Archie pulled his phone out of his pocket under the desk and looked at the email he had received last night. Class was boring this afternoon anyway, so there wasn’t anything better to do than have a look over this dodgy email.

He hadn’t signed up for anything, and after reviewing the name of the company he was sure he hadn’t played too many of their games. Shrugging he put his phone away and pulled out a chocolate bar. He wasn’t silly enough to just click random things, but he had a look at the details of the email and it seemed legitimate. The address matched with the companies contact details on their website.

School was almost over and soon enough he’d be able to go home and download this game. He didn’t play many of the deep dive games, he never really saw the thrill of it, but he knew quite a number of his friends played games like this. It might be interesting to play this one before any of his friends had a chance to. Maybe even find some secrets before anyone else.

The teacher continued to drone on and on.

* * *

As the headset came down Archie yawned. Sleep overtook him quickly as it always did when you went into a deep dive, but he felt more awake as his mind connected with the game.

He felt like he was floating in space as a white spot appeared in the distance from within the blackness. The spot grew bigger and bigger, and it turned out that it was coming closer and closer. Then is stopped before him, a great white wall with a blackboard on it.

A piece of chalk floated up into the air and started scribbling on the board.

“Oh, you kidding me, this is going to take forever!”

Welcome was written on the board.

“Yes, yes, welcome, welcome. Hurry up about it. This is character creation right?”

A figure dissolved in front of the board holding the chalk and sighed.

“Look, I was trying to make this thing interesting,” said the woman who was standing there now, looking very much like a primary school teacher, “Yes, this is character creation. We’ll get it done in just a minute. I’ll keep in mind that you felt the writing was taking too long, I’ll need to speed it up.”

“Oh, sorry. Didn’t mean to be rude,” Archie felt sorry for his speech, not knowing there was actually a person in there with him, “I take it you’re an administrator or designer?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“Yeah, sorry. Let’s just do the CC. I don’t want to spend too much time here.”

“Fine,” she hit the edge of the board with a fist and the Welcome text dropped off the board and a series of class choices appeared, “Come on, we’ve got about three or four pages of choices to get through.”

“Hey, just a sec,” Archie stammered out, “I don’t actually know anything about the game. What it’s about, how to play, there weren’t any instructions with the email.”

“Oh, that’s useful. Who was the moron that sent that email out?” She put her fingers on the bridge of her nose in frustration, “Fine. Look. I can’t tell you about the game itself. I can explain a little about how to play. It’s based on opposed skill checks. Every time you do an action then you will either have to beat a set difficulty rating, like if you’re trying to climb something, or you’ll have to beat a score set by the skill of your opponent. For example, say you swing a sword at your enemy, the system will ‘roll’ a number for you and add your stats and skill ranks to the ‘roll’. Then your opponent will make a ‘roll’ against you, in this example they might try and block your sword with theirs, and add their stats and skill ranks to it. It sounds complicated but the system does it all in the background. You’ll just need to keep the thought in the back of your mind that your skill ranks and stats will affect your rolls and whether you succeed or not.”

She took a deep breath and seemed about to continue but instead just looked at the board and waved to it. Archie looked over it. They appeared to be a list of classes to choose from. Some were obvious, he understood them from other games, some seemed a little more complicated though. But he currently had nothing to gauge it on, all he could do was go with his gut instinct.

“I think I’ll go Man-at-arms, thanks.”

“Easy, simple and straight forward. Good first pick considering you haven’t played before.”

The word lit up on the board and then they all dissolved. New words appeared, and a series of tally marks appeared at the top of the board. Nine of those tallies transferred down to the nine words, so there was one tally beside each one. These were his stats for sure.

“This one is simple,” she muttered, “the tallies across the top of the screen represent how many points you have to spend. Put points into each slot as you see fit. There’s a brief explanation of each one under them in smaller writing. Just tap the word whenever you want to put a point into it.”

Archie moved up to the board. Not really walking, as he didn’t have a physical form yet, but more just bring his ‘camera’ to where he could tap the board. Tapping also wasn’t physical yet, but when he tried he felt he could do as she asked.

He had played MMO’s before and knew that usually people liked to focus on single stats, or even a couple, but never really spread them around. He had a feeling that there would be more to depth to this than most MMO’s, so he began by putting a point into each of the stats. The tallies floated down and rested next to his chosen stats. He read the stats a little closer when making his next decisions though.

“So Reflex is primarily a combat stat. Since I took a warrior style class then this makes sense. Body governs my hit points and carry-weight. That’s a must. Crafting doesn’t seem overly useful for me. Speed and Will are probably going to be useful. As will Dexterity, since it appears to favour ranged combat.”

He tapped away at the board until all the tallies were removed from the top and placed on the board.

“There, done.”

“Just so you are aware, there will be no chance to change these again. You can, at a later stage, improve upon these by spending points you have gained.”

“Yeah, sure. I’ve got no real idea about the game, so I’m just guessing at this stage.”

She shrugged and clicked her fingers. The stat choices were input now and the board dissolved again, this time being filled with even more text. Atop the board were two rows of tally marks this time. The top one is a lot longer than the bottom. Eleven of these floated down, six sat next to six of the skills (the word Skills was scrawled across the top of the board), while the remaining five floated about. A few of the skills on the board were highlighted. They appeared to be mostly combat-based skills.

“So, as you can see, this is your skill board,” she yawned, “Now, you start with eleven skills. The two floating are telling you that you have a choice for them from amongst the glowing ones. Take a pick.”

The one was easy, Swordsmanship was a must. Swords were always the best in games like this. The other skills didn’t really seem like much, so he just chose randomly. Athletics. Brawling. Archery. And finally Riding.

“Ok, great. Now you get to distribute the top row of tallies amongst these eleven skills. Be aware, the more points you put into a skill, the more tallies it will cost. It’s a sliding scale. After that you’ll get to put the bottom row of tallies in any other skill that is not part of these. The first represents your chosen class, and the second represents your ‘hobbies’ if you will.”

She looked at her watch, which didn’t really mean anything, as there was no real sense of time within the system currently. He could have been here for hours, but he thought it was more like minutes, or even just moments. The character creation felt like it was dragging on but it may have taken no time at all.

Quickly he distributed the points. Putting them in places he thought were good, and maxing out his sword skill. He picked a few random but interesting sounding skills from the others, not really sure how the whole thing would work. Once done he accepted his decision and the process moved on.

“Cool, done, finally?” She was tapping her foot on the ground now, “You’re going to wake up in the game world now. Be prepared. Your characters appearance will be decided based on these stats. So you have nothing else to worry about. Anything to add before we move on?”

“Can you give me more explanation about the game?”

“No. Figure it out down there. When the full release is made there will be additional information.”

“Maybe you could be a little nicer when doing characters with others?”

“I understand your concern, and we’ll work on it. Now just close your eyes and then open them.”

As he started to close his eyes he could see her hand moving towards his face, fingers prepped for a flick. And just as the world was once again enclosed in darkness he definitely felt it on his forehead.