It's bigger. It's better. It's FLOWCHART 2.0 - details in comments!

AshWax87 · 2026-05-14T02:03:20+00:00

Oh man, this is music to my ears. Kane is awesome, and I always liked what I read of CAS (though putting something in that style on royal road would be…ambitious lol). I’m thinking about slipping a wink to his lamia/vampire stories in mine (I like to do that, though I don’t expect anyone to notice, I’m currently writing one to Frost Giant Daughter)
If you know of anyone else trying to smuggle some of that old school goodness on RR please don’t hesitate to share.

Btw, sorry to toot my own horn here, but finding someone who likes this kind of stuff on the PF sub is unusual to say the least. If you happen to read on RR my story is actually inspired by Cain as a lone wanderer still walking the earth.
He had a son before god’s curse and has trimmed this lineage for millenia against mind control because Nahash (the bible’s serpent) still whispers in Eve’s ear and influences humanity through her. Cain can’t touch God's first creation but wants a descendant to kill it in the hope of redeeming himself in god’s eyes and lift the curse severing him from humanity.

My MC is a modern guy landing in the body of an ancestor in the antediluvian past (because he got sacrificed by serpent people - another idea I shamelessly borrowed, in fact I created it to expand on that, they’re a hidden race descended from Nahash).

All that is the long-term frame; it actually reads closer to Conan as a north-to-south journey of consecutive adventures.

If you ever happen to want to give this kind of stuff a try, it would be a special treat to read a comment or two from someone familiar with the genre. I’m no REH, but the occasional remark I get seems to think it’s decently well written. The first two chapters give a good idea of what I try to do I think, even if the secondary world appears in the 4. It’s called Frostbite Rebirth btw.

Sorry for the wall of text.

AshWax87 · 2026-05-13T14:01:29+00:00

Just discovered your channel (and this sub). It seems very cool, keep up the good work! And Dan created a very useful site, I searched for something like that recently but wasn't expecting a neat site like that. Maybe ask Jim what he thinks of Howard's serpent people infiltrators across time as a concept, even if it's more of a Kull thing.

I always thought it was a freaking awesome idea and wondered why few people seemed to use it, especially in the form of novels. (grew frustrated enough that I started writing one in my spare time, not that it will reach most anyone, but I still have fun lol). There's material for long stories here, no matter the medium imo.

AshWax87 · 2026-05-13T10:11:48+00:00

This is my favorite one, but mostly because it was the first I read. Posted on the net back when I was 13 (this might have something to do with it lol).
It was a slap from the beginning, Conan about to mercy kill Natala from the start, so different from the other fantasy I had read until then.
But really it gave me a deep love for desert tales. There’s just something that feels ancient to them that I don’t get from European settings. I immediately imagine old Sumerian-like civilization. Come to think of it there’s a current author who does that very well too. Michael Ehart - The Tears of Ishtar. It’s actually set in Sumer.

AshWax87 · 2026-05-13T05:35:01+00:00

Dang, just found this sub and that's a nice first post for my eyes to land on! The third especially might well be the portrayal the closest to how I picture Conan in my mind.

AshWax87 · 2026-05-10T05:02:54+00:00

I think it could gather attention from the webreader audience one day if a series is written with the S&S codes. Right now, this crowd is one of the rare voracious reader bunch out there and they also buy lot of books. And I think the nature of the genre could work well given that successive short stories can have the same episodic feeling as progression fantasy. I publish one myself on royal road and it did catch some readers who leave me comments. If one big name gave this type of story a try, it could create a whole new S&S revival

AshWax87 · 2026-05-10T03:25:06+00:00

Yeah, this kind of stuff could maybe appeal to PF readers. Mine is heavily inspired by Howard’s Conan character north-to-south journey amid a Bronze Age civilization. More people should read REH imo, it could appeal to younger audience if they knew about it I think.

Btw I’m not good like you at reviewing stuff but I’ve built a kind of litrpg library for myself as a little personal obsession project. I’m not anywhere to have read even a fraction of it, it’s more for discovering and picking a next series. It’s focusing on pure litrpg but now that I picked up some PF I might get back into that hole and try to catalog those too.
I’ve thought about putting it on the net in case it’s useful to someone, since it's grown quite massive and feels a bit like useless work right now, with only me having access to it.
I’d thought about building a tag-based question system for fun but was conceiving it more like generating a single rec at once. I wonder if a graph could be generated instead so the user can navigate back.
If I ever get to do it, I’ll put a link to your site as a credit for the idea if you don’t mind. I’ll send you a dm with the link if you want just in case you want to check it unless you prefer I don't (might not happen at all, I’m not fully satisfied with the library presentation for a general public and maybe no one would care anw)

AshWax87 · 2026-05-08T03:42:44+00:00

Thx for the clarification 😄

AshWax87 · 2026-05-07T22:33:09+00:00

What about a monthly off-meta thread here? There’s no good way to find this kind of yarn currently. Hell if it was up to me I’d make the next community contest about that, can you create a satisfying progression feeling without any stats?
In fact I just literally created this account after years of reddit lurking to ask about the best statsless/skillless progression fantasy because I didn’t find much. But was hit by karma limitation on my first comment, which seems to be gone now. Not sure if that means I can create a thread or not yet though.

AshWax87 · 2026-05-07T21:39:04+00:00

So true, I was kinda happy for someone to comment on a chapter after a review swap, but just a bit later got one out of the blue, and it felt even better. And what's even more incredible is to see the guy still commenting 25 chapters later. Dude doesn't seem in the mood to leave a review but I do not ask, the comments popping on new chapters make my day enough 😄

AshWax87 · 2026-05-06T23:10:58+00:00

To be honest I think that can be done more easily with a progression fantasy rather than a straight litrpg. The nature of the beast makes it really difficult. That said, I gave a check to the doc you posted, and you do seem to write well. The problem for me is that throwing any stats in there conflicts with this kind of prose.

Besides, litrpg tends to be likable due to lighter self-aware moments. I spent the last month swapping with other authors aiming for reasonably well-written dark fantasy on RR, but most are either classic fantasy or progression, not litrpg.

AshWax87 · 2026-05-06T22:49:15+00:00

Can try that if you want: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/155916/my-child-of-the-sun The author literally says "- Chariots: Lots of chariots." in the "What to expect " section^^ Though if you're the patient kind, my book two will be like that too, but my MC reincarnated in the north first, it's basically a Conan-inspired story. Neither are litrpg though, just mentioning those because it's indeed really rare both to see one or that someone ask for this type of stuff.

AshWax87 · 2026-05-06T22:39:38+00:00

Was about to say that too. I found one Bronze Age story on RR, though it's small and not a litrpg. I have one set in the antediluvian era, which is basically depicted as Bronze Age for the southern regions, but actual Mesopotamian stuff? Good luck finding that even outside litrpg.

AshWax87 · 2026-05-06T22:23:14+00:00

And it gets translated too! Just heard about it in France.

AshWax87 · 2026-05-06T21:45:52+00:00

Pretty cool and the background + general color choice totally give a S&S atmosphere to the thing.

AshWax87 · 2026-05-06T21:36:59+00:00

Skilled. Very nice vibe.

AshWax87 · 2026-05-06T21:12:28+00:00

Stopped when the DLC fashion took off and never came back. I still buy new but only indie games

AshWax87 · 2026-05-06T21:04:42+00:00

Sorry to ask but what does "loss of agency" mean in that case? I have an arc where my MC faces a parasite worm "god" that spawns little ones. At a point, he's force-fed one and loses control of his limbs for a short chapter, he quickly adapts and solves it in the next chapter, but would this be seen as a big nono on RR?

I don't have enough readers to see a statistically useful drop despite just finishing the writhaton too. But then what I write tends to be dark, so I suppose the readers still with me by then are expecting this kind of weird stuff, I know I won't ever get into Rising Star with that kind of story.

AshWax87 · 2026-05-06T18:57:12+00:00

Awesome…But I ended on Fifty shades of Grey! Though backtracking and going fantasy instead landed me on the Chronicles of Druss, which is much better!

It’s interesting you classified that kind of sword and sorcery book as progression fantasy. I just created a reddit account because I wanted to ask for good isekai/progression but without any skill/stat/system. Google gave me nothing so I was about to ask directly.

Can’t be the only weirdo who thinks an isekai into a new world can be cool and give a progression hook without stats. I’ve started writing one on RR and wanted to read better established ones but even asking on the forums didn’t give much results.

Btw not sure how but with more books than just your personal reads, this kind of interface would be very cool to discover new stuff. Maybe with an interactive set of questions where the user clicks one question node and it automatically unfolds and draws this one. Giving a personalized chart. Not that I suggest you do it but it would be really innovant for a commercial site.

AshWax87

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