A Unique(?) Skill Story Plot Idea

Discussion in 'Author Discussions' started by Neiri, Aug 30, 2022.

  1. Neiri

    Neiri Well-Known Member

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    Some novels has variation of "shop" or "market" skill where they can buy stuffs from earth to the otherworld.

    What I am thinking is "Hiring" skill where the skill let you hire professionals like cooks, carpenters etc. Unlike the Shop where you can have it on one time payment , here the skill is by contract. Once you hired them, you have to pay their wages depending on the contract. The limitation I guess would be labor law related such as you can only make one specific worker work for 8 hours. You have to follow the labor laws if not the skill will be gone or at least suspend you from hiring for a time.

    Unlike the shop where mostly you do not know the the products are produced and seems be be immune to the laws of logistics, supply and demand. Here the workers are from another world and the skill are connected to the their equivalent of employment agency.

    The story could be the adventure of the skill holder, or the employment agency or even the worker.
     
  2. sakyuya

    sakyuya 【Villain】【Very tired and wants to retire】

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    How about a story about a man who is trying to revive a ruined world?
    He has the skill to hire the survivor from other ruined world and begin hiring them to save his world first before continuing to save his worker home world. All world has their own problem and specialty, and MC use specialty of other worlds to save other world problem. Something like that would be good.
     
  3. UndyingSLIME10295

    UndyingSLIME10295 [•Figment of your Imagination•]

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    You can try chinese mtls that usually contain farming/building elements.
     
  4. Darius Drake

    Darius Drake A poster of verbose posts

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    Neiri: Just to be clear, is this supposed to be a thread where we discuss your Unique Skill Story Plot Idea, or a thread to discuss unique or rarely seen Skill-Based Story Idea's. I'm going to assume it's the first one, and continue from there.

    Neiri, I can see what you're coming from, basically a Temp Hiring Agency in a world where people have game-style skills. But what you're talking about is basically a bunch of short-stories where a weak-but-useful protagonist follows along a team-of-the-week on that week's adventure. It's interesting, but it's basically a variant of a monster-of-the-week story combined with weakling-joins-strong-party-due-to-being-useful, which is, admittedly, nearly always a weak-to-strong story trend. For the monster-of-the-week stories, think of shows like Scooby Doo, Power Rangers or Adventure Time. For weakling-joins-due-to-secret-usefulness, think Trash Skill 'Mapping' is the best example I know of, mostly because their unique skill is exactly what it says and nothing more, while he becomes useful in combat purely through utilising the Job System.

    A similar alternative is a world where "Skills" can become tangible objects with the assistance of the correct Skills, to be bought, sold or hired out. Set up some rules such as hired Skills can aid a person in developing their own instance of that skill, Bought or Stolen (any Skill taken without permission, be it by murder, theft or threats) are weakened to either Level 1 or Level 0 (Level 1 provides a slight benefit to having the Skill, and makes improving the Skill easier. Level 0 means that you have the Skill and the only benefit of it is seeing what actions actually help develop the skill towards Level 1). Hired Skills, however, maintain half the level from the person allowing them to be Hired, and if the person they're Hired to dies, the Skill is automatically returned to the Owner. As it is returned if the default conditions on the Lending Skill is fulfilled.

    This second setup would allow you to have those same stories, but allow for the party that did the hiring die without risking the loss of the "worker". This means that a person could hire out a Cooking Skill for their adventure without taking along an actual cook, and come back six months later proficient enough in Cooking to have the skill for themselves. Alternatively, a guard hiring Scouting & Trap Disarming Skills can hunt down a bandit camp without having to protect a non-combatant scout and a party of foolhardy idiots who hire an Archery Skill to hunt what turns out to be a Young Dragon or Hydra aren't risking the Hiring Agency's Talents in their recklessness, only their own lives.
     
  5. Neiri

    Neiri Well-Known Member

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    Those already exist and they are as edgy as f*ck. One manga, he loan skills at a high interest even loan shark would squirm, it is fine, his former team mates are bullies.Another similar one loan out experience, also another stupid teammates.
     
  6. Darius Drake

    Darius Drake A poster of verbose posts

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    No, those stories are "Weak-to-Strong" stories with people who went around with teammates & were treated like garbage despite being the reason the teams were successful in the first place. What I'm talking about is a person who's stated job, that they do for money, is to develop as wide a variety of Skills as high a Level as they can inside of town, and hire it out for cash for people to use WHILE THEY STAY IN TOWN. This would be akin to one of those business stories where you see them buy the product and then see the results of them using said product, usually used in horror stories with the results harming the purchaser. You hire skills from them with the Contract Skill, with penalties to the Contract Skill's Level if the owner breaks the Skill Hiring unfairly & the Hirer's losing the Skill if they don't meet the terms of the Contract, or are unable to pay IN ADVANCE anymore. That way you don't have people losing skills in the middle of a fight & dying simply because the author doesn't like them.
     
  7. Xian Piete

    Xian Piete Author of many mediocre stories

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    You should rename this thread because it is NOT about a unique story plot idea. What you are describing is part of your story setting. The plot of your story would be the series of events that this character who hires people would need to run through. The actual events the character would need to follow from beginning to middle to end.

    Also. it's not unique. It's just a variation of a very standard setting.