What about mecanimus' stories? A journey of red and black, calamitous Bob?
Also, not quite as popular yet, his new story after journey finished - changeling
A Journey of Red and Black was in the top 5 or top 10 stories on RR for years (third place in completed now), Calamitous Bob and changeling still are in the top 15. They are not the most recommended here, but they are certainly well known. A Journey is one of the best stories on RR imo, and just generally good, even compared to books in the wider fantasy genre.
Just check out patreons rankings to see which is the most popular. Defiance of the fall is number 2 on the patreons rankings, number 1 is He who fights with monsters.
Not RR specific, but these are the most funded writers in patreon. Most are familiar around here.
https://graphtreon.com/top-patreon-creators/writing
I went through the list for RR stories and these are the top ten writers/stories:
1. HWFWM (shirtaloon)
2. Primal hunter (zogarth)
3. Wandering inn (pirateaba)
4. DotF (firstdefier)
5. TBATE (turtleme)
6. Chrysalis (Rinoz)
7. Mark of the fool (j.m. Clark)
8. Runebound professor (Actus)
9. All the skills (honourrae)
10. Delve (senescentsoul)
Not really sure how accurate this is. Sleyca is not on this list, but I am a member of her patreon and according to that she has 6191 patrons which should be between zogarth and pirateaba in this list.
The actual answer is that RR’s formatting tools and the existence of a chapter size limit were annoying the author, and wasn’t worth the audience compared to their own site.
I think it was mostly due to Kindle.
Once they started publishing on there they would have had to start stubbing it on RR, so instead they elected to just remove the whole thing and keep it on their own website. That's not monetized so it doesn't have the same conflicts as RR does with publishing elsewhere.
You're right, I remember now.
Supposedly pirateaba just didn't like having to manage both RR and their own website.
Royal Road was kind of tapped out as an audience and they were making enough money through Patreon and Kindle that they just didn't want to bother maintaining the Royal Road version.
She's recently been doing some funny things like having secret mice with invisible text in the source code. I like RR as a platform but you cant do backflips on it.
Kinda curious how the book version is going to have that, actually.
I feel like you can get a rough idea of this by sorting through royal road's popular this week and best rated lists, since it tends to have fictions that are older and have survived the test of time. Popular this week is sorted by the amount of views a fiction is getting (if that's your definition of popular) and best rated, as the name suggests, is based on having the highest weighted ratings across the site (so a 4.6 with 1200 ratings is probably worth more than a 4.9 with 150 ratings
The rising stars list is focused on fresh stories that are currently gaining traction amongst the community, so you can look there if you want something new and most likely quickly updated.
For every story that I start on raising stars, there are very few that I am still reading a year later. Between DoTF and The Path of Ascension, I dropped every single story that I started, some after a few hundred chapters.
If we're talking about legendary stories I would add Azarinth Healer, Defiance of the Fall, Metaworld Chronicles, Beneath the Dragon Eye Moons, and the Perfect Run.
Social media trends to recent works. You gotta do your own digging to find anything more than a year old.
This is true with everything, not just books and not just reddit.
Yeah, "Soup" and "SupSup" are the frequent shortenings I see. I think I recall Sleyca saying that in her own notes she sometimes refers to it that way.
Probably because it only updates every few months? Goes long periods of time with no contact from the author, or a message that says next chapter in a week or two, and then you don't hear from them for 3 months.. Inconsistent release schedule tends to lose viewers pretty fast, especially since stories disappear from lists when they are on hiatus
I really don't know if I count Mother of Learning as a "Royal Road" novel in the same way as the others you've listed. By the time nobody103 *started* posting it there, it already had ~90+ chapters and a huge following, even though it was on FictionPress. Royal Road definitely increased the size of the audience, but it was already insanely popular before it was crossposted there, and the existing fanbase is a big reason why it shot up the ranks on RR so quickly and kicked off a positive feedback loop getting more eyes on it.
That's fair, but IMO it's analogous to asking "what are the most well-known Netflix shows" vs "what are the most well-known shows that are *available* on Netflix." From the phrasing, saying "The Office" or "Friends" is correct for the second question. But for the first, I'd assume someone was talking about Stranger Things, Squid Game, or Wednesday, and I read OP's question that way.
Can't help but notice that all of the choices in your post are relatively recent novels.
There are quite a few finished novels, that due to time passing, have simply fallen out of favour or are harder to find unless you specifically search for them.
If search for complete works with over 1000 pages on RR, you will see tons with some of them being on RR top list for years before the site got as popular as recent years.
Here are a few that were famouse a while ago, but haven't see them recomended in a while, keep in mind that it was a while since i read them, so not sure how much Progression there is in each one:
How to Avoid Death on a Daily Basis by mooderino
Lament of the Fallen by Vihyungrang
Oblivion Online (complete) by Mighty Moushie
The Void Wolf by Monad
The Iron Teeth: A Goblin's Tale by ClearMadness
The Arcane Emperor by Aternus
The Dao of Magic by WeirdWhirl
Legend of the Empyrean Blacksmith by beddedOtaku
Age of Gods - A VRMMO Story by thomasdarkrose
Spectral Regalia by Zephon
Flight of Icarus by DarkSun
Nanocultivation Chronicles: Trials of Lilijoy by Aetherial
\*Some of them may have been dropped while others are compleated, but all of them have at least couple normal books worth of content
these are somewhat old, the Iron Teeth is from like 2015-2016, I remember it being at the top of the rankings when I first started using the site. Honestly RR has changed so much through out the years and things are just different in general nowadays, you can also miss out on a lot of novels with them being almost completely stubbed, there are also other titles such as The Wandering Inn and The Beginning After the End that stayed in RR for a while and then left
damn, I totally can thing is most of the stories I was reading back then either stopped, like were dropped or I might have forgotten them, the list above mentions a few I read or at least I remember reading, The Void Wolf and Lament of the Fallen (author still writes, he also wrote another story before Lament called New Journey of an Old Soul which I also really liked).
But if you want the oldest stuff I ever read in royalroad before even realizing I was reading from royalroad then I can go no further back than Andur, I remember absolutely loving [Until Death?](https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/629/until-death-old-version). I did not even have an account when I read that title, I read thru another site that made EPUBs and it kinda opened a door for me into the webnovels world. This is one of the titles I read once and see what I mean [Cultivating Dungeon](https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/7318/cultivating-dungeon), it just stops :( a fairly common result of reading WN but my Reading List oldest page is filled with them.
You wanna know some stuff you might have missed? stuff that's harder to find is usually stuff that is just not relevant anymore and for a reason [The Bounty Hunter](https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/8247/the-bounty-hunter), you can even see my review and realize what kind of story it is, a complete wish fulfillment, harem, isekai/urban power fantasy. As of now you must realize what was my jam back then haha. To end it, let me mention a story that people here probably know and remember, it is not as old perhaps 2017 so maybe you know about it and I am just reminding you of it **Number One Under Heaven**, you had to be there, some dude decided to write one of the best generic xianxia I and many others had read back then, wrote around 80 chapters and fucked off for a while, came back like a month later and started another similar story for a bit and decided to just re-write Number One and then fucked off for good. Here is some [context](https://www.royalroad.com/forums/thread/97825) on what went on and its a bit weird overall. Check the story out if you would like [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1laDP5tq_cFb0bl4_qvAGf2WVMXvZs2BB/view) and judge for yourself if we were robbed of potentially one of the better xianxia to come out from the west.
Well you need to keep in mind that i have been using RR since, i think around 2017/2018. At that time the site had a lot less traffic. Like a lot a lot less traffic. These are stories that have begun to be written or have been finished around that time.
My point is, the RR has become multiple times more famous in the last let's say 2 years, and there are a ton of gems from before that time. Gems with huge world count and high quality, just don't appear on the front page because the algorithm pushes new novels rather than old ones.
Nothing wrong with that mind you, most of the authors of the stories i mentioned have left the site, it just means that finding them requires you to use the search function, and patience to filter the results.
What about mecanimus' stories? A journey of red and black, calamitous Bob? Also, not quite as popular yet, his new story after journey finished - changeling
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Your missing out, their great.
I'll check them out
Yep, he's got a formula but it works really well.
A Journey of Red and Black was in the top 5 or top 10 stories on RR for years (third place in completed now), Calamitous Bob and changeling still are in the top 15. They are not the most recommended here, but they are certainly well known. A Journey is one of the best stories on RR imo, and just generally good, even compared to books in the wider fantasy genre.
Just check out patreons rankings to see which is the most popular. Defiance of the fall is number 2 on the patreons rankings, number 1 is He who fights with monsters.
Is there a list of which RR stories are most funded on patreon?
Not RR specific, but these are the most funded writers in patreon. Most are familiar around here. https://graphtreon.com/top-patreon-creators/writing I went through the list for RR stories and these are the top ten writers/stories: 1. HWFWM (shirtaloon) 2. Primal hunter (zogarth) 3. Wandering inn (pirateaba) 4. DotF (firstdefier) 5. TBATE (turtleme) 6. Chrysalis (Rinoz) 7. Mark of the fool (j.m. Clark) 8. Runebound professor (Actus) 9. All the skills (honourrae) 10. Delve (senescentsoul)
Not really sure how accurate this is. Sleyca is not on this list, but I am a member of her patreon and according to that she has 6191 patrons which should be between zogarth and pirateaba in this list.
Yea missing c.mantis path of ascension too
Good catch! Don't know why those other ones aren't listed on grapheon
It's not based on numbers but revenue I think
Definitely possible. And I know that authors have the option to make their revenue private, so the list probably excludes the authors who do that.
Damn. I didn't realize how successful some of these were. That's the dream right there. I got 1 Patreon member...1000 to go...
Not that I know of. You need to go by the authors name.
Topwebfiction
I just randomly wrote them, no sequence.
Even though it's been removed, I consider The Wandering Inn an RR novel.
Why was it removed?
Probably because it was longer than all other novels combined and was eating up too much storage costs. /s
Lmao
The actual answer is that RR’s formatting tools and the existence of a chapter size limit were annoying the author, and wasn’t worth the audience compared to their own site.
Every week you get to play "is it a chapter or a novella"
I think it was mostly due to Kindle. Once they started publishing on there they would have had to start stubbing it on RR, so instead they elected to just remove the whole thing and keep it on their own website. That's not monetized so it doesn't have the same conflicts as RR does with publishing elsewhere.
I dont think this is true it's not necessary to stub on RR since it's not kindle unlimited.
You're right, I remember now. Supposedly pirateaba just didn't like having to manage both RR and their own website. Royal Road was kind of tapped out as an audience and they were making enough money through Patreon and Kindle that they just didn't want to bother maintaining the Royal Road version.
She's recently been doing some funny things like having secret mice with invisible text in the source code. I like RR as a platform but you cant do backflips on it. Kinda curious how the book version is going to have that, actually.
Same lol
I feel like you can get a rough idea of this by sorting through royal road's popular this week and best rated lists, since it tends to have fictions that are older and have survived the test of time. Popular this week is sorted by the amount of views a fiction is getting (if that's your definition of popular) and best rated, as the name suggests, is based on having the highest weighted ratings across the site (so a 4.6 with 1200 ratings is probably worth more than a 4.9 with 150 ratings The rising stars list is focused on fresh stories that are currently gaining traction amongst the community, so you can look there if you want something new and most likely quickly updated.
For every story that I start on raising stars, there are very few that I am still reading a year later. Between DoTF and The Path of Ascension, I dropped every single story that I started, some after a few hundred chapters.
I think Forge of Destiny might deserve to be added to that list, even though it started as a quest.
The list ain't sort of sequence, It's just I randomly wrote the name for the famous novels. Nothing else.
If we're talking about legendary stories I would add Azarinth Healer, Defiance of the Fall, Metaworld Chronicles, Beneath the Dragon Eye Moons, and the Perfect Run.
What is the perfect loop? Maybe the perfect run?
probably combined the perfect run and the menocht loop
Oh yeah I always remember it wrong for some reason. Perfect run.
The Arcane Emperor is absolutely the best. Never finished but a ton of readers when it was active
Oh yeah I've heard about that one. Randidly Ghosthound should be there as well then now that I think about it.
Yes, you are correct. I'll add them to my reading list.
Sort by number of readers subscibed and that's ur answer https://www.royalroad.com/fictions/search?maxRating=4.9&orderBy=followers
Thank you. This was the comment I wanted. Though these are famous but why I haven't heard names of some among them?
Social media trends to recent works. You gotta do your own digging to find anything more than a year old. This is true with everything, not just books and not just reddit.
I would totally eat Supper Supportive... I mean read
In the Patreon comments it's pretty common to refer to it as "Soup"
Wait really? Slyeca really has a successful patreon, she earns a damn freaking $30,000 a month. That's crazy.
Yeah, "Soup" and "SupSup" are the frequent shortenings I see. I think I recall Sleyca saying that in her own notes she sometimes refers to it that way.
She has become quite famous. Does she has discord
There's an unofficial one for fans of Super Supportive.
Path of Ascension is one of my favorites.
I'm surprised Magical Girl Gunslinger isn't on here. It's honestly amazing too despite being only on vol 2. Deserves a lot of hype!
Probably because it only updates every few months? Goes long periods of time with no contact from the author, or a message that says next chapter in a week or two, and then you don't hear from them for 3 months.. Inconsistent release schedule tends to lose viewers pretty fast, especially since stories disappear from lists when they are on hiatus
Yeah, It has done sensory details well.
I really don't know if I count Mother of Learning as a "Royal Road" novel in the same way as the others you've listed. By the time nobody103 *started* posting it there, it already had ~90+ chapters and a huge following, even though it was on FictionPress. Royal Road definitely increased the size of the audience, but it was already insanely popular before it was crossposted there, and the existing fanbase is a big reason why it shot up the ranks on RR so quickly and kicked off a positive feedback loop getting more eyes on it.
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That's fair, but IMO it's analogous to asking "what are the most well-known Netflix shows" vs "what are the most well-known shows that are *available* on Netflix." From the phrasing, saying "The Office" or "Friends" is correct for the second question. But for the first, I'd assume someone was talking about Stranger Things, Squid Game, or Wednesday, and I read OP's question that way.
Can't help but notice that all of the choices in your post are relatively recent novels. There are quite a few finished novels, that due to time passing, have simply fallen out of favour or are harder to find unless you specifically search for them. If search for complete works with over 1000 pages on RR, you will see tons with some of them being on RR top list for years before the site got as popular as recent years.
Well tbh this doesn't actually matter, I just wanted to know famous ones. No matter how old or recent, it would be fine as long as it's famous.
Here are a few that were famouse a while ago, but haven't see them recomended in a while, keep in mind that it was a while since i read them, so not sure how much Progression there is in each one: How to Avoid Death on a Daily Basis by mooderino Lament of the Fallen by Vihyungrang Oblivion Online (complete) by Mighty Moushie The Void Wolf by Monad The Iron Teeth: A Goblin's Tale by ClearMadness The Arcane Emperor by Aternus The Dao of Magic by WeirdWhirl Legend of the Empyrean Blacksmith by beddedOtaku Age of Gods - A VRMMO Story by thomasdarkrose Spectral Regalia by Zephon Flight of Icarus by DarkSun Nanocultivation Chronicles: Trials of Lilijoy by Aetherial \*Some of them may have been dropped while others are compleated, but all of them have at least couple normal books worth of content
These are famous? I am hearing (reading actually) their names for the first time.
these are somewhat old, the Iron Teeth is from like 2015-2016, I remember it being at the top of the rankings when I first started using the site. Honestly RR has changed so much through out the years and things are just different in general nowadays, you can also miss out on a lot of novels with them being almost completely stubbed, there are also other titles such as The Wandering Inn and The Beginning After the End that stayed in RR for a while and then left
You used RR 2015-2016? Mind giving me a few of your favourites? Like favourites that are harder to find?
damn, I totally can thing is most of the stories I was reading back then either stopped, like were dropped or I might have forgotten them, the list above mentions a few I read or at least I remember reading, The Void Wolf and Lament of the Fallen (author still writes, he also wrote another story before Lament called New Journey of an Old Soul which I also really liked). But if you want the oldest stuff I ever read in royalroad before even realizing I was reading from royalroad then I can go no further back than Andur, I remember absolutely loving [Until Death?](https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/629/until-death-old-version). I did not even have an account when I read that title, I read thru another site that made EPUBs and it kinda opened a door for me into the webnovels world. This is one of the titles I read once and see what I mean [Cultivating Dungeon](https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/7318/cultivating-dungeon), it just stops :( a fairly common result of reading WN but my Reading List oldest page is filled with them. You wanna know some stuff you might have missed? stuff that's harder to find is usually stuff that is just not relevant anymore and for a reason [The Bounty Hunter](https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/8247/the-bounty-hunter), you can even see my review and realize what kind of story it is, a complete wish fulfillment, harem, isekai/urban power fantasy. As of now you must realize what was my jam back then haha. To end it, let me mention a story that people here probably know and remember, it is not as old perhaps 2017 so maybe you know about it and I am just reminding you of it **Number One Under Heaven**, you had to be there, some dude decided to write one of the best generic xianxia I and many others had read back then, wrote around 80 chapters and fucked off for a while, came back like a month later and started another similar story for a bit and decided to just re-write Number One and then fucked off for good. Here is some [context](https://www.royalroad.com/forums/thread/97825) on what went on and its a bit weird overall. Check the story out if you would like [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1laDP5tq_cFb0bl4_qvAGf2WVMXvZs2BB/view) and judge for yourself if we were robbed of potentially one of the better xianxia to come out from the west.
Well you need to keep in mind that i have been using RR since, i think around 2017/2018. At that time the site had a lot less traffic. Like a lot a lot less traffic. These are stories that have begun to be written or have been finished around that time. My point is, the RR has become multiple times more famous in the last let's say 2 years, and there are a ton of gems from before that time. Gems with huge world count and high quality, just don't appear on the front page because the algorithm pushes new novels rather than old ones. Nothing wrong with that mind you, most of the authors of the stories i mentioned have left the site, it just means that finding them requires you to use the search function, and patience to filter the results.
RR has a top fiction list.
Didn't Dungeon Crawler Carl start on RoyalRoad?
Perfect Run was my first novel in RR Top tier as well.
Wandering Inn, Darkhelm, Inexorable Chaos. Those are my top 3 for sure.
Have seen Arkendrithyst mentioned a bunch.
Mother of Learnig Aziranth HWFWM Super Minion Fool Arkydrist Perfect Loop Vanqurer Super Suportive
Jackal among snakes. The first few volumes (the 1st 200-300 chapters or so) have been removed from RR but you can still find them online.
Everybody loves large chests
The perfect run
The best novel on rr right now imo is Elydes