GemStone

4843-word narrative essay on being addicted to GemStone III in middle school.

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This essay first appeared in The Paris Review in Spring 2026.

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GemStone

1

In 1995, when I was in seventh grade, I became addicted to a multiplayer online role-playing game with no graphics or sound, just words. It was set on a two-mooned planet called Elanthia, in the continent of Elanith. There, I was Esperath Wraithling, a dark elf wizard with black eyes and black hair.

I’d chosen everything about my character, including his statistics. Character creation involved “rolling.” Each roll produced ten numbers. People rolled for hours or days to get the highest numbers to apply to ten attributes—discipline, strength, etc. Player-written guides helped me decide what to do. Dartaghan’s wizard’s guide began:

The following is for you wizards out there that want to create and develop a wizard that will come into their power fully as they approach maturity around level 30 or so. Following this path will not be easy.

2

A virtual world is a persistent, shared reality in which player-controlled characters enact real-time changes governed by automated rules. GemStone, one of the longest-running virtual worlds, was created in 1987. It became GemStone II in 1988, GemStone III in 1990, and GemStone IV in 2003. Each iteration expanded and complexified the game.

Everything that happens in GemStone appears on the screen as lines of text that scroll up, like in a chat room. In middle school, I saved some of the text logs on 3.5 inch floppy disks, but I no longer have those. So in 2024, to help me remember the game, I created a wizard named NiniLali in GemStone IV.

He spawned in the town of Wehnimer’s Landing, as Esperath had twenty-nine years earlier. After a description of his surroundings (“Silver-veined grey marble comprises a short wall that lines the entire expanse of the courtyard…”), there was a line break, then: “Obvious paths: out”—the underline meant the word was interactable.

I typed “go out,” pressed Enter; “> go out” appeared on the screen, followed by more description, pushing up the older text. I was now in Erebor Square. I moved through eight more “rooms” and reached

[Town Square Central]

This is the heart of the main square of Wehnimer’s Landing. The impromptu shops of the bazaar are clustered around this central gathering place, where townsfolk, travelers, and adventurers meet to talk, conspire or raise expeditions to the far-flung reaches of Elanith. At the north end of the space, an old well, with moss-covered stones and a craggy roof, is shaded by a strong, robust tree. The oak is tall and straight, and it is apparent that the roots run deep. You also see the town constable, a banana cupcake, a large acorn, and an herbal remedy donation bin. [ There were more items here, but I deleted them for concision. Also left out underlines because Substack can’t underline without linking.]

Also here: Soulheaven, Vav, Trysalis who is sitting, Thrumli, Kethrain, Tearieyes who is sitting, Cranyn, Grimshade, Great Lord Airicus

Obvious paths: northeast, east, southeast, southwest, west, northwest

In 1996, when GemStone peaked in popularity, with up to 2,500 simultaneous players, there were usually forty or more characters in Town Square Central; in 2024, there were nine.

> “Hi everyone

You say, “Hi everyone.”

Soulheaven waves.

Soulheaven just went west.

Kethrain nods to you in greeting.

> wave keth

You wave to Kethrain.

Kethrain slowly modulates through a series of chords, building a beautiful melody.

Tearieyes smiles at you.

> look teari

You see Tearieyes the Swashbuckler.

She appears to be an Erithian.

She is taller than average. She has piercing icy green eyes. She has waist length, ringleted silver hair divided into several elegantly twisted sections and adorned with some star-cut silvery crystal hairbeads. She has a thin line of freckling dappled along the nape of her neck.

She is in good shape.

She is wearing a greasy Maelstrom Bay rat, a dusky silver elothrai dangling a teardrop of ocean agita, a bone-clasped forest green backpack, a beaded crinkle crepe halter, a gleaming dwarven vultite-buckled bodysuit, a pair of low-slung pants crafted from supple doeskin, and a pair of black leather thigh-boots.

> smile teari

You smile at Tearieyes.

A flower girl arrives, whistling a merry tune.

> “Beautiful music

You say, “Beautiful music.”

The tempo of Kethrain’s song slows slightly, taking its time to convey a message of gentleness and rest.

Soulheaven just arrived.

On unfelt winds, the musical notes drift about.

Trysalis continues playing her harp.

Speaking softly to Kethrain, Tearieyes says, “So this is going to sound odd but I need to go to Zul Logoth.”

> sit

Tearieyes agrees with you.

You sit down.

3

In fourth grade, I spent a day or two with Chrissy, a second grader in my subdivision. We climbed a tree, and she kissed my cheek. We rollerbladed, and she said I was faster because my legs were longer. She showed me a Mickey Mantle baseball card and said her dad said Mantle had the record for most RBIs. I said Hank Aaron did, and she said I was probably right because I was “really smart.” Soon after this, she began to play with a boy from a different subdivision. I looked at them discreetly from down the road.

In fifth grade, I had a crush on a talkative girl in my class. Each morning, I looked forward to seeing and hearing her (from a distance; we never spoke). One day, I overheard her say something like, “Ew, gross,” when someone suggested me as her prospective boyfriend. Chrissy was the only girl I’d met who seemed to like me, besides my older cousins in Taiwan.

Race may have played a role in my lack of romantic attention. Evidence for this factor, which I fortunately didn’t dwell on back then: When I was eight or nine, a boy asked me why my mom was married to my dad if my dad was ugly and my mom was pretty. He seemed genuinely confused. He may have absorbed a bias viewing East Asian males as unattractive. About 1 percent of Central Floridians were East Asian.

A more definite factor was my shyness, which stopped me from talking to girls, creating the illusion that they were ignoring me, making me even shyer around them. Factors contributing to my shyness: I was one of the smallest and youngest boys in my grade; I was somewhat frail and sickly, with chronic mouth sores, nosebleeds, and headaches; and I was sensitive, often noticing that other kids were meaner than me.

In sixth grade, turning my attention away from girls, I focused on my friendships—all male—and my confidence grew. Boys in my subdivision and at school liked me because I was brave (except with girls) and funny, but not cruel or violent. My popularity seems to have peaked in seventh grade, around the time I started playing GemStone.

One day, an adopted Korean girl named Lindsay took me aside between classes and said Patricia wanted to date me. I felt disbelieving, then disoriented. I wasn’t ready to date anyone, especially Patricia, who was intimidatingly tall and would be voted “most popular” in eighth grade. I don’t remember what I said—probably nothing. Lindsay said something like, “What’s wrong with you? This is your chance!” She was right—it was the last time anything like that happened in my childhood.

Patricia began to date a boy who was, like me, shorter than her. In my eighth grade yearbook, this boy wrote, “Well I didn’t talk to you much because you really don’t talk. But you are still pretty cool so don’t change.” I saw them kiss between classes; the behavior seemed impressively mature, outside my world of possibility or even, by then, desire. I felt satisfied, mostly, focusing on other things.

4

In GemStone, I did not feel weak, shy, or unattractive. I interacted with the opposite sex without fear or anxiety. I was made of words and numbers, and I was always becoming more powerful. I gained experience points by killing creatures. When I gained enough experience, I leveled-up, earning “training points” to allocate to skills, such as hiding, telepathy, and spells.

Wizards could learn sixty-plus spells, including Sleep, Invisibility, Cone of Lightning, Telekinetic Disarm, and Call Familiar, with which I could summon a cat, bat, or other animal. I chose to be a wizard—not a bard, cleric, empath, ranger, rogue, sorcerer, or warrior—because I liked magic and wanted to attack from a distance, with water, fire, ice, and electricity.

Except for empaths and clerics, who specialized in healing wounds and raising the dead, GemStone was centered around killing kobolds, bears, orcs, trolls, urghs, and hundreds of other creatures. This is what hunting looked like for NiniLali, who at level zero had no spells:

A rolton trots in!

> kill rolton

You swing a longsword at a rolton!

AS: +30 vs DS: +28 with AvD: +41 + d100 roll: +40 = +83

A clean miss.

Roundtime: 4 sec.

A rolton tries to bite you!

AS: +36 vs DS: +77 with AvD: +35 + d100 roll: +56 = +50

A clean miss.

Xanlin just arrived.

Xanlin just went southwest.

> kill rolton

You swing a longsword at a rolton!

AS: +30 vs DS: +7 with AvD: +41 + d100 roll: +79 = +143

... and hit for 38 points of damage!

Slashing blow to chest knocks the rolton back a few paces!

The rolton collapses to the ground, emits a final bleat, and dies.

Roundtime: 4 sec.

> skin rolton

You skinned the rolton, yielding a rolton pelt.
Wardex just arrived.

Wardex just went northeast.

> search rolton

You search the rolton.

She didn’t carry any silver.

She had nothing of interest.

A rolton decays into a pile of fur and bone.

Bezzy just arrived.

Bezzy just went northeast.

Characters often passed by, and there was always another layer of voices—GemStone had a Twitter-like stream of text called the “amunet,” accessed by rubbing a crystal amulet. The constant awareness that other people were also escaping reality was comforting. On the amunet, I could communicate with everyone or to specific characters. Sample amunet messages received by NiniLali:

• Need a cleric or two in Solhaven please for some dead bodies.

• Lazing around and doing some healing in the Square if anyone is in need.

• Selling some random things: A love potion, half a dozen granite triangles, three Lumnis Schedules and a couple of zesty necklaces.

5

Before GemStone, I read guidebooks on aquatic animals, memorizing their lifespans, lengths, and weights. I collected sports cards, Marvel cards, Magic: The Gathering cards, and coins, tracking their value in monthly “price guides.” I followed baseball metrics in newspapers. I played role-playing games on Nintendo and Super Nintendo.

With its dynamic economy and extensive personalization, GemStone took all those interests to a new level, while also being a fictional social network and an open-ended world in which I could do almost anything. There were hundreds of commands. To do things not programmed into the game, I typed “act” and my desired behavior, generating sentences like “Esperath clapped the air, killing a mosquito.”

Unlike TV, GemStone exercised my imagination; advanced my literacy (every hour or so, the equivalent of a two-hundred-page experimental novel scrolled up the screen); and lacked ads, misinformation, propaganda, and sexualized imagery. But it occupied most of my free time, reduced my desire to interact with people by partly sating it, and damaged my social skills and health.

I played hunched in a chair in my family’s computer room. Like many of the households that had computers back then, we had just one. At first, my playing time was limited by the hourly cost of internet, but after America Online—which hosted the game—switched to a monthly fee when I was in eighth grade, I began to play for up to six hours per weekday (before school, after school, before bed) and more on weekends.

My mom bought a radiation-reducing screen that clipped onto the monitor. Then she began to hide a cord I needed to get online, so that I couldn’t play after school, when she and my dad were at work. After a few days of this, I liked that it freed me somewhat from my addiction, but at first I was very upset.

I expressed frustration by typing “cry” while hidden in a room with four to eight other characters, who saw this: “You hear someone weeping nearby.” One searched me out of hiding and asked what was wrong. I didn’t explain. Saying and doing things that didn’t make sense in the fantasy world was strongly discouraged. I hid again and kept crying. My actual face was probably blank or slightly frowny. I was probably listening to grunge music through earphones.

6

Because we didn’t reference our lives, in-game social ties were tenuous, or at least they were for me. I don’t remember becoming close to any other characters, not even those played by my friends. I knew of six classmates who played, and I was friends with four, but we rarely saw one another in GemStone, since we were all at different levels, hunting different things.

Like me, Luis gave his character a fine-tuned fantasy name—something like Alutheren Treestone. Aluthern was a human warrior, which matched Luis’ real-life presentation as a normal-seeming person on track to succeed in mainstream society. He did many extracurricular activities, often seemed overworked, and could be moody.

Two friends played giantman sorcerers with emphatically silly names—Mookiller and something like Arf Arfy. The latter friend, who had his own computer in his room, was the most addicted of us, playing at least eight hours per school day. A fourth friend also played a sorcerer, but I don’t remember his character’s race or name.

We called each other “addicts” with half-sarcastic derision. When we met at Red Bug Lake Park to play basketball, we ended up betting GemStone currency on games of horse. After a few hours, our parents drove us home, back to our computers.

It became shameful to play too much. Players could type “find [name]” to check if someone was playing, so we couldn’t hide our presence in the game, except by creating new characters. Besides Esperath, I had dwarven and halfling wizards. I don’t remember my friends’ secondary or tertiary characters, or maybe I never learned of them, or maybe I was the only one who had them.

When I felt lonely in GemStone, I would check if my friends were playing and feel lonelier if none were. When I typed “who” to see how many players were logged in, I felt glad when the number was high.

7

At school, I was in two overlapping friend groups—one from grade school, one of new kids—but I also wanted to be in the grunge group. Our eighth-grade yearbook had a section of friend-group photos. None contained me or my friends. The grunge group had a photo with twenty-six kids (the second-most), comprising many subgroups.

The subgroup in our school’s “gifted” program, where my friends and I were placed, was almost all girls. They emanated a blithe disaffection and were led by reticent Sara, who seemed to always be slightly smiling. My main memory of her is from English class: as everyone worked silently, Mrs. Poole called Sara to her desk and told her to cover her belly—exposed midriffs weren’t allowed. I don’t remember ever speaking to Sara. In college, I learned she hanged herself after high school.

Clothing seemed to be my only strategy for joining the grunge group. They wore baggy pants like my skateboarding brother. I wore his clothes to school, but I never became friends with any of the grunge kids; I was too shy.

Eventually, some of my friends befriended the girls, and through this I got a little attention from one, who voted me “best dressed” in eighth grade. In my yearbook, she wrote, “You know, I’ve never really talked to you before Washington D.C.”—a field trip I no longer remember—“& that’s probably because I never really thought you talked. But you should talk more, because when you do, you’re really funny.”

8

As a child, I spent a lot of time alone or with my mom. My dad was busy with work. My brother was with friends or at college; he left home before I started playing GemStone. All our other relatives lived in Taiwan. We visited about once every two years for up to five weeks, moving across the yam-shaped island, staying with extended family.

When I was in seventh grade, we visited during Chinese New Year. My mom’s family—including nine siblings—gathered, as they did every year, at their childhood home in the mountains. On the first floor, my relatives ate and talked and played mahjong. On the second floor, I played Chinese Checkers with my second cousin Tíngyú—two years my junior—and her little brother.

They called me “Uncle.” I felt a sturdy, affectionate admiration that I didn’t get from my peers in the U.S., especially girls. At night, we played rock-paper-scissors on the stairs leading up to the third floor; the loser of each round had to ascend a step toward the scary darkness.

The next day, leaving the mountains, I cried. I wanted more time with Tíngyú, but I felt embarrassed to say so. I might also have been mourning an alternate reality where I’d grown up in Taiwan. I didn’t stay sad long. I was still generally cheerful then.

9

I used to attribute my social and emotional decline to shyness, sensitivity, isolation, and GemStone. In 2023, I became aware of another potential factor: cervical headgear, which some orthodontists link to sleep apnea, a condition in which airflow is blocked repeatedly during sleep.

I wore headgear in eighth grade for maybe half a year, at night and on weekends, while playing GemStone and sleeping. The appliance wrapped around the back of my neck, latching onto metal tubes attached to my molars, pulling my upper jaw throatward, shrinking my airway.

Headgear likely damaged my mood and my social skills by disrupting my sleep and by giving me pain in my mouth, jaw, and neck that reduced my ability and desire to speak and to make facial expressions.

Retreating into GemStone, I told myself I’d be social again after headgear. It didn’t happen. In my eighth grade yearbook photo, taken at the start of the school year, I look happy and charming, with crinkly eyes. In my ninth grade photo, I look severely depressed, with dead eyes and no expression.

10

The summer before high school, I attended band camp. I was in a stationary percussion part of the marching band. I’d gotten musical training since I was six—weekly piano lessons—but, bleary from headgear and GemStone, I couldn’t play my rudimentary cymbal part.

When I hit the cymbal at the wrong time, the entire front ensemble (around ten kids) had to do push-ups. Our instructor said, “Push my deck!”—a sailor reference apparently. He was fired later that year.

Luis was also in the front ensemble. So was Ryan—my best friend in elementary school and some of middle school, who never played GemStone because his mother didn’t let him play fantasy games.

Another day, two seniors mocked my clothing, saying I thought I was “so cool.” They stood across the room, about ten feet away. My heart beat chaotically. I focused on pretending nothing was happening.

Luis and Ryan befriended the seniors and other upperclassmen. I befriended no one—not even the other freshmen. I withdrew into the echo-y cave of myself. Alone with my thoughts, I watched my peers talk and laugh.

11

In 1997, soon after high school began, Princess Diana died in a car accident. I saw it on TV. I remember walking quickly from the living room to the computer room, where I was logged into GemStone.

On the amunet, I shared the news, possibly in all capital letters, multiple times. Other characters found Esperath and killed him for acting egregiously out of character. Death was inconvenient, causing a temporary decrease in stats.

I normally enjoyed role-playing as a friendly, creative, well-adjusted wizard, but I’d begun to drift from the game.

12

I was carrying a cymbal stand to the school’s parking lot for band practice one day when two punks approached and asked if I wanted to play drums in their band. I said I didn’t know how. They said I could learn. I said I had no drum set.

I wanted to join their band—I’d replaced grunge, whose cryptic lyrics no longer engaged me, with punk, which more directly expressed disaffection—but I was so closed off that I reflexively denied the opportunity, like when Patricia wanted to date me.

The punks walked away. Luis asked what they said. I told him. He asked what I said. I told him. He laughed a little, with unfocused eyes. Luis also loved punk music. The punks should have asked him—he had a drum set—but he didn’t dress like a punk.

Later in ninth grade, Luis called to ask for advice on his GemStone character. I felt surprised and moved. We were no longer equals—he’d seen me go from confident and playful, often making him laugh, to so timid that I couldn’t play a cymbal part fit for a first-grader—but he still wanted my guidance.

He’d begun playing later than everyone else, so it made sense that he wanted advice, but he didn’t need to ask me. Maybe he wanted me to feel useful, or maybe he missed the old me. Whenever I fleetingly reverted to my original, spontaneous self—which happened less and less—he seemed delighted.

13

Sometime after Luis’s call, I sold Esperath Wraithling for something like six hundred dollars on a message board or eBay. At level twenty-eight, he’d begun to peak (as per Dartaghan’s guide), meaning he was more powerful than most characters at his level.

I’d spent about three thousand hours in GemStone and a similar amount of time in Taiwan. Both worlds showed me what life was like (expansive, riveting) when I didn’t feel undesirably different. One was an unrealized timeline, the other a blatant escape.

It seemed too bleak to spend a third of my waking hours improving the skills and stature of an imaginary elf. I didn’t want to give up on my life. I’d begun to often feel doomed to a repressed, lonely existence, but on some level I retained hope for myself.

14

Through high school, I rarely spoke and sometimes stuttered. I felt increasingly trapped in my new personality. When boys discussed girls, I went silent. My most intimate experience with a girl was a conversation in tenth grade with a fellow percussionist at a football game, seated side by side, sharing mildly witty thoughts. Before that, the closest I’d felt to a girl was Tíngyú in seventh grade. Before that, Chrissy.

I made younger friends in percussion, but we weren’t close. One asked me if I liked girls. “He said that I never talk to them, which is right and it sucks,” I wrote in my diary. Between classes, I listened to music through earphones. I ate lunch alone in various spots around the open campus.

At home, I played drums (I got a set in tenth grade), piano, guitar, and non-addictive computer games. I read fantasy novels, then Vonnegut, who expressed my disillusionment but not my discomfort. I found those in song lyrics: “This cracked and broken feeling was inevitable.” “Like a leaky faucet, fear floods the room.” I wrote songlike poems that I didn’t show anyone.

Taiwan wasn’t fun anymore. I dreaded my relatives seeing the new me. I looked and felt troublingly uncomfortable. I could sense people pitying me. Pity humiliated me, deepening my alienation and feeling of inferiority. Staying silent and alone minimized it. People couldn’t pity what they couldn’t hear or see.

One day in eleventh grade, Chrissy (now a freshman) and I were getting a ride home from Ryan, who lived in our subdivision. We were in the back seat of his SUV in the school’s parking lot. Chrissy turned to me and asked why I wouldn’t speak.

I ignored her, and she urged me to “say anything.” She seemed as committed to eliciting a response as I was to not responding. We probably hadn’t spoken since I was nine and she was seven or eight.

“Say something! Why won’t you say anything?”

People read sentences in a single flow, like a wind instrument, but life is layered, like a symphony. A faithful textual simulation of existence would require many parallel columns of scrolling text—one for emotions, one for conscious thoughts, five for the main senses, etc.

I stared out the window. Students were walking to their cars. Ryan was talking to someone in the passenger seat. In elementary school, when other friends rang his doorbell, we’d pretended no one was home. Now I felt weird being alone with him. He was especially interested in girls.

Chrissy told me to “make any noise.” It was easy for me to commit to silence—I did it often—but I’d never been challenged on it this much. Part of me wanted her to keep pressuring me until I was forced to talk.

Ryan noticed what was happening and began to ask her questions about her boyfriend, diverting her attention. His behavior—underscoring how vulnerable I’d become—moved me but did not surprise me. My peers regularly did kind things like this, indicating they noticed and sympathized with my plight.

15

Later in eleventh grade, I found a message board for people with social anxiety disorder and realized I had all its symptoms. I blushed, stiffened, and trembled during social interactions. I didn’t know what to say. I was excessively aware of my mouth and face. I couldn’t hold eye contact. I feared others would notice I was anxious.

I ordered a set of twenty tapes for treating social anxiety with speaking/writing exercises and self-directed cognitive-behavioral therapy. I practiced talking slowly. I practiced identifying and replacing my “automatic negative thoughts.” I worked on worrying and ruminating less. Progress felt slow and small. In my diary, I wrote:

I just want to go back in time 10 years. When I think of my childhood, everything seems so comfortable and right. Unlike now, I feel so nervous and wrong. I really have nothing to look forward to now. 5 years ago I would just look forward to waking up and being with friends.

I hated and pitied the fearful person I’d become. I kept listening to the tapes. I got a job selling tickets at a movie theater. Brief, inescapable interactions became part of my therapy. Before each shift, I sat in my car, reading my notes, practicing what to say when greeted by co-workers. I had to relearn how to interact with people.

Senior year, my right lung collapsed three times, and I missed over forty days of school, reversing some of my progress. In the hospital, painkillers sometimes made me feel like my old uninhibited self. According to my mom, one night I talked garrulously about not enjoying computer games.

16

At college in New York City, I felt more hopeful and less anxious. I liked being in a new place; in Florida, people expected me to be silent, making it harder to express myself. Still, I continued to struggle to feel comfortable around people. At night, I wandered, listening to music, feeling sorry for myself. My new favorite genre was emo, which focused on sadness and longing.

At the start of my second year, I met my first girlfriend, a fellow sophomore. We shared a dark sense of humor. We dated for about a year. Sometimes I felt unable to speak. Once, she asked if I liked her because she liked me. I said no but sensed she might be right.

After we broke up, I settled back into the familiar isolation of high school. By then, I’d found books that expressed what I’d found in song lyrics. I loved fiction about social anxiety, generalized depression, unrequited romantic feelings, and loneliness.

I related more to resigned, inturned characters than ones who destructively externalized despair or blamed others. A decade later, I began to assign some blame to society for making many people feel terrible, but for now I viewed my estrangement as self-induced. This left me open to change.

I tried to write my versions of my favorite stories and novels. Solitude had given me a skewed perspective that I enjoyed articulating and sharing. After suppressing myself for a third of my life, writing was gratifying and fun, and it relieved loneliness by giving me imaginary conversations and scenes to exist in for a while.

Sometimes I felt a strangely calming excitement about my solitary existence—writing in empty computer labs on weekend nights, reading in the library on holidays. I was connecting with people across time who felt like I did. I wanted to add my voice to this open world of emotive text, and lead myself into a better life.

In my junior year, I started publishing poems and stories. After college, I started a blog, gave readings, made friends, and published books. Gradually, I regained most of my preadolescent self-esteem—complicated now by a wry melancholy—and re-entered the social world with something to offer that didn’t elicit only sympathy and pity.