Drunk Dungeon Poll

Back in September, I started writing this story with the goal of writing 3,000 words per day and came quite close to meeting that goal, missing a day or two due to some IRL issues. Then in October, I had a string of bad luck including sore wrists bordering carpal tunnel due to improper typing while writing in September, a nasty cold that lasted two weeks, and more IRL issues. After I recovered, I was unable to push chapters out as easily and even had issues going to sleep in a timely manner due to staying up late to push out chapters so often I got used to staying up until 4-5am.

Now I have motivational issues, not only due to the long breaks between chapters, but also due to some issues in past chapters I see and want to change, but depending on how I change them it could change everything past that point. So I see it necessary to rewrite the story with edits and major changes. This shouldn’t impact my writing too much as I already have breaks between chapters lasting upwards to a month at this point.

I’ve decided to make a poll, offsite so I have more options, to ask you the readers to let me know how much you want me to keep the change or leave the same about some parts of the story I find to be iffy or not good enough. I’ll make sure to mark each of the poll options that are being used in the story with (current) and they’ll all be optional so you can answer as much or as little of the poll as you want. The poll will go on for maybe a day, possibly more. Depends on how much activity it gets and when I get back in the mood to write properly.

Depending on how you fill out the poll determines how much of the story stays the same or changes. Feel free to point out anything else not mentioned in the poll that you think should be changed or expanded upon.

The poll questions and answers with details will be below.

Which point of view should the story be told from?

First Person (current)

First person is when the story is told from the perspective of the protagonist and his thoughts are the narration. Its strongest point is that it makes it really easy to flesh out the protagonist without trying too hard as long as the narration matches what the protagonist says and does well. Its main weakness is that it limits my vocabulary and can sound quite awkward at times since I have to go out of my way to make sure I don’t start every sentence with “I” or “The.”

Third Person

Third person is the perspective most stories are told with, an unknown or nonexistent character narrates the story. It allows for relative freedom of vocabulary and is the most commonly used POV as well as the POV most people prefer to read. Its main weakness is that when done poorly, characters, including the protagonist, can come off as flat or two dimensional. If this is the result in the poll then I’ll probably majorly transition the story more towards the protagonist actually being drunk and affected by it. After all, it’s hard to describe a drunk person from their perspective but a third person narrator has no such issues.

Third Person Limited

Restricts the POV of the narrator to only the protagonist’s perspective. The narrator does not know the thoughts of other characters and tells things in relation to the protagonist.

Third Person Omniscient

The narrator is like an all knowing god and knows the thoughts of everyone and often times will even foreshadow whether something is a good idea or explain the motivations of other random characters without being rooted to the protagonist in terms of perspective or storytelling.

Note: I will continue writing in past tense. I will not change the tense of the story. I’ve tried writing in first person before and it’s like writing first person but ten times worse.

How should the dungeons be structured?

Very structured except during convergences (current)

This basically means that dungeons always up in difficulty at certain points and the number of monsters between each trip is consistent on certain floors and such. The only exceptions being the rest area, special elemental monsters, and during convergences where things are more chaotic and the difficulty ramps up.

Loosely Structured

Difficulty ramps up at random points but things still get harder further in the dungeon. Like two enemies might pop up at room two instead of later on and so on. Basically, every dungeon’s difficulty changes at a different rate.

Every dungeon is different but structured

Basically, dungeons always ramp up in difficulty at the same room, but this varies from dungeon to dungeon. Like the dungeon in the starting town and the city are not the same.

Should only one type of monster appear in each dungeon instance?

Only one type of monster that becomes more numerous deeper into the dungeon and gains new behaviors (current)

Basically, you enter the dungeon and find one type of monster and that same monster can be found throughout the rest of the dungeon. You can even leave and come back for a new type of monster to find a suitable dungeon for getting far or an easy fight.

Weak monsters appear on the first floors and stronger, yet related monsters appear deeper in, following a theme.

Something like if the monster on the first few floors was like a goblin, then hobgoblins, orcs, ogres and such can appear on later floors as the difficulty gets higher. More than one type of monster appears but it’s something either like an upgrade or closely related.

Every room can have completely new monsters, weaker or stronger, less or more numerous, random.

This will make dungeons a lot more chaotic and dangerous as one room might have weak slow moving enemies while the next has armored flying birdbeasts of death and destruction. But it might slow down my writing a bit during dungeons as I either have to describe every monster the protag comes across or gloss over the weaker ones with little detail.

Should Monsters be unique to dungeons?

Monsters appear only in dungeons (current?)

I haven’t written about any monsters outside of dungeons and have mostly described monsters by appearance rather than common names they might receive if they showed up consistently outside of dungeons. Like how I wrote slimes to be more like puddles that formed hands. If this is chosen, it’ll stay this way more or less with possibly some mention of dangerous animals on the surface but nothing beyond that.

Monsters appear in dungeons and on the surface naturally

Basically there are monsters in dungeons and ones on the surface, but tend to be different with some exceptions of monsters that appear commonly enough on the surface or in dungeons to receive names. I won’t do the trope of monsters bursting out of unattended dungeons as I’d prefer to write the story as them being natural wildlife people are used to and sometimes even treat as wild animals more than monsters or possibly even pets.

What should monsters drop in dungeons?

Monsters have a chance of dropping ores, with very rare odd drops from special monsters like magic equipment. (current)

Monsters, when a room is cleared out, have a chance of forming into metal ores that are valuable in day to day life, with adventurers providing the world’s material needs from the earth rather than opening up mines. Occasionally monsters with weapons might drop said weapon and special monsters are guaranteed to drop an elemental item.

Monsters drop coins that are used directly as currency or exchanged for local currencies

Same as above but instead of ores, coin directly drops that is accepted as a universal currency but tends to be too valuable for most small scale transactions and some places might not accept the coin for reasons and so it can be exchanged for smaller local currencies unrelated to dungeons.

Monsters can have body parts harvested for cash

Instead of monsters dissolving into the dungeon and basically only the ores having worth, various monsters have parts of their body that can be exchanged for cash. Which part is valuable would likely cause monsters to be placed in various categories and common parts that tend to be valuable taught among adventurers to maximize cash gain without necessarily knowing what the hell they killed.

Treasure chests with cash and equipment can spawn after a room is cleared or on their own without monsters.

Treasure chests that might contain coin or items spawn occasionally after clearing a room or take up a room all on their own like a rest area. Monsters, on the other hand, have pretty much no value on their own and are just beings to be killed so you can continue onwards.

Should the story change?

Protagonist will die in a year if he doesn't form a knight order for a goddess without much more info than that (current)

The story is more or less a bit forced. It’s a reason for a character who would normally just be fine drinking his life away to go into the dungeon since there’s a chance to save his life and most of the story is written on the fly. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the next few chapters because I don’t really plan ahead. All I do is write what I feel like writing while trying to keep things somewhat logical and consistent.

More of a structured logical story

I’ll figure out a way to make the story have a semblance of structure with a better plot and a transition from an introduction to rising action to climax to falling action to resolution or something like that. The story itself will be quite similar to before but would have some major changes, unless of course, you vote options other than the (current) on most of this poll then I’ll probably make things completely different.

What do you think the protagonist should be named?

I never named the protagonist in this story. I just found it awkward to name him in the first chapter and never bothered to come up with a name so I just avoided naming him in general. I’ll let you guys come up with possible names and I might choose one from the list or I might just go with one of my own preference I think of.