When I tap the "Roleplay" button on the server, my body lurches through the screen.

There's no gentle "Hey you, you're finally awake," no benign old guy showing me how to forage or build, no heads-up display telling me my life and mana.

Instead, a giant battle ax hurdles toward me, neck high. At the other end of it, an orc with forearms the size of my thighs foams at the mouth.

This is going to be a bad day.

I duck. The ax blade shears off the top half of my helmet and embeds in the tree behind me with a sickening thud. That could have been me. I don't know what happens if I die here.

Locks of golden hair drift to the forest floor beside me. I tap my head to make sure the top is still there. It is, and there's some hair left, too.

I'm dressed to the hilt in armor--except for my now-ventilated helmet--but my frantic hands can find no hilt. No belt pouch of magic potions, no bow strapped across my back.

The orc draws a knife and charges me. Instinct kicks in and I grab his wrist, using his momentum to throw him off balance.

How do I know how to do that? What am I, an armored ninja?

I dodge and weave between strikes, the unwilling partner in this dance of death. He lunges too far once, and I roll inside to deliver an uppercut to his jaw.

He barely flinches.

The pause gives me enough time to escape his grapple and create some distance. He glares at me.

I don’t know my body, so I do what any human of average intelligence would. I run.

The orc bellows as I take off; every hair on my body stands up on end.

I run for some time, until I reach a section of trees whose branches hang lower than most. I crash through them. Then I realize the ground is gone.

An abandoned quarry stretches downward further than I'd like to fall.

I scramble for a branch to hold my weight. It does, and I swing back to solid ground.

A low chuckle grates against my ears. I turn to see the orc set his plumed helm on a stump.

He licks the flat of his knife.

"Time to taste your blood, champion."

"You really don't have to do that," I say. "If you want, I can give myself a paper cut and you can--"

"Silence!" he roars. "Die, insolent fool!"

He sprints toward me with amazing speed, and I have one fleeting thought. A long shot. A last resort.

I wait till he's almost at my throat, and I step backwards. My armor scrapes the side of the quarry as I fall.

The orc tumbles over me as I grip the edge of the cliff, his face twisted in an expression of disbelief and hatred. He screams until he doesn’t, and his armor rattles far below.

I pull myself up, panting.

“Incredible,” says an elf who’s joined by several others from the forest. “You’ve defeated the general, my liege.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I stammer.

"Are you not Floopbert the Magnificent?"

"No. I'm Joel, the guy who lives alone at the end of the cul-de-sac."

“Told you he’d log out before the fight,” says a second elf.

My body lurches backward. My reflection in the computer monitor bears red marks the size and shape of keyboard squares. The “Roleplay” button is still there.

I close the window and go for a long, long walk.