My top ten webserials.

[halfeye]

I said in the Pale Lights thread that that probably wasn't in my top ten, so I thought I ought to work out what was, and find out whether Pale Lights crept into the end. Note well that I have less memory than the proverbial goldfish, if it's not updating at the moment, it's out. Other people may like webserials that are finished, I may have liked them when they were running, but if they're done, I'm out.

Top five, in no particular order:

Pale: Wildbow's magical fantasy of Canada.

https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/...-run-cold-0-0/

The Wandering Inn: Pirateaba's magnum opus, there is nothing bigger.

https://wanderinginn.com/2016/07/27/1-00/

Cinnamon Bun: A girl called Broccoli Bunch get's isekied and wins with hugs and cleaning. For bronies that don't hate rabbits.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/31...0/maps-and-art

Only Villains Do That: Guy gets isekied to be The Dark Lord, doesn't wanna.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/40...llains-do-that

Katalepsis: Lovecraft on LSD with lesbians, in England (mostly Yorkshire).

https://katalepsis.net/

Next five:

Forge of Destiny: Whimsical chinese cultivation with lots of manners, spirits and some fighting (which can get brutal when it happens).

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/21...rge-of-destiny

Ar'Kendrithyst: Gay guy gets isekied with his adult kickass daughter, becomes a mage.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/26727/arkendrithyst

Inexorable Chaos: Pastiche. Guy gets hired as a superhero by gods. Like '60s TV Batman, OTT extravagant fun.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/22...exorable-chaos

Beneath the Dragon Eye Moons: Girl dies and is reborn elsewhere with magic.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/36...ragoneye-moons

REND: Psychopathic protagonist is a psychopath and knows it before getting infected by alien superpowers. Personally I am not 100% convinced by the description of psycopathy, but it's the first attempt I remember.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/32615/rend

Third five:

Reincarnated into a Time-Loop Dungeon as a LVL100 Catgirl Chef!: Very short chapters.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/46...on-as-a-lvl100

Bioshifter: Girl dreams another world, becomes alien in this.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/59450/bioshifter

Micro: Truck is isekied into human body, world has cultivation, magic, monsters.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/56...n-deckbuilding

Deadman: Fallout 3 ghoul protagonist, more or less Fallout world?

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/51...st-apoc-litrpg

Fates Parallel: Cultivation, cat, rat, fox or dog people, but mostly fully human humans.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/39...ed-cultivation

So. that's my ten for today, somewhere in there, tomorrow will probably be different, I do like stories with fighting in more than shows up here.

[Dragonus45]

Wildbow in general has dropped pretty hard for me so he has gone down the list out of the top 5 entirely, so TWI is probably at the top for me. Also on a side note Wandering Inn's book 1 rewrite drops today for anyone who had heard about how that was happening and wanted to wait for that to start it.

After that I think Pale Lights is a bit early but is a solid number 2, I would have to think about it harder for the rest.

[Rynjin]

Pale is actually REALLY good, I'd suggest giving it a shot. You don't need to read the thoroughly mediocre Pact (which introduced the setting) to enjoy it.

[halfeye]

I'm not convinced that Pale is set in the same world as Pact. There are no demons as such in Pale, and there are a lot more types of mostly minor spooky beings, some of which approach demon levels of power, and a lot of other spooky goings on.

[Dragonus45]

Pale is actually REALLY good, I'd suggest giving it a shot. You don't need to read the thoroughly mediocre Pact (which introduced the setting) to enjoy it.

I've read a decent chunk of Pale, frankly I liked Pact better. Pale just feels like a pale imitation of the Pact setting.

[Eldan]

Pact had an interesting setting, but I found it endlessly tedious to read so I gave up before the finale. Tried the next Wildbow series what came out after that, which didn't grab me after a dozen chapters or so, and then the Worm sequel, which I stayed with for a while, but also never finished.

[Rynjin]

I'm not convinced that Pale is set in the same world as Pact. There are no demons as such in Pale, and there are a lot more types of mostly minor spooky beings, some of which approach demon levels of power, and a lot of other spooky goings on.

This is because the girls have better Karma. Demons are extraordinarily rare and only someone with generationally ****ed karma should have been running into one just sitting in the middle of a warehouse for no discernible reason.

[halfeye]

This is because the girls have better Karma. Demons are extraordinarily rare and only someone with generationally ****ed karma should have been running into one just sitting in the middle of a warehouse for no discernible reason.

Spoiler: Pact vs Pale

Show

There were several demons in Pact, and a literal hell (from what I remember from several years ago). I don't see any of that in Pale, Maricia is now an abyssal godess, but she isn't a demon.

It may be that the setting from Pact inspired the setting for Pale, but they have diverged as the story of Pale has grown.

[Rynjin]

Spoiler: Pact vs Pale

Show

There were several demons in Pact, and a literal hell (from what I remember from several years ago). I don't see any of that in Pale, Maricia is now an abyssal godess, but she isn't a demon.

It may be that the setting from Pact inspired the setting for Pale, but they have diverged as the story of Pale has grown.

It's a big setting. Not everything from one story needs to appear in the sequel. It was stated repeatedly that if you have ended up in a situation where you encounter a demon, your life is basically already ****ed. Diabolists are universally reviled, and it's quite possible that the Thorburn family were the last Diabolists left alive in Canada.

Yes, god(desse)s are different from demons/devils or angels. They exist in a tier just below those supreme beings, and this is again consistent with the lore from Pact, on the occasions that they appear in said story.

Notably, we do have confirmation that angels operate under the same logic in Pale as in Pact. But they don't feature in the story because angels really only show up when demons are mucking **** up.

As demons are not a core plot element of Pale, unlike in Pact, angels also haven't yet appeared directly.

This is the only point of "inconsistency" that you seem to be able to think of, and it really is as simple as "the setting is bigger than this single plot element that featured prominently in the first series". It's like saying Ward takes place in a completely different universe (shut up) than Worm because the Slaughterhouse Nine don't make an appearance.

[halfeye]

It's a big setting. Not everything from one story needs to appear in the sequel. It was stated repeatedly that if you have ended up in a situation where you encounter a demon, your life is basically already ****ed. Diabolists are universally reviled, and it's quite possible that the Thorburn family were the last Diabolists left alive in Canada.

Yes, god(desse)s are different from demons/devils or angels. They exist in a tier just below those supreme beings, and this is again consistent with the lore from Pact, on the occasions that they appear in said story.

Notably, we do have confirmation that angels operate under the same logic in Pale as in Pact. But they don't feature in the story because angels really only show up when demons are mucking **** up.

As demons are not a core plot element of Pale, unlike in Pact, angels also haven't yet appeared directly.

This is the only point of "inconsistency" that you seem to be able to think of, and it really is as simple as "the setting is bigger than this single plot element that featured prominently in the first series". It's like saying Ward takes place in a completely different universe (shut up) than Worm because the Slaughterhouse Nine don't make an appearance.

So nobody has anything to say about the other 14?

Third five:

Reincarnated into a Time-Loop Dungeon as a LVL100 Catgirl Chef!: Very short chapters.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/46...on-as-a-lvl100

Bioshifter: Girl dreams another world, becomes alien in this.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/59450/bioshifter

Micro: Small truck is isekied into human body, world has cultivation, magic, monsters.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/56...n-deckbuilding

Deadman: Fallout 3 ghoul protagonist, more or less Fallout world?

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/51...st-apoc-litrpg

Fates Parallel: Cultivation, cat, rat, fox or dog people, but mostly fully human humans.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/39...ed-cultivation

Next five:

Forge of Destiny: Whimsical chinese cultivation with lots of manners, spirits and some fighting (which can get brutal when it happens).

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/21...rge-of-destiny

Ar'Kendrithyst: Gay guy gets isekied with his adult kickass daughter, becomes a mage.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/26727/arkendrithyst

Inexorable Chaos: Pastiche. Guy gets hired as a superhero by gods. Like '60s TV Batman, OTT extravagant fun.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/22...exorable-chaos

Beneath the Dragon Eye Moons: Girl dies and is reborn elsewhere with magic.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/36...ragoneye-moons

REND: Psychopathic protagonist is a psychopath and knows it before getting infected by alien superpowers. Personally I am not 100% convinced by the description of psycopathy, but it's the first attempt I remember.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/32615/rend


Top five, in no particular order:

Katalepsis: Lovecraft on LSD with lesbians, in England (mostly Yorkshire).

https://katalepsis.net/

Cinnamon Bun: A girl called Broccoli Bunch get's isekied and wins with hugs and cleaning. For bronies that don't hate rabbits.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/31...0/maps-and-art

The Wandering Inn: Pirateaba's magnum opus, there is nothing bigger.

https://wanderinginn.com/2016/07/27/1-00/

Only Villains Do That: Guy gets isekied to be The Dark Lord, doesn't wanna.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/40...llains-do-that

Pale: Wildbow's magical fantasy of Canada.

https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/...-run-cold-0-0/

I do like stories with fighting in them more than shows up here.

[Rynjin]

I read a bunch of them, but there's only one so far that has had a relevant discussion to it. If you'd like to kick things off, feel free.

I'll say my top ten has some overlap with yours. Mine, in no particular order within their category:

Top 5:

The Wandering Inn
Only Villains Do That
Pale
Mark of the Fool
The Hedge Wizard

Next 5:
Beneath the Dragoneye Moons
Vigil's Valor
Pale Lights (it's so close to being top 5 material, will likely get a bump when the plot kicks off proper, similar to PtGE)
Defiance of the Fall (my current binge series)
The Zombie Knight Saga (though calling it "ongoing" is...loose, it just came off of a 2 year hiatus)
------------------------------

Forge of Destiny is one I used to read, but IMO the cracks in its storytelling (being based off of an ongoing quest thread) started to show in book 2. "Storytelling by comittee" can only work for so long.

Tower of Somnus would make it into my top ten if it was still ongoing, but it looks like Cocop unceremoniously dropped the series with zero warning to focus on whatever his new series is.

[Thrawn4]

I read a bunch of them, but there's only one so far that has had a relevant discussion to it. If you'd like to kick things off, feel free.


Mark of the Fool
The Hedge Wizard

Hold on a sec.
I found these one Audible.

So does it mean there are webserials which are commercially succesful?
Also, they are tagged as "LitRpg" which apparently means they are similar to OOTS?

[halfeye]

Hold on a sec.
I found these one Audible.

So does it mean there are webserials which are commercially succesful?
Also, they are tagged as "LitRpg" which apparently means they are similar to OOTS?

I dunno about Audible.

It seems that some are successful (via Patreon? by publication as ebooks and dead tree books?) enough that the authors can give up their day jobs, how that works out in the long run I have no idea.

LitRpg means you get power-ups happening in the middle of the story, sometimes with huge intrusive stat-blocks that take up half of that update. Hopefully not all of the ones I listed are like that, and I'm pretty sure that if they are in most of the cases I listed it's not that intrusive

[Rynjin]

Some webserials are very financially successful, yeah. Litrlg refers to a genre where there are gamelike elements and characters gain levels like in an RPG.

...Neither of those are actually Litrpg stories, I'm pretty sure the authors just tagged them that way to get more eyes on them. It's the most popular genre on Royal Road.

The closest they get to Litrpg is that both are obviously TRPG inspired. Fool in particular is very Pathfinder-based, and I know several fights in the series are actually copied from encounters run in Juggernaut's PF game.

[Thrawn4]

That was very helpful, thanks guys.

[halfeye]

I read a bunch of them, but there's only one so far that has had a relevant discussion to it. If you'd like to kick things off, feel free.

I saw this before it was edited to include the rest, so ...

I'll say my top ten has some overlap with yours. Mine, in no particular order within their category:

Top 5:

The Wandering Inn
Only Villains Do That
Pale
Mark of the Fool
The Hedge Wizard

Next 5:
Beneath the Dragoneye Moons
Vigil's Valor
Pale Lights (it's so close to being top 5 material, will likely get a bump when the plot kicks off proper, similar to PtGE)
Defiance of the Fall (my current binge series)
The Zombie Knight Saga (though calling it "ongoing" is...loose, it just came off of a 2 year hiatus)
------------------------------

Forge of Destiny is one I used to read, but IMO the cracks in its storytelling (being based off of an ongoing quest thread) started to show in book 2. "Storytelling by comittee" can only work for so long.

Tower of Somnus would make it into my top ten if it was still ongoing, but it looks like Cocop unceremoniously dropped the series with zero warning to focus on whatever his new series is.

Of those I read and like (besde the ones in my own list) Mark of the Fool, The Hedge Wizard (I hate, hate, HATE "Hump" as an abreviation of Humphrey, Mr. Lyttelton used Humph (pronounced "humf"), and hump means shag), Beneath the Dragon Eye Moons and Pale Lights. Congratulations on keeping it to ten.

I didn't know Forge of Destiny is a campaign log. It wanders, but I don't think that's necessarily bad.

I think I've read some recent Cocop, but I couldn't tell you what.

[Rynjin]

The Hedge Wizard (I hate, hate, HATE "Hump" as an abreviation of Humphrey, Mr. Lyttelton used Humph (pronounced "humf"), and hump means shag),

Hump also means like...a hunch, or lump though. But kind of the point is it's supposed to be an ugly peasant name.

I didn't know Forge of Destiny is a campaign log. It wanders, but I don't think that's necessarily bad.

It wasn't awful, but a few of the plot points in the "war arc" started to feel very clearly like stuff that were decided based on what was optimal for the RPG portion, not for what made a good story. I think the last straw for me was when Gu Xiulan basically got "voted off the island" because during the "downtime" slots the players chose to focus on other "social links" with different supporting cast and hit some hidden threshold for Xiulan leaving the story.

[halfeye]

Hump also means like...a hunch, or lump though. But kind of the point is it's supposed to be an ugly peasant name.

Humphrey isn't a peasant name though. So abreviating it to something that is, is peculiar. It's a minor quibble, but it's mine.

[Rynjin]

Humphrey isn't a peasant name though. So abreviating it to something that is, is peculiar. It's a minor quibble, but it's mine.

From what I remember, doesn't Hump say that it's not an abbreviation when asked? His name is...just Hump.

[halfeye]

From what I remember, doesn't Hump say that it's not an abbreviation when asked? His name is...just Hump.

I remember seeing him called Humphrey, that's probably recent because my memory for details is terrible, so it could easily have been contradicted earlier in the story.

Either way I don't like it, who calls a baby "Lump"?

[Rynjin]

I remember seeing him called Humphrey, that's probably recent because my memory for details is terrible, so it could easily have been contradicted earlier in the story.

I may also be misremembering but I'm about 75% sure that somebody called him "Humphrey" as an attempt to talk him up and he was like "No it's just Hump actually".

Either way I don't like it, who calls a baby "Lump"?

If you name your kid something ugly, the fairies won't kidnap them.

[Fiery Diamond]

Why has nobody mentioned Beware of Chicken? Or, for completed web serials, Mother of Learning? The latter is actually what got me into reading web serials in the first place, actually. The former: unfortunately the beginning is only available for purchase right now, since the author made the first (and soon the second) volume(s) into Kindle Unlimited stuff, which means they can't also have it available for free elsewhere while it's on KU.

Anyway, BoC is a parody (sorta) of xianxia cultivation novels about a guy whose soul transmigrates from Canada into a cultivator's body in a xianxia world and he decides to nope out and become a farmer. Many of his animals end up becoming spirit beasts, and he gets more or less accidentally involved in cultivator business anyway despite just trying to live a quiet life on the farm. It's got both slice of life sections and action parts. It's really funny and quite well-written.

MoL is THE time loop web serial that started the time loop web serial trend on Royal Road. Fifteen year old boy in fantasy world (not really medieval though, it has newly introduced firearms and trains) goes to his third year of magic academy and at the end of the first month he dies and winds up at the beginning of the month again. Thus begins his time-looping life, where every time he dies or the month ends, he returns to the beginning, carrying over nothing but his knowledge and growing magical prowess.

[Rynjin]

I didn't mention BoC because I don't read it; I'm not interested in reading a parody of a genre I'm already not a huge fan of.

Mother of Learning I didn't mention because it's already completed. I only mentioned ongoing series I'm currently reading. Otherwise there'd be a few others I'd recommend.

[Eurus]

I feel like I should attest that Beware of Chicken is more solid than the name would suggest. It's sort of a parody, but I think it's more useful to describe it as a relaxed slice-of-life story about a guy who rejects the martial arts lifestyle, stumbles into power anyway, and uses it to farm and raise his eccentric collection of talking animal disciples/children.

I'm enjoying The Calamitous Bob, a litRPG isekai about a woman who lands in the middle of a civil war and rescues an intelligent assassin golem that wants her to become empress. It has a solid setting, a main character that I actually mostly like (a rarity!), and the chapters don't feel too short, which is always a peeve of mine.

[Saph]

MoL is THE time loop web serial that started the time loop web serial trend on Royal Road. Fifteen year old boy in fantasy world (not really medieval though, it has newly introduced firearms and trains) goes to his third year of magic academy and at the end of the first month he dies and winds up at the beginning of the month again. Thus begins his time-looping life, where every time he dies or the month ends, he returns to the beginning, carrying over nothing but his knowledge and growing magical prowess.

Mother of Learning has kinda ruined Royal Road and other webfiction sites for me since I can't help but measure all the other online progression/litrpg/isekai/whatever stories against MoL and I've yet to find one that really matches up.

Since finishing MoL, I've read about . . . 3-4 other similarly long webserials, I think? And I'd struggle to really recommend any of them. When I look back on them, they all had interesting points and features (enough to make me read more than a novel's worth of chapters, at least) but with hindsight, I mostly notice the flaws rather than the positives.

Mother of Learning does three things really well:

1) it's set in an interesting and well-thought-out world
2) the protagonist faces serious challenges that he has to struggle to overcome
3) there's a clear plot which keeps progressing.

I'd really like to find another webserial that does all three, but I've yet to find one. Usually they fall down on point 2 (overpowered protagonist) or point 3 (story gets bogged down in long meandering sidequests/sidestories that aren't very interesting).

[halfeye]

We were like a canary and a vulture; both soaring, the canary infinitely lower than the vulture, but both of us dwarfed by the void of space beyond the false blue ceiling of the wide carnivorous sky.

That nonsense is from Katalepsis, it almost makes sense in context, but if you don't like that sort of thing Katalepsis is not going to be for you.

[Rynjin]

Mother of Learning has kinda ruined Royal Road and other webfiction sites for me since I can't help but measure all the other online progression/litrpg/isekai/whatever stories against MoL and I've yet to find one that really matches up.

Since finishing MoL, I've read about . . . 3-4 other similarly long webserials, I think? And I'd struggle to really recommend any of them. When I look back on them, they all had interesting points and features (enough to make me read more than a novel's worth of chapters, at least) but with hindsight, I mostly notice the flaws rather than the positives.

Mother of Learning does three things really well:

1) it's set in an interesting and well-thought-out world
2) the protagonist faces serious challenges that he has to struggle to overcome
3) there's a clear plot which keeps progressing.

I'd really like to find another webserial that does all three, but I've yet to find one. Usually they fall down on point 2 (overpowered protagonist) or point 3 (story gets bogged down in long meandering sidequests/sidestories that aren't very interesting).

I'd have to know which other serials you've tried to really make recommendations because there's plenty that do just as well at all 3 points as MoL (or better), but MoL kind of "cheats".

The "filler" portions of a timeloop story don't feel like it because of the inherently sandboxy nature of a timeloop tale. MoL has plenty of chapters that don't serve the overall plot, but do give Zorian some kind of benefit (ranging from spells known to resources to just better mental health) which is the same as any other progression fantasy. The only difference is that the self-contained timeline before a reset helps to mask any pacing issues.

[Saph]

I'd have to know which other serials you've tried to really make recommendations because there's plenty that do just as well at all 3 points as MoL (or better), but MoL kind of "cheats".

Off the top of my head:

• Worth the Candle – I liked the premise on this one since I like psychological-exploration-type stories and I've done a ton of DMing, so the idea of a creator set loose in a world populated by his own (frequently very unhealthy) creations was a really interesting one. But it got bogged down too much in the levelling-up trap that isekai stories so often fall into – it quickly got to the point that the MC had so many powers and abilities that I couldn't have told you all of them if my life depended on it – and the harem made me cringe. I liked it enough to finish it, so I took a look at the author's next series, but once I saw that every member of the new "party" who wasn't the MC was young and female I noped out since I was pretty sure I knew where this was going.

• He Who Fights With Monsters – Gave up around chapter 2 or 3 or so. Felt like yet another isekai written by someone raised on MMORPGs/CRPGs, with an annoying protagonist to boot.

• I Alone Level Up – Start was good, world was interesting, and I liked the South Korean setting. Writing quality was awful, but I was willing to give that a pass since I know how hard it is to do a good translation. Unfortunately it fell into the standard power creep trap that so many of these stories do and it didn't take long before the story was revolving around the MC levelling up and gaining vast amounts of loot by effortlessly annihilating everything with his armies of endlessly replaceable summoned monsters, over and over again. There were some hints of a long-term plot but I wasn't willing to stick it out long enough to follow them.

• Webserial number 2 or 3 or 4 by Wildbow, can't remember which one – Pale or Twig or Pact or something? Think I got through about ten chapters and all I remember is a bunch of psychologically damaged kids doing something or other with a supernatural flavour. Not terrible, but very slow and given how long Worm was I didn't think it was good enough to justify reading a million-ish words of it.

• Paranoid Mage – Urban fantasy rather than isekai and definitely better than average. Writer knows how to design a magic system and writes believable antagonists. Biggest criticism I had is that the MC's magical talent was just a bit too far on the overpowered side – it's hard to meaningfully threaten a character who can just teleport away whenever they feel like it. Still, I read about 2 or 3 books worth of this one, so I can't criticise it too much.

And probably a few others that I've forgotten about. As I said, none match up to MoL.

[Rynjin]

The only one of those I've read is Pale. It starts out rough (in large part due to Verona and to a lesser extent Lucy coming off as really unlikeable without context into their lives, and the Others being very nebulous non-characters for a while) but picks up pretty quickly as the cast is fleshed out; I'd say around chapter 15-20 or so. It has a consistent plot all the way through unlike his other stories, because it was originally meant to be written as a shorter tale.

It's been extended now but it also feels like that extension was worthwhile.

Unless you're talking about Twig which also stars psychologically damaged kids but has a way more meandering plot. I still love it for teh characters, but it definitively does not meet your criteria; Pale does though.

[Rakaydos]

Unless you're talking about Twig which also stars psychologically damaged kids but has a way more meandering plot. I still love it for teh characters, but it definitively does not meet your criteria; Pale does though.

Psychologically damaged kids doing unnatural things really is Wildbow's whole schtick.