The clacking sound of the ancient laptop keys filled the room as Karl hit them in succession. The laptop buzzed and shook under the strain of its task, its fans pushing hard to cool down internal components. A few sparks flew out from the GPU port, casting an orange hue across the otherwise dim office.

Karl read party chat as his group prepared to take on the dungeon.

"Everyone up to speed on how these things go?" asked En4sir, the tank and leader of the party.

Karl was not, but last time he'd opened his mouth in a group like this, he'd been booted. So he played it cool, keeping mum.

"Look, if anyone's playing dumb here, let me know." En4sir continued to call out any imposters.

That line had gotten Karl to spill the beans once before - he got kicked out - never again.

"My word is my bond - if anyone needs help with any of this stuff just say something, okay? No one will judge."

Karl felt his fingers twitching over the keyboard. En4sir sounded so sincere, so ready to lend a hand - maybe this would be the chance for him to finally learn about-

"Whew, I was only joking anyway. Real talk, if any of you didn't know the mechanics I was insta booting you."

And that was why Karl had trust issues. His first therapist had thought it had something to do with him having two ex-wives, so he stopped seeing her. He'd opened up a bit more to his second therapist, who was sure it had something to do with how both of his ex-wives, who had met through him, were now blissfully happy together and madly in love. He canceled all of his appointments with him that very day.

All Karl's third and current therapist knew about him was that he liked to collect stamps, and he wasn't opening up any more than that any time soon.

There were tons of tips and tricks for how to skirt through for anyone who was willing to do even the least amount of research. But Karl really enjoyed learning in the moment and through trial and error, regardless of how many peoples day around him he ruined.

Karl had tangled with this particular part of the dungeon more times than he cared to admit. He and his party wended down a serpentine corridor, backpedaling swiftly as large chunks of earth tumbled from the ceiling. There was some way to tell before they came, but Karl didn't know it, he just jumped back half a second after everyone else did. If anyone asked why he was slow, he just said, "lagging a bit here, but it's all good." It was a modern solution to a modern problem.

After the perilous boulder-ridden path, or "the rocky road of misery and woe" as Karl had so aptly labelled it after his fortieth failure, the party eventually emerged from the other side.

Karl and the others now had to sneak past a dungeon filled with dangerous monsters, making sure that the three different bars on the screen stayed at safe levels. Unfortunately, Karl had no idea what any of the bars meant, so he simply proceeded as fast as possible, only slowing down when En4sir yelled for whoever was 'trolling' to stop.

Karl was completely in the dark about this final step. This was his first time making it to this point, so he already saw the dungeon as an absolute win.

The room was filled with a checkerboard of squares for the party to traverse, though no one seemed to be discussing it. The first person took off across the board according to a pretty simple pattern: left, right, and up.

The En4sir followed a pretty similar route, with maybe a turn or two extra, but it didn't seem all that complex to Karl.

The healer stepped up next and this time Karl noticed strange symbols on the ground. It felt like there had to be some kind of hidden message in them, but was too distracted by the many extra turns they'd had to make compared to the players before.

Two others traversed the space before it was Karl's turn. He watched as the last crossed the board like they were running an obstacle course, chased by their inner demons.

Karl's mind was a maze of confusion. The cryptic message engaged him, but he had no idea what it meant. He watched his peers engage in the game of chess, feeling like a pawn himself. Instead of following their lead, he decided to make a bold move across the board in checkers fashion--only to be caught up in a bubble almost immediately.

His comrades laughed at his misfortune, while he felt the sting of embarrassment burn deep within his chest. "Come on man, let's get this over with," one of them urged impatiently.

Karl retreated and prepared for another go, only for his character to trip over a hidden wire that sent him tumbling down. As he tried to regain his footing, just to run into at least 4 other trip wires.

The room was silent until en4sir finally spoke up, "I have literally never seen someone do that bad before."

Within seconds each tripped wire brought in a group of mobs. They were survivable if only one or two showed up, but with all of them Karl's party was decimated.

Karl felt a wave of heat wash over his face as he stewed in frustration. These idiots! All they had to do was let him go first. He shook his head, feeling a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. Actually, they deserved it.

"Way to waste 20 minutes of my life," said dddamage dryly.

"Why are you even here?" asked En4sir, literally the guy that had invited Karl!

Heals4days had trouble understanding, “This dungeon has been out for six months! How do you not know how it works yet?”

"Oh yeah, lets pretend that everything here is my fault." Karl said sarcastically. He ran back and tripped the wires, this time out of spite, and the group wiped again, laughing as they died.

Karl stared at the messages flashing across the chat window. He had to defend himself, he knew yelling at them wouldn't solve anything, but it wasn't about solving anything. It was about hurting them more than they hurt him. Karl had most of a pretty rancid text ready to send, he just needed to figure out what name to call their mothers, when Steven’s voice filtered through the speakers of his laptop asking, "You doing okay buddy?"

He sent the message, fully aware there was a good chance he'd get locked out of the game for the rest of the day. With a heavy sigh he closed his eyes; after a second of calming himself down, he opened them again and forced a smile on his face as he replied, "Yeah man, doing just fine."

Karl's stomach dropped as the popup flashed in bold print on his CRT screen - he had been voted out of the dungeon for toxicity. His character TuffEnuff, a dwarf dressed in soft leather armor rather than the bulky plate armor his class was supposed to wear.

En4sir and a couple of the others were relentless in their whispers; "Nice move wearing that leather, you stupid plate spec." "You must be fun at parties," "I just checked your dungeon completion rating, are you literally a bot?" they jeered.

Karl merely sighed and muted them.

A system notification popped up on Karl's screen offering "twenty tips and tricks" to make him better in the dungeon. Karl moved it to the recycling bin, where it joined all of the others.

"These dungeon's suck" Karl eventually said to Steven.

"Did you check out those videos I sent you?" Steven asked, not for the first time. "They go over a lot of the mechanics."

"No," he responded, too busy thinking about his last dungeon to give Steven much thought. Karl's face was pinched in concentration as he studied the screens of text scrolling before him, the words and numbers representing his most recent battle in War Never Changes.

The healer didn't heal enough, the tank didn't cc enough, the other damage dealers took too much damage. It wasn't really Karl's fault, they were all bad.

Even then, the game was unbalanced, the enemies were overpowered and the rewards weren't worth the effort. His thoughts drifted to the discussion boards, and an idea formed: he could post about all the problems people were having and air everyone's grievances about the game. But he remembered that he was still banned from the forums for another week or so — his last post had been too harsh for the developers to handle.

Steven spoke up again, and Karl failed to notice an air of apprehension in his tone "Uh…Karl, uh…I've been looking through our roster and it seems there's no more room on the raiding team."

Karl idly flicked through a stack of papers he had to sign off on. He was listening to Steven just enough to absentmindedly respond, "Man, that sucks but it is how it is."

"Yeah man, it's great to hear you say that, I was really worried."

"Who are we kicking out?" Karl asked without much concern.

Steven was silent. He stumbled over his words, searching for a diplomatic way of saying what he wanted.

"Hey man, I think something's wrong with your mic."

"Nah its just...How do you feel about coming to the raid? Have you got time?"

"Oh yeah man, I cleared my schedule. Man, I'm so excited, if it wasn't for raiding with y'all... who knows what I'd get up to." Karl's second therapist was very worried about what would happen if he didn't continue his activities with friends, sometimes she still thought about Karl and hoped he hadn't gotten left behind yet.

Karl remembered, "Oh yeah, so who aren't we inviting again?"

There was a long pause before Steven finally sighed and said, "Someone else, don't worry about it buddy."

Karl's slender frame slumped against the vinyl chair, his tongue sour from the lingering bitterness of defeat.

He was still angry at those jerks in the dungeon who never gave him a real chance, who set him up for failure. They should be the ones getting recommendations for videos on how to play.

Karl sat in his dreary office space; it stank of ancient musk and his computer bellowed its robotic cries from atop his desk.

Soon enough, he was invited to join a new group.

"Greetings everyone!" their leader began, "Before we begin our mission, does everyone know the layout of this dungeon?"

Karl kept mum.