LitRPG Power Arc Analysis: Case Studies of Veridian Gate Online, Dungeon Crawler Carl, and More...

Power Arcs in LitRPG can be tricky. So in this video we're going to take a look at some of my favorite series and deconstruct how they built their power arcs. More specifically we'll discuss Veridian Gate Online, Dungeon Cralwer Carl, Ascend Online, He Who Fights With Monsters, and 5th Edition D&D
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[@hggpi]

OH YEAH more litprg stuff.
After reading every single korean litrpg like manga now i can finally do the same thing with books

[@lucasfv1357]

Oooh, always nice to have examples. I want to try writing the story of a mage apprentice, so pacing and curve of learning and improvement of skill would be fundamental to tell a decent tale

[@themagicengineer5314]

Excellent! Do you think you're going to mirror one of the arcs/curves we covered here or develop your own?

[@lucasfv1357]

@@themagicengineer5314 Due to how my system works, getting the hang of the very basics takes a lot of effort and learning. Once he's done with that, things can get linear, especially if he picks a specialization early on (which I haven't decided yet). After that, progress can be slow again once he tries to achieve more complex effects. That said, the guy is no prodigy, has no natural talent, is not special in any way, in fact he might even suck a little: the more spectacular and powerful magical effects will be shown by his seniors. So it kind of reminds me of the steps in Ascend Online... but not really

[@themagicengineer5314]

sounds like a solid S-Curve arc. Slow at the beginning and end with consistent growth in the middle. Does that sound right?@@lucasfv1357

[@lucasfv1357]

Actually, yeah! That's a good way to see it, I hadn't realized it had a simple shape. Thank you, sir!

[@knaz7468]

Have you done a video on what is on your whiteboard in the background? Like is that how you "Life Game" you days/weeks? It looks neat.

[@themagicengineer5314]

I have not and I don't think it's anything so interesting. The thing is, I have a hard time just relaxing, so I made a list of different kinds of relaxing activities I like to do and broke them into active (me making things, solving problems, or working my brain) and passive (things that are easy and/or mindless to do. And if I need to relax and REALLY don't know what to do, I can just roll some dice :D

[@TheMichaellathrop]

So in terms of xp to next level DnD does require exponentially more as you progress, but because defeating an encounter of your own level gives you exponentially more the number of encounters you need from level to level doesn't really change so long as you are always dealing with encounters of the appropriate level.
OK so a couple of things with HWFwM's first is that from what I remember in terms of raw physical stats Bronze 0 to Bronze 1 is the same as Iron 0 to Bronze 0 so each stat bump is ten times as strong as at the previous rank, also I think peak non magic human potential is somewhere in the middle ranks of iron so someone in the worlds strongest man competition would be somewhere in the power 4-6 range and Captain America might be a 9. Secondly a bunch of the characters who we see go from silver to gold over the course of the books were at silver 8-9 when we first met them, as far as reaching silver Taika manages to get to low to mid bronze over the course of I think between 2-4 years and then manages to get to mid grade silver during the monster surge which was fast but not unprecedented, where as Thalia Mercer and Daniel Geller only managed from like silver 7-9 to gold 1-2 in that time. It's not hugely clear but the arc where Jason is back on earth is actually longer than the time he initially spends in the other world and they do talk about people ranking up faster during monster surges.

[@themagicengineer5314]

That sounds right. I've been re-listening to the books lately. I understand WHY he's pushing Jason forward like he is (got to keep the progression going without it taking years and years).
I also thought of a small modification that might have made it a bit clearer to someone like me. Rather than presenting it as an exponential progress curve (different from the logarithmic power progression of the characters themselves), maybe it could have simply been presented as a scarcity issue. Like, it takes the same number of monsters of your equivalent rank for you to rank up, but the problem at Gold is FINDING enough gold-ranked monsters to fight... IDK maybe that's exactly what Travis intended, but it's not quite how my brain interpreted things

[@themagicengineer5314]

Oh, and you're absolutley correct in terms of D&D. Mechanically, it kind of balances out to a smooth line, but that progression curve is ultimately managed by the GM.

[@TheMichaellathrop]

@@themagicengineer5314 I think he actually mentions somewhere that it actually takes more monsters of your equivalent rank at each successive rank. I know that he does specify that for core users in book one.

[@themagicengineer5314]

I thought he did but wasn't positive@@TheMichaellathrop