As Alex visualized his name a flash of memory hit him hard causing him to stumble backwards onto the bed.
The voice of his fifteen year old brother David playing sharp in his head.
“Bro. Sure I can help you with your essay writing for english lit classes, but I’m gonna need a favor from you in you return.”
Alex shook his head as he looked around the cottage, the character creation menu nowhere in sight. David’s voice echoing within his mind.
“This new Visual Reality MMORPG is super realistic and also insanely hard. There is a global tournament coming up in a few months, and I have a plan on how to win. If you play as my bodyguard, I should be able to level my spellcaster up enough to be self sufficient. The magic classes are super strong once leveled, but also super vulnerable at low levels, and there’s less than 100 level 15 magic users GLOBALLY!”
Alex’s head stopped ringing as he stood up, finding the menu reappearing as soon as he thought about filling it in.
Remembering the instructions he was given from David, Alex filled out his sheet.
Name: Alex SteelShield
Sex: Male
Race: Human
Occupation: Town Guard
Class: Paladin
Now came the tricky part, as the game scanned each player as they created their character, then rolled a 1d8 for each stat before letting the player assign their bonus points and chose their starting abilities.
Holding his breath, Alex blinked, the numbers appearing suddenly.
STR: 13+4
DEX: 12+6
CON: 13+7
INT: 10+2
WIS: 6+1
CHA: 12+3
Alex sighed, relaxing slightly as he looked over the numbers. An average person would normally score a 9 or 10 in each stat then the roll would buff them higher, but since this game scanned all players and created the characters to match their real life attributes, A muscular athlete like Alex had a strong advantage on his Strength, Dexterity and Constitution rolls.
Alex liked that his Charisma was slightly above average, and was not surprised by his average intelligence. It was based of the real life Alex and he wasn’t anything special academically.
Finally the low wisdom score caught Alex’s eye.
David had mentioned that teenagers were still developing mentally and that meant that all teen’s had low base Wisdom scores, and often low Charisma scores as well.
Alex then turned his attention to the bonus points. Human’s not receiving any specific bonuses or penalties to stats were only affected by their job at character creation. David had chosen town guard as the guard were on the street among the public, patrolling in heavy armor and responding quickly to events as they saw them. This meant town guards received a bonus point to Strength, Dexterity and Charisma that would help with the paladin build David had planned for Alex’s character.
The menu asked Alex to confirm this was the character he wanted to play as, and as he mentally confirmed it, his stats finalized and he was given the chance to chose his special skills.
STR: 18
DEX: 19
CON: 20
INT: 12
WIS: 7
CHA: 16
First was the passive skill that all new players got in the lead up to the world tournament.
Passive Skill: The Cursed Hero: You will level up quickly, but luck is not your friend, and evil will be attracted to you.
Next Alex got to pick a class skills and a occupational skill, and again he went by David’s instructions, selecting the two skills he had been told to.
Lay on hands: The paladin can heal another by touching them and calling upon their faith. The Paladin can use this once per day, but gains a use every third level and the healing effects gains strength with every level.
Smooth Talker: The player gains a bonus during persuasion attempts by choosing their approach from a selected character stat. For example a player with a high intelligence could bluff someone based on their general knowledge around a topic.
Double checking he had selected everything as instructed. Alex confirmed his character and looked down at his body as a strange tingle ran down his spine.
His form which had been a blank grey shape started to materialize, his arms and legs becoming familiar. Walking over to a cracked mirror hanging on the wall, Alex saw his own face, piercing blue eyes, short brown hair that merged into his 5’o clock shadow.
At 18 it had taken quite a lot of work to get the stubble look just right, and Alex was happy he would still be ‘him’ for the game. Looking down he noticed his muscular, shaved chest and abs were exposed, his player dressed only in a white loincloth as the 6 foot 2 man examined himself. Alex had taken to shaving and trimming his body hair to impress Sandy, one of the cheerleaders as his highschool.
The sudden desire to see how realistic the game was in rendering its players was interrupted by a quest prompt, and the arrival of internal mail from David.
Alex would have to go through the tutorial section for his character by himself as David tackled his own.
Alex shook his head as his characters routines suddenly flooded his mind. He had to get to work!
Donning his armor and grabbing his sword and shield, Alex headed out, his feet wandering along a path he vaguely seemed to remember as the gravel crunched underneath his noisily clanging armor.