#gamer plot

Plot 152: Pokémon: Friend or Foe? (submitted by Emmeline)

This town has been nothing more than boring as long as Muse A has lived here. Not even Pokémon GO, a game lauded for it’s ability to encourage social interaction, has changed much of anything around town. Sure, a few of the high school students have picked it up, but it doesn’t seem to be the obsession here that it is everywhere else. Muse A definitely doesn’t mind; less people playing means less competition for rare Pokémon and less opposition for their hold on the town’s only gym.

Muse B is new to town, moving there right before Pokémon GO was released. Between unpacking and settling in, Muse B hasn’t had much of a chance to do anything besides downloading the game onto their phone. Eventually, they get so restless that they aren’t playing the game that they can’t wait anymore, and take to the streets of the sleepy town in the middle of the night, walking the length of it to find every stop and Pokémon they can. After they discover the gym, they stop and set up a lure at a stop near their new house, not yet ready to return home.

That same night, Muse A can’t sleep and ventures out towards the gym, checking in with a few stops along the way to collect supplies. They are shocked to find a lure around the last one – all the high school players are surely home this late at night. They are distracted, frowning down at the unfamiliar username as they forget to watch where they are walking, completely missing Muse B sitting on the ground.

Plot 149: PvP aka Strange Dayz  (submitted by Aki)

Virtual reality dictates daily life in Oceania. Status and currency is awarded to the best players; illegal street games of Risk, matches between players outside of government-sanctioned tournaments, are major underground sources of income. When two countries go to war, the result is new and incredible: soldiers fight in VR instead of in real life, bombing the virtual landscape and targeting virtual currency sources, raiding each other’s virtual strongholds, even meeting in scheduled places for PvP brawls that will sap losers of their virtual currency and even hard-earned gear.

Muse A is a top player from a feared raiding guild that works for the military and leaves a path of digital destruction in its wake. They’ve ascended to the top of society as a venerated virtual soldier, attending expensive soirees in real life and then fighting massive, over-powered battles in-world. Their only rival is Muse B, a mysterious raider from the opposing side, and there are rumours that even their comrades aren’t sure of their real-life identity.

In fact, Muse B is a hacktivist who knows Muse A in real life. In order to fight against their own government, they’re using the identity of someone from the opposing country to fight on their side. So far as anyone knows, Muse B’s just a programmer who works as a bug-fixer at the firm that takes care of Oceania’s virtual universe.

The penalty for dissension is virtual death, being permanently banned from anything digital–essentially exile from human contact in the modern world. 

Is it just paranoia, or do Muse A’s suspicions about the enigmatic raider seem to be growing? Are they really chasing Muse B through VR or are their repeated mid-raid meetings coincidental? Are they spending an unusual amount of time visiting Muse B after work, or are they just looking for some peace from the celebrity paparazzi?