Title: The Games We Play
Author: Ryuugi Shi AKA rgm0005
Rating: T
Genre: Fantasy/Adventure
Status: WIP
Published: July 27th, 2014
Updated: October 1st
Chapters: 18
Words: 83,508
Fandoms: RWBY/The Gamer (korean manhwa)
Pairings: None yet
Summary:

Link: Fanfiction.net (final version)
Spacebattles (rough drafts; ahead of FFN)

After his "hiatus" writing Worm snippets, Ryuugi Shi returns to novel-length fiction with a crossover of two fandoms many people have never heard of. Thankfully, you don't need knowledge of either work to enjoy the story (although you'll want some basic video game experience).

The premise is simple; Jaune Arc, the out-of-his-depth regular guy in RWBY, gains the ability to act like a video game character prior to the start of the series. You've probably read dozens of fics like this. Fortunately, Ryuugi manages to miss many of the problems that plague this type of story. Instead of being the whole focus of the story, it's used to quickly leave the rails of canon and put you onto Ryuugi's Wild Ride. And oh what a ride it is.

It only suffers from a handful of subjective issues, including too much focus on figuring out the mechanics behind the video game system (a problem inherited from The Gamer and amplified by SB), as well as some bland characterization of the side characters. I found these problems easy to ignore, and they're buried under the fun of Jaune Arc's crazy adventures. I'd easily give this a 5/5.

(And yes, it is a Ryuugi Shi story. This means updates may slow from daily to a crawl at any moment. I feel there's enough as is for it to go into the Library.)

 

A bit of a guilty pleasure for me. The protagonist doesn't really have any antagonists that match up to him, or if they do, he goes super furry saiyan and defeats them.

Still, a fun read. 4/5

 

As I mentioned on SB, the reason I started reading both The Gamer and RWBY was because I saw a four-thread (now much longer) Ryuugi story that showed no sign of slowing down.

I don't regret it in the slightest.

Note that this story started well before canon in RWBY and shows no signs of following the original rails.

 

This is probably the best of the millions of The Gamer crosses that have popped up over the last few months, but reading about someone grinding stats endlessly does not stay interesting for very long. The actual story parts of it are pretty entertaining, but I really can't justify giving a high rating to something that I skipped over half of.

 

Ya, but recently it's been getting a bit shark jumpy for me.

 

I'm enjoying the story and I especially love the characters and their interactions. Most of them are good and trying to do good. That makes the conflict even better, since it's not good vs. evil, but people with different goals who are all trying to do the right thing.

I should hate the long monologues, but they're great. Really refreshing and not cynical. (They're acknowledging the lack of easy solutions, but they're still all trying.)

The introspection regularly goes on far too long. The story would improve significantly if those parts were cut down by half or even three-quarters. Sometimes it's a whole chapter or more of just Jaune thinking and training. Often there are 2-3 pages of thinking or exposition in the middle of a fight. This causes some of the fights to go on for far too long. Most recently the fight against

Spoiler

Pyrrha Nikos

could have been shorter.

I've been skimming a lot of the introspection, grinding and even some of the fight scenes. The rest of the story is great (see above), but if half of the story is stuff I just want to skip, there's a problem.
I also feel like it's a bit too easy for Jaune. Yes, there are constantly people around that are leagues above him and that would trounce him in a second, but he wins every fight that he actually gets into.

 

My problem was that it never felt like a RWBY story, about RWBY problems. I stopped somewhere during the heist on the Schnee company, where Jaune knew how to hack/gather passwords and stuff and while Blake and the White Faunus played big roles, the Gamer parts had really completely taken over the story.

About hacking and cyberstuff, RWBY isn't. Does this get better later on, when more canon characters appear?

 

Yes, there hasn't been any hacking or cyberstuff since.
Lots of world-building going on and many OCs are introduced (which is natural, since we only saw a limited number of characters in canon). Some canon characters have shown up.

 

I don't get a couple of the complaints about this fic. Like about how Jaune can just "Go furry super saiyan" to beat his opponents, and how he doesn't have any antagonists that can match him, etc. Because, err, that' blatantly not true? Or are you talking about and overarching enemy, a Big Bad? Because that's pretty much still the Grimm, an do I have to mention Ziz?

Jaune fights in his wight level and even a bit over it. He would have lost against Penny w/o using a munchkin like, cheap tactic. He doesn't fight people who are way over his head because...well, he can see how far over his head they are by looking over theirs. He can literally see their level and if he can't, then they are DEFINITELY out of his league. It's a fight he can't win.

In an RPG, if you're level 10, you don't go off an try and fight a level 100 enemy. You run away or avoid the fight.

The Cyber-hacking stuff was literally relevant for a chapter or two and I don't see what's all that bad about it?

I can see why the monologue can be YMMV, but I personally love it. It's a direct example of showing off how much more analytical Jaune has become. Though I'll admit, more interaction with others character his age that we''ve come to know, would be nice. He hasn't talked much to Blake, and his conversations with Adam are always short and too the point. These kid from Mistral were kind of nice, too, but they've kind of disappeared as well.

I can't comment about it not feeling like RWBY, because, well, never watched it. Made do on the wiki.

Anyway, 5/5 from me.

 

And with the most recent snippet I am out, this intellectual cowardice of running away to save more later is rather disgusting. If you don't live by your ideals then there's no point in even having them.

 

Eh, those are Granny's ideals, not Jaun's. He's agreed that there's merit to it, but he's going to learn from the situation and choose his own path. Would he be able to stand by while others are dying just because he'd probably die? The mine workers rescue arc would say "no". Ryuugi explained in a post that Granny's philosophy is why she's still alive, whereas most of her peers - and most Hunters throughout Remnant - die young. When you're the p/matriarch of your family, and its continued existence and fortune is your responsibility and desire, then this is easily the sort of philosophy that you'd preach and desire for your kids, and their kids, etc. Most moms would want this for their sons when going off to war. "Come back alive."

Personally I found the philosophy a bit of a relief compared to the shounenesque values I usually see displayed. Fight against overwhelming odds and if you have enough will, you'll steal a win somehow. Or deus ex machina will save you. Bleagh. More "heroes" need to die in my media when they make stupid decisions. If they want to die for their ideals, then let them.

 

Going into this story, I was somewhat disappointed, because it really doesn't feel like a RWBY fanfiction, despite taking place in that world. Even the main character, Juane, doesn't really feel like the Juane we know from canon. (To be fair, we don't really have that much to work with yet from canon.)

Despite that, the story grew on me. I am also a fan of The Gamer, so I actually found the mechanics of the Gamer power interesting. The plot arcs were engaging and fun to read. In addition, Juane develops nicely as a character, both in strength and character. He's far from perfect, and it shows in the story, but even his bad decisions have logical reasons behind them.

Overall, I rate this story 4/5.

 

The moment he apologized was the moment he said sorry for saving the people being oppressed in the mining camp. She blasts him for deciding to free that town, even though he went about it intelligently. He had no way of knowing that Ziz was sleeping on that mountain, or that Penny even existed, or that Torchwick would cause a scene. That is called plans not surviving the enemy, and there is no way to prepare for that. The grandma basically said that he was a fool for putting those in the town over himself and then he agreed with her. So I guess he wishes he never rescued all those men, women and children and giving them a chance at a better future.

Seeing a hopeless situation and realizing that you won't be able to turn the tide is one thing, but letting that cynicism seep in so deep that you even refuse to take risks unless it benefits yourself is even worse. At least the ones who died trying died as heroes who fought for what they believed in rather then live long enough to betray their ideals.

 

Jeanne implies that Jaune had a negative effect on the world of Remnant because he didn't think it through. Life is worse now for the faunas in hundreds or thousands of other mining communities. Remnant's economy is going to hurt as well. Rising prices, dust costs, large infrastructure projects, a loss to public transportation and fellowship between nations, etc. Loss of public confidence in security and stability which will draw in more grimm. For what? A single community of miners being better off than they were.

 

in the beginning I would have whole heartedly recc this fic.

Now?

Eh... its very YMMV.

Parts of it seem more like Ryuugi just doesnt quite know where this is going so stuff is just piling on top of each other and frankly we havent even fucking gotten to canon yet so oh dear god this is going to be insane.

 

This is the longest work of Ryuugi's that I've ever seen, and I still hang out for the updates every day.

The plot is still about one hundred times better than The Gamer manga's. And the story seems to be going places. Perhaps I'm being distracted by the cool fight scenes, but I'm still enjoying the hell out of the fic.

 

Very good fic. I really like it way better than that crappy RWBY. I only watched up till episode 8 coz of the trailers.

Recent chapters suggests that he's going somewhere tangible with his plot esp. the connection between his Gamer abilities and Grim.

 

Well, things just happened in this last chapter. Not entirely sure what to think about it, but it's definitely renewed my interest in the story.

 

For me it was the reverse - my interest has been dwindling, and this felt like Ryuugi jumped off the slope.

Felt like Bleach, to be honest, both about how this situation occurred with little warning and involved mostly tertiary characters, and about how the 'new enemy' sounds just like a Hollow. And it's been years since that has been a good comparison.

 

It's pretty good, and more promising and interesting than the source material.