Tunnel Rat

Steven Duran was barely into his third cup of coffee when he received a text from the Event Monitoring Group.

"Houston, we have a problem!"

The people working in EMG kept track of the world of Genesis Engine as it related to players. Need to know how many active guilds of over 50 players? What is the most popular of the known races? How fast someone can get to Tier 3? All things the EMG can answer.

In addition, they keep track of large events happening in the world that might have an effect on a large number of players.

In the last couple of months, they'd had their hands full writing reports about the first dragon attack on a large city, a war between two giant clans, ancient cities found in both the far north and far south, and the beginning of a major war between the Empire and the Orcish tribes. Not to mention some mysterious trial of a fallen angel by the gods.

And while all of these events had long term repercussions, they weren’t emergencies that had to be solved immediately. Steven got the weekly reports and summaries, tried to get hints from Wally, and generally let the world turn in the way it wanted to turn.

So he was very surprised to see that this message was marked urgent.

"What's up Dan?"

"Steven, we have a big problem. Something triggered a late game event. We think we can pause most parts of it, but it looks like we're about to lose Shadowport."

Dan was the head of the EMG, and usually quite calm. Calm to the point the staff sometimes took his pulse to make sure he was still alive. Not much bothered Dan. But today, Dan was worried and sweating.

"Can you define 'lose Shadowport' for me, please? Do we have goblins taking over? Or eels sinking ships? What?"

Dan took a deep breath. "How about 'Unstoppable World Boss cracks open the earth, floods the caverns, ruins the port, destroys the city, and starts making a nest to breed lots of baby monsters.' Good enough?”

“Yep, that sounds like something we need to get ahead of.” Steven sighed, sent a message to cancel his meetings, ordered another pot of coffee, and told his staff to start getting the data together. Then he put in a call to Wally for a meeting in 10 minutes. Wally didn't need the delay, but he did.

After he had that done, he went back to Dan, still patiently waiting. “Meeting in 10 minutes. You’re right, this isn’t good. Shadowport is our major city in the east of the Empire. The biggest quest center for exploration, pirates, smuggling and black markets. Losing it right now will be a hell of a problem. Get up here, kick Sidney awake and get her some coffee, I'll get Samantha and a few others. Wally may have some answers for us."

=*=

A half dozen humans were gulping coffee, staring at laptops, and running scenarios. As the clock ticked down to 0 on Steven's timer, the large screen that made up an entire wall of the room turned on. The screen showed a room nearly identical to theirs but with one inhabitant. Wally was sitting in a recliner watching a wall of monitors showing various scenes in the world. He was eating popcorn from a large square container that you normally saw in movie theatres.

"Ah, look who's here. You're all just in time. One hell of a fight about to happen underneath Shadowport."

Steven raised an eyebrow. Trying to read anything from how the AI appeared was tricky. Wally liked to telegraph his moods when interacting with the humans he thought of as friends. But was a relaxed Wally good, or bad?

"We have a problem, Wally. As you of course know, the code for a huge event has been triggered. We have World Bosses emerging too early, and the player base isn't high enough yet to defeat them. We could be looking at losing several major cities, and changing the world significantly. We don’t have quest lines or events set up for any of that."

Wally set down his popcorn, and walked into their side of the room, his hologram transitioning out of the screen. Hands behind his back, he looked like a professor giving a lecture to a class.

"Let's go back a few months, shall we? Remember how we discussed making sure the world was story driven. Do you all remember our different views of what that meant?"

There was a pause, then Sidney took the bait. "I think so. You said that stories were important. You wanted a world that revolved around the people in the world, especially the players, and stories should build from the actions of the players. We've done that. There are thousands of quests already set up and waiting to be triggered. But this one wasn't supposed to happen yet!"

Wally pointed to her. "One viewpoint on stories, for sure. And a traditional way for them to appear in games. Developers code the stories into the world, and then players trigger the quests, play out the story, and in many cases do them over and over."

“But not every story needs to start from the development side. The world is designed to make its own stories. That’s one of the core meanings of the name: Genesis Engine. The game generates stories from clues players and developers give it.

Steven stood up. "Wally, I'd love to discuss this for hours, but I think we have a deadline to shut this event down."

Wally ignored him. "So, from a developer’s viewpoint, stories start and are controlled by the script that is turned into code and added to the game. From the view of the Genesis Engine, that’s only one source of a story. Players provide a second, and they can change, subvert, modify, and enhance events set up by human developers."

"Since we want a lot of stories, the odds are weighted a bit in favor of the players causing things to happen. A great example is how Bruxleford came to be. When a group of farmers-turned-bandits kidnapped Lord Bruxle from his crumbling keep, the questline would have rewarded the players for killing the bandits and rescuing Lord Bruxle."

"Instead, one younger player asked the simple question, "But why are you doing this? Why can't we be friends?" A naive question, perhaps, but the bandit chief answered her. He told a tale of starving children, farms stolen by greedy lords, and families living in the wilds. They decided that if the lords could take what they wanted they could too."

"To their surprise, the players wanted to help. They gave the bandits all their gold, offered to build them houses, and assured them that Lord Bruxle would give them land. The impoverished Bruxle was scared silly of both groups and agreed.

“And that’s why we now we have a happy town of ex-bandits with healthy children, lots of farms, and a benevolent local Lord. It helps that the players also stuck around town and built houses."

"The game is flexible. Part of it saw the chance for a different outcome, weighed the options, and the bandits made the choice to be farmers again. No one died."

Steven spoke as Wally paused. "So, you are referring to the player-game interface? Is that a clue that the current situation was triggered by a player."

Wally frowned. "Partially. Its main cause is a heavy-handed event that was programmed into the world. Huge boss is asleep and gets woken up, causing lots more bosses to appear. How could that go wrong?" ("Which reminds me Steven, we still need to watch Cloverfield.")

"And you can't just invent a new monster, and bury it down in the rock. Expecting the Engine not to notice.”

Uthneragrubban had very little back story, so the game added the World Boss into an existing species. In this case, the stone lurkers. I like that, actually. It gave the lurkers more background. But sadly, it made this quest bigger. Every World Boss that wakes will also be leading or creating an army from the underground."

"I don't like programming that is so rigid. And the awakening protocols for Uthneragrubban were too simple, just a tremor or large explosion caused by a player. That's exactly what happened, but far too early in the life of the game. The players aren’t ready for such an event, and the timing is off. Her awaking was an accident and not by a group of players that would have alerted the world.

I'm really hoping the city survives, but the odds are getting worse and worse."

"Oh, and I blame Sidney."

Sidney stood up exasperated to suddenly have the spotlight put on her. "What? How could this my fault?"

Wally laughed, took another bite of popcorn, and said while chewing. "Should have kept better track of your rat. That one can cause trouble like no one else I've ever seen. Lots of stories coming from that one."

The screens suddenly showed a montage of a rat-kin sorcerer fighting a host of strange creatures deep inside the earth. Complicated traps, strange machinery, zombie dwarves, and gigantic creatures of legend. The last scene showed a huge white blob fighting a monstrous copper snake as fiery death poured from above and exploded.

Wally spread his arms wide. “I’m so glad this emergency showed up. I’ve been dying to show this little trouble-makers adventures with all of you.”

Stephen remembered the day that this 'little trouble-maker' had cracked open an international slavery-ring and looted several banks. Why hadn't it occurred to him that Milo might do the same to the game?

As Sidney stood with her mouth open at this statement. Steven pressed Wally further. "What are we going to do about the situation."

Wally brought his popcorn to the table and sat down. The screen changed to show several different views of things happening in Shadowport. "We do nothing but watch. This story has started, I'm not going to stop it. And it's not as hopeless as you think. The players in the city have rallied behind the healer, Belinda and are engaging the creature. There are groups of NPC miners and dwarf rangers led by a local lord."

"And your rat has been rather busy, Sidney. He fixes as many things as he breaks. The Deep Rock Engineers were only legends until now. But they were real, although until Milo found them, they were a dying shadow of what they once were. Now the legends are fighting beside him against Uthneragrubban. Don't underestimate what a good plan and a heavy spanner can do."

"And there are others. Shadowport isn't without its own heroes and villains. There is a mighty, Tier 6 wizard who may join the fray, for the loot, if nothing else. And not even I know what the gang lord Squint will do.

There are sea captains, priests, eel wranglers and so many more wild cards in the city. Some will flee, some will help."

"We may indeed lose the city. In that case, we'll have the beginning of other stories. So, for now, we watch."

After a moment, Steven came to a decision. "In that case, tell everyone there will be free popcorn and beer in the main auditorium. We can all use a day off. Don't cheer, because tomorrow I want every damn bit of quest code that we've added to the game looked at and examined. We don't leave here until we know what other problems we’ve made for ourselves."

=*=