What are you reading in 2024?

[TwoSix]

That's pretty standard for the genre, much of which is written originally as serialized web fiction and later chopped up for publication.

Yea, if you want to have "one book = one story", then progression fantasy/LitRPGs is not the genre you want to be reading.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Yea, if you want to have "one book = one story", then progression fantasy/LitRPGs is not the genre you want to be reading.

Counterpoint: The overall quality of fiction generally would improve if authors believed they had to tell a complete story with a beginning, middle and end, in a single work and would never have a chance to tell more stories in the future, so there would be no benefit to holding onto "good stuff" for volume seven in a planned nine-volume series, or whatever.

Being a good craftsperson benefits from discipline and previously existing market forces helped instill that sort of discipline, back in the day.

Self-publishing has helped democratize publishing, which is awesome, but there's been some downsides along the way.

 

[overgeeked]

That's pretty standard for the genre, much of which is written originally as serialized web fiction and later chopped up for publication.

Yea, if you want to have "one book = one story", then progression fantasy/LitRPGs is not the genre you want to be reading.

Complete story in the sense of here’s a big bad or specific arc for this book. Rather than just ending the book at the closest word count rest stop.

 

[TwoSix]

Counterpoint: The overall quality of fiction generally would improve if authors believed they had to tell a complete story with a beginning, middle and end, in a single work and would never have a chance to tell more stories in the future, so there would be no benefit to holding onto "good stuff" for volume seven in a planned nine-volume series, or whatever.

Being a good craftsperson benefits from discipline and previously existing market forces helped instill that sort of discipline, back in the day.

Self-publishing has helped democratize publishing, which is awesome, but there's been some downsides along the way.

That's not really a counterpoint, since I made no observation on whether the general tendency of progression fantasy/LitRPGs to be serialized is a good or bad thing in terms of quality.

Ironically, the series that started this particular diversion is Dungeon Crawler Carl, which actually does have pretty discrete arcs for each book (since each book is the story of one level within the dungeon).

 

[TwoSix]

Complete story in the sense of here’s a big bad or specific arc for this book. Rather than just ending the book at the closest word count rest stop.

Heh. I just mentioned this in the post I just made, but DCC does actually have natural stopping points. New dungeon floor, new book (generally, I think 2 of the books cover two levels).

Each dungeon floor is wildly different then the next, which becomes more apparent when you get to book 2.

 

[overgeeked]

Counterpoint: The overall quality of fiction generally would improve if authors believed they had to tell a complete story with a beginning, middle and end, in a single work and would never have a chance to tell more stories in the future, so there would be no benefit to holding onto "good stuff" for volume seven in a planned nine-volume series, or whatever.

Exactly. The same applies to RPG referees. This is your one chance to hook the audience. Go big or go home. Holding that cool stuff for book nine means book one will be boring and most readers won’t make it to book nine.

Being a good craftsperson benefits from discipline and previously existing market forces helped instill that sort of discipline, back in the day.

Self-publishing has helped democratize publishing, which is awesome, but there's been some downsides along the way.

Exactly. Anyone can publish anything, so good books that won’t make enough for traditional publishing can reach the market. But, anyone can publish anything, so amateur authors who pound out an unedited first draft who think they’re Hemingway can throw their stuff out there, too.

 

[overgeeked]

Heh. I just mentioned this in the post I just made, but DCC does actually have natural stopping points. New dungeon floor, new book (generally, I think 2 of the books cover two levels).

Each dungeon floor is wildly different then the next, which becomes more apparent when you get to book 2.

New floor, who dis? does not a complete story make. There’s no real setup, complication, resolution. The first book is all setup with fights in between. Nothing was resolved. There’s no arc. There were what, four bosses? At a guess they were near the 25, 50, 75, and 100% marks. Good job hitting the markers, I guess. But that doesn’t make the story really hang together. There’s no there there.

 

[Pedantic]

While

Counterpoint: The overall quality of fiction generally would improve if authors believed they had to tell a complete story with a beginning, middle and end, in a single work and would never have a chance to tell more stories in the future, so there would be no benefit to holding onto "good stuff" for volume seven in a planned nine-volume series, or whatever.

Being a good craftsperson benefits from discipline and previously existing market forces helped instill that sort of discipline, back in the day.

Self-publishing has helped democratize publishing, which is awesome, but there's been some downsides along the way.

To some degree, progression fantasy (especially overt gamelit or litRPG) is intentionally subverting that norm. The genre defining thing is that characters strive to get better in some quantifiable way, then demonstrate their improvements in a repeating loop, and the rest of the work exists to to make that loop possible. Sometimes you have books that really focus on world/system building, sometimes you have books with an underlying mystery that progress slowly unravels, sometimes you just have increasingly big ponds full of bigger fish to punch, but the loop is generally more important than the external story events.

Take something like Titanhoppers, where basically no progress has been made in 3 books to resolving the "what's up with these giant mechs? Is our political system corrupt? Who are these people wearing black that keep showing up to cause trouble?" plotlines, but the characters have all updated their understanding and relationships and gained new abilities each book. Those interesting events are just scaffolding to allow the improvement loop to play out, and that loop is the core appeal of the genre.

That and a lot of it is just really, really badly written, but the trend has gotten better as genre norms have become more clearly defined and the pace of better stuff rising up has gotten faster.

 

[TwoSix]

New floor, who dis? does not a complete story make. There’s no real setup, complication, resolution. The first book is all setup with fights in between. Nothing was resolved. There’s no arc. There were what, four bosses? At a guess they were near the 25, 50, 75, and 100% marks. Good job hitting the markers, I guess. But that doesn’t make the story really hang together. There’s no there there.

<Shrug> I never said it did. It's not an issue I concern myself with. My only observation is that the books are divided up by dungeon floor, and each floor is different enough that it feels (to me) like an obvious place to break.

 

[TwoSix]

To some degree, progression fantasy (especially overt gamelit or litRPG) is intentionally subverting that norm. The genre defining thing is that characters strive to get better in some quantifiable way, then demonstrate their improvements in a repeating loop, and the rest of the work exists to to make that loop possible. Sometimes you have books that really focus on world/system building, sometimes you have books with an underlying mystery that progress slowly unravels, sometimes you just have increasingly big ponds full of bigger fish to punch, but the loop is generally more important than the external story events.

I mean, just consider the fact that the top two finished stories on Royal Road (Mother of Learning and Perfect Run) are both explicitly about time loops.