Dungeons Just Want to Have Fun (Introduction) (Patreon)

Kelsey didn’t ask to be reincarnated. Nor did she want to be reborn as a dungeon. But it’s not like a disembodied soul has any choice in the matter when selected by a God for an exciting new opportunity.

Complaining wouldn’t get her anywhere, so Kelsey got to work. Being a dungeon, digging a hole of ever-increasing depth and complexity. Spawning monsters and treasure. Killing adventurers. It’s not easy being a small dungeon in the backwaters of an unimportant kingdom, but she did her best to be the best dungeon that she could be.

Until, finally, she got her chance. Time to seize it with both hands.

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Soooo… I’m going to put in a bit about the system, as all the characters know about it already, so there’s no one to explain it to. Maybe I can drop enough hints that someone can piece it together, but this is simpler.

People (and monsters) have Stats, Classes, Levels and Traits.

The Stats are: Strength, Toughness, Dexterity, Agility, Charisma, Will and Perception

Skills are not tracked in the system. You have to learn them the old-fashioned way. Having high stats helps of course, but enough skill can trump raw stats. Unlike Phantasm, where the System determines the outcome of an action based on your effect total, in this world your basic abilities are boosted, but doing something with that raw ability takes practice.

Classes have a grade (Common, Fine, Rare, Unique, Epic, Legendary) and a Tier (1,2, etc). The higher the Tier, the more likely it is that a Class will be a higher grade.

Tier 1 classes go from Level 1 to 5, Tier 2 go from 1 to 10, and Tier 3 goes from 1 to 20. Your level is the sum of all the levels you’ve completed in all the Classes you’ve taken.

At each level, your Class gives you a number of stat points. Common Classes give 3 points per level, Fine Classes give 4, and so on. Generally, one of these points is free to assign, the others are determined by the Class

At each even level, your Class gives you a Trait. Traits give you the ability to do one specific thing that’s relevant to your Class. A good example is Identify, which comes in different versions, depending on the class that provides it.

Anton, for example, has Delver’s Discernment, which can provide basic information on anything. Aris on the other hand has Ingredient Insight, which only works on objects, but provides much more detail about ingredients that a baker would care about — the freshness, whether the flour has weevils, that sort of thing. A noble class would have something that worked on people, and gave details about status and family and so on. A Class doesn’t provide the same Traits to everyone, it also depends on their life experience.

What Classes are available also depends on life experiences. For example, to unlock the Delver class, you need to have entered a dungeon and fought a monster. This wasn’t a problem for Anton, as his parents were adventurers and just took him along on a milk run. Another rule is that you can’t take a Tier 2 Class until you have finished at Tier 1 Class, and so on for the higher Tiers.

Another way to unlock Classes is that each Class unlocks at least one Class of the next Tier when you complete it. So by completing Delver, Anton unlocked the Tier 2 Class, Adventurer. Chains of Classes like this are referred to as Paths, and most people are on one. The Soldier path is Soldier -> Veteran -> Elite, so when Anton refers to Elites, he’s actually referring to something specific.

People can refer to themselves by their Tier, Class or Level, depending on how specific they want to be. Tier 3 suggests a Level of 16-36, but it could be more if the person switched paths. There are higher Tiers, but they’re pretty rare.

Lastly, there is magic, but it’s pretty rare and… actually, I think I’ll be able to explain that one in the story.

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Will try to post both a Phantasm chapter and the first instalment of this thing during the next week.