It's been a long time! I'm still alive, but I haven't been writing my own work, not for a long time. Life is too busy, lack of motivation, and all that jazz. However, that doesn't mean I haven't written anything at all - on a few different forums I've written omake for other people's stories as the mood struck. I've decided to post them here, as I have this "story" set up as a place to post this sort of thing, anyway!
So, uh, a whole bunch of chapters are about to go up at once. Enjoy!
Context: "A Bad Name" is a Gamer-style story in the Worm Universe, with an Original Character as the Gamer. It is written by Potato Nose, and I've only ever read it on Spacebattles - I don't know if its posted elsewhere. Highly recommend it, its worth the read. My handle on that forum is Ike. This explicitly refers to me, here, in the first person - this is what I would do if I was stuck in Worm with the Gamer power, and references my thought process on why I would do it.
If I was the OC with the gamer power placed in Worm, what would I do?
Min-maxing is love. Min-maxing is life. I will admit, with zero hesitation, that I am a power gamer in every game I play. Any game I buy, I research ahead of time to figure out what build paths or character choices lead to what, and which results in the strongest and/or most fun build to play. At one point in my life, I was even heavily involved in a theory-crafting community. But even there, I only ran the numbers - I didn't come up with the program that did the number running for me, I always used the work of others. That's because, to eek out the smallest dps increases at the highest end of raids, the differences would be so minute that only running calculations would be able to tell you which was consistently better.
Well, here I am. I've woken up in Worm. I have the Gamer power - I know roughly how it works, as I explore the information currently available to me, and the launching points for a character build that I'm fairly certain will dictate whether I live or die. I NEED to know which choices are the best one, just like I know that on my own I can't figure it out. I don't have Binkenstein here to save the day for me, but that's OK - I have other options.
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"... And that's why I came to you. I have a power, a strong power, but by its very nature requires me to constantly work hard to make the most of it. Moreover, I have life altering, non-refundable choices I will have to make, and figuring out the most... efficient... way to both boost my stats and determine my build is most certainly the most important factor in my survival. So... I came to you."
I had him. I could see him slowly nodding - I knew the efficiency argument would work, but emphasizing the hard work while glossing over all the shortcuts I can work out was probably equally important.
"Well, we should probably get you signed up with the Wards as soon as possible. That would be the most efficient use of our time, after all." Armsmaster smiled at me, looked all the world like a man who knew what a smile should look like but was too busy thinking to actually succeed at it.
This was definitely the right choice.
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~Golden Morning~
I smirked up at the big golden moron. I was level 255, max stats, with 3 full talent trees filled out and a few points in the rest. It took a lot of work, but in the end, it was worth it - after all, Sion was capped at level 99, apparently!
AN: Like seriously, this seems so obvious to me. You have a power based on efficiently leveling yourself up, that most definitely reacts to minmaxing, but people only ever seem to try to do it on their own. We have a dude who's power is literally "making things more efficient". Seems obvious, really.