Royal Road
is a site hosting a wide variety of Web Serial Novels, both original and Fanfiction. It was originally created to publish The Legendary Moonlight Sculptor, and draws its name from that,note but later expanded to include tens of thousands of other stories.
This website provides examples of:
- Fanfiction: A substantial portion of the stories are fanfic, and can be tagged as such, although original fiction is more common.
- Level Grinding: Interacting with stories (eg commenting, reviewing) gradually gives XP to your account, which levels up your avatar image.
- Mission Creep: Originally the site just published one (albeit very large) story. Later it opened up for anyone to self publish.
- Web Serial Novel: Royal Road's interface is oriented around serial publishing, such as bookmarks that keep track of the last read chapter vs the last published chapter, and a homepage that keeps track of the most popular completed stories vs the most popular "rising stars" vs simply the most recently updated.
