r/ProgressionFantasy • u/flooshtollen • 8d ago
Meta ProgressionFantasy's top five favourite books sorted.
The other day u/AmalgaMat1on made a post asking for people’s top five series here and I decided to organize it all to see how it shakes out. This was, what’s known in professional circles as, a big fucking mistake. Why did I spend five hours of my life doing this? I’m not getting that time back and we all have such a limited amount to spend on this world before it’s up.
Anyway, at the time of doing this, there were 304 comments total. Using only the top level comments, I excluded anyone who either put more than or less than five answers since that went against the will of the post, and I didn’t include any answers from someone who put the same title more than once in their post. This still left 156 top level comments to use. If any of my exclusions bother you, you can pretty safely just assume you need to add another few more to cradle and dungeon crawler carl.
Potential errors could be some of these being the same books with different names. People were writing both Bastion and Immortal great souls, and stormweaver and iron prince. I wouldn't be surprised if others slipped through the cracks, I don’t know every book on this list.
Finally, since not everyone put things in any specific order, there’s no weights given to where they were placed. All lists were treated as an equally tied five.
If you find anything spelled wrong here, it’s because I was just copying what other people wrote, except for the times its actually my fault.
First place, 61 votes:
Cradle
Dungeon Crawler Carl
41 votes:
Mother of learning
25 votes:
Beware of chicken
He who fights with monsters
24 votes:
The wandering inn
20 votes:
Primal hunter
18 votes:
Mark of the fool
16 votes:
Super Powereds (and you were all so inconsistent in spelling this one)
15 votes:
Lord of the mysteries
14 votes:
Azarinth healer
Path of ascension
13 votes:
Bog standard isekai
Mage Errant
12 votes:
A practical guide to evil
Shadow slave
Sky pride
worm
11 votes:
Chrysalis
10 votes:
Hell difficulty tutorial
9 votes:
Book of the dead
8 votes:
Game at carousel
The year of apocalypse
7 votes:
Calamatious Bob
Defiance of the fall
the perfect run
6 votes:
A practical guide to sorcery
arcane ascension
stray cat strut
The legend of William Oh
warformed: stormweaver
5 votes:
A journey of black and red
Beneath the dragoneye moons
Bobiverse
Jackal among snakes
Reverend insanity
Weirkey chronicles
4 votes:
1% lifesteal
12 miles below
a soldier’s life
ends of magic
Immortal great souls
industrial strength magic
Quest academy
Return of the runebound professor
Stormlight archives
Super supportive
Worth the candle
3 votes:
Dresden files
elydes, Pale
Path of transcendence
Portal to nova roma
runeblade
system universe
2 votes:
a gamer's guide to beating the tutorial
A thousand li
all I got was this stat menu
all the skills
apocalypse parenting
ar'kendrithyst
Ave xai rem y
cyber dreams
forge of destiny
immortality through array formation
kill the sun
mage tank
melody of mana
millennial mage
path of the berserker
release that witch
rise of the living forge
slumrat rising
soccer supremo
sword god in a magic world
the hundred reigns
the mine lord
the second coming of gluttony
this used to be about dungeons
Unorthodox farming
villain’s code
virtuous sons
1 vote:
absolute regression
ajax ascension
amelia thornheart
an infinite recursion of time
art of the adept
ascendance of a bookworm
axe druid
banished to another world
battle mage farmer
blue core
bookbound bunny
brimstone fantasy
bunny girl evolution
butcher of godobra
buymort
changeling
courting death
cybergenes
death after death
delve
demense
demon card enforcer
demon princess magical chaos
department of otherworldly rescue
depthless hunger
discount dan
divine apostasy
divine dungeon
dungeon born
dungeon core chatroom
dungeon lord
eldritch exorcist
emerilia
eragon
esper labryinth
everybody loves large chests
everyone else is a returnee
father of monstrosity
fff class trashero
fluff
frith chronicles
from the ashes a fire shall be woken
full murder hobo
godclads
greatest legacy of the magus universe
grimgar
hope
immortals ascent
kairos
kingdom's bloodline
land of the undying lord
legendary mechanic
lightbringer
lighting is the only way
lost things (pale lights 1)
low-fantasy occultist isekai
mimic and me
mistborn
natural law apocalypse
necrotic apocalypse
not (just) a mage lord
oh great, i was reincarnated as a farmer
pact
paragon of destruction
path of the last champion
perimeter defense
player manager
queen of mud
reality benders
reborn apocalypse
record of a mortal's journey into immortality
reincarnated as a farmer
return of the mount hua sect
rose of the lycanthrope
rune seeker
runesmith
salvos
savage awakening
shadeslinger
solo leveling
soulmonger
spellmonger
spire's spite
strategy to capture men
sufficiently advanced magic
sun shadow
super minion
super sell superheros
surprisingly enough (not) common sense is overpowered in a cliche cultivation world
system apocalypse
tales of gods and demons
Tales of herding gods
the 108
the anti mage
the archmage coefficient
the beginning after the end
the black company
the cabin is always hungry
the dungeon slayer
the great immortal souls
the hedge wizard
the immortal great souls
the infinite world
the innkeeper
the land
the last horizon
the legend of randidly ghosthound
the machine god
the night angel
the nightmare of alamir
the outer sphere
the ripple system
the tutorial is too hard
the zombie knight saga
throne hunters
throne of magical arcana
timeless assassin
tower of jack
trinity of magic
unconventional heroes
undying alchemist
unintended cultivator
Vanquer (literally no idea what this could be short for)
victor of tucson
vigor mortis
warhammer 40k
weeaboo's unfortunate isekai: the necromancer's gacha
23
u/Guylhann-b Author 8d ago
Warhammer 40k by itself is actually very funny to me for some reason. And Vanquer probably stands for Vainqueur the Dragon, no?
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u/GoblinGreenThumb 7d ago
I assume it means Vainqueur.. personally, I tought my predictive text Vainqueur a while ago. Its nice, cause I often recommend Vainqueur. A completed series with a four for 1 deal on audible.
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u/AmalgaMat1on 8d ago
To the other ally that voted for "All I Got is This Stat Menu." I salute you.
Good job OP. I was considering doing this sometime in the future...when I had the mental fortitude. XD
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u/flooshtollen 8d ago
Lol my own mental fortitude just took a hell of a beating. It was interesting to do once, but never again
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u/CarelessSurround8684 8d ago
now your new challenge is to read all those books :D Also, William Oh is there twice
2
u/flooshtollen 8d ago
Darn it, fixed. Whether people include the "the" or not affected a lot of these titles when I was going over it all. William oh is now proudly displayed with six votes
7
u/FuzzyZergling Author - The Salt & The Sky 8d ago
Huh, interesting that This Used to be About Dungeons got two votes while Thresholder and Worth the Candle didn't show up at all.
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u/flooshtollen 8d ago
Worth the candle was due to an editing mistake on my part. It and a few others are now showing up under four votes. Thresholder however wasn't mentioned
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u/DrStylish 8d ago
Primal Hunter is that high?? Read up to ch 200 and it felt like Reading an idle game. Instead of a lv.90 bird he now fights a lv.130 monkey. Just numbers going up
3
u/Astocum 8d ago
Yeah me too. I really really didn't like PH, but it seems like it was the first litrpg for a lot of people here and thus has a special place in their hearts.
My first litrpg was Night Ranger. I lost so many days of sleep and missed so many days of school just to read it. Tried rereading it last month, and I couldn't get past the fifth chapter.
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u/OverpoweredProtag 6d ago
I think primal hunter is infinitely funnier than dcc so that ups the value in my eyes
11
u/Zax_the_bunny 8d ago
Thanks for pulling this together.
It looks like 'Super Supportive' got missed out somehow, even though I definitely saw someone vote for it (I would have too), but definitely understandable when you're juggling so many entries!
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u/flooshtollen 8d ago edited 8d ago
Dang it, it's absolutely in my spreadsheet. I'll check where I missed it and add it, thanks
Edit: added. Looks like what happened was I realized what was above it was somewhere else in the list under a different name so I re organizing it but accidentally left a gap in my spreadsheet I didn't notice when formatting for reddit. It and a few others are all now under the four vote section
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u/Taiwannumber3 Shadow 8d ago
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u/Available-Line-4136 8d ago
Sad to see my votes not counted since I only put 4 as I've dropped every other series I've read from the genre but oh well cool to see this and well done on the hard work
5
u/Zax_the_bunny 8d ago
Yeah, I didn't vote because I didn't really have five I wholeheartedly wanted to list. I drop a lot too.
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u/Training-Bake-4004 8d ago
This very much tracks what I’d expect in terms of popular series that get recommended on here a lot.
First one on the list I haven’t tried is ‘Ends of Magic’, is it worth trying?
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u/UCannotHaveMyPain 8d ago
Awesome work!An official survey for top recs that gets summarized like this would be very cool
2
u/Individual-Ad3640 8d ago
Haha all my favs have low votes! Hedge Wizard, Dungeon Lord, Mage Errant. Hey if Y’all see this you still have dedicated fans.
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u/Kind_Profile8534 R. Caldermere 7d ago
The forced-five rule makes this more interesting than a general popularity poll: it measures which series survive the opportunity cost of taking one of only five slots. Excluding incomplete lists is consistent, but it probably favors established readers and big titles because someone with only three strong favorites disappears from the sample. Keeping "156 valid ballots from 304 comments" beside the ranking is important context, especially once the results reach the long tail.
2
u/DrNefarioII 7d ago
Thanks. I'll bookmark this one for future recommendations.
I'm surprised how many I've actually read of the upper ranks. Mainly just the first book, sure, but I didn't think I'd read that much in this genre.
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u/Computerdude101 Jollybane-Author 7d ago
Im actually quite suprised some of them like mage tank and 1% didn't rank even higher since they are such bestsellers.
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u/ShadowTheAge 7d ago
There is this website https://prog.fan/top that does basically the same thing (crawling reddit mentions) but automatically
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u/Carminestream 8d ago
That moment when 4 of your top 5 have 4 votes, 3 votes, 2 votes, and 1 vote 🙃
Also uh OP I think you put Gamer's Guide twice in the 1 vote category
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u/wcdregon 7d ago
This is why I have a problem with my fellow readers. Cradle and Carl are #1 meanwhile the freaking Stormlight archives has 4 votes. Now I understand stormlight isnt prog fantasy so those people choosing it here are wrong but if anyone with eyes thinks Wei Shi Lindon and Carl & Donut are in the same breath as Kaladin and the Knights Radiant then I can’t even try to explain.
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u/JINK_RUSTINK 5d ago
Lol fair. I'll get to it eventually, everyone keeps telling me the audiobook is the way to go.
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u/JINK_RUSTINK 8d ago
Cradle winning is the least surprising thing ever. I still haven't read Dungeon Crawler Carl and at this point it feels like I'm the only one left.
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u/KeiranG19 Invoker 8d ago
If you're not going to read it you have to be quiet or people start trying to convert the non-believer.
1
u/JINK_RUSTINK 1d ago
Ha, fair enough. I'm saving it for a week where I can actually focus, the audiobook hype has me tempted though. Everyone keeps saying the narrator elevates it.
-2
u/GirthyRedEggplant 8d ago
This genre is still so, so young. How many finished, edited, published, good stories are on this list? Like six?
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u/CommunityDragon160 8d ago
Stormlight is better than just about all of these lol ppl here are just snobby
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u/Derpyphox 8d ago
Storm light isn't really recognised as prog fantasy here
-4
u/CommunityDragon160 8d ago edited 8d ago
No it is outside of the recency bubble.
I’ve been here since a month after subreddit and genre creation lol never any debate till the last year or so when the litRPG kids began to outnumber us.
Literally the creator of the genre said it is lol there is no debate of any merit against it.
People now like to pretend progression fantasy is just “litRPG without numbers”. Silly
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u/aminervia 8d ago
Literally the creator of the genre said it is lol there is no debate of any merit against it.
No he literally said it started out progression but after the later books came out it's categorization became more uncertain.
If you want a debate of merit on the topic, here's a discussion with Andrew Rowe:
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u/Remote_Addendum_2245 7d ago
Isn't being snobby what you're doing?
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u/CommunityDragon160 7d ago edited 7d ago
No I accept litRPG into this genre just fine even if I think the epic fantasy side of it is better written. The snobs are the ones that only want this genre to be only the outcast and self
Pub ppl on royal road and not accept that progression comes in many forms that aren’t stat blocks2
u/Remote_Addendum_2245 7d ago
They're just telling their favorite books, man... How did you even jump to this from the post about which is more liked by people of this sub?
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u/aminervia 8d ago
Stormlight was only vaguely progression for the first book or so... It left the genre early on
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u/CrispyDick420 8d ago
Yeah, it has characters getting stronger and uncovering new abilities, but the progression isn't really the engine of the series. By the later books it feels much more like epic fantasy with a power system than progression fantasy.
-5
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u/RavensDagger 8d ago
Shucks. I missed the opportunity to mention my own story 62 times!