(tentative) Play It

Chapter 1

Bright flourescent bulbs lining a white plaster tiled ceiling were what i opened my eyes to after having fallen asleep just a split second beforehand, finding myself staring up into the stress and laugh lined face of a tall middle-aged man whose thick and unruly brown hair was kept in a ponytail danging inches away from my head as he did something underneath the rubber foam table i was laid out on. There were just under a dozen other tables and occupants in differing types or styles of clothes arrayed around my own, but most of them were already emptied or being seen to by the professor's many assistants or technicians. "Just another minute or two, everybody," the professor says loudly to more than just me after prizing the table's hardware from the base of my skull and ushering me into an only slightly unbalanced upright position.

"We can discuss everybody's first day on the way to and over lunch, but we have a tight schedule to maintain if we are going to be able to squeeze a fourth session in before bed," he went on to say while the other three late loggers and i were briefly tested for awareness by being jostled or asked questions about where we were. "Now, if Harold would open the door and lead the way down the hall to the elevators, we can get this show on the road while i go over a few of the finer points in your first session."

It was hard to pay attention to more than where i was going behind the professor who stopped at the door to let the rest of us stragglers through ahead of him, but it did not take more than a few strides down the hall and equal amount of deep, slow breaths to steady myself in reality. "...You can kind of tell we stepped in to tweak the storm a few times after the initial destruction of the ship, a few of you were closer to 'ground zero' than we wanted and would have sustained more than superficial and concussive damage. Aside from turning the stormclouds a few degrees every now and then, as well as a few pokes at a few of you who were stuck drifting, everything went as smoothly for us as could be expected. How about you, Zai, you were on the main deck when the ship got sunk. Any notes you would like to share?"

I was caught off guard both by the fact that i was presumably the closest to the lightning strike and that i was being addressed for in-game feedback, but it did not take more than a second or two before i was saying, "I've never been struck by lightning before, but i imagine that was as close to the real thing as i can get without dying. the Sensory overload was pretty realistic, like a mortar tube falling over and launching a firework across the yard at you times ten, and the discharges through the water were a nice touch that helped me come back to reality. When my dad knocked this firework mortar over almost a decade ago, it was these little dimple scars on my arm from magnesium flakes that brought me back, so i can attest to that much of the action being on point with reality."

"And, Julia, you're a coastal resident of maine with seafaring family," Professor moves on after filing away a recording of my answer on a personalized green hexagonal holoscreen, probably not even registering more than the fact that i had spoken while his mind existed a million miles away on something else. "Do you have any feedback on the storm and ocean itself?"

Julia near the front of the line was much quicker to respond than i was, almost instantly saying, "I have never actually been out at sea during a storm but i have been in more than a few coastal squals before and that one was almost spot on except for the lightning, there was just so much of it in a small area from too low in the sky for it to have been a natural storm. the whirls were a new experience for me as well, but they acted just like everything i have ever been told about them."

As if our two responses were enough to cover his interests for now, Professor Harlen changes track with, "Some other points i wanted to cover were your lifeboats... i don't want to point fingers or say names, but some of you either never searched your sections of the ship or lost them out at sea. i told you all that all the tutorials are some form of survival simulation, and every little thing is of some value in such situations, so the fact that some of you never even pulled ropes from your cargo sections is more than a little disappointing. You either left behind or simply lost a lot of valuable supplies and i hope that this becomes a lesson you learn from. As for the rest of you, i feel inclined to credit Harold, Maxine, Zai, and Julia for not only taking full advantage of their ship sections but also starting or setting up funtional campsites before retiring for the night.

"As promised, there is a three-day grace period that protects all new players from 'unnecessary' danger," he goes on as we make our first of several turns through the chilly data center hallways outside of our 'operating room'. "In your tutorials, this grace period starts with your next session and will keep the game from spawning mobs on your respective islands for you to deal with- however, this is still a tutorial and combat will be a part of it. On each of your islands already exists one hostile, non-sentient creature that will not begin seeking you until the third day, at any point between now and then you may take the fight to them if you so please.

"The creatures on each of your islands will differ from one another's not only due to different topography and environments but also because each of you has a different difficulty rating," he goes on while we all listen on in silence. "As i told you all before during orientation, there are no levels in this game, you grow stronger through more or less organic means and the stronger you become the harder the game will become for you to compensate- so a relative measure of power for players is if their difficulty rating is at Novice, Apprentice, Journeyman, Adept, Master Epic, and Legendary. Everybody starts at Apprentice, which is only measured in things like physical strength and health, but people with actual combat trainings like Harold's military experience or even martial arts training and classes will usually be at the higher end or entered into Apprentice based on actual experience. Based on these things and activities during today's session, three members of the beta started the game in the first ten percentile of Apprentice- Harold, for obvious reasons, Sasha, for several years of mixed martial arts and weapons training, and Zai for a combination of combat training in several different styles and weapons as well as an extensive hospital record. Fun fact, Zai has been shot as many times as Harold- which is to say only once."

Suddenly sharing this information earned me almost a dozen swiveling heads and newly appraising looks from the other eleven randomly picked beta players, but the professor seemed to not notice any of it as he went on with, "Two of you were raised to Apprentice difficulty in the first percentile after showing necessary or even impressive levels of psychological as well as physical fortitude while out at sea or reaching the island- those two would be Brittany and Emma. Now, your difficulty ratings will not go up again until after the grace period is over, but the difference between Novice and Apprentice is a large one that will affect the animal on your island. Whereas a Novice such as Julia would face something like a lone, starved wolf, an Apprentice such as Zai would probably face an even more dangerous and well fed animal such as a boar, but none of you need worry about facing an opponent with special abilities or powers until at least the fiftieth percentile of Apprentice and even then its only stuff with non-lethal abilities like blinding light or electrical discharge, maybe some super heated air if you were really unlucky.

"Otherwise, all of the non-sentient creatures you face will be mostly mundane and even familiar animals as creatures and sub-sentients indigenous to the game do not start being spawned on you until Apprentice or after your grace periods," he seems to finish his lecture as we made our second to last turn, only to pick up once again after a brief pause for breath. "While some people might think it best to play with as low a difficulty rating as they can maintain- many of my employees who play on the closed alpha servers use such a strategy- the difficulty rating directly relates to the kind of rewards you would gain from things such as animals or outlaws or missions and quests depending on the kind of life you choose to live and thusly one should strive to achieve at least Master level difficulty where at least seventy-five percent of the animals and NPC you come across will be magic related or capable. For now, though, i am sure all of you and our technicians will be content with current difficulties as you progress through the tutorial.

"For those of you wondering if you can actively control your difficulty raiting, there are several ways that you can raise, lower, and even negate your difficulty rating. For instance, in your tutorials there are many different goals both large and small that you have set for you and achieving these will grant you bonus points at the end, things both basic and complicated from starting a fire to studying your tutorial enemy to get an advantage over them. While you can usually view these things in-game through menus and even a Heads-Up Display, these functions are locked until after your grace periods for immersive reasons to see how you sync and flow with the game early on. in order for a full and proper integration of the prototype pain simulator, you have to be 'there' instead of just 'in-game', if that makes sense.

"Other factors for your difficulty rating include the amount of times you have died, if you died during a mission or during your tutorial, how you died, if you took them with you, all sorts of things," he carries on casually about dying. "One of my assistants is currently maintaining a position in the first ten percentile of Master by completing missions for his NPC guild and then finding some rather interesting ways of killing himself in near instantaneous fashion. As for raising your difficulty through death, just dont die. any injury you sustain and survive plays a fair part in your difficulty rating. Failure to meet bonus goals such as those in your tutorials does not necessarily negatively affect your ratings, but it also does not increase them and missing enough mission or quest related goals will actually negatively affect your ratings and overall rewards.

"As for your goals in the tutorial," he goes on without missing a beat even as the central support column for the building and its dozens of elevator shafts came into view, "the main ones to remember are setting up functional shelter, a fire, gathering supplies and materials, building a way off of your island or proving physically capable of swimming between islands, and a general proficiency at crafting tools and weapons. Bonus goals are things like hunting for food by tracking, trapping, and or just plain killing, hunting your tutorial opponent and or taking it out early, studying and exploring the landscape to find 'points of interest' that would later in the game be pointed out to you. i try to have all of my employees maintain 'hardcore' mode with minimal or no HUDs and interfaces to see how well they actually know the game they developed, but for regular players simply proving capable of finding these things on your own will unlock certain HUD or interface options during the tutorial instead of afterward. as for points of interest themselves, they can be anything from a crevasse in a cliff face to something shiny on a beach, could have existed there 'for years' or suddenly spawned there for the player, and could be anything from a pretty view of the landscape around you to treasure of sorts.

"Also in the way of random opportunities are mini games of sorts that make themselves out of otherwise every day situations such as hunting and gathering or certain athletic activities," he says as the large Plexiglass elevator bearing the bold blocky white decal of RESERVED across the door rises up to meet us at only halfway down the hall, already opening and awaiting our entry. "Each player- unless we decide to make mini game opportunities financially favorable- will have one every day of their grace period and at least one every three days at random afterward until the tutorial is completed- at which time your in-game activities would hopefully be profitable enough to compensate for only two mini games an in-game week or roughly once every three days in reality. Then come daily goals and rewards from them that are dependant on everything from difficulty to environment, on top of an actual minigame of sorts that gives out prizes once every game day after the grace period- just something basic i was told to make to balance out the possible free-to-play and pay-to-play issues of the future and will probably not be the last.

Squeezing into the front of the large elevator after the rest of us were piled in, he adds, "If anyone has any questions or you want to talk among yourselves, now is the time to do so."

The others immediately started rapid-firing questions and comments around the elevator in hushed or loud voices that Professor Harlen did his best to answer or ignore, friendships and partnerships were hastily made, i think two of the girls developed a rivalry, but for the most part a few of the others and i were thoughtfully silent while taking in the information that everybody was putting out and considering our next moves in the game. by the time the elevator had carried us down to the central and largest floor of the building that housed a giant cafeteria sporting different styles of restaurant and fast food to feed the employees who often lived in the building's lower level dormitories, i already knew who the people who disappointed the professor in our first session were, who had the best supplies from the ship, and who talked the most about how easy the tutorial was going to be. In comparison to most of the people around me, i not only had the most rope to start with but also the best personal supplies in the form of a week's worth of food and fruit bearing trees on my island capable of sustaining hydration as well as hunger for even longer and one of the best starting camps with a structure that was both wind and sun proof if not waterproof.

The cafeteria floor was really two stories all by itself outfitted with inside structures to serve as kitchens only a few dozen yards from the elevators in a perfect circle with space between each kitchen building for a group of people to pass through on their way to the sea of bench tables and smaller private tables filling up the rest of the floor within the walls of tinted glass that gave view to the sprawling desert countryside surrounding the small city dedicated almost solely to Professor Harlen's Cynaptic gaming company. It was not far from our elevator, however, that a familiar, large round table from our brief, light breakfast was waiting for us with several familar hologram servers, which put an end to most of the conversation taking place as the other beta players decided which brand of food they wanted to order from. After having learned that several of the kitchens here offered a broad array of fish and Asian cuisine, i had preordered my meals for the next few days just to try out everything they had to offer with sushi and smoothies for breakfast and lunch and reserving a whole fish and salad garments for each of my suppers.

Picking a seat from which i could watch the elevator column and the people coming out of it after a brief nod to the Asian female hologram that i had ordered from this morning, it is not long before an automated serving table hummed its way over from a nearby smoothie stand with my drink for lunch while the others were just taking their seats. My food was on its way while the others were just recieving their drinks, a ceramic plate covered in small groups of different style rolls for my fish of the day- eel- that they had surprisingly garnished with the components to my side salad, but like me the Professor seemed to have all of his meals planned out in the form of different types of sandwhiches- breakfast having been turkey bacon and egg and swiss in a large, halved croissant- so both of us we busy eating while the others talked between bites of food and sips of their drinks.

Whether it was the attention placed on them by the Professor or something more charismatic about themselves, Harold and Maxine were at the center of lunch conversation with questions about their lives, trainings, and gameplay as well as sought after advice on how to complete their own goals. Harold actually had a lot of valuable information in the way of crafting primitive tools and starting a fire, revealing that he was equipped with a knife by his talk of having cut and shaped a piece of wood to conform to his preferred friction fire method of rubbing a stick down a chute, but he shared little in the way of actual combat advice saying that his training mostly covered his fists, stuff with a knife he couldn't simply tell them how to do, and guns that were irrellevant to the game. This is where Maxine picked up, using the advice she had given out on crafting tools to tell them how to pick out a good weapon for them to use and the kinds of materials or methods they should use when making their own versions of such and such.

Aside from being questioned constantly about the game, Harold and Maxine were one of the few other quiet people in the group who seemed to be the strongest players both in supplies and tactics, people i really had no choice but to currently consider my equals. "I would like to not only remind every one that you're not allowed to group up until after your grace periods, but also inform you that forming parties will combine your difficulty ratings and make the game somewhat harder for you. Even though putting a Novice like Billy with an Apprentice like Harold would make a Novice party, putting Billy and Julia and Luis in a team would make an Apprentice party. in fact, if all of you as you are no in-game came together to form one big party, it would be Journeyman and twelve-percent. Thirty percent is required to start chancing magical bosses both main and mini outside of related quests or missions- such as coming across a special variant of an otherwise mundane creature and so on."

"I would join that party," i say slightly louder than i had anticipated after finishing the rest of my cherry tomato garnishes. "Max potential difficulty means max potential rewards and i like that kind of math. Otherwise, most of us really would be better off on our own- whether your difficulty is Novice or Apprentice. Professor Harlen, in what ways does being in a party affect the growth of your difficulty rating?"

"Being in a party minimizes difficulty rating by default, to maintain the team throughout lengthy quest lines," he replies almost instantly, as if having expected the question to come despite actually stopping in the middle of reaching for his large glass of tea. "By association, individual growth is also minimized unless circumstances dictate a or multiple individuals deserve extra credit- such as saving another party member, the whole team, sacrificing oneself for the party, or just plain exceptional performance. The number two reason why there is no co-op until after the grace period is personal performance behind only our needs for individual experiences and data. Otherwise, we would have teamed you up preemptively."

There were a few moments of silence as this news settled in with the group, but Harold soon broke that silence a few seconds later with, "I vote we all rendevouz at a single island nearby, from what was left of the prow of the ship i could see that we all drifted to islands right next to each other on either side of the end of the island chain. From a tree on this hill where i decided to spend the night, i could see that the next island in line with the point is a bunch of slate formations pitted with exposed or weathered empty iron veins. That's where i am going once i strip my island of all the resources i will need to go there refine what i need to make iron tools and weaponry- anyone who wants to come and help is welcome but i would prefer to work for the sake of a team rather than a bunch of different people."

"Those are our two strongest Apprentices making a call to arms," Professor Harlen remarks during the next hush to fall over the group. "I wonder just how often noobs in their tutorial phases would actually be able to achieve journeyman status. This really would not only be the first occurence of its kind but also a rare one, i should probably insist upon it just for the data. But, i will leave it up to the group as we make our way back to the OR. Get your drinks if you still want them, its time to go," he adds before drinking his entire glass of water and climbing to his feet.

I busied myself with the remaining half of my giant smoothie as the others took to pro-and-conning the idea of one big group effort on the way to our elevator, which was soon brought to a head by Harold claiming that a group effort would require a full disclosure of not only our current belongings but updates on everything we have done and do leading up to our rendevouz on iron island. Nobody really wanted tell everybody everything about themselves in case the plan fell through with individuals going their own way, which was completely understandable except that the debate kept going in circle around Harold or Maxine trying to coax someone to commit fully and inspire the others only for them to cave because of someone else's remarks. This seemed to be most commonly caused by a single person near the middle of the elevator, a guy probably younger than my own twenty-five years with carefully kept hair and clothes and even a few accessories that screamed money that i was beginning to suspect was a wealthy troll with nothing better to do with their time than cause problems.

Finally separating myself from my smoothie, i say, "On my person, i have a starter kit of thick canvas clothes, boots, and a knife from a drowned man i found in the underside of my lifeboat. in the way of supplies i have another day or two's worth of melons for hydration from the ship's cargo, roughly five to eight pounds of nuts, a cargo net from the ship, maybe fifty to sixty yards of loose rope, and access to my life boat that was crashed pretty hard on the beach of my island when i got there. The island i landed on is the crescent bay at the very point of the chain, the one in line with iron island. My next moves are to make a fire, find sustainable food, and grind tools and weaponry from the slate surrounding my little mesa. If i can find the time, i also plan on climbing my mesa to get a better view of the surrounding islands and start charting the waterways leading inland."

If the professor was to be believed in his earlier statement, maybe not only one of the silents but also the current second strongest player who had suggested the Journeyman party to begin with disclosing their information as a show of committment would inspire more confidence in the plan despite the efforts of the beta troll. As if he could feel my eyes on him, the troll turned his head just far enough to size me up in the cramped elevator before smirking while the otherwise silent Emma spoke up with, "I was hurt getting to my... lifeboat, banged my leg on a broken hunk of mast in the water and got three nice gouges in my outer thigh. i can still walk around on it and stuff, but i couldn't explore my life boat until i got to my island two down from Zai, but i have all of its supplies and a starter kit like Zai's except that it came from a trunk instead of a body. I was also kind of hoping, considering my injuries despite the game bumping me up to Apprentice probably because of them, that you would let me pair up with a volunteer to help me get off of my island, Professor Harlen."

There was a sudden uprising of voices both male and female volunteering to save the damsel in distress, but everyone was quickly silence by the professor raising his hand from the front of the elevator. "Considering the circumstances of your injuries, one of which is two inches across with a peak depth of almost three, i will allow one of the other Apprentices to come to your aid on the second or third day of the grace period," he decides after almost a full minute of suspenseful silence. Then, "on the condition that during your next session you and they at least meet the goals of starting a fire, crafting both a feasible tool and a feasible weapon, and in the case of your rescuers their tutorial opponents must be defeated as soon as the second day. suitable transportation can be built at any point before, during, or after these requirements are met so long as they are met."

I can do all that, i tell myself, running through a mental list of the little information that i had on my island and the vast amount of possibilities i had predesignated after learning of my involvement in the beta and just over nine months ago. With one full day on my little island, i can be on the water heading to her island by nightfall. Maybe sooner if her island has better food and resources than mine. "What do you know about your island?" i ask while the other Apprentices started debating their locations to see who was closest to her. "From the rise of the beach leading up to my mesa, i could see that my island is lightly hilled low wetlands with lots of citrus and cane trees. if you have similar or better resources, since i am fairly close to you, could forgo farming my own island til later since it is closest to iron island and go farm yours. With your injury, you can cook our kills while i farm and build a small barge."

Everybody quieted down in their conversations, waiting to hear what to expect from Emma's island and even a trollish remark about us as a pair, but Emma herself nevertheless responded with, "My island doesnt have any of the rock formations you guys have, but its pebbly beaches are littered with coconuts and where it rises up in the middle from one big low-lying claybed are fruit trees with invasive patches of cane trees growing up the back side. Pretty much your island but covered in muck and without the slate."

Clay means food and water containers and even molds for melting metal in, i add in to my own plans, moving on to wondering what kind of enemy would be on her island after the game had given her a boosted difficulty instead of a handicap for her injury. Professor Harlen already hinted that i would be facing something like a boar, something understandably suited for the dense vegetation of the wet grassland- which means a polearm weapon's reach would be the most effective. If her opponent is something mundane and familiar but big enough to consider a person prey, it's probably going to be something that can survive in or prefer the mud of the island more than the hill which would make it easily spotted and that probably makes it water related. A young seafaring crocodile or some other form of reptile would probably be her island's tutorial threat- another opponent that i would rather fight from a distance.

"I can make the tools and weapons necessary for that venture," i reassure the group after another second or two of thoughtful consideration. "Some basic all-purpose pole weapons with slate heads and axes for harvesting... the only things i would really need to bring from my island is cooking wood and that's only a couple of hours worth of work."

"First come first serve," Professor Harlen states simply, which immediately brought conversation full circle to committing to one big team. A few more people- including the troll- broke down along the way and gave in to peer pressure by revealing the more useful contents of their island from food to things like flint or obsidian being on their island as well as Billy having deposits of natural copper on his island that he had no idea how to mine. By the time we made it back to the OR, over half of the beta group including all of its current Apprentices were on board with the idea of one team, but i had bigger problems to mull over as i made my way to the sterilized rubber foam table bearing my name over a depression the exact measurements of my body.