Editing on book 1 is nearing completion. In periodic breaks from Magic is Programming, I've fleshed out some more details for Skill Unlocker. I've also identified some areas that I could use some suggestions for.
Here's the non-spoiler parts of what I have so far:
Background:
Set in the near future, or possibly an alternate present, of Earth.
Set primarily in the US.
The System arrived on Earth 5 years before the story begins.
The arrival of the System did not directly disrupt things.
No throwing everyone in a life-threatening tutorial.
No swarms of monsters spawning out of nowhere to threaten humanity.
No preventing existing technology from working.
It was very much not a destructive kind of apocalypse. People just started gaining more capabilities.
The System has given no hints as to its origin or purpose, aside from the obvious fact that it empowers people, and efforts to investigate its origins, purpose, and means of operation have borne no results.
Dungeons started spawning all over the world soon after the System arrived.
Dungeons are heavily concentrated near major cities and famous locations. They rarely ever spawn in wilderness areas.
Vatican City is an especially major hotbed of dungeon formation, among others.
Whenever a dungeon spawns, the System issues a quest to everyone nearby to clear it. People approaching it afterward also get the quest, and the area covered by the quest notification expands the longer the dungeon remains uncleared.
Research efforts into dungeons have found ways to detect when a dungeon is about to form, but that is practically redundant with the System quest notification, and their origins and mechanisms remain mysteries.
Dungeons technically can breach, but this was only discovered because a research team intentionally prevented anyone from clearing it for an extended period of time. The consequences proved not worthwhile.
While dungeons are extradimensional spaces filled with fantastical and sometimes valuable things, only the rewards for clearing a dungeon can be taken out of it.
System-based advancement:
You can gain skills by successfully performing a basic function of the desired skill a requisite number of times.
The more skills you have, the harder it is to gain new ones.
Using a skill to perform a basic function of a more advanced skill can upgrade or evolve the skill.
Compatible groups of skills can be merged into more versatile and powerful skills.
There are several publicly-known skills that lead to literal magic.
Skills have levels.
You can also gain achievements for doing various things, which give related bonuses, and a lot of them are easy enough to have become ubiquitous.
Once you have enough skill levels, you can gain a class.
What class you get depends on the combination of what skills and achievements you have and your personality, behavior, desires, and motivations.
Classes grant additional skills to cover any major class-relevant gaps in the skillset you already had and may evolve some of your skills.
Classes also have levels.
I have not yet decided whether to include stats in this System or not. I'm leaning toward leaving out stats.
Experience points and levels can be earned through training, overcoming challenges, and especially by clearing dungeons. The System is quite generous with XP rewards.
People with great authority, influence, and/or fame also gain XP passively over time.
Above a certain level, XP gains are heavily reduced. You can push higher despite the reduction, but the penalty escalates the higher you go. The reason for this soft cap is unknown.
There have been dungeons that were dangerous beyond the level of the soft cap. Clearing such dungeons without great risk requires a combination of high-level delvers, expensive high-tech equipment, and creative blatantly-unfair tactics. At least one such dungeon has been outright nuked.
Setting details:
The new US president campaigned for election primarily on the basis of his class, which is some kind of leadership class with a plainly-clear honesty-and-competence slant to it. Skills that can identify other people's classes are common, and at every election campaign event, he invited all attendees capable of it to personally identify his class. Once in office, he followed through in full on the expectations he set in his campaign.
Putin got assassinated and replaced by an elite Russian soldier who cleared several dungeons early on and got ambitious with his high System level. The new Russian leader is very militaristic, but also very focused on dungeon delving rather than war with other countries. He believes that an exceptionally high personal level is the ultimate source of security and that clearing dungeons is the best path to achieve that.
China declared all dungeons to be government property and instituted a power-leveling program for its leaders. Its politics and style of government remain largely unchanged.
The capabilities of magic are gradually permeating society.
Many major research efforts are focused on various kinds of magitech.
Development of better AIs has been handicapped by the fact that no AI has ever gained a skill or achievement from the System.
Now, for things that I would like suggestions for. Note that the only compensation for any suggestion I use from this post will be the existence of the story that uses it.
What should the US president's class be? I've considered Honest Politician, partly for the obvious joke - "Identify me and behold for yourself what was believed to be impossible!" - but I'm not fully satisfied with it.
What major international tensions would make sense and be potentially interesting story elements, in particular with some aspect of the System contributing to them?
What sorts of societal transformations due to the System would you find logical and interesting to read about?
Any other thoughts that come to mind?