Dungeon City - A Fantasy-Based Hentai-World Sandbox Setting

[Minorikawa Deactivated]

Hello everyone! Welcome to Dungeon City, a sandbox setting intended for fantasy-based stories in the Hentai-World club. The intent of a sandbox setting is that it gives you just enough details to help inspire concepts or pairings, or help give context to a broad craving you might have. There will be no hard-and-fast rules applied to the setting, so you can modify it to your heart's content in order to fit the sort of roleplay story you're looking to create. While the initial setting concept was intended for something that leans towards the light-hearted, sometimes comedic, end of smutty, it could be used for darker intents as well.

I know this is going to have a lot of text, and it is designed to be free-form, but I would request that you read all of this before choosing to use the setting. Thank you.

WHAT'S A DUNGEON CITY?

Simply put, a "dungeon city" is a metropolis built around a dungeon of significant size and features, enough to generate an entire economy based on its very existence. Adventurers come to dive into the dungeon, slay monsters, gather their parts, harvest unique flora or minerals, gather any other loot for selling, purchasing better gear, then going back to dive deeper and seeking more precious materials. This causes more inns, pubs, and brothels to open in order to entertain the adventurers, which also draws more blacksmiths looking to not only craft and sell the best weapons and armor for these adventurers, but to also use the rare materials and minerals found in the dungeon to craft unique equipment that can then be exported out to nobles. Similarly for tailors and cobblers looking to craft clothing and footwear out of fine furs, feathers, and leathers not commonly found outside the dungeon, exporting to wealthy nobles across the kingdom(s). The more business in the city, the more adventurers arrive. The deeper you dive into the dungeon, the more likely you are to need a party, and so guilds emerge to help form organized groups of adventurers seeking to delve as deep as possible. Even an Adventurer's Academy was formed in order to train up-and-coming adventurers in the art of diving into the dungeon with increased odds of survival, improved teamwork, and with the greater goal of discovering how deep the dungeon really goes. Libraries have additionally been founded to further study not only the origin of the dungeon, but its purpose and what lies towards the bottom.

As you can probably tell, the concept runs on video game logic and is inspired by such anime as Is It Wrong to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? and Grimgar. How far you'd like to take this inspiration is up to you. If the characters are discussing levels and character classes like players discuss them, that's fine. If characters are behaving with a degree of verisimilitude, as if there's a degree of realism to gaining strength and choosing one's combat specialty, then that's also fine. Just make sure you and your play partner(s) are on the same page in regards to the level of tone you are seeking.

Given the above description, while there's plenty of room for adventurer characters, there's also room to explore other kinds of characters and stories as well. Scholars of the library and academy, local politics regarding how one taxes adventurers or these business, nobles perhaps looking to treat the dungeon as sport and clashing with the low-born adventurers, brothel girls looking to entertain the adventurers, shop keepers and their own bit of slice-of-life, and so on. As I said, it's a sandbox, so feel free to explore it as you see fit.

WHAT KIND OF DUNGEON IS IT?

The dungeon itself is a "transforming" dungeon. Each day the floors completely change, right down to their "theme". The only one that remains consistent is the first floor, which looks like a typical cave. While the layout will shift and become different each time, it will always have basic, weak monsters such as giant rats, slimes, and brittle skeleton warriors. The treasures here are the least valuable, but most experienced adventurers are able to find the entrance to the second floor rather swiftly no matter how many times it shifts.

Once adventurers reach the second floor, however, things are less predictable. One day it might resemble the ruins of an ancient temple, the next it will be a cavern of ice and frost. Another day it will be much like a forest, or perhaps a damp and humid jungle, only for there to be a vast looking desert or a lava-leaking cavern the next. All the floors shift like this, and there are still some themes being discovered the deeper down you plunge.

By the fifth floor, adventurers will be forced to face Elite Beasts, the equivalent of a "boss monster", on each floor. There are anywhere between three-to-five on a given floor, often roaming around. Again, skilled and experienced adventurers can sneak past these creatures or defeat them swiftly, but other adventurers may find them difficult to surpass. However, the loot gained from carving up these creatures will always be the most valuable to anyone plunging into the dungeon's depths. Every beginner adventurer group not only makes it a goal of reaching the fifth floor, but defeating at least one of these elite beasts.

What is most curious are tablets found on each floor. These are one of the few things that do not change despite the constantly shifting environment. The language is ancient, and only gives some degree of hint as to the origin and purpose of the dungeon. It was birthed by some great magic, though it is unclear if it is from divine origin or an ancient race of mages no longer known to us. Replications and scratchings of these tablets were quite valuable, but now there's a demand for tablets from far deeper into the dungeon. The problem is that, once adventurers reach floor twenty-five, warp spells no longer work. No matter how experienced the adventurers, it takes a long time to reach floor twenty-five, and climbing out before the dungeon shifts again is highly unlikely. Fortunately, floor twenty-five is also a hot spring with no monsters in sight. It is a place for rest, and some adventurers will return to the hot spring instead of the surface for longer attempts to delve deeper.

The problem is that the strength of the monsters and size of the floors increases dramatically. The deepest any returning adventuring party has made it is floor twenty-nine. Few adventuring parties that reached the thirtieth floor ever returned, and even those that have survived trips to depth twenty-nine rarely come out unscathed. While it is possible for reckless adventurers to die on any floor, even the first, it is very, very rare to find a whole group capable of surviving repeated plunges into floors twenty-six and on without losing at least one or two of their group.

No one knows if the thirtieth is the final floor of the dungeon, or if there's as many as one-hundred floors, assuming there are any at all. In addition, the tablets for floors twenty-seven, twenty-eight, and twenty-nine have yet to be found. These are the most treasured discovery of the scholars on the surface, and they are what they offer a high bounty reward for. The question is how many adventurers find it worth their lives?

OPTIONAL: A SEX-DRIVEN MAGIC SYSTEM

One of the elements to this setting I had come up with was a sex-driven explanation for magic. Effectively, there's an innate mana energy present in men's semen that a woman's body is capable of processing and turning into magic. This would lead female adventurers into magic roles such as healer, mystic archer, sorceress, and mage knight, while men are more brawlers or rogues. However, in addition to limiting character class types, this is also a heteronormative approach. I still put it forward in case anyone wants to use it, but also think it's fine to ignore it if you'd like, or perhaps change it to be more applicable to same-sex relations or futanari, etc.

AND THAT'S THE BASICS! FEEL FREE TO COMMENT, REQUEST, OR ASK QUESTIONS IN THIS THREAD

There's a lot you can do with this setting. A low-smut, high-action adventure deep in the dungeon, a no-dungeon narrative that takes place at the academy with horny students and lecherous professors, a political intrigue surrounding the civic and scholarly nobles in the city (and perhaps the merchants and adventurers that can't stand them), or a dark dive into the dungeon only to get gangbanged by goblins and tentacled monsters and slime creatures.

Use this thread to express interest in a story in this setting, perhaps seeking a partner or partners in crime, or to ask me questions or even make recommendations.

Thank you for reading.