Making progression more satisfying?

Source Credit

Original Author: Sunny Sain

Original URL: https://www.royalroad.com/forums/thread/113935

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Heyo, I like studying storytelling and writing and been compiling my own notes on progression fantasy for quite a while. Most of these observations are based on the big hitters of the genre. These are my thoughts on what to consider when crafting a power-system for your prog-fantasy story. Maybe it's all common knowledge, in which case, you can use this post as an invitation to gimme your thoughts on tips&tricks on how to make progression more satisfying

Crafting A Satisfying Progression fantasy

Note. This post does not touch upon characters, plot, or setting, just how to adapt magic system and progression to make progression satisfying.

Elements of progression that facilitate character development:

Tied to character progression.

Some revelation or commitment is required to progress past thresholds of power. If progression beat equals character development beat, your pacing will be snappier. Gating progression behind character revelations and growth can be really satisfying and lets you pull off those big moments where MC gets a sudden power up at a dramatic moment. Of course, if you’re going for a grittier feel, you may want to tone this aspect down. These don’t always have to be 100% positive moments either. Some of the most chilling/thrilling scenes are those, where a false revelation or powerful emotion leads the character to using more power than usual and doing things they wouldn’t normally want to do.

Powers with personality.

Giving elemental forces semi-sentience or making the emotional properties of elements influence characters can enhance the impact of character moments and highlight character traits.

Examples: Pacts or bonds with sentient entities (swords, demons, gods, etc.) for extra oomph. Powers with divine aspects that require you to be or become a certain way to wield (vows and such).

Variety of progression sources.

(This element also increases enjoyability a great deal). If progression is obtained mainly from doing one thing over and over to increase strength, it’s BORING to read about. Instead, plan several ways for your character to increase strength. Examples:

Mental.

Character learns about, the progression system, the society he lives in, the basics of combat, battle tactics, strategy, about importance of a good plan, about the importance of panning for when you don’t have time to plan, and about how to learn better and teach himself instead of constantly relying on others to teach himself. Mental progress is endless in real life, it’s super satisfying to see it in any book.

Physical.

Better fitness. Better combat skills. Physical skills such as swimming, climbing, parkour, shooting, swords. In most settings, a person can only have time to learn so many physical skills, so they’re a good way to differentiate characters. Also fun to have people with low physical skills possess superpowers that enhance strength.

Magic-system based.

Learning about the limitations and strengths of the magic system, adapting to the magic system’s drawbacks, coming to terms with mental aspect of using the magic (such as resisting a demon or god’s influence), compiling synergistic powers, utilizing powers you have more efficiently, improving the sheer power of your powerset, and so on.

Resources.

Improving access to magic-system resources, improving access to mental learning resources, improving access to physical training resources, improving personal logistics to travel faster, improving your lodging, improving regular mundane gear, gaining crafting equipment for magic or non magic, getting access to better consumable items, better weapons, hire others to do research for you, hire others to do crafting, buy safe mansion, upgrade mansion to castle to city to nation… Resource based progression has its own subgenres: Base Building and Dungeon Core.

Character/Emotional.

This list isn’t about satisfying character progression, but for progression stories, you may want character progression to touch upon the mentality needed to succeed, the realities of what it is to work hard 24/7, and the mental consequences of being focused on success and power. 

Elements of progression that make progression feel more earned

Everyone can be a hero.

Every human should theoretically be able to do it in the setting (when writing a classic zero-to-hero), if given the chance, but society can limit them.

Grit, determination, hard work, and their intelligent application pays off.

If they don’t pay off eventually, the progression earned will feel lame. However, you can buy/get accelerated by mentors and resources.

No pain no gain.

Some suffering must be had to process to make it feel extra earned. Consequently, putting MC through more pain than his peers is an excellent tool for justifying them progressing at a faster rate.

Think before going grimdark.

Be aware that trading limbs and organs with every power-up leads to a very dark experience for the reader. Magic at a cost trope creates great moral and ethical dilemmas, but it does not necessarily facilitate satisfying progression. You still need some resource(s) for characters to burn in order to make fights exciting though.

Note. There can be secret powers that cost life force or cause great pain, but beware of the hero making them his crutch.

Elements of progression that encourage cool action scenes

Resource wars.

Progression needs to be limited by resources somehow. People fight over these progression resources.

Not all resources are equal.

If only the quantity of resources matters, and not their quality, then there’s less fight over a special resource, and more economic maneuvering to use everything within sight as efficiently as possible.

Nature can do magic too.

Allowing beasts and locations to access the magic system like humans lets you have some crazy man vs nature scenes. Think on a scale from bacteria-ants-rats-cats-lions-dragons-hurricanes. 

Healing.

There have to be healing powers or you have no shounen action.

Robust bodies or energy shields.

Same point as healing. Regular humans break easily and their fights can get gritty.

Elements of progression that enhance wonder/enjoyment

Magic must enable/enhance wonder,

and progression must in part be what allows characters to experience that wonder.

If the system doesn't allow awesome creatures, places, items, cultures, and cosmic beings to exist, then it reduces awesomeness.

Sidenote. If the magic system is too well understood by its users, you risk turning the story into a study of human nature, politics, and socio-economical conflicts instead of epic battles and heroic actions. Might be a good thing if you’re writing a grittier story.

System needs to be difficult to min-max or game, so that it takes genuine ingenuity to be able to do it.

Diversity of progression styles and combinations.

People can progress in different, but roughly equally powerful paths. If you’re looking for themes of paths, don’t stick to just elemental themes, but elements in a broader symbolic style like death, storm, life, and even more abstract ones like playing card themed powers. Best if you have to specialize so that companions can cover different areas. Make sure MC does not pick the most generic path. Make sure that these paths can be combined and tweaked for endless variations that the reader can dream about.

Rather than there being a super duper element of awesomeness that rules them all, a rock-paper-scissors balance may result in more entertaining combat scenes.

Understandable and meaningful categorization/ranking of power tiers.

It should be possible to categorize power levels in a way everyone can understand. Preferably with titles or unique names, rather than numeric levels.

Tie the titles to the rest of the worldbuilding and give them some hidden lore to make them feel deeper than random video game rankings. What do I mean with this? If your story is about delving into a mysterious hole, the ranking could be whistles (a common explorer item), and ranks are whistle colors. Makes sense. But wait, it turns out that white whistle (the highest rank) can only be created by your magic system in super specific conditions, and their sound can animate certain secrets of your setting (check out Made in Abyss for more whistle details).

It may be a good idea to give some tiers physical identifiers (eye color, hair color, wings, horns, etc.) Physical transformation to signify mental transformation is wonderful.

Meaningful progression.

No random stat upgrades that don’t translate to any difference in story. All progression needs to have a real demonstrable effect.

Meaningful power difference between tiers.

Tiers are there to give weight to MC outwitting “almost unwinnable” fights, and to give motivation to progress. Don’t trivialize the difference though. 

Tease future progression.

Promise is one of the most important writing tools, so teasing progression in a prog fantasy is a no brainer. Have your characters hype up and dream of possessing powers/treasures they see or hear about. Make your Guide character give MC a prophecy about his future self. Make your villains discuss MC’s growth and compare him to an ancient sealed evil who makes their knees tremble. Promise awesomeness to the reader and the characters, and make the final result be even awesomer.

Theorycrafting potential.

If you’ve teased progression and established diverse progression styles in a semi-hard magic system, your readers should be able to theorycraft potential progression builds for your MC. This can be hard to achieve, as it requires you to be very internally consistent with your magic system, and requires you to plan out a lot more of the magic system than you show to the reader. However, the end result can be quite satisfying, as your readers will keep guessing between books on how the main cast will evolve. Some ways to help achieve this:

Include minor characters with progression styles comparable to MC. MC can think about their powers and ponder if he should do something similar. The more comparable characters you include, the more options MC and the reader can use to draw from into their theorycrafting.

In story stories about people with cool abilities, who are later revealed to once having been similar to your MC. It’s neat to find out that the apex characters in your world were once similar in power to MC. Makes MC and reader think of how MC could become like them.

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