Category: Blog

            Gods are an enduring part of many fantasy settings. They are powerful beings that generally have a specific domain or portfolio they’re in charge of. You’ve got your ocean gods, sky gods, gods of good, gods of evil, gods of archery, gods of carpentry, etc. I think the fun thing about adding gods to a story is the different ways that gods can be portrayed and how their relationship with their mortal followers affects the world.

Gods and Belief

            How gods are formed changes from setting to setting. Gods can be a natural part of the world, but often belief plays a factor in the formation of gods. If enough people believe in or worship something then a god embodying that focus of worship will come into existence. This new god will either form from nothing but belief or will be created from something that already exists such as a mortal. Belief is what allows a god to both exist and grow.

Gods as People

            There is a bit of a scale when it comes to how much a god is a person. On the one end, you have gods which are essentially just humans with a lot of power and a job they must perform. On the other end of the spectrum, are your eldritch gods with minds that defy comprehension whose very existence shatters the sanity of anyone who perceives them. Regardless of origin, I believe power is what defines a god most. Gods have the kind of power that makes even the ruler of an empire seem like a toddler in comparison. 

Gods as Magic

            It’s common in settings with gods for these gods to be a source of power. This usually takes the form of a pact or exchange of worship. Prayer takes the place of a magic spell with magical effects being the end result. It might require actual faith on the part of the worshipper or it may work more on a transactional basis. The mortal performs a service for the god and gain power in return. This is where the second part of the post title comes into play.

Sacrifice

            Sacrifices can range from simple offerings of food, incense, or prayers but can scale up to things like human sacrifice. There can be multiple reasons that the god requires sacrifices. It could be that gods are powered by worship and that sacrifices both sustain their existence and allow them to grow stronger. By this logic, the greater the sacrifice the more powerful a god becomes and the more power granted to their mortal worshippers.

            Usually only evil gods need sacrifice, but sometimes this is an aspect of all gods in a setting. There might be something special about humans that causes their deaths to add power to a god. It could also be the case that it’s the perception of the worshippers that causes human sacrifice to be viable. The worshippers view it as significant and this belief adds power to the sacrifice. In theory, as long as a worshipper views what they are sacrificing as important then it adds to the power. In this scenario, if someone views a really nice work of art as having the same intrinsic value as a human life then it would also have the same effect. Of course, there are a lot less works of art than there are humans which is why human sacrifice ends up being the go-to method of powering up a god.

Silt Verses

            My absolute favorite depiction of gods would be in the podcast, The Silt Verses. In this setting there are hundreds of gods formed from concepts and human sacrifice is considered a normal part of society. What I love about these gods is that while they are based on concepts humans can understand they’re always taken to horrifying extremes. Like the Trawler Man, a river god whose “miracles” include fusing fishermen to their boats and turning people into human/prawn hybrids. The gods themselves aren’t even really people. The closest they get to talking to someone is by sending weird dreams. They’re formed from human ideas, but there is nothing human about them. Gods, both legal and illegal, are integral to the nations presented in the Silt Verses even as their eldritch power is steadily eroding reality with each sacrifice.

            This is likely my own personal bias at play, but I feel like gods should be more than a person with magic powers. They should be something almost otherworldly in both its form and the way it thinks. I think this depiction of gods is an untapped well that more stories could do with.

Conclusion

            In general, adding gods to a setting can set up an interesting dynamic where the mortals are directly or indirectly being influenced by beings far more powerful than themselves. This sets up a situation where gaining the favor of gods can shape entire civilizations. Gods in fiction are a fascinating way of exploring the idea of powerful beings and the ways humanity interacts with them.

This might be personal bias talking, but it feels like the majority of web novels come in the form of a progression fantasy. Both of the litrpg variety and its numberless cousins. It’s the usual system. Your protagonist (usually an orphan) starts off weak before receiving an opportunity to start getting stronger. This opportunity is usually from discovering some previously unknown magical ability or a chance encounter giving the protagonist a mentor or a chance to go to magic school.

            One issue that I’ve found with a few of these stories, is that the author will give insufficient reason for the protagonist to want to get stronger. In the worst cases, it will be a “just because” mentality where there is no stated reason other than the fact that the book is a progression fantasy. There will be no enemies to defeat other than faceless monsters, no loved ones to protect, and no lofty goals to achieve. It’ll be like the protagonist is just kind of going with the flow. In less extreme cases, the protagonist will have incredibly generic reasons for getting stronger. They’ll want to help others or they want more freedom for themselves without really specifying what they mean by those things. Helping others and ensuring your own personal agency are noble goals, but I can’t help but feel like so many of these protagonists have them that it’s become a cliché.

            It’s even worse when the protagonist gives some speech or monologue about their reasons for wanting to get stronger. It might be the whole telling vs showing thing, but it just comes off as a bit preachy when they give a whole speech about wanting to help others. I get it. We all saw you give food to that starving kid. It’s obvious you’re an altruistic soul and honestly the way the author tried to show that was already heavy handed. No need to make it worse.

            I used to think that the obligatory scene at the beginning of a progression fantasy where the protagonist gets beat up was purely a “before” image before the training arc begins. Something to show the reader how far the protagonist has come in their training when they are able to dispatch the same threat later in the series. While I think this is still one of its purposes, nowadays I think it’s to give a big motivator for the protagonist. The question of “Why get Stronger?” becomes easy to answer when you plainly show what happens to those that can’t fight back.  

            The problem of protagonists whose only goal is to get stronger is worse in litrpg series. A big personal red flag I’m on the lookout for when starting a new litrpg is when the protagonist is obsessed with seeing their stats grow to the point of describing it as addicting. It’s almost like the author is outright saying that character and plot take a back seat to watching the numbers go up.

            This kind of mentality can lead into endless training arcs where the protagonist wakes up, trains, and goes to bed. The protagonist will sometimes have friends to train with, but when character relationships and character development are left by the way side in favor of making numbers go up it can feel forced. Almost like the author knew that you need more than a character doing push ups to have a story, but decided to do the bare minimum to add something else.  

            A good example of a progression fantasy protagonist with good motivations is Catherine from “A Practical Guide to Evil”. Her reasons for becoming stronger are fairly simple. She wants to improve the lives the kingdom she lives in which is currently being oppressed by the evil empire which conquered it. A simple and noble goal with concrete objectives that requires the protagonist to become stronger in order to get anything done. Much better than a generic “I want to help people” motivation which can mean anything from saving the world to working in a soup kitchen. It also helps that the series treats power as something that can come in multiple forms such as political or military power which can’t really be obtained through an endless training arc.

            Progression fantasy is probably the genre I’ve read the most, but it can be undermined by an obsession with getting stronger above all else. Strength being both the means and goal makes for a weak story. The protagonist of a story needs to have worthwhile goals to move towards. There needs to be a reason to have all that strength or else all that training becomes pointless.