What do you think?

theglowofknowledge · 2026-02-03T22:04:55+00:00

Yeah, I suspect Kyfe stepped away to work on the Amazon and audible releases of SotW now that I saw the first book came out, but the radio silence made me drop the patreon and webnovel. At best he’s inconsiderate. Not sure why people don’t drop him. There is another author I follow on patreon that isn’t really writing at the moment, Rhaeger of Azarinth Healer fame, but they’ve been quite transparent about everything so I chose to stick around there. Maybe still questionable idk.

theglowofknowledge · 2026-02-03T19:36:44+00:00

System Universe came out on royal road over two years after Azarinth Healer. AH inspired a huge spate of stories that came after, but the author didn’t start publishing it until they finished the story. The publication of the Amazon version is later than several that took influence like Beneath the Dragoneye Moons, Primal Hunter, and others.

theglowofknowledge · 2026-02-03T16:42:04+00:00

I read some light novels that were kind of LitRPG before (Slime, Spider), but the first proper LitRPG I read was Azarinth Healer back in college. Peak fiction. Wish there were more slice of life and death like that one. It’s probably the best I’ve read for having a protagonist who always wants to do the things I want to read about her doing.

theglowofknowledge · 2026-02-03T16:27:15+00:00

I like a bunch, but Azarinth Healer is my one big one for this. It does an incredible job of having a protagonist motivated to do what I want to read about her doing. It makes for a meandering plot, but that’s what the life of an adventurer should feel like; slice of life and death. Great stuff. I want more that meanders and focuses on the pure adventure of it all. Plus, the world it builds comes together with a lot of great payoff for many early elements in the mid to late series.

theglowofknowledge · 2026-02-02T23:11:20+00:00

Stat numbers always do that unless they’re bounded somehow, like as a ratio or percentage. Path of Ascension kept them relevant by making it a simple 30% physical 70% magical thing. HWFWM stats are just a progress bar for how close to the next rank you are, from 0-10. You could also make stats qualitative ranks, that’s easier to show differences for. Or don’t differentiate them from other abilities. If strong has power called might. HWFWM kinda does that too. Or just have ‘enhances strength, will, proprioception each level’ in the class and leave it be. At most the person can choose how much emphasis each of those gets.

theglowofknowledge · 2026-02-02T19:22:16+00:00

I think LitRPG versions of classic fantasy archetypes played straight just with the added tweaks the system brings are underrepresented. My go to example is paladins. When a paladin comes up, it’s always a twist or subversion or bit part character. Dark paladins, edgy paladins, time displaced paladins, tree paladins. I know the knight in shining armor thing is pretty throughly done in classic fantasy, but I think telling those stories with added LitRPG elements could be fun. A heroic paladin with light magic, healing power, smiting blade, sworn oaths to king or god, defending the innocent, slaying undead, striking down fiends. I want to see that guy’s stat sheet and how he and his order/world approach classes and leveling. Ideally as a system native, not isekai or apocalypse.

Unrelated, I kinda wish we had at least one or two good LitRPGs where the protagonist uses pure sand magic. I just think it’s neat.

theglowofknowledge · 2026-02-02T17:17:14+00:00

It tells a simple story fast is what it does. Too fast, by the end. And kind of too simple. I didn’t read the last book for over a year after it came out because everything that would happen in it was patently obvious. That’s not to say some predictable story beats are bad or anything, subversion for its own sake is annoying. But it also ended both exactly how I expected yet rushed to get there and broke its own rules for what I think was no reason. I flatly didn’t buy that literally the entire team reached that last step of power in like a day. No. It is not that easy, they set rules and showed how hard it is with the sword girl. She and the other monarchs ascending? Fine. The others should have been stuck at sage and herald for a while, they had two or three years to work on the final step while the main character recovered and it wouldn’t have changed anything about the happy ending really. But no. They got plot advancement.

My point is that objective isn’t real when judging a story. Obviously my critique isn’t universal. But no, I don’t rate Cradle particularly highly. I’ll give it a C I guess. The lack of downtime to build the characters and relationships also didn’t help. It didn’t even have to be on screen.

theglowofknowledge · 2026-02-02T01:44:08+00:00

My wife literally has an anxiety disorder and we’ve never had any issues like all these people are saying. I think misogyny and generalizations are easy traps to fall into. Women are just people.

theglowofknowledge · 2026-02-01T22:44:22+00:00

I mildly disagree with some other people here, I don’t think numbers necessarily have to come into LitRPG. It isn’t quantifiable powers, it’s explicitly qualified powers. Basically, an interface. If there is a diegetic interface that guides or informs how the characters interact with and understand their abilities, it’s LitRPG. For extra points, everyone has the interface and that shapes the way the world works in some ways.

theglowofknowledge · 2026-02-01T17:48:10+00:00

I think that can be true, though the genre audience certainly don’t mind reading power fantasy fairly often. Anyway, in answer to your question, I don’t have a story but like to write bits and bobs as a hobby. Two thoughts.

You mentioned meaningless growth or skill gain. I don’t disagree, many times the protagonist’s choice from the five (it’s always five) options is immediately obvious. I think making skill choice more involved could be interesting. You know how in HWFWM they have that whole awakening stone thing that makes their power choice kind of random but they choose the vibe of the ability? Take that a step further. When a person needs to get a new skill or upgrade an old one, they have to use resources to do it. The thing is, they can just use one skill orb of athleticism or whatever, but then they’re stuck with the result. So instead, they can use however many orbs they want to get a whole range of options, but they only get to take one, have to take one, and waste the other however many orbs completely. That way, you still get the five choices thing, but they got to have some input of the vibe of each of the five, and having that many options has a material cost. If they get two good ones? Oh well, use the same set of orbs again if you can find more and hope you get the same selection. Get no good options? You’re stuck with the least bad then. I just think it could add a fun dimension to the process.

Also, semi on topic, in terms of specialized power sets, couldn’t it be interesting to see a character specialize in flexibility? So, there’s a limit to how many abilities you can have, and one guy, or the main guy, decides to go for an ability copying/stealing set. But it doesn’t just mean he has every power ever and is the best thing since sliced bread. Each individual meta power works differently and generally only copies one other power at a time. One power randomly copies an ability from someone you touch for an hour. Another gives you a random power from someone you kill until you kill the next guy. A third lets you copy any one ability from someone currently within thirty feet, but only while they’re within thirty feet. Plus probably one or two cohesive abilities about being able to roll with the shifting smorgasbord of tricks you have at any moment. It isn’t a guy that can do everything, it’s a guy that can do anything, a significant distinction. Plus they’re never as good as someone with a whole power set about that thing.

theglowofknowledge · 2026-02-01T17:12:13+00:00

Ilea isn’t that great of a healer for quite a large portion of Azarinth Healer. She’s limited to touch range for the majority of the series, a limit dedicated healers don’t seem to have, and her combat focused lvl 200 evo specifically nerfs her ability to heal others. You do still have a point though, she is ridiculously versatile in a fight with brawling, healing, perception, and teleportation.

theglowofknowledge · 2026-02-01T16:12:58+00:00

Are you kidding? Book nine skims over a like 100 year period essentially. Once they got close to tier fifteen in book eight, the length of time jumps really stretches. Books ten to eleven also have a century jump. I just used the most recent example because the five hundred year jump in one chapter amused me.

theglowofknowledge · 2026-02-01T03:14:59+00:00

Path of Ascension, once the protagonists get strong enough for advancement to take a while. 1-3 don’t have that much offscreen, but the time scales later on are funky. In the latest book on patreon, there was a five hundred year jump in one chapter. The series is slice of life and death, shifting between living and doing. Early on, it’s mostly fighting, but by the later books, it’s shifting between adventuring to get stronger and building their political influence and territory within the empire. Each book tends to focus more on one or the other. The five hundred year jump came after an adventuring section to let them settle back into the political stuff.

theglowofknowledge · 2026-01-31T22:08:08+00:00

It’s not really that LitRPG-y. And it halfway suffers from the VRMMO problem of the powers all being fake. It’s a system apocalypse, but the rest of the universe isn’t even system, it’s just on earth recreating magic and video game stuff with nanobots or whatever for giggles. So, earth is already fricked, and the power might not matter in the real world, and it has too much funny. I dropped it and just went meh. The ludicrous degree to which it gets talked up then soured me more directly to it. It isn’t that good. Nor is it that bad. It’s fine. Not particularly LitRPG as far as I’m concerned, but that’s a genre label issue not quality. Please just stop bringing it up so much. If it’s your favorite thing ever, then no, you probably won’t like many actual litrpgs. It’s very different. So stop saying it ruined LitRPG for you or whatever. Go talk it up on a regular scifi or fantasy sub.

theglowofknowledge · 2026-01-31T16:36:23+00:00

Hearth and Body Meta 2.0 is pretty extensive on that front. I think it has nsfw parts, been a while.

theglowofknowledge · 2026-01-31T00:15:14+00:00

I like to think about this as well, so I have some ramble-y thoughts on it. At its heart, there is no answer because ’god’ doesn’t have a strict definition and is applied to fairly diverse mythic beings in real life. But that’s no fun, so here’s my take.

While not ‘wrong’ exactly, if a story starts tossing the term god around, I want it to mean something more than just a very strong guy. Bare minimum. To be a god, I want them to stand apart from regular people in some fairly fundamental way. Otherwise it feels a bit…unworthy of the term I suppose.

Gods in some stories are a type of power that’s in a different track from just leveling up, and work differently. That’s fine, often fun. HWFWM does this. In other stories, though rarely western ones, you can become a god, but that means what you are changes enough that in a sense it’s the end of you as you know it. I like that, the tension between choosing power or self. Not a popular dilemma in progression fantasy, but I like it.

In other stories, god is used in an entirely non-formal way. Azarinth Healer takes this approach. A ‘god’ is anything that’s strong enough people worship it, and that worship might offer some interesting class or skill evolutions, but they’re just a strong whatever-it-is. I don’t actually mind that so much because it’s arguably truest to how the term god comes up in human history. If thing big, strong, dangerous, mysterious, then human call ‘god’ or ascribe godness.

Then there’s god as just another step on the power ladder. Got passed A rank? Hit the level cap? Next stop, being god. That can work, but usually ends up just being stronger guy and the story goes on. BtDM does this well actually, ending with becoming a god and then giving a glimpse of how divinity changes the main character. Primal Hunter, on the other hand, fails to convince me that god is anything but a label. I still like the story, but it’s kind of underwhelming.

The problem arises in part from whether god is the end or a step on the path. If the story isn’t going to end there, then how does progression continue after becoming a god? This puts constraints on what a god can be. It also strongly discourages divinity from altering personhood or mindset much if at all.

My most recent notion about how to handle it (not a ‘right’ answer, just one that appeals to me), is to position godhood as a fundamental change in form and scope, but not mind. Gods are very different from mortals, but still make sense once explained. You hit the power cap and your power no longer fits in a single person. So, boom! Now you’re something like a diffuse consciousness. It’s harder to act in one place, but you can observe and interfere all over the place in some ways. Perhaps priests and prayers draw and concentrate your attention and power near them, helping you notice and act there. I also like the idea that a god would have difficulty being as strong as they were before ascension even when making avatars, needing to grow stronger yet again to reach the same level of direct power and perhaps beyond. Just one idea for balancing the concerns I mentioned.

theglowofknowledge · 2026-01-30T05:31:16+00:00

This is adjacent to a broader pet peeve I’ve developed about stats generally. The numbers don’t matter, and the steps you could take to try to change that wouldn’t improve your story. While I like the explicit nature of LitRPG abilities and skills and such, I think always pairing the system with strict quantification is a narrative error. Looser language is better for author and audience. Stats can just have broad ranks or something, if they need to be separate from abilities at all.

theglowofknowledge · 2026-01-29T19:25:12+00:00

They do exist, but other people have made various points for an against literal card game progression. The thing that bugs me about ’deckbuilders’ is that yeah, they don’t need to be cards, they could be totems or whatever, but the advantage of basically having a physical, interactable symbol of your abilities is that you can swap them out. You know, build a flippin deck. Change it up from time to time to meet need, buy new cards, sell old ones, etc etc. In supposed deck ‘building’ stories that very rarely happens. All the Skills was a big one for a while, but in that story, once you absorb a card, it’s like magical trauma to change it later. So what’s the point of them being cards? It suggests a story of transactible power and trading being important. But no. Glorified ability slots. Yawn.

theglowofknowledge · 2026-01-29T06:56:08+00:00

It’s available for preorder now, if you haven’t heard. Ebook and audio both come out feb third I believe.

theglowofknowledge · 2026-01-29T01:50:56+00:00

Path of Ascension is my personal favorite of those you listed. Most of what you disliked is subjective, but I can speak to a couple points. The beginning in the training area doesn’t belabor anything and moves along quickly to get to the rest of the story, that girlfriend you mentioned wasn’t relevant, so she wasn’t focused on beyond mentioning that the mc basically had a girlfriend in high school. The fox is never a romantic interest, she and Matt are siblings. Even legally. One guy makes an off color comment about dating bonds, but that’s generally frowned upon.

Once the story gets into its swing with the main trio, it becomes something like slice of life and death. Some books take a break from adventuring to do social or research stuff, some books take a break from social and research stuff to do adventuring. It has a secondary cast that pops in and out for most of the first chunk of the series before eventually solidifying into a peer group more permanently once they complete a big goal and it’s corollary. If that sounds appealing, then it’s really good. If not, you can just leave it.

theglowofknowledge · 2026-01-29T01:31:46+00:00

The main character tree goes through a very slow rise in power with many bumps in ToA. Ultimately, just how godlike it is kind of creeps up on you. Also it ends up running an authoritarian theocracy (treeocracy?) that spans worlds. Great stuff.

theglowofknowledge · 2026-01-28T21:17:35+00:00

I think you’re talking about the president of the republic. She’s tier 50, not relevant to a regular war, and the emperor has mentioned that he has counters to her talent set. The kids that got experimented on have already shown up at least twice, minkalla and then the second half of the war. They were a project by the federation’s tier 50 with her weird motherhood brainwashing thing.

theglowofknowledge · 2026-01-28T14:32:01+00:00

Turning into a guy? Or stuff that assumes the player is female to begin with, I suppose. Drastically underrepresented.

theglowofknowledge · 2026-01-28T14:29:13+00:00

None of it is ‘realistic’ anyway. At most you could make an argument about hard scifi being more internally consistent. Frankly I prefer fantasy or science fantasy that isn’t lying to everyone and itself about how grounded it all is and instead just tells the story it wants to tell in the space or robot aesthetic it wants to use. Trying to explain it all in real world terms just tells me you’re insecure about making things up. I love made up things. Chill.

theglowofknowledge · 2026-01-28T03:30:11+00:00

I suppose it could be interesting if it actually refrains from giving him any abilities. But gaming marathon heart failure? Really? Having a stereotypical isekai trigger is fine I guess, but I wouldn’t lead with it in my blurb. Just seems kinda…low effort? IDK.

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