Rules are great (Writer's Path)

So just a few things to start for you guys. I will be moderating submissions. You can write basically anything you want so long as they comply with the guidelines.

Also feel free to ignore the lore and mechanics of this world if you want, I'm just laying out the groundwork for people who enjoy having a structure to work off of.

If you wish to start a story of your own or branch off another creator's story please put your name in brackets next to the title of your first chapter that way people can follow authors more easily.

Your story will not be approved until you have at least three chapters completed. I'm doing this to reduce bloat from Authors who will only write one or two chapters then leave. I'm sorry for the inconvenience. Once you get past 10 chapters I will add you to the author's list so your story no longer needs approval for chapters to be published.

I will also be including further resources at the end of this chapter to keep track of all the humanoid races, notable people, notable locations, skill ideas, dungeon crystal abilities, and anything else I may think of.

Thank you and sorry in advance for the long read. I wanted to be thorough with the mechanics for anyone who wanted to use them.

Update: Also thank you to DosEch for his "Dungeon building for Beginners", from which I took the Idea for the Fame and Favor statistics.

For anyone who's wondering why I am keeping this story up when DosEch's story exists its because while similar I think they are different enough to validate this story's existence.

Make no mistake. While it may be structured like a game the people in this world are actually alive and most of them will never revive if they die. In this world when you lead your troops to conquer a town, the men your army kills will never see their wives or children again. If you kill an animal for food, that's not just some source code that will respawn after five minutes.

"So first off there's a few stats you need to be able to understand. If you've ever played a videogame this should be pretty easy for you." she says, exasperated she even has to go over this.

"First is your level. I don't give a shit how much you whine to me, you start at level 1!" She yells before explaining the rest.

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The max level for monsters or sentient objects is 255 with evolution possible (but not necessary) every 25 levels. For example, lvl 1 Goblin, lvl 26 Hobgoblin, lvl 76 Goblin Lord, lvl 151 Goblin King, lvl 251 Demi-godblin, et cetera. There may be requirements you must meet before evolving, if you do not meet them before your level cap then you will no longer gain EXP until you can evolve. EXP requirements to level up for monsters is (your level × 200)

The last 5 levels are treated as mythic levels and require either Eris' or another god's blessing to be reached. Each of the last 5 levels has a strength increase comparable to 10 regular level ups essentailly making the level cap 300 but these last levels are incredibly difficult to reach.

Experience is gained from killing humanoids, their pets, wild beasts and outliers (like automatons or angels). Your own spawned monsters do not give you exp, no friendly fire allowed. However, monsters that were in the area before your dungeon was erected, Monsters in land you intend to conquer, wandering neutral mobs and invading monsters do grant EXP.

The level cap for Humanoids is lower than that of monsters to make up for their overwhelming strength difference. Most humanoids (but not all) have to go through one or two evolutions (typically, but not necessarily around 55 and 110 respectively) to reach the cap of 145. Similarly Humanoids may reach level 150 through divine blessing and may also need to meet criteria before they can evolve.

Humanoids are typically moderately stronger than generic monsters of equal level but greatly weaker than named and boss monsters of equal level. To combat this they tend to travel and explore in teams making them more dangerous. It's for this reason that they typically need to be separated or picked off to achieve victory. A well balanced party of 4 humanoids can be expected to safely defeat a boss that is 1.5 times their average level and barely defeat a boss that is twice their average level. Though there are some very talented humanoids who hunt solo and have achieved feats like beating a boss 1.5 times their level on their own. This is not the norm however.

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"So that's how levels work. Next up is HP, MP, Durability and Resonance. These ones are easy so it should be quick."

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HP is hitpoints, your health. Neither HP nor MP have caps but 10,000 for HP and 5,000 for MP is the realm of ancient dragons so keep that in mind.

MP is your Mana Pool, it's basically how much magic you can cast. It does not affect what types of spells you know at all but if your MP is 0 you can't use magic and magic items hurt you to use them because they steal your health as fuel instead of MP.

Durability and Resonance don't matter unless you are an object. If you're a monster no need to worry about these.

Durability replaces HP if you are an item, You're harder to damage than a being made of flesh but by default you do not regenerate so any damage you take must be fixed by a smith an item or a skill. 2,000 durability would make you a mythical item.

Resonance Is a measure of how much of your MP pool you can **** into your body. There are grades of resonance. G, F, E, D, C, B, A, A+, S and SS. G means you can **** 15% of your mana pool into your body and that percentage increases by 15% per rank up to a total of 150% at SS. Charging your body can have a multitude of effects but the most simple use is to increase damage dealt if you're a weapon or decrease damage taken if you're a type of armor. Charging your body costs the MP you use to charge though so it can easily deplete all your MP. Iron weapons typically resonate at F while mythril sits at A. Only objects blessed by a god reach SS.

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"See nice and simple. These ones are easy too but I'll explain them anyway." she continues clearly bored at this point.

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STR is Strength. It shows how hard you can hit something. It caps at 1,000 and someone with 900 STR could barrel right through a reinforced city gate.

Dex is Dexterity. It shows how skillfully you can do something. It caps at 1,000 and someone with 900 DEX could balance their weight on a single stand of silk.

AGI is Agility. It shows how good you are at subtle movements. It caps at 1,000 and someone with 900 AGI could likely dodge arrows fired at them by a squad of coordinated archers.

INT is Intelligence. It shows how effective your spells are and how many spells you know. It does not affect actual intelligence. It caps at 1,000 and someone with 900 INT might be able to wipe out a small city with a single spell.

WIS is Wisdom. It shows how much useful information you actually know. It caps at 1,000 and someone with 900 WIS could reasonably answer any question you have about any monster.

CHA is Charisma. It shows how well you can sway others with your words or charms. It caps at 1,000 and someone with 900 CHA could reasonably talk their way out after stealing from a dragon.

APP is Appearance. It shows how attractive you are in the eyes of most races. It caps at 1000 and someone with 900 APP could form a cult based on their beauty alone. Average APP for humanoids is 100 with a variance of 50 depending on how attractive their race is perceived to be. Human-like monsters tend to sit around 30 APP. It is possible to have a negative APP with debuffs

DEF is Defense. It shows how much damage you can reduce from a physical attack. Humanoids have a base defense of 0 and get their defense from armor. Monster's have varied defense stats based on their race and if they are wearing armor or not. DEF has no cap but a single piece of armor granting more than 500 DEF is unheard of.

RES is Resistance. Resistance does the same thing as Defense but with magical attacks. RES also has no cap but RES is much rarer to find in clothing and armor, to make a single piece with more than 250 RES would be a feat that made you a smith without peer.

MGT is Might. It shows how much damage a weapon can inflict. MGT has no limit but might above 1,000 is incredibly rare.

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"Alright we're almost there just two more sections. The last one is where the fun really starts!!!" she giggles, finally perking up now that the end is in sight.

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There are two more stats of interest, Fame and Favor.

Fame is earned by word of mouth about you or your zone/dungeon spreading. Remember, you can't be famous if everyone and everything around you is dead. Fame is used to buy skills that affect spawned monsters or named monsters that have pledged allegiance to you.

Favor is earned by performing actions that please a god of your choice. To begin earning Favor you must create and maintain a shrine to your god within your territory. You may only have one shrine at a time, they take a long time to construct and they cost a lot of GP (GP is explained later) to build. Favor can be used to revive named allies who have died and to buy EX skills that fit under the domains of your god. Be careful though, Shrines must be defended. If a Shrine is destroyed you lose access to any favor points you have and EX skills tied to your deity until the shrine is rebuilt.

Moving on we come to skills. Many monsters have a multitude of skills. These are broken down into three categories. General Skills, Racial skills and EX skills.

General skills are skills that any monster or humanoid could possess. They are ranked by levels I through X (1 through 10) and the higher they are the better you are at it. An example a general skill would be Campfire Cooking IV. General skills can only be leveled by training or another method described later.

Racial skills are skills that are unique to your monster race and cannot be obtained by humanoids. Racial skills are usually not ranked. An example of this would be "Chameleon: Allows user to camouflage itself by changing the colour of it's skin to match the surrounding environment."

Finally EX skills are skills that can only be acquired through evolution or gifted to you by a god, they are typically very powerful but also have a powerful drawback like a very long cooldown time or a high MP cost to use.

Titles are earned by performing feats that Eris or another god deem worthy of recognition. They can be literally anything and can boost certain stats depending on the title. Only one title can be used at a time and the stat boost is almost never more than 20 per stat it effects. Easier titles grant smaller bonuses. Objects cannot unlock or use titles.

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"Yes!!! We're finally at the end!!! Its time for my grand reveal!" She shouts with a happy squeak.

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Your heart is a crystal at the end of your dungeon, embedded in the floor of your personal chamber. It is massive and impossible to hide or obscure. Anything you place above it to hide it will vanish. Luckily for you the heroes have to beat your dungeon's final boss (if you have one) to get access to it. It only has 10 HP but is completely indestructible to anything except an attack from an adventurer or a raiding monster.

If you invadeand destroy another dungeon's crystal you may harvest it and feed it to your own crystal to give it 10 more HP. This is the only way to increase your crystal's HP.

If you die you will be revived once all the adventurers in your dungeon exit or are killed but if your Dungeon Crystal dies it's game over.

When you put your hand on this Dungeon crystal you can spend GP or Goddess Points to buy improvements, add floors or spawn monsters for your dungeon. Improvements may cost materials that you can find out in the world as well. Materials may be a requirement to build a structure or they may decrease the build time or increase the durability of structure you build. Your dungeon crystal may function as a storage space for these materials but they must be physically brought to your crystal and make contact in order to be absorbed for use.

You can construct basically any structure with any effect you wish but the closer it is to the theme of your dungeon the less it costs. The more powerful it is the more it costs. For example if one of your focuses is fire then a fire based trap would cost less than an acid based trap but the acid based trap would cost less than a lava based trap even though your theme is fire, because lava is much more dangerous.

You earn GP in a few ways. First and easiest is by killing adventurers and monsters that enter your territory. You can get GP from conquering a new zone or demanding tribute from a nearby town. Lastly, having spawned monsters or monsters that have pledged themselves to you within your dungeon gives GP passively.

If you kill an adventurer and no attempts are made to retrieve or take their body from your dungeon for 4 hours then they will be absorbed granting their level in GP, foreign monsters do the same but only grant their level divided by three. Bodies that fall on your crystal are absorbed immediately.

If you conquer a nearby zone and harvest some (or all) of its resources or demand tribute from a nearby town you can get GP by absorbing the resources they give you into your crystal. GP from this varies widely as it depends on how much you get. Theoretically you could strip your own zone of resources but you and all your spawn monsters still need food to survive.

You get 1 GP per week for every 5 levels a monster has in your dungeon. You do not count toward this passive generation.

Captured slaves do not give GP but you can **** them to train skills, then sacrifice them on your dungeon crystal to gain their skills. Be very careful when doing this unless you have a deathwish. You can also drag back slaves or corpses from any raids you send out into the world (assuming they're successful) and consume the corpses for points or slaves for skills as normal.

Another thing to note is that your dungeon does not need to be below ground. It is completely plausible to have an above ground dungeon or have part of it be above and part of it be below. You could even be on a floating island if you really wanted. Just be aware that the less accessible your dungeon is the harder it is to obtain outside resources and for adventurers to challenge your dungeon.

Unless you want it to, your dungeon crystal will never start exposed to the surface. Unless otherwise stated it will always be hidden in a small cavern, within a grove of tress, behind a waterfall, et cetera. Moving a dungeon crystal costs GP but it's relatively inexpensive. A moved crystal must be placed on a floor. It cannot be placed on walls or ceilings.

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"That's everything! It's finally over!!! We can go now right? You're ready?"