Part 1: Character Creation / Chapter 13

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I didn’t choose to be transformed into a Desk Lamp—or any of the other inexplicably inanimate options.

I also did not choose a Gila Monster, Kangaroo, Pigeon, or any of a dozen farm animals offered up. This, despite the fact that the Chicken race enticed me with a special attack called the “Egg Canon” which would enable me to launch eggs out of my butt—or wherever eggs come out—with a 2% chance of a critical hit.

Mind you, there were other race bonuses that were pretty tempting. If I’d gone with Panda, I would have gotten a twenty-point bump to my Handsomeness and my Skin Thickness stats, which Robbie and I both pegged as stand-ins for Charisma and Armor Class. If I’d gone with Snow Leopard, I would have gotten a fifty-point bump to my Twinkle Toes stat, which we guessed was comparable to Dexterity. But there was no indication of what I’d be giving up for that gain. In any respectable RPG, it would be something important—necessitating a calculated trade-off.

Robbie’s optimism aside, I thought I could easily forget who I was as my mind was lost to my new bestial form. And my prospects didn’t improve when I considered the game had obviously gone wonky. I’d have to be a complete idiot to expect any favors from a system that assigned me a so-called stat called “wore T-shirt with pit stains” with a magnitude of “last Tuesday.”

And on top of all that, if I switched races, there was no reason to think I’d be re-humanized if and when I survived the game.

In the end, I just kept tapping the “keep looking” button until the Human option did indeed come around again. And, against Robbie’s many protestations, I stuck with my birth race. The +3 ability modifier was all but useless considering I didn’t have any abilities, but at least I had opposable thumbs.

Next, I was asked to choose a gender, via a new tattoo that appeared below my now-static race tattoo. The number of options were, frankly, overwhelming. I thought that was a win for progressives everywhere, but I’m partial to my original equipment. I made another unimaginative choice and went with “male”.

Finally, I was asked to choose a class, via a new tattoo that appeared below my now-static race tattoo. I toggled through the first few options: Macho Man, Pretty Boy, Frat Bro, and Ivy Leaguer. The Macho Man class would grant me an armor upgrade that increased a bunch of stats from Muscles to Skin Thickness to Eye of the Tiger. Of course, that armor came in the form of a wife beater T-shirt. And when wearing it, female NPCs would be invisible to me 25% of the time and I’d only be able to hear them half the time. Not only was that pretty messed up, it would also be a real liability if a woman was trying to kill me. And in my new life, there was a better-than-even chance a woman would try to kill me.

The Frat Boy, Ivy Leaguer, and Pretty Boy classes also had trouble seeing or hearing women to varying degrees. And while the armor upgrade for the Frat Boy class wasn’t as meaty, it came with an alcohol-fueled rage ability called “Beer Berzerker,” that doubled damage output for up to a minute. The Ivy Leaguer class didn’t have any armor upgrade at all, but doubled the Book Smarts and Handsomeness stat. And it had an additional downside: a significant increase in the Face Punchability stat. We guessed this was some sort of aggro-attracting trait that would make whatever horrors I encountered all the more eager to kill me. The Pretty Boy class maxed out Handsomeness, with a huge drop in Book Smarts. Plus, they suffered from something called a “Narcissus Nerf” that gave them a 5% chance of being stunned for up to ten seconds whenever they spotted themselves in a reflection.

And so on and so forth. All the options seemed to be ridiculous stereotypes, with ironic shortcomings. Once again, I made a safe choice, settling on a class called Regular Joe. It didn’t have any of the flashier stat bonuses, but it also didn’t come with any of the scarier drawbacks. I ended up with modest increases to Handsomeness and Skin Thickness and a marked decrease in Face Punchability.

I thought Robbie would feel like it was a boring way to go. But he seemed to be more or less onboard with the choice. Alas, his overall mood seemed to have taken a turn toward melancholy.

“Where’s the Paladin class?” he asked. “The Barbarian? The Druid?”

While the race selections hadn’t included the traditional assortment of orcs and elves, the bestial options had held his interest. But apparently the class selections had driven home that this wasn’t the RIP he knew and loved.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“Well, you said it yourself: same franchise, new genre,” I said.

“Yeah, feels lame.”

“Very lame,” I agreed. “The whole game is basically built on my memories and phobias with clichés and lunacy thrown in to fill the gaps.”

Robbie nodded, then took on a pensive posture.

“So, is it just you?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean if the game’s built around you and your memories, does that mean you’re the only player?”

“Well, you’re a player, right?”

“I’m in mentor mode—I mean people who are really playing.”

“I think it’s just me,” I answered with a shrug.

The whole thing was very personal—very specific to me. Sure, there could be other folks out there playing their own versions, but for some reason, I didn’t think so. Then again, I didn’t really care. I didn’t care what the rules were or how I’d ended up playing or how hard the game was. Looking at my nephew lying in his hospital bed, all I cared about was winning that Kool-Aid.

Robbie brightened a little, as an idea occurred to him.

“What about relics?” he asked.

“Huh?” I responded.

“You know—items with unusual properties? Have you run across any?”

“Oh, uh . . . ” I thought for a moment, then remembered the “premo drop” Nancy’s mom had draped over my face after Marty had melted.

“Nancy’s mom gave me these,” I said, pulling the undergarment from my jacket pocket.

“Are those . . . old underwear?”

“Seems like.”

“What do they do?”

“Dunno.”

“They didn’t come with an item description?”

“Only a name: Belgian Boxer Shorts,” I said. “Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re just used underwear.”

“Why?”

“Seems like something Nancy’s mom would do.”

“This game is so busted.”

I sighed and shoved the threadbare drawers back into my pocket.

“Okay, so you’ve got no real gear. And garbage stats,” Robbie said.

“Yup.”

“And you’ve gotta level up to win. And normally that would happen as you worked your way through bosses. But the game is glitched so the next boss you face could be way above your level and kill you dead.”

I nodded and looked at him. He said what we were both thinking.

“You gotta grind.”

Sure, I’d somehow found myself in a nonsensical life or death contest. But that didn’t change the fact that when you need to safely prepare for the worst a game has to offer, there’s only one thing to do: find a ton of low-level mobs and beat the holy hell out of them until you accrue enough XP and loot to claw your way up to a rank with some respectable stats.

Robbie started brainstorming.

“So, what, maybe you go to the forest and wale on a bunch of ferrets?”

“They’re not native to the area.”

On some level, I was relieved. As much as I hated ferrets, killing them had made me feel like a monster—even if I’d done it in self-defense. Luckily, I knew there was at least one other option.

“Will you be okay on your own here for a little while?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he answered without hesitation. “Why?”

“I gotta run to the store,” I declared.

“Now? It’s 1 a.m.” he said. “Everything’ll be closed.”

“I’m counting on it.”

He nodded, as if no explanation was necessary.

But as I turned to go, he said, “Wait.”

I turned back and found him rifling through a drawer beside the bed, where the hospital staff had stored his belongings. He came up with a twenty-sided die. No, not a twenty-sided die. The twenty-sided die.

When he was barely five-years old, I’d inducted him into the grand old tradition of D&D. True to form, he’d grasped the nuances of the game better than I’d thought possible for a kid that age. And during his third session, I’d led him to a secret passage in a castle where a magic suit of armor was hidden. But like many magical items, the user would only discover what the suit could do and be able to wield its power after they’d attuned to it. That usually meant sitting and staring at it for the duration of a short rest, or an hour of D&D time. But there were goblins upstairs, closing in on his scent by the minute.

Sure, he could have backtracked, taken the short rest, and returned to the castle in our next session, but Robbie wasn’t interested in playing it safe. At his insistence, I’d reluctantly agreed to employ a risky, home-grown rapid attunement rule that allowed him to unlock the suit’s powers with an Arcana check of seventeen or more. It was a big roll—the rule dictated that if he came up short, he’d lose ten health points. And he only had nine left. But he didn’t hesitate. He just threw his gold-trimmed, zinc alloy twenty-sider and didn’t even flinch when it landed on just fifteen. After only a few sessions he knew that his Intelligence of fourteen gave him a +2 bonus on Arcana checks. A minute later, he was running amok, turning goblins into handicapped cats in every corner of Cragmaw Castle.

That die had been his lucky die ever since—in every sense. It went where he went, especially on every trip to the hospital.

“I can’t take that,” I told him.

But he just looked up at me and said five words I’ll never forget.

“Your luck is my luck.”

And the full weight of it settled on me. Robbie knew, as I knew, that my inexplicable RIP odyssey really was his best hope.