Peek: An Interview

Earlier in the week, I got asked for a quick interview from Ashen Combatant, a member of a writing discord.  I thought they asked some interesting questions, and I hope you guys find them interesting, too :)

AC: I would just like the story of how you started writing Dungeon Life. Starting at the beginning I would like to know

1. How did you discover dungeon core as a genre. What story made you want to start writing?
2. Why did you start posting to r/HFY? As your story is quite different from its normal content
3. Is there any reason you choose the manor as the starting location with spiders and rats as first monsters?

Khenal: 1: Well, I didn't even know dungeon core was a thing until well after I  started writing.  I was actually inspired by a joke in a different HFY  story.  The main character was offered several options for  reincarnating, and one was to be a dungeon.  The writer joked about it,  asking how that would even work.  The idea stuck in my head, until I sat  down and started writing.

2: I've posted to HFY for a while.  I have a short scifi series  there, Field Notes on Sol 3, as well as a few oneshots.  I was  introduced to the sub by a friend, and spent much of a road trip reading  various stories there.

3: I chose the manor because I felt it was a good place to have a  dungeon with a town around/nearby.  I had considered placing the dungeon  in some forgotten hole, or spooky cursed castle or something, but I  wanted a lighter tone than those would imply.  And having a town nearby  would give the chance to have delvers beyond just dedicated adventurers.   Spiders and rats followed as simple weak starting creatures that would  be found in a spooky manor, and I could make a joke about rats in the  basement.  And then I put the spiders in there instead, heh.

AC: You... didn't know about the genre when you started....

Thats... that basically throws away even plan I had for questions. Here i was ready to ask things like

• Did you have any plans for dealing with the pitfalls at the start
• What was your goal to change and expand upon with your story that the other entries in the genre never did
• What tropes of the genre are you a fan of

This  is interesting as I was expecting to analyze your story as a part of a  whole, and use that to help guide other people, new authors, about the  different things they can do when starting their story.

Well now that I understand that origin, my next several questions are:

1. Thedeim  has clearly revolutionized his surroundings by using science, giving  him a huge power gap over all others. Is this because he is unique in  his circumstances? Is there a reason science doesn't exist in the  fantasy world?
2. You're story is marketed as slice of life, but  has some pretty heavy hitters in both dungeon monsters and threats. Do  you have any things you keep in mind when dealing with the rising stakes  and tension?
3. How do you juggle having do many characters in the story? Between 3 dungeons and an entire city, its a lot

Khenal: 1: Science is still a thing, but researchers have magic as a crutch,  which will blind them to certain things.  Additionally, the theories  that get entrenched about how everything work will have powerful people  who want to see them stay entrenched.  Just look at how long the four  elements lasted as a scientific consensus to see how those kinds of  things tend to last.

2: I've always enjoyed the magical in the mundane, and the mundane  in the magical.  The idea of Superman doing his laundry and hoping the  colors in his cape don't run, just how far he might have to tone down  his heat vision to try to quickly dry a load after having forgotten to  put it in the dryer, things like that.  I don't worry too much about  power levels, because in the grand scheme of the story, they really  don't matter.  Fights and such will happen, because that's just how the  world works.  It's the reason behind the fights that I find interesting,  and I try to write about.  And I enjoy a good action sequence  sometimes.  If it's a slice of life, cool stuff happening is still a  part of that life.

3: For juggling characters... I guess I have experience.  I've run a  lot of table games, so I've gotten used to not only trying to have a  vague idea of what the players are going to do, but how the world should  react.  If I'm going to have the players invested, there needs to be  people in the world to be invested in.  I also tend to have other  powerful characters running around in my games, because I think it  breaks believably that the party are the other powerful people trying to  do things.  So I suppose I just have around two decades of experience  juggling characters.

And bonus for the questions you think you'd have to throw out: while  I didn't know specifically what pitfalls other stories might fall into,  I did take some time to think about what having a dungeon as the main  character would do.  For one, Thedeim can't move.  He can get bigger,  but he's unlikely to ever get big enough to even encompass a second  town, so he's stuck where he is.  He also has no mouth, how does he  talk?  I even gave him a core because I wanted to have some kind of  target.  I didn't want him to be basically invulnerable, encompassing  the entire space of the manor with no way to harm him.  I've found it  amusing that I basically reinvented a lot of tropes that are common in  the genre from scratch.  As for changing stuff I've seen other stories  do, the old game Dungeon Keeper was a partial inspiration as well, and I  almost went with the cartoonish evil tone of the game, but I decided I  wanted to do something lighter.

AC:  Khenal  Wrote: I don't worry too much about  power levels, because in the grand scheme of the story, they really  don't matter.  Fights and such will happen, because that's just how the  world works.  It's the reason behind the fights that I find interesting,  and I try to write about.  And I enjoy a good action sequence  sometimes.  If it's a slice of life, cool stuff happening is still a  part of that life.

Once again you have shattered any and all preparation i had for  this, and honestly I'm starting to understand your story better. Its not  a power fantasy about conquest, but just someone being themselves and  the world almost taking offense.

I did have plans on asking if there was anything you look back on  and might want to change, or maybe if you think you're story will ever  end... but after talking to you I can just feel your love for the story  you have made.

I think this interview is about done as I believe I understand your  point of view well enough to share it with others. It was never a story  of infinite growth, but just enjoying the ride. Thank you for you're  time.