Nate was perusing the internet when he saw the ad in the corner for the site Moonlight Rhapsody. He couldn't help but be intrigued by it with the well drawn illustration of several werecreatures, with a classic werewolf as the central beastie, among a moonlit cityscape and he clicked into it. He read through the description detailing that the site was an immersive and state of the art open world online game. Each player would create their own "Were" character and customize it however they saw fit. Nate had always loved werewolves and was excited by what he was seeing. He looked over the main screen and saw a button that read "Begin Creating Your Character Here."
Nate knew he should be finishing his report for school, but it was also Friday night and he had the house to himself. He closed his science book and tossed it aside as he clicked on the button, unable to resist a game all about werebeasts. A new screen loaded up with an avatar that looked vaguely like Nate himself, including the grey sweatpants and white t-shirt he was wearing as well as his somewhat disheveled light brown hair. He couldn't help but wonder if he was some sort of stereotypical transformation enthusiast that they base the basic avatar on or what. At the top of the page, it asked you to enter your character's name. Unable to think of anything better, or perhaps he wanted this fantastical role play to be an immersive as possible, he put his own name. As soon as he pressed enter, his avatar smiled and waved.
"That's cute," Nate whispered. He looked at the next setting marked "Species" and clicked on it, revealing a rather long drop down of all the different options for werebeast. Werewolf, Weretiger, Werelion, Werepanther, and on and on including such surprises as Werehorse, Werebull, Werecow, Weredragon, Werealligator and Werebeaver. But Nate knew right away what his was going to be. It was always going to be a Werewolf. He clicked on that one and moved to the next section, marked special attributes. This section was explained as such:
"You have a total of 100 points that can be divvied up among the different possible attributes for your selected Werebeast. You can gain an extra 10 points for attributes by taking on a downside."
Nate looked at the slide rules for such attributes as enhanced strength, immortality, and element affinities. He slid the rule over for enhanced strength, enhanced senses, and immortality as well as for fire element affinity because in addition to being a transformation enthusiast he was also a pyro. He didn't have enough points to get as high of a rating on those as he wanted, so decided to select painful transformation to gain an extra 10 points, apologizing to his avatar self as he did it.
Then he got to the next section with class of werewolf with differing options that had varying qualities. It seemed to be a sliding scale of less humanoid of a werewolf you were the more bestial the wolf side was and less control there was. After looking it over, he went with a bi-pedal werewolf form for his character. He took another look at his selections and satisfied clicked submit. The page began to load with a screen coming up saying "Saving Character stats. Please wait." As the page loaded, he watched an animation of the avatar he created slowly transform into his werewolf self. He couldn't help but get excited to play the game.
Nate leaned back in his desk chair. "All right, now to play this game."
The page changed again and went back to the main page with a button marked, "Begin Game." Nate clicked the button and waited for the game to load but nothing happened. He pressed it again and again, but nothing happened. He eventually shrugged his shoulders and bookmarked the page, figuring the site was currently down or something.