History Literature / ThisUsedToBeAboutDungeons

* MeaningfulName: The bulk of the story takes place in the town of Pucklechurch, puck meaning a mischevious spirit and chuch in this case refering to the massive, distinctly out of place catherdral the town is built around. In the past there was a leyline going through the area, but it shifted shortly after its discovery, strangling the town's prospects in the metaphorical crib. The church was almost finished anyway, so they decided to go through with the construction, even if it was vastly outsized to the town's actual needs.

* RagTagBunchOfMisfits: The party members are all a little out of step with the rest of their peers in one way or another. Justified, as Alfric was specifically looking for such people since they would be more likely to upset their lives to go dungeoneering.
--> '''Alfric''': I don't see any of those things happening. And I'm building something here, Lola. I have a team.\\

'''Alfric''': [[ShutUpHannibal Yes. They're ''my'' team]], and if you ''ever'' want to speak with me again, do it by letter. I'm done with you.

* MostWritersAreHuman: In-story. It's clear that the Editors (a group of mysterious godlike beings that can change the rules by which the world works) are, or once were, human — party communication requires a voice, teleportation requires making a gesture with three fingers with your hand, the way the dwodo society works doesn't mesh with the hexal administration system at all, etc. It's an open question whether the Editors used themselves as a frame of reference or explicitly wanted humans to reign superior.

--> Alfric gave a brief nod, and exploded into magic. When the wisps of blue smoke cleared, he was coated in a black armor with thin lines of gold, holding a sword that was six feet long with a gentle curve, gleaming in the streetlights. He’d grown by an extra two feet, towering over everyone around them.

* AbsurdlySharpBlade: Mizuki tests out a sword entad and discovers that it can extend and contract, even collapsing the blade entirely, while remaining strong and lightweight, which is handy but nothing extraordinary. Then Alfric actually tries out in combat. Where it cuts through anything -- even items that were nigh-indestructible before -- like melted butter.

* GroundhogDayLoop: Chrononauts have an innate ability to go back a day and reset time, although with a few caveats. While they are only aware of the times they personally reset, the guild communication system can be used to pass short messages between individual timelines. The exact number of times one of them can repeat a day is dependent on the individual, with 12 being noted as extraordinary, and there is a complex order of precedence that governs the order the resets apply when multiple chrononauts are involved. Generally they'll try to stay out of each other's way so they don't have to worry about it, but when they coordinate their efforts, passing messages between lower-priority and higher-priority chrononauts, they can potentially keep the same day playing out for years.[[note]]The maximum number of repeats is the product of all the chrononauts involved, so three coordinating chrononauts with limits of three, four, and five, could theoretically repeat a day twelve times.[[/note]]

** Kesbin, God of Nothing [[note]] aka God of Division and Subtraction [[/note]]

* HarmfulHealing: As a cleric of Garos, God of Symmetry, Hannah can easily fix many minor injuries by simply mirroring an undamaged part of the body. However, in a fight she has darker options available, like mirroring a severed limb or other serious wounds, and no matter someone's outside appearance they'll never have symmetrical intestines -- or heart ventricles. All of the gods have their own version of this, like doubling a person's blood for Bixotl, God of Copies, giving someone cancer for Xuphin, God of Infinity, or straight up deleting a person for Kesbin, God of Nothing.

* GroundhogDayLoop: Chrononauts have an innate ability to go back a day and reset time, although with a few caveats. While they are only aware of the times they personally reset, the guild communication system can be used to pass short messages between individual timelines. The exact number of times one of them can repeat a day is dependent on the individual, with 12 being noted as extraordinary, and there is a complex order of precedence that governs the order the resets apply when multiple chrononauts are involved. Generally they'll try to stay out of each other's way so they don't have to worry about it, but when they coordinate their efforts, passing messages between lower-priority and higher-priority chrononauts, they can potentially keep the same day playing out for years.[[note]]The maximum number of repeats is the product of all the chrononauts involved, so three coordinating chrononauts with limits of three, four, and five, could theoretically repeat a day sixty times.[[/note]]

** Verity has traces of this, apparently unconsciously influencing the dungeons that generate when the party goes through the door.

* RainbowPimpGear: Subverted by Alfric's father, who makes use of a necklace that grants him the effects of any entads placed on a certain mannequin (which stays at home). He's effectively wearing over forty entads at once, without having to look ridiculous or risk losing them.
** Alfric gets hands on an amulet that averts this as soon as he can, which changes look of all gear currently on to fit a singular ostentatious style. The problem being that this style doesn't look very good on him, according to his party-mates.

--> '''Alfric''': I don’t see any of those things happening. And I’m building something here, Lola. I have a team.\\
'''Lola''': Oh, well, your ''team'', yes. A musician who couldn’t hack it, an inept sorceress, a zealot of what has to be the least worthwhile god, and an untrained archer? And you, naturally, who fits in with them somehow.\\
'''Alfric''': [[ShutUpHannibal Yes. They’re ''my'' team]], and if you ''ever'' want to speak with me again, do it by letter. I’m done with you.

* RenovatingThePlayerHeadquarters: The party all chip in in different ways to fix-up Mizuki's neglected BigFancyHouse.
* RetGone: Most clerics can use their god's area of expertise for harm: a cleric of Kesbin, God of Nothing, can make something disappear — your heart or liver, or possibly your entire body. An archbishop of Kesbin can make it so you disappear retroactively.

* ScrewTheRulesTheyreNotReal: Chrononauts are allowed to self-govern themselves and there are no laws regulating their abilities. For the most part their practice of "disclosure" is enough to keep things honest... officially, anyway. [[spoiler:This might change after Lola's little attempted-murder spree brings formal attention to the matter.]]
* SealedEvilInACan: A previous civilization had a habit of sealing dangerous creatures in stone circles rather than killing them for unknown reasons. The party finds one after a dungeon monster copies traits from it.

* SortingAlgorithmOfEvil: Dungeons get more powerful from nearby magic, be it from mages, magical items, or natural features of the environment, making it easy to find one of an appropriate level. Just starting out and need a relatively risk free test of your abilities? Find an out-of-the-way town and clear out the nearby dungeons. Have some experience and looking for something more lucrative? Head to a larger town or find an area naturally high in magic. Repeat as many times as you like, with the main complication being that you can go into each dungeon only once. They will also get harder from a person increasing their elevation.

** While some magics are a learned skill or can be acquired reliably, others are given at birth completely at random.

** Alfric buys a dagger that can transport the last person cut by it, to its location, once per day, along with quite a lot of carried items. They generally leave it in a temple at home, and use it to get home from dungeons, figuring that if they need serious healing, that's the best place to land.

** His father can carve statues of people and then use a wand to make the original and statue swap places, over any distance. It takes a while to set up, but the statue can then be reused, and a block of wood is often easier to transport through other entads than a person is.

--> “Yeah,” said Mizuki. She pointed at his necklace, which was half-hidden by his long shirt. “Right there, I could undo that and force the energy — the pool — out into your chest. Pow. Through the heart.”
* UtilityPartyMember: Clerics get some magic effects relating to their god. For example, a cleric of Garos can symmetricalize things (which includes restoring an arm if your party member lost it, or making an enemy lose ''another'' arm — the harmful use of these effects is called a hex). Clerics of Qymmos, God of Sets, can't heal or hex, being the only cleric utterly useless in a straight-up battle, but they could potentionally be useful in a dungeon to identify threats and valuables — and are straight up vital out of the dungeon, being the only accessible source that can reliably identify all there is to know about a given entad.
** Successful enough dungeoneers set up something called a counterparty, which is a party made out of utility party members, focused on providing the main party with transportation, resources, selling the loot, etc.

* WalkingSpoiler: The fact that Alfric is a chrononaut is pretty fundamental to his character and rather hard to talk around given the gender distribution of the party.

* ZergRush: Hordes of small animals or insects are one of the harder things to defend against in dungeons, but are thankfully rare. For all his preparations, Alfric's plan for dealing with an insect swarm is to simply abort and lose the dungeon.

* DungeonBasedEconomy: Not entirely true, but they do provide a lot of magical items and material conveniences. Discussed at one point - the dungeons are mostly unregulated and untaxed because the flow of goods from them is too useful in too many ways to add barriers to the process.

* EyeScream: For dwodo, who can transfer eyes between each other quickly and painlessly, forcible enucleation is it's equivalent to a very large fine. For humans, who are subjected to the same fate if found guilty of some significant offense against the dwodo, it's not.

* GroundhogDayLoop: Chrononauts have an innate ability to go back a day and reset time, although with a few caveats. While they are only aware of the times they personally reset, the guild communication system can be used to pass short messages between individual timelines. The exact number of times one of them can repeat a day is dependent on the individual, with 12 being noted as extraordinary, and there is a complex order of precedence that governs the order the resets apply when multiple chrononauts are involved. Generally they'll try to stay out of each other's way so they don't have to worry about it, but when they coordinate their efforts, passing messages between lower-priority and higher-priority chrononauts, they can potentially keep the same day playing out for years.

* HowDoIShotWeb: Entads don't come with manuals, so some playing around is usually required to figure out what they do and how they work. Form will usually correlate to function and it's generally regarded as safe, but sometimes there will be flowerpots that shoot city-destroying lasers or cauldrons that will automatically homogenize anything put in them - ''anything'', including scrubbing brushes and the hands holding them.
* InnocentlyInsensitive: The casual suspicion and disdain of chrononauts lands differently after the reveal that Alfric is one.

* LoopholeAbuse: A big part of using entads is finding ways around their limits, often with the help of other entads, such as combining an extra-dimensional rock, a magically mobile chest, and a flying helmet to jury-rig mass transit. People get into the rock's extra-dimensional space, the rock gets put into the chest, and the chest follows after the person wearing the helmet.

** There's a small chance that an entad will bind to a party or individual, making its special properties unusable to others. This is a mostly random process (though somewhat more likely to occur when someone carries a specific item out) that pays absolutely no attention to how useful the item might be, so sometimes a set of bracers that doubles the strength of its wearer will bind to the party's wizard. If a party disbands, their party-bound entads will permanently lose all of their magic, although individually-bound items will still work as normal.
** This is taken further by a chest that binds itself to the party, then follows party members around on little legs. It doesn't take instructions, but its movements can be directed by moving people in the direction they want the chest to go (and anyone inside the chest doesn't count, so you can climb in and get carried to the other party members).

* {{Courier}}: Cartiers are people who use various entads to rapidly transport goods. Xy, the "local" cartier to Pucklechurch, has the SuperSpeed to run over sixty miles per hour.

* CurbStompBattle: The issue of the wizard-sorceror rivalry is that it massively favors the latter, as the sorceror can simply unravel any spells or magical constructs the wizard is using, even killing them on the spot with that alone. The only recourse wizards have to avoid suffering a curb-stomp battle is to invert it, killing or otherwise incapacitating the sorcerer way outside their range, before they can see an attack coming and counter or retaliate.

* DispelMagic: Sorcerers can unravel magical constructs.

* AliensNeverInventedTheWheel: humans in this world find it odd to light things on fire to cook food, since heatstones exist.
* AlwaysChaoticEvil: All creatures generated by dungeons are afflicted with dungeon madness — a condition that makes them forego everything to try to kill humans on sight if they detect the presence of any. Dungeon madness is incurable, meaning that even if these creatures were sapient, it's okay to kill them on sight. Things get fuzzier when one finds eggs or newborns, which are not necessarily subject to this rule.
* AndThatsTerrible: the concept of a landlord is utterly alien to Mizuki, and the system is discussed as odd and unfair.

* ArrangedMarriage: Of a sort. Chrononauts are routinely pacted to produce children together, due to the nature of chrononaut inheritance: two chrononaut parents will have chrononaut children, but no other combination. The arrangement doesn't require marriage, and with the right entads it doesn't even require physical contact, but [[spoiler:Alfric doesn't want to have even that much to do with Lola, nor does he want her raising any child of his]]. Still, it's important, because chrononauts provide the world with their best line of defence against existential threats.

''This Used to be About Dungeons'' is an ongoing slice-of-life adventuring story by Creator/AlexanderWales that occasionally features dungeons.

%%Mostly it's about walking in the woods with a friend, looking for mushrooms to put in your soup, or haggling with the guy selling squash, or taking care of a neglected garden. It's putting some jam on shortbread biscuits. And yes, sometimes you go down into the dungeons with your friends, and you kill monsters there, or disarm traps, but when you come out, you realize you've found the perfect magic item to give to one of the local kids that helped you out when your cat was sick. Look, the dungeons are always going to be there, and sometimes you need to make a journey to one of the Spirit Gates, or make a pilgrimage with the local Cleric of Symmetry to a holy shrine. Your tour through the local dungeons can wait. You'll have rivalries with other groups, and find some dungeon eggs that need to be carefully incubated in case they turn out to be something valuable, and help a friend to build a fishing weir. There's a big world out there, a mostly tame place with lots of magic, and even more to do and see. Join me, won't you? [This description was copied in violation of our Administrivia/{{Plagiarism}} policy. Please replace it with original writing.]

** Alfric gets hands on an amulet that averts this as soon as he can, which changes look of all gear currently on to fit a singular style (the problem being that this style doesn't look very good).

* UtilityPartyMember: Clerics can some pseudomagic effects relating to their god. For example, a cleric of Garos can symmetricalize things (which includes restoring an arm if your party member lost it, or making an enemy lose ''another'' arm — the harmful use of these effects is called a hex). Clerics of Qymmos, God of Sets, can't heal or hex, being the only cleric utterly useless in a straight-up battle, but they could potentionally be useful in a dungeon to identify threats and valuables — and are straight up vital out of the dungeon, being the only accessible source that can reliably identify all there is to know about a given entad.

* OlderThanTheyLook: Mizuki is short and petite, looking by far the youngest of the group, whereas in reality she's over twenty.

* WhiteMage: Clerics of Garos and Qymmos are the most well known for healing, but all of the gods have blessings that can be leveraged for the purpose, such as Bixzotl removing scars by copying healthy skin, or Kesbin removing fluid buildups or toxins. There are few injuries a full team of clerics working together can't overcome.

* RPGMechanicsVerse: Downplayed, with the only overt RPG elements being the dungeons and their loot, a party and guild system (mostly used for ease of communication), and vaguely defined "elevations".

* DungeonBasedEconomy: Not entirely true, but they do provide a lot of magical items and material conveniences.

* WhatMeasureIsANonHuman: After encountering a dungeon species with behavior that suggests possible sapience, Mizuki is uncertain about the morality of butchering their way through them all. Alfric indicates that the consensus on the subject is that there's not much that can be done about it; even if they really are thinking creatures (which isn't at all certain), they're nonetheless hostile due to the dungeon madness, and if left to their own devices they'll be unmade when the party leaves the dungeon. Complicating things is that sometimes they're created as infants who aren't affected by dungeon madness and can be safely reared outside the dungeons. They're made as haphazardly as anything else from the dungeons, and tend to have large gaps in their natural cognition, with less than 1 in 1000 capable of functioning on their own as adults. Alfric has an aunt who abandoned her career as a dungeoneer to care for such people - called Bastlefolk - and even she admits it's a messy and complicated subject.

* AwesomeButImpractical: In the time period the story takes place in, magic weapons are a dime a dozen and not terribly useful. They'll still sell reliably to resellers, but unless they're a world class specimen it won't be for very much.

* ScrewTheRulesTheyArentReal: Chrononauts are allowed to self-govern themselves and there are no laws regulating their abilities. For the most part their practice of "disclosure" is enough to keep things honest... officially, anyway. [[spoiler:This might change after Lola's little attempted-murder spree brings formal attention to the matter.]]