Interviewer: How would you describe your job, being a protector?
Me: I guess to those modern day kids out there, it’s sort of like one of those video games where you go fight monsters. Except it’s harder. Gold doesn’t just come spewing out of the corpse after you kill a monster. Nobody pays the freaks that keep their pretty little faces safe at night.
Interviewer: So you would compare it to role-playing video games?
Me: Yes. Yes I would.
Interviewer: So what about XP?
Me: I guess there is XP. You gain experience when you kill a new monster. You can gain experience by doing anything, just in real life no golden banner pops up over your head that says You have killed a monster and gained 20 XP. And I guess there is no specific amount of experience gained depending on which type of monster you beat. Every battle is unique, and therefore the amount of experience, and the type of experience, gained from each is unique as well.
Interviewer: Do you think that kids that play a lot of video games are likely to become protectors when they grow up?
Me: I don’t know. That all depends. It depends on their backgrounds, and how much they live in the game, and what kind of games, and how much money their parents have, and a lot of other variables.
Interviewer: Did you play a lot of role-playing video games growing up?
Me: I always enjoyed them a lot, especially the ones that made it feel as if I actually had a say in the game, as if it mattered that I kept coming back, because the whole world wasn’t just programmed to do the exact same thing for the next person in line. I didn’t play them very often, but I definitely got addicted when I did play.
Interviewer: Do you recommend your job to anybody?
Me: I love my job. It is dangerous and it is hard. Like I said earlier, nobody pays the freaks that keep their pretty little faces safe at night. It’s not that rewarding, but it’s never dull. There is always something to be doing, always another monster, always a new set of gauntlets or a new dagger to save gold for. There isn’t much gold, but for me protecting the city is it’s own reward in a way. I would recommend it to a small elite of people. I would have to know a kid pretty dang well to recommend something like this to them though.
Interviewer: You mentioned buying new armor and weapons. How similar is the weapon and armor trade to the RPVGs?
Me: Well, different merchants have different stock and different specialties. Some have better prices than others. Usually, you can find one or two in remote and random places that you like, and when you do you keep coming back. Some items are harder to find than others, and some items are completely unique. So I would say very similar. Kind of unnerving how so many tiny kids play my life as an innocent computer game. They think it would be ‘sweet’ to be me, and maybe it is, but they don’t know what they’re wishing for.
Interviewer: So you mentioned rare and unique items, how about “magical” items?
Me: Oh, there are definitely magical items, but they are hard to come by. They are not nearly as common as they are in the RPVGs, and nobody will tell when they have one, for fear of theft.
Interviewer: Do you have any “magical” items?
Me: I’m not going to tell you that. Who knows who might hear it. But I can tell you that I have definitely had one in my possession before. They can be helpful, if you actually happen to know what the enchantment does. That’s another one of those differences between real life and the game. There isn’t a little info box to tell you what everything does. Sometimes a merchant will tell you, but you can’t always trust them. The best way to know for sure is trial and error, but that comes with consequences.