Storys, poems, songs

[vaisasu]

As originally posted on the Triangle of Truth forums.

The journal of a young crafter

Early morning - Rise and shine
Getting up in the morning has always been difficult for me. Each morning my mind seems to resist the idea of leaving the comforting warm sleepy state it's in for the harsh realities of facing daily responsibilities. I go through the same routine as always where I lie half awake watching the lake cast playful patterns of light in my appartment. I know I'm just stalling the inevitable ritual of getting ready to go to work. It's even harder on days I've been playing till late the night before. Today is such a day.

Morning - Get going
It's always the same thing. A long queue of people too lazy to enter town, trying to sell stuff to the stable boy. All I want to do is get my mount and head to work! Patience just is not one of my virtues this early in the morning. Contrary to my plan, I have not yet made up my mind on what to make today. I figure I'll make some ammo. The shop gives good value for Ammo. If I'm lucky some of it will be sold and I will earn some commission. Most important thing is that I am getting better at my craft. Hopefully one day people will say they buy all their ranged weapons from me because I deliver good quality stuff. For now, being an apprentice, this is just a dream. One can always dream.

Day - At work
The same old routine at work. Harvest this, harvest that, Craft some stuff, head back to town, sell everything, get back and start all over again. Workdays really give me an aching back. Explosions and gas-clouds are no picnic either, mind you! The fun part is talking among the guys. Some of them are actually interested in the game I play in the evenings. I have yet to convince one of them to play with me, but they still ask me questions about it, and I really don't mind talking about it either.

- So, let me get this straight. You have a character in this game and you can travel around and do stuff.
- Yes, they have mechanical boxlike mounts which break down on colission. I bought one with just a few hitpoints left, which was a bit cheaper. Anyway, there are so many of them that the game lags most of the times you use them. Still everybody wants one.
- Then you shoot everyone you see?
- No, there are games like that, and I've played some of them, but this is not like that.
- Oh, I had a friend who played a game like that where they said funny phrases like, "Hi Johnny, nice Beemer, how fast does it go?" and "The mortgages seem to be lower if you get them from the other bank." So you walk around in that game of yours and say silly stuff like that, and call it role-playing?
- Well some people do, and I sometimes join in, but not all the time. Usually I'm too busy making stuff to earn money.
- You have a job in that game of yours?
- Yes.
- Haha, like you haven't enough crafting to do here! And what is it that you do?
- Well, you could compare it with what we're doing now. I dig for information usually in documents others have crafted, then I craft a document of my own. Only I don't sell it. They have this strange economy in IRL(TM). I give it to some other bloke, who uses it to craft something else with it, which he gives to another bloke and so on. At the end we have collectively crafted a huge thing called a computer system, of which nobody knows how it really works. Next time they want some changes, we start with digging again and the whole thing starts anew.
- And you earn dapper?
- Well something like that. It's called money and the currency changes per spawnpoint. I am busy figuring out how that works. Somehow since I bought myself a mount the bank keeps sending me funny system messages saying I'm "overdrawn". Tonight I'll visit the NPC handling that to find out what happened. There should be a mission or something.
- Sounds complex and confusing to me, mate. Why would you play such a game?
- Well it's quite relaxing after a working day. We have a nice community... at least most of the time.

Afternoon - Back in town
It's always good to collect the last few dapper for my work. Knowing that after collecting some skills with my new skillpoints I can logon and play IRL(TM). It seems there are patches every now and then, but I have not seen any so far. There are many GM's saying different stuff about what the devs are doing, but no consistant news there either. Well, as long as I can play without lag, I don't mind. I log on, get out of my appartement and step into my mount to go to work...

Hours later - Logging off
Phew, this game is really becoming an addiction. I was planning on asking some friends to come hunt some Izams for some ranged XP, but I got stuck in this game too long again. I have to get up in a few hours to go digging. I formed this funny idea, though. I think I'm going to write a small story about this guy who lives in IRL(TM) and in the evenings, he comes home and plays a game where he is someone in Atys. LOL, the guys on the forum will probably tell me to stay off the Yelk dung when they read it!