What is Progression Fantasy?

Now to start off with a bit of needed dryness, let’s get the most common definition of the genre out of the way so we can start building on it!

Progression Fantasy is a subgenre of both Fantasy and Science Fiction that focuses on the ‘journey’ of the characters as they increase in power, skill, and ability over the course of the story. A common trope in this genre is that the main character often starts off as an underdog with little to no power and gradually grows in strength throughout the series until they end up as one of the most powerful entities in the story’s world by its conclusion.

At their heart, these are stories in which characters often struggle to gain in strength, undergoing harrowing training, experiences, and/or trials to gain power. Often times, these training and battle scenes feature heavily in these kinds of novels with the main characters constantly learning or building on new abilities, techniques, and fighting styles all throughout the story.

All right, that sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? Well, you’d think so but depending on the story in question, this progression of power and growth can be executed in a variety of different ways, all of which further fall into the various sub-genres of Progression Fantasy.

Yes, you read that right! There are sub-sub-genres to this sub-genre! So let’s break them down a little further.

The Sub-Genres of Progression Fantasy

As of this time of writing, there are three major ‘Progression’ styles that set an expectation as to  ‘how’ the power progression, theme, and overall journey of a particular story will develop. They are:

• Eastern-Style Progression
• Western-Style Progression
• LitRPG

Of course, these aren’t exactly hard and fast lines for the overall genre, but rather a range of styles that a story falls in. It isn’t uncommon at all to have stories that span multiple styles, while others stay firmly within their niche.

Eastern-Style Progression

Generally to be considered the original founding sub-genre that helped inspire the evolution of the Progression Fantasy Genre, the term Eastern-Style Cultivation used here encompasses the two major eastern genres Wuxia and Xianxia, which as you guessed — are even further subcategories to this genre. Fortunately though they are pretty simple to explain!

Xianxia – which loosely translates to “Immortal Heroes”, is a Chinese ‘high fantasy’ genre that focuses on characters who undergo various trials, tribulations, trainings, to ascend to the heavens, becoming godlike beings in the process. Common tropes within this genre are things like meditation to understand the world around them, harsh over-the-top training regimes, and fantastical and magical implementations of Taoist and Buddhist philosophies. A good recent example of this genre would be the Black Myth Wukong video game.

Wuxia  – on the other hand loosely translates to “Martial Heroes”, and is considered the Chinese ‘low fantasy’ genre that focuses on the lives and adventures of martial artists in ancient China, or similarly styled settings. A great example of this setting would be the Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon or the Hero movies.

Of these two genres, the majority of stories fall into the Xianxia genre with a focus on Cultivation as the method of power progression for their characters to become stronger, extend their lives, and achieve their goals. Through this process, Cultivators (those who practice this method of progression) harness vital energy (often called qi) to empower their bodies through various stages of enhancement, which may grant them special abilities, powers, or insight as they achieve them.

If you are looking for a novel that closely follows this progression system I would highly recommend:

• I Shall Seal the Heavens

Western-Style Progression

Moving onto the Western-Styles of progression, this category encompasses the ‘newer’ wave of tropes and story elements that was inspired by Eastern-Style Progression, specifically Cultivation, however without the typical Chinese, Buddhist, or Taoist elements found in otherwise traditional Xianxia or Wuxia. 

In their place these stories typical feature terms, tropes, and other cultural elements are instead more ‘western fantasy’ in nature. While this varies drastically depending on the work, this style of progression can still include some eastern themes – such as naming conventions or overall setting, or it can be completely devoid of them, following a Dungeon and Dragons or Lord of the Rings style storytelling with a vastly different power progression structure than what would otherwise be seen in traditional fantasy.

Two great examples of this difference would be:

• The Cradle series — Which carries a handful of Eastern-Style cultural elements however stands wholly separate from it otherwise.
• The Immortal Great Souls Series — Which carries no Eastern-Style cultural elements and is best described as Epic Fantasy with a unique magical system attached to it.

LitRPG

Coming up to our final category here, LitRPG is a sub-genre that focuses upon game-like elements written into a literary, or in recent years, movielike, narrative where traditional video game ‘Stats and Attributes’ make a meaningful impact to the character’s power progression and or existence within the story’s context.

For those unfamiliar with this genre, two good movie/anime show examples of this sub-genre would be Ready Player One and Solo Leveling. In each of these two shows the characters within the stories are able to interact, enhance, and gain strength through improving their stats, often time in a traditional video game like way – which is to say by killing monsters and leveling up.

That said, if you are looking for a more specific definition of LitRPG there are two generally accepted rules that describe it.

1. A LitRPG shall, involve a story or character, that exists in a game world or world with obviously stated game mechanics. Ie: damage notifications, status screens, stats, health/mana bars, etc.
2. A LitRPG shall, the character must progress in some obviously stated way. Ie: levels, skills, abilities, notifications, ranks, etc.

There are of course many different ways of executing on these elements and the LitRPG genre can be further broken down into several smaller sub-genres such as: 

• Virtual Reality MMORPGs — In which the characters play through a next generation style video game in which either their minds or they themselves are physically transported into.
• Portal Fantasy — In which the characters are somehow transported to an alternate world which is ruled by game like mechanics and displays.
• The Arrival of a System — In which a game like ‘System’ suddenly overwrites the typical rules of reality, turning it into a game like one, often with apocalyptic consequences for human civilization.

If you are looking for examples of stories to read that fall into these kinds of genres, then I would highly recommend checking out some of my works, which include each of these three sub-genres!

• Virtual Reality MMORPG — Ascend Online
• Portal Fantasy LitRPG — Savage Dominion
• The Arrival of a System — Paragon

And That’s a Great Starting Point!

Of course this short list of each of the three major genres is by no means an exhaustive one with there being not only several other sub genres to each, but also ones that blur between several of the genres. 

However if you’ve been looking for a starting point in understanding what Progression Fantasy is and what to expect when you pick up one of these books, I hope that this explanation has helped in some small way! 

If you’re looking for more information, stay on the lookout for more detailed deep dive blogs that will explore all of these genres in more detail – all while giving you some awesome recommendations to explore!