Have you ever woken up and not known where you are?

Usually, a quick glance around, a moment to shrug off the drowsiness, and it all comes back to you. Here? Not so much. For one, I was lying on the ground in some dark room I didn't recognise. And when I say dark, I mean I couldn't see my hand in front of my face.

More than slightly creeped out (I sleep in my underwear, so being in a strange room was even weirder then it would be otherwise) I groped in the dark for the wall, looking for a light switch.

Upon touching some kind of flat surface in the dark, it lit up with the words "Select your game." With a start, I realised that though the (screen?) was lit up, I still couldn't see anything else in the room.

Which should be impossible. Wouldn't the light from the screen be enough to see by?

Still creeped out, I thought aloud "Game? What kind of game?" The sound of my own voice in the darkness helped to sooth my nerves. "You mean like D&D or something?"

As I finished talking, the text vanished, shortly replaced by the stylised text "Dungeons and Dragons" that I had seen once on a book my friend owned. It even had the "Wizards of the Coast" logo floating above it.

I blinked in surprise, now really nervous. What was happening here didn't make any sense. What were the odds this thing was set up to react to those exact words?

"Select edition" replaced the game iconography. 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 3.5, 4th and 5th were my options.

Quick confession: I have never played D&D. Ever. Any edition. I only said it out loud because one of my friends has been playing recently. So I had no idea which would be the 'best' and just went for the middle one, touching 3.5.

It asked me to pick my 'Ability Scores', which were similar enough to Fallout's 'S.P.E.C.I.A.L.' System that I felt reasonably comfortable. Pity I didn't say Fallout when asked for a game, I rock that FPS. Anyway, I went for 14, 13, 13, 16, 12, and 10 as my scores. (Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma respectively. Just so you know, 10 is base human average.)

"Select class" followed after. A really long list, with well over a hundred items appeared below, spread out over several columns.

….

What, was I supposed to pick the class that represented me the most? The class I aspired to be? Was this some really strange invitation to a game session? I had no idea which classes were good ideas, or bad ones. I made a small noise of frustration. I didn't want to be the healer, dang it!

Skimming the list, I saw "Monk" listed. Good, if they were what I thought they were, then Monk should be simple, straightforward and offensive, just beating up the guy you didn't like. I touched Monk.

The screen changed to "Select Race". This was a no-brainer, I touched "Human" as soon as I spotted it. "Template(s)?" Replaced the previous text. Considering that things like "Ghost" and "Half-Dragon" were on this list, I didn't think that mucking around with it was a good idea… but I saw "Lycanthrope", and hey, werewolves are cool, right?

"Select Feats" appeared.

I didn't even know what a feat was. Were they like Fallout Perks? "Is there a tutorial I can access?" I asked the screen hopefully, to no avail. "Difficulty slider?" Still no change. "Options menu?"

This time the screen dimmed, and brighter text was superimposed over the top. Ugh, there were a ton of on/off switches here, for options whose function I was limited to guessing. What the heck did "Spontaneous Divine Spellcasters" mean? Did that mean that spontaneously there would appear spellcasters who were simply divine? I switched that one on out of curiosity.

"Spell point system" and "Recharge magic" were left alone, as I really had no idea what they did.

"Gestalt" looked promising. That meant… multiple things working together, right? Some help would be very welcome here. I switched that on.

Ugh, still lots of options left. Skim, skim, skim… There was an entire section called 'transparency', with sub-options like "Magic-Psionics", "Magic-Incarnum", and so on. Transparency would imply they would go through each-other, which I didn't want. So I turned the entire 'Transparency' section off.

Okay, um… "Bloodline"? I looked closer, and it listed sub-options like "Major Gold dragon", "Minor Troll" and such. I exhaled. "What's recommended?" I wondered, and to my surprise the screen underlined the "Intermediate Fire Elemental" bloodline. Shocked that the screen was being helpful, I chose as it had suggested.

Back to the main options menu, I asked "Anything else I should change?" The screen underlined "Fractional BAB" and "Multiclassing XP penalty", so I switched the former on and the latter off. Satisfied with my choices, I went back to the feat selection menu.

Once more, I cheerfully asked "Okay, what do you recommend?"

The screen what not as useful this time. For one thing, it underlined dozens of the hundreds of feats I could choose from. For another, it had also opened up another menu underneath the first one labelled "Flaws", and underlined three of them. What the heck were flaws?

I glanced though the feats suggested to me. There was still an awful lot – "Kung Fu Genius"? That sounded helpful for a Monk. I guess that's why the screen suggested it. I picked that one.

Ugh…. Still so many to choose from. At this point I just wanted to finish whatever this was meant for and go back to where things made sense. I closed my eyes and picked a feat at random. Opening my eyes back up, I saw that I had picked "Darkstalker", which wasn't ominous at all. In response, the Feat menu had gone dim, but hadn't disappeared. The flaw menu was still there…

"Forget it." I said. "Just pick what you think is good already and turn the lights back on."

"Honourable Challenge" and "Vulnerable" flashed, then the flaw menu vanished, the feat menu fully lit once more. "Sacred Vow" flashed, then "Vow of Poverty". The menu name "Feats" changed to "Bonus Feats" and the options dropped from hundreds to a couple dozen. The screen picked "Nymph's Kiss" and "Monastic Training".

Speeding up, as though the menu was looking forward to finishing as much as I was, the screen picked Rogue as my second class (Wait, what? Why do I have a second class?) before assigning Skill Points, which once again looked pretty similar to Fallout's system.

With a whirring sound and a blink of surprise from me, the screen… apparently printed my character sheet. I grabbed the paper, noted that it appeared to be laminated and that like the screen, I could read it in the pitch-black room. I tucked it under one arm.

"Begin game?" The screen asked.