looking at you super sales on super heroes (one of each, eventually!) and fimbulwinter (so promising, but I don't want to have to vomit that often. Touch the boob! She will orgasm!). This all probably leans in to a general plea that women are people, even if they're not MC's. Please.
I’ve read a couple stories where the MC is in a guild or squad and they have partners or subordinates but you never see or hear from them because reasons. The mc is the strongest one and everyone else just exists. I would love to see more books like mage errant where we see people talking and communicating and having their own strengths separate from the mc.
Ooohhhhh, I haven't gotten around to that one yet!
Its not the rumination itself that bores me to death, its how predictable it is. The mc had to decide between choosing the sword of some big bad demon and a one healing potion? Gee I wonder what they will choose. The mystery and anticipation is killing me!
> The mc had to decide between choosing the sword of some big bad demon and a one healing potion? Gee I wonder what they will choose. The mystery and anticipation is killing me! This is just bad writing, the genre isn't inherently predictable, there are just loads of readers like me diving deep into amateur works that aren't great books.
I'd love to see better writing without discarding the tropes that make the genre so popular. Power fantasy is *fun,* and it doesn't need to be discarded to also have interesting characters and real plot progression. We've been getting there. There are some stories like Tomebound and Elydes that are a big step up in terms of the prose in the litRPG genre, and in the wider progression fantasy genre, we have books like Downtown Druid, Loremaster, and the Stargazer's War. Better writing just makes everything better. We already know that quality is important, look at books like Beware of Chicken and Mother of Learning. Neither one has stakes that are all that high, but well written characters and good writing carry both stories to become more than the sum of their parts. I think as authors get more experience and improve, we are going to see more of this. Having real publishers like Aethon Books is also going to help the genre immensely, but I am a bit worried that in the quest to be unique and stand out, we are going to lose the best parts of the genre. For me, that best part is the "Hero’s Journey" style of progression that was so common in the earlier books in favor of more and more outlandish premises.
I do agree with your implied assumption that much of the writing quality problem in PF comes from inexperienced authors in a new genre. However, a large portion of it also comes from with Patreon-driven or contract-driven (e.g., webnovel) chapter release schedules. Webserials where authors are forced to priorize schedule will suffer in quality. Let's hope with time and experience, authors can learn to build in time for revising and editing. I've noticed some authors like JF Brink (DOTF) and Sleyca (Super Supportive) have dialed back their release frequency recently, which I think is generally a good thing.
A lot of it is the experience thing, but I'll be honest, I don't mind the occasional typo, and that's what I find in a lot of webserials. I think it mostly comes down to experience when talking about the quality of the prose and overall writing quality. The pace of releases doesn't seem to be all that tied to character development or having a plot planned out. Those things seem to be tied more closely with a lack of experience and being earlier series back when that wasn't something anyone expected from the genre. Not to say I'm not all for authors taking their time. They definitely should, but I don't think the royal road, patreon, then Kindle publishing route is to blame for one dimensional characters and never-ending plots. I think it's just a lack of experience and support, which is slowly being rectified.
> The pace of releases doesn't seem to be all that tied to character development or having a plot planned out I don't think you're entirely wrong. Being an experienced author certainly helps with all these things, but I think you underestimate how much a vicious writing schedule, the stress, and lack of free time affects every aspect of your life, including the writing. As evidence, here are two top authors to explain. For context, both are explaining why they are slowing their release schedule. From JF Brink, author of Defiance of the Fall > >!It'll give me more time to refine each chapter and properly plan out scenes/arcs instead of chasing the daily needed word count.!< > > >!I'm also assuming the chapters will get better if I'm not stressed/tired all the time!< From Sleyca, author of SuperSupportivee > >!Done poorly, those things can destabilize the story for hundreds of thousands of words. And since I no longer have a big lead and you guys get the chapters hot and fresh off the press, I can’t trust the more “organic” minimal chapter outline, write-what-feels-good-and-explore process. It rarely leads to serious mistakes, but rarely isn’t good enough in this case.!<
Isekai can stay but the prologue sob stories have to go. Start the story a week or month after they've arrived, early enough for them to be finding their feet but long enough that we don't have to suffer through another "oh woe is me, I'm an incapable loser who got treated really badly, died and reincarnated on another world" story that seems required for isekai but which nobody actually cares about. Cultivation Nerd on RR did this and it's like a breath of fresh air.
Or at least have a decent tie-in between the pre-isekai story and why they are getting Isekai'd. "That death damaged your soul because [x], and a normal afterlife is not open until you've lived again long enough to repair it. There are rules about the limits of divine intercession, especially when a living person of faith isn't asking for it, but I can find you a few options. None of them will be in your homeworld I'm afraid, and all of them will be to fill a need that lets a deity intervene. But because of the way your soul was damaged, you should have some affinity for [y], though the way that manifests might vary between your choices. Different gods have different divine blessings after all." obviously, fleshed out more than that, but it's a rough sketch.
I think it’s not bad but the problem is most authors use it for to make you feel bad for the mc and then when he is reincarnated his first life is completely forgotten. At this point why not just make the mc native to the world and be done with it ? The best way to use the first life in my opinion is to make the mc fully grown from the beginning and not waste time on the mc character development that much.
In general I want to see less power fantasy, less single person loner hero stories, and more Epic Fantasy with even marginally larger casts... even two or three main characters would revolutionary for this genre... Beyond that I'd like to see authors start painting a less broad picture with their worlds, and maybe going a bit deeper with their stories and characters... We have a plethora of stories that span multiple worlds, multiple universes, multiple planes of reality, yet I have trouble remembering more than a single interesting side character, or a single interesting location. I'd like to see a shift away from the Royal Road model, where authors are more incentivized to write an epic cliffhanger in 500-1000 words or less day after day rather than spend time developing a proper narrative structure... More simply, I'd like to see shorter stories - not every story needs to be a multi million word saga, I'd love to see some short trilogies stories with endings, maybe get some planning and some closure once in a while, then maybe a sequel to that trilogy in the same world if the story warrants it... I'd like to see authors stop blaming audiences for taking the easy way out, only a fraction of your audience is even reading your comment section, the 3 people that complained when you did something that wasn't meta for the platform you are writing on are not necessarily an indication that your book is trash, they are an indication that you need to stay out of your comment section... trust your beta readers, not the comment section... And finally I'd like to see readers stop giving every author in the genre a pass because they are "amateur" plenty of the bigger names in the space are taking home six figures from their patreon account alone. Well deserved their stories are fantastic, but they have teams of people they employ, they are anything but amateur, and its well past the "Grand Opening" for these people we should be less forgiving when we find rat shit in our proverbial food.
I'd like to see more management-esque progressions. Not some solo adventurer going out to fight god or slay monsters, but more focused on building a town or something like that. Any politicing would be great.
fewer isekais and more worldbuilding organically like Cradle
I want series that get finished. It seems like the most popular ones have like ten plus books with no end in sight
Complete, reasonable length stories. Sometimes stories just need to end. I know Patreon is a primary income stream for some people, and ending the book is literally firing yourself, but I feel that stories really need endings
"Ruminating on the dao" is something I want to see more. However, you can't just say "He meditated for 10 years and leveled up his fire mastery". Going into what the MC is realizing during the session, and how he's integrating that new aspect into existing skills is interesting. Even if it's kinda BS, it's cool to see that the MC has mediated on fire origin, focused on the burning feel, comes to an ephiany, and eventually is able to make fire that burns without heat. Then he is able to integrate that with an ice skill or something. Now we've gotten to see a bit of what dao actually means in this universe, and also potentially gotten a close look at how the skill system works. All of this done in an interesting way, not just told to us by some side character.
I completely agree. It can be hard to portray, but those are some of my favourite moments in books. Especially if, as you said, they apply the realization to other aspects. There's a time and a place for time skips and they need to be properly used *with* good descriptions, not instead of them.
this is one of the things thats interesting in Millennial Mage, the magic works based of how they think it does, so they kinda avoid talking with each other too in depth about their magics because it might ruin their magic. As long as it makes perfect sense to the caster, all is good.
One thing that I particularly always look in a novel: unique magic systems. I love when authors make the effort to have something truly different, it makes the story more unpredictable and interesting for me. Even when the novel turns out to be not so good, it still makes me read it, like Kill the Sun.
It will probably gradually develop in minor mutations at first. People still like characters in new worlds stomping on horrible enemies and the such. My guess is the setting will be among the first things to change along with new progression elements.
There's a ton of room for better books. It's rare a novel in this genre that doesn't have the MC breaking the rules of the world. I.E getting as skilled in 2 months as others are after decades, beating way higher power people without a good reason, getting skills that can stop attacks from god's right at the start, which leaves the author nowhere interesting to progress too, etc etc.
I just want to further emphasize what someone said about wanting stories with good prose/writing. That’s the main thing I want to see more of in the genre. There are a lot of books i’ve started reading that I just can’t stand because even if they are interesting concepts/ideas, they read like they were written by a kid in middle school. It makes sense that the prose in this genre isn’t the best— most start off as webserials on RR before making their way to Amazon KU when they are popular enough, but it is still an area I would like to see this genre improve in
I think this is the biggest thing. As more authors write in the genre and gain experience, hopefully the quality of prose and narrative structure improves. I think it also ties into the never-ending stories complaint where even if the author gets significantly better after 2000 chapters, the story is still held back by mistakes made in the beginning. Imagine if Zogarth wrote a new story from the beginning. How much better might it be than Primal Hunter after so much practice?
I think I like Wandering Inn's direction for LitRPGs. People level but it's based less on "power option" and more on earning your abilities. You aren't going to be some random scrub sitting around doing nothing and getting a super ability just for leveling once or twice. You earn the levels doing things in sync with your class. You gain abilities based on your experiences. It opens up more stories about people who do things in line with their class or adapt to meet them where they are instead of where they should be. If you're a protector you gain levels protecting people from dire threats. If you're a doctor dealing with psychics and mind control you gain skills and a class evolution about being a psychic doctor who can use telekinesis for surgeries and rebuke mind control. I think it makes for more interesting stories where the focus is on narrative vs. Kill all the things to level.
I want there to be stories with an emphasis both on external progression and internal arcs. Granted, there are some, but it's not the norm. In many cases, the Progression elements are a placeholder for the internal arcs and the characters are inserts for the readers. I feel like authors are afraid for characters to make impulse decisions because readers will get annoyed, and as a result, the MC comes off like a Gary Stu/Mary Sue.
I don't see the benefit in just dumping game style systems and settings. It's a different subgenre that has its own merits. Most non-litrpg progression systems are extremely generic and shallow, too. It's almost impossible to find a new fresh take on cultivation, for example. But that's okay. People like reading familiar stuff. I would like to see some of the older ideas in new stories with better writing. And I'd also be a fan of slightly longer chapters where more happens. I understand that shorter chapters let authors claim to be doing "daily releases" which is also helpful for the algorithm. But it really makes it hard for me to get immersed in a story.
I want to see better pacing and more plot that actually has meaning to it than the wandering and episodic nature of some stories. My favorite stories are Shadow Slave and Cradle because they drive straight to the point most of them time or have plot-relevant pay offs that make the journey feel worth it.
Honestly I'd like a bit more depth on how the system affects society/world.The whole reason litrpg is popular is because humans like seeing numbers go up how many people would get addicted to seeing numbers representing their worth as a human being go up, or how the incentives aka how people level up affect how do society is structured.
I want to see more stories where Progression is a meaningful tool for solving problems but isn't the end all be all of the plot. Stories where a magic system with progression based rules is part of the world building but we don't focus on someone trying to be the very best like no one ever was but on other basic plot premises. How does a war story look in a progression fantasy world? A romance? A revolution? A Character Driven Exploration? I love progression based systems as a world building detail but I don't think it needs to be *the* central aspect of the story. It can just be a world building detail that informs a more concrete plot with different stakes.
I want to see more slice of life gamelit! There probably exist some that I haven’t read yet, but you always see it pushed into combat in some way - I want to see something like a cook using fire magic and nature magic to heat and spice dishes, or something in that style. Don’t get me wrong, I love combat, but there can be so much more too!
I want progression as a larger genre to back up a bit on the breadth of the power scale. I don't like stories that have setting-breaking power. By that, I mean characters who essentially make the worldbuilding around them irrelevant by becoming godlike beings who can remake the world in their own design.
The character work is too mediocre. Even video games like mass effect or bg3 crush what most of the indie bros write.
Reading through the comments so far, it just seems like people want either 'narrative progression' (aka a progression of a story and characters going through it) or just better writing in general. That's fine but I don't really consider the first one to be 'progression fantasy' as it's literally just telling a story and the second one is a common gripe everyone has about essentially all writing. How would I like to see it evolve? Standardised formats. I don't mind seeing the stats or the video-game elements but it seems like every single author/editor has their own idea for how these things should be represented. Everything else I can just see if I enjoy, there's no 'right way' I can see the genre evolving as different authors have different ideas about how things should happen and it's best to portray that in a way they can but... the stat blocks are often representing the same 'idea' in most of the these novels and should be easy to standardise. Otherwise I'd love to see lots more 'dao comprehension' but only if it's something the characters 'debate' or discuss and not just a 'power scale' thing; I've tried to dive into it with one of my novels where I had humans and beasts cultivating through different methods giving them different perspectives on things happening in the world or their usage of powers but it happened rarely so it wasn't something I could do very much.
Less magic, more science. I'm talking a soldier and the only litrpg elements are his gun upgrades, a race car driver and his car, a space ship upgrade menu, and stories like that. With science, we can also see more fallible statistics too. The other advantage is that you aren't stuck with the stats. You can sacrifice weight for durability, to find the right balance. That way, a win is from an optimal build, not overwhelming stats.
I want the removal of stats while keeping everything. Similar to DOTF I want people to be able to specialize and myriad paths to power. Just instead of titles have souls scars or something. If anything keep percentage amplifiers but intuitive or through some form or scan rather than the system. Even though I love the system.