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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pedantic" data-source="post: 9371197" data-attributes="member: 6690965">WhileTo 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.</blockquote>