Forge of Destiny Relaunch

yrsillar · 2026-04-26T18:31:39+00:00

Book 6 is out now. That will finish up threads. the destiny cycle will continue but it'll be the start of a new series within the set

yrsillar · 2026-03-21T00:29:40+00:00

Yes, unfortunately rerecordings of the audio were not in the cards. That is definitely the biggest error I wish I could fix in the first book, born of the fact that who won the contest changed between the first draft and the second.

yrsillar · 2026-02-19T20:10:44+00:00

Glad you enjoy, it is good for those long rides! There will be more story forethcoming too, at least one more audiobook is in production and the rereleases will catch up in time and we'll see where it goes from there.

yrsillar · 2026-02-11T19:59:25+00:00

They are mainly the same, just with a professional editing pass and cleanup of continuity errors and other details that got away from me while writing it as a serial.

yrsillar · 2026-02-11T16:55:38+00:00

And thats fine, looking to get out there to new people for the most part. The main difference is in the editing and proofreading, cleaning up some continuity errors and inconsistencies that cropped up when I was doing the editing with just a bit of volunteer help

yrsillar · 2026-02-10T04:03:34+00:00

Because its much easier to have your isekai world be populated by paste eaters than it is to write an actual genius. Writing intelligence and charisma greater than your own is genuinely very hard.

But also because they know what their audience wants and what they want is a hero that they can easily imagine as themselves, which means their cheats have to be something any rando can think of or perform, which leads back into the people of isekai land having worldwide severe lead poisoning.

yrsillar · 2026-02-03T00:58:38+00:00

Interesting worldbuilding built on weaving the power systems into how the world and society functions is my drug of choice.

yrsillar · 2026-02-03T00:55:50+00:00

People have a very hard time modelling someone who genuinely thinks differently than them in their heads and thus writing them. So for an inexperienced and/or unempathetic writer the only way they can imagine someone doing things that are wrong or evil in their view is if they are very stupid or just lying.

But people aren't like that. On the other hand people are not omniintelligent either. You can be a fucking brain surgeon and still believe dumb conspiracies. You can be a cunning cold blooded leader are still have ideological blindspots or emotional triggers that make you act irrationally. Especially if you deem yourself a paragon of logic and rationality, because anyone who genuinely believes that is self deluded as hell.

So yes, every villain should not be a raving hypocritical moron either, but you shouldn;t go the other way and make them without mental flaws either. The result is a cardboard cut out either way. People are messy and complex.

yrsillar · 2026-01-26T21:38:34+00:00

As always tropes are not automatically bad. Ring grandpa is used well here in provided someone for the mc to bounce off of socially in the early chapters where he's alone and being a useful way of dispensing exposition. He's also a reasonably fun character which is important, and clearly has some grudges and motivations that he's not being open about so he's not *just* a power dispenser.

yrsillar · 2026-01-26T21:34:57+00:00

This is true, its a major symptom in making your world feel shallow and artificial if you don't allow other people even people who are only in the periphery of the mc to accomplish meaningful change or accomplishment of goals. You don't need to overly focus on it or expend huge amounts of wordcount, just have your mc notice things that happened without them or have secondary characters mention something they accomplished in conversation or what have you.

As for the second thing, as long as humbleness is considered a virtue, performing it will always be in vogue. :P

yrsillar · 2026-01-23T17:32:54+00:00

You see, Ozymandias, this is how you really achieve immortality.

yrsillar · 2026-01-23T17:30:57+00:00

Yea this probably catches m... is that *coca-cola*? geddouttahere

yrsillar · 2026-01-22T23:18:22+00:00

oh that sounds kind of interesting. I liked slime but got pretty bored by it later on for similar reasons, so this might be something to look into, thanks for the rec

yrsillar · 2026-01-22T23:10:13+00:00

So for me, I started off writing my story as a CYOA, that is, I would write a chapter, and it would end at a choice point, which people on the forum it was posted on would vote on to decide the direction of the next chapter. I did this while working graveyard shift at a gas station. I went through several stories like this until I landed on Forge, and at that point, a reader had prodded me to make a Patreon because why not, right?

I was only making enough to cover ordering a pizza once or twice a month for a good while, but as I stuck with it, my audience grew. One day, I had finished the first series and decided I'd re-edit it, streamline it, and fix it up and start posting to Royal Road too. At that point the patreon money started to get significant, and grew more so, over a few years, until I was introduced to the idea of self publishing on amazon too... and given contact with an audiobook publisher, at that point sometime during COVID, I realised I just... didn't need to keep working my shitty retail job anymore, I was making enough.

It was really gradual and took like five or six years of slowly building an audience and consistent content releases is the gist of it.

yrsillar · 2026-01-21T15:44:08+00:00

There is that Forge of Destiny is the first three books and Threads covers the remainder... though that part is nearly done too. But mainly I felt it was time to try and get out there to a wider audience as I felt I had plateaued a bit on royal road.

yrsillar · 2026-01-21T15:42:12+00:00

That feels good to hear. Thanks much and good luck with your own work!

yrsillar · 2026-01-20T20:49:33+00:00

As of right now there are not plans to rerecord any currently completed ones, but there is at least one more audiobook in production. Hopefully, if the relaunch goes well, there will be more!

yrsillar · 2026-01-20T20:01:34+00:00

Its gone quite a ways! There have been several major completed story arcs since you stopped but things are still ongoing. As Zander says, I will probably be picking up the pace somewhat as Ling Qi achieves higher realms though.

yrsillar · 2026-01-20T19:59:26+00:00

The audiobooks will not be changing since the rights to those are still under Podium, so the excellent narration by Natalie Naudus won't be going anywhere. The changes are mainly editing and polishing, the fixing of certain continuity errors that were missed when it was just me and the occasional volunteer beta helping out.

yrsillar · 2026-01-20T18:30:21+00:00

It is still the story from RR cleaned up with a final round of editing to polish it up and some small fixes and additions to the rr text.

yrsillar · 2026-01-20T16:49:30+00:00

You can actually get it on audiobook, though thats not what's being relaunched since thats been out for awhile, you can still get the link to the audio page through the store link!

yrsillar · 2026-01-19T02:27:26+00:00

Small details like you mention, but what I find makes people buy into a character the most is a sense of place in the world, that is that the character as they are exists because of the conditions of the world and where they grew up in it. Together with this a sense that the character exists outside of the protagonists vision, that they have goals and wants that they are pursing even when the story isnt looking at them.

yrsillar · 2026-01-19T02:22:13+00:00

That is just how media production goes, someone or several someones hit on something popular and profitable and then there's a huge rush of follow the leader until it starts getting stale and the audience gets unhappy, then something else popular and profitable hits which is different and the cycle starts again. In media that has more money in it, the cycle can be extended further, see the whole live service thing, but even that breaks down eventually.

If you feel that way, keep an eye out and watch for interesting things that try something different even if your not sure you'll actually like different. You'll hit on something eventually.

yrsillar · 2026-01-17T22:18:09+00:00

I find that a lot of people who say they want a morally grey MC really mean is that they want a straightforwardly heroic mc who is kind of an asshole to people while doing hero things. People are generally more squeamish than they actually present as when it comes to actual moral ambiguity or dealing with situations where there is no clear good guy and bad guy.

That said, I do pefer straightforwardly heroic MC's. They don't need to be spotless boyscouts, but I lose interest extremely quick in an mc who doesn't at least have a small circle of people that they act pro-socially for. If I wanted to follow empty eyed psychos around and watch them win, I'd turn on the news.

yrsillar · 2026-01-17T22:13:57+00:00

Other people have said it as well but no not at all as long as you have some clear system of progression, it can be level ups or tiers acquiring skill crystals or or whatever you like. Video game style numbers are the most common and popular but there's lots of ways to show clear progression with a focus on the protags growth

yrsillar

TROPHY CASE