SEVEN: CHARACTER

“You okay, kid?”

Finn raised a lip and bared teeth. “Uh, no! My headset is toast! Look at this flipping sticky mess! And you can smell the burned circuits!” He tossed it onto the couch. “It’s done for!”

Lars raised an eyebrow. “That’s not what I was talking about. But calm down, kid. It’s not the end of the world. It could still work. Have you... checked it?”

“No!”

“My mom always told me not to get my knickers twisted before I knew if I needed new drawers. You should check it out before you write it off.”

Finn crossed his arms and looked away.

“Fine, I’ll check it for you.” Lars placed his hands on his knees, stood with a groan, and walked over to the couch. He reached down, grabbed the headset, and pulled it up over his eyes.

“Well, don’t hold me in suspense.” Finn huffed. “What do you see?”

Lars pulled the headset down and frowned. “Blue screen. Is that good? Or is that bad?”

“Depends on which type of blue screen it is. Give it here!” He grabbed it and pulled it to his eyes. “Huh. It looks like it's still working.” He tried to snap his fingers. “Quick, hit the load button on my tablet.”

Lars raised an eyebrow, but hit the button.

Finn pumped a fist in the air. “Yes! It works.” He tried to snap his fingers again. It was more akin to skin rubbing together than a true snap. “Hand me yours!”

Lars handed him the headset.

The kid pumped two fists into the air. “They both work, Lars! We’re in business!”

“See? He shrugged. "No need to get bent out of shape so qui—”

“Well, quit wasting time, Lars. We’ve got to get you into the game. And time is wasting away like my muscle fibers!”

Lars tossed his hands and blew out a slow breath. His excitement to try something new had all but vanished. “Should have left it alone, Ogre.”

“What was that? Nevermind.” Finn wheeled his chair over to the coffee table and picked up his tablet. He started swiping through the screens, then paused and gave the tops of his thighs a quick pat. “You better come take a seat. You won’t be able to see this from over there.”

Lars got up and went to sit down on Finn’s lap. The young man caught the massive derriere with two outstretched hands and pushed. “Not on me, you bozo! Over on the couch! Next to me! For the love of Merlin’s beard! You’re four times the size of me! You'll kill me!”

“Sorry,” Lars said meekly as he did as he was told. “Now what?”

“Now, we need to talk about creating your avatar and putting some points into your character sheet.”

“Avatar?”

“Your character, remember? Your toon? Jeez. It’s like I’m teaching chemistry to a toddler, and his only experience with compounds is mashing Play-doh together until he gets that gray blob.” Finn rolled his eyes. “Have you given any thought to what race you want to be?”

Lars looked down at the olive skin poking out from his t-shirt and raised an eyebrow. “Um...”

Finn tossed his head back and huffed. “Not that kind of race! In-game race! Like elf, dwarf, half-elf, halfling, half-dwarf, goblin? Half-goblin?”

“Why all the halves?”

“Don’t ask stupid questions. What do you want to be?”

“Well,” said Lars, as he shrugged his shoulders. “I just... want to be an ogre.”

“An ogre?”

“Yeah, I’m ‘The Ogre’ so I figured I could be an ogre, you know?”

“I guess that makes sense in some twisted noob way, but you can’t be an ogre, Lars.”

“Why not? You were talking about an ogre when you were playing the other night!”

Finn shook his head. “That’s different, though.”

Lars shot to his feet. “How? There’s clearly ogres in the damn game! I want to be a fucking ogre.”

The kid raised his hands. “Okay, okay. Calm down. And watch the language. I’ll explain, okay? In Dungeon, ogres are what are called non-player characters, or NPCs. They’re in the game as people you talk to or bad guys you have to battle, but they haven’t been coded in as a playable race. Make sense?”

“I guess.” He snorted. “It’s stupid since they’re already in the game, but I get it. It sucks like a Shop-Vac, but I get it. What the hell can I be, then?”

“Aside from the races I already told you,” Finn pulled out his tablet and started flipping through the classes, “you can be a dark elf, a dwarf, a centaur… a half-centaur, which is really just a human. You can be a human Lars. Pretty boring, but you can do it. Or even... dare I say it… a gnome?”

“A gnome? My grandmother has about a hundred of those cheap pieces of shit outside her trailer. She even has one painted in Michigan State colors. You’re telling me I could be one of those dumb little bastards, but I can’t be a badass ogre?”

“Yes… but I wouldn’t recommend it.” Finn winced. “Do you... want to… be a gnome, Lars?”

“No! I want to be a damn ogre!” He grunted, then his face turned bright red. “Just… what else is there?”

“We’ve covered most of it already but” —Finn continued swiping—“shmaybe a goblin? Half-goblin? Merman? Lizardfolk? An or—”

“There!” Lars jabbed a finger down. “That’s it! An ogre! It’s plain as day right there on your tablet! I can be an ogre! You lied to me, kid!”

“First, I didn't lie to you.” He paused. “And second, that’s not an ogre. That’s an orc.”

“Bullshit! That’s a fucking ogre! Don’t play chicken games with me! You know what? I bet you’re gonna try to tell me I can be chicken next!”

“You can be a chicken… if you want. And it’s not an ogre!” Finn rolled his eyes and flipped through his tablet. He did a quick search and pulled up a picture of a certain animated ogre with his donkey friend. “This is an ogre, Lars.”

“That!” Lars clenched his fists. “That is a sorry excuse for an ogre drawn up for children. Now this?” He snatched the tablet and flipped back to the character creation screen. “This is a proper ogre! A mean-looking, blood-thirsty, killing machine! And it’s what I want to be in Dungeon!”

Finn took a deep breath to calm himself then—not wanting to argue with someone that didn’t get it anymore—waved a limp hand. “Fine. It’s an ogre. I lied to you because I was saving the cool race for myself. But I give up. You can be the ogre, Lars.”

The big man grinned. “I knew it!”

“Yep, you got me.” He rolled his eyes so hard they went completely white. “So… what class do you want to be?”

Lars gave him a blank stare.

“Okay, then. Let’s go ahead and make you a... Fighter.” He shook his head. “No, that doesn’t work. You clearly have anger issues so… a Barbarian is more your style. Sound good?”

Lars continued to glare at Finn like the young man had cleaned out his secret stash of Twinkies.

“Okay, a fighter.” Finn shrugged. “Like I care anyway. Alright, so now we need to allocate your skill points.” He gave Lars a sideways glance. “Any idea how you’d like to handle that? No, I take it? Fine. I’ll do it for you. If you don’t like it you can re-roll or… you know? Just quit playing, which you’ll probably do after five minutes, anyway.”

“Keep it up, kid. I got a lot more body that needs shaving other than my back.”

“Duly noted. We certainly want to avoid that, don’t we? Let’s see. Seventy-five points over six attributes. Let’s max out Strength with twenty.”

Lars let out a rumble of approval.

“Next is Constitution.”

“Is that how free I am in the game?”

“Nooo0. It’s endurance, stamina, health.” He gave Lars a quick up and down. “You eat a lot of junk food, so your health has to be terrible. But, you are technically a professional athlete so let's put, um, fourteen there.”

Lars shrugged. “I can’t argue with that.”

“And that brings us to Dexterity. That’s your agility and speed. Again, professional athlete, so you get some credit there but you're also as big as a tank so… let’s make that an eight.”

“No, no, no. I may not look like it but I’m actually really agile. I want that one to be a, uh, fourteen, too!”

“You sure? If we make Dexterity fourteen, that means you only have twenty-seven skill points left to use. There are three attributes left. You’ll put two-thirds of your points into the physical attributes. Doesn’t make for a very well-balanced character, especially for a Dungeon virgin.”

“I’m not a virgin!”

“I didn’t say you were. I said a Dungeon virgin. As in, having never played the game Dungeon before. Anyway, are you sure that’s what you want to do?”

“I dunno. This stuff is kinda hard. I didn’t know there would be this much thinking involved. Reminds me of math class.” Lars scratched his beard. “What, um, what are the three that are left?”

“The mental ones. Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. And for the record, the real you don’t exactly excel at all three, so I'll eat a slice of humble pie and admit that you are playing to your strengths here.”

Lars waved a giant mitt. “Yeah, that works. Split 'em up evenly.”

“Great. Glad to have that over with.” The kid began tapping away at his tablet, then flipped it around so Lars could see it. It showed what looked like a digital recreation of weathered parchment with old timey writing on it. “How’s this look?”

Player: Lars Ochre

Race: Orc

Class: Fighter

Secondary Class: [EMPTY]

Strength: 20

Constitution: 14

Dexterity: 14

Intelligence: 9

Wisdom: 9

Charisma: 9

Lars frowned. “Looks great. Except, um, ogre is spelled wrong.”

Finn winced. “Yeah, must be a glitch or something. I’ll submit a bug report.”

“Huh? What do spiders and ants have to do with it?”

Finn sighed. “Nevermind.”