Isekai games

[Eagleheart]

So, believe it or not, I don't like anime. But I love isekai. I love the idea of characters getting thrown into an unfamiliar world, a different time period, etc. and learning to adapt to their new surroundings, especially if they must also adapt to having new abilities and/or a new body.

Isekai is pretty common in TTRPGs, too - perhaps even a bit overdone? - yet I don't seem to see much of it here on M-W.

So, do you enjoy isekai games? Who would be interested in playing or GMing one? What game systems do you think best lend themselves to this genreI don't know if isekai can be called a "genre", but I can't think of a better word to use here?

[TheFred]

I've seen plenty of games like that. The trope writ large ("portal fantasy" perhaps) is very common in Western (or anyway non-Japanese) literature too (though it's perhaps fallen out of favour) with plenty of arguable historic examples (e.g. Orpheus visits the underworld). But, we also have lots of traditional modern Western examples, like The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant (1977).

Anime examples include stuff like the "sucked into a videogame" trope which is obviously more modern.

Personally, I find these things a bit overdone and trite (perhaps why they are less popular than they used to be) and video games ones especially can feel pretty silly. However, they're also a fun classic form of escapism. I'm pretty sure many of us have wished we could be transported off to a fantasy world to be the hero at some point or other (before we read Thomas Covenant, anyway...), and the idea of becoming an epic warrior or gaining magic powers along the way is even better!

So, I do like that, from time to time. Personally, though, I also like playing with tropes and subverting expectations and stuff so I prefer it when there's a more fun twist on it, like for example the characters wake up in different, mismatched bodies (e.g. the new Jumanji films).

In terms of system, the advantage is that you can usually use whatever fantasy system you would normally. The slight wrinkle is that fantasy stats may not reflect origin-world knowledge or skills, but that's usually rare enough that it's not a big deal.

[Actana]

DIE RPG has a pretty cool concept for an isekai game. Based on the graphic novel.

[Penchant]

I've always liked the concept and have played in a few such games in the past. I wanted to run one where the characters are inserted into a video game where the interface is an unreliable narrator, like there's something deeper going on and 'enemies' aren't necessarily the bad guys and the story that the game wants you to follow isn't really the right path.

[MrAndrewJ]

The first handful of Joel Rosenberg's "Guardians of the Flames" book series was about a group of fantasy RPG players who wound up inside of their own game. Those started getting published in 1983.

It's also interesting to see how Myth-Weavers doesn't always limit it to the fantasy genre.

I have been interested in some games like this, but never applied here at Myth-Weavers.

[Rudra]

in the isekai i've seen we have the character/characters live their normal life then (usually) die and reincarnate into another world, there is the early struggle to learn and adapt and so on.

Here there isnt, people build their characters for the game, which start already in the alternate world(there may be a brief prologue in the real world) and they already know the rules of the system , this nullify the surprise and the confusion, sure they can roleplay it, but wont feel it.

If i had to make an isekai game, i'd ask applicants to apply with a character they are currently playing in another game(just background/personality, ignoring the system) and then have the game be an alternate version where their original character die and is reincarnated into the new world(with the other player characters)

now you have characters who have lived past lives and may very well want to return home(my party is fighting the goblin king! my pilot was attacking the death star! hey, where are my godly powers? ecc) and run on different mechanics, which should disorient the player a bit😄

 

Edited January 20 by Rudra (see edit history)

[TheFred]

So fantasy characters are transported to another fantasy world? 🤨😀

4 hours ago, Penchant said:

I've always liked the concept and have played in a few such games in the past. I wanted to run one where the characters are inserted into a video game where the interface is an unreliable narrator, like there's something deeper going on and 'enemies' aren't necessarily the bad guys and the story that the game wants you to follow isn't really the right path.

Intriguing... reminds me of Only You Can Save Mankind.

[Saberfan]

I personally love isekai, trite and overdone as it can be at times. I'm an even bigger fan of what I would call 'reverse isekai' though, where residents of fantasy worlds are dumped into the modern world Modern Arcana-style or where the modern world begins fusing with a more fantastical one.

There are a few systems out there that probably handle isekai better, but I default to Pathfinder 1E because of it's sheer diversity. If you're willing to delve into third-party, the Spheres system is quite good for emulating a number of isekai, especially isekai games where PCs are transported into MMOs due to the fact that Spheres and Talents could easily be reimagined as skill trees that their characters invested points into.

[Yamazaki]

I'm undeniably a sucker for isekai. It's my guilty pleasure. It's also the genre I trash a lot because most of it is indeed trash unless the writer is actually trying to do something with the genre (Re:Zero and Mushoku Tensei are prime examples of using the isekai genre to do character growth), but I still enjoy those silly ones quite a bit. Particularly fond of Slime and Skeleton Knight as my guilty pleasures.

Worth noting that isekai tends to be linked up with what is commonly called the 'LitRPG' genre (I'm guessing it's short for Literary RPG? I've only seen the term thrown around as the short hand), aka Video Game Mechanics. This is doubly so for the power fantasy stories, but sometimes they do a bit more than that.

 

That said, I have been slowly creating my own Isekai Campaign setting... Although I've not found the gumption to actually run anything in the setting yet.

Edited January 24 by Yamazaki (see edit history)

[Cirlot]

I'll see your Re:Zero and Mushoku Tensei and raise you Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash and Faraway Paladin.  My own guilty pleasure is Reborn as a Space Mercenary tho - it is so, absolutely, shamelessly based on the Elite Dangerous MMORPG that it's kind of funny.  And given the end notes of the most recent lite novel indicate the author is now getting into Mechwarrior Online I have stompy mech hopes for the future . . . 😄

From a gaming perspective the system is less a concern for me than the setting: mechanically most trad RPGS work just fine for isekai because isekai really isn't about rules, mechanics or even powers (the wish fulfillment bent towards the stories aside), isekai is fundamentally a point of view.  It's the fish out of water or the escape into the unknown story, the "if I were someplace else, I could BE something else" wish you used to find in old adventure fiction. I think the real strength of it in a gaming context is that isekai lets one reintroduce exploration as one of the pillars of play because it allows the characters to share the same information deficit as the players about the world.  Finding their bearings IC and OC both becomes a real and vital plot point and the world gets to become it's own character in a way a know setting typically doesn't?

That said, I've seen some good osekai or isekai-adjacent dedicated rulesets: .Dungeon//Remastered does a great job of the "players playing an MMORPG" though it lacks the "trapped" isekai aspect: it's a .Hack or Log Horzion where you can totally log off in between adventures, but the game world is where all the exploration and fun happens. And if you want just a straight up isekai RPG Konosuba has a licensed rpg from Yen Press that just leans in on the whole genre, albeit in a humorous way.

Anecdotally, the few isekai games I have played on the Weave (oGMW) all seemed to stumble on the same problem - the GM was running a ruleset the players didn't know or one that was purposefully held back from the players (to enable the sort of 'learning the mechanics IC' scenes you so often see in the genre) but by doing so they accidentally put a barrier to interacting with the world. Having to learn both the rules and the world at the same time caused things to slow and looe momentum, so if I was running an isekai I'd use a very common or simple ruleset to keep the focus on the world exploration if at all possible.

 

[TheFred]

Whilst there can be some fun to be had in the "sucked into a video game" trope, I personally am for the most part rather put off by it. Even if I'm sucked into a video game, most of the time, I'd rather that it turn out to be a real-seeming world just as the "sucked into a storybook" trope doesn't have characters suddenly becoming collections of letters and having to figure out how to get past full stops. The whole "litRPG", figuring-out-the-mechanics thing doesn't really appeal to me.

I totally second the point about exploration though. I also like the sort of... personal exploration?... that you can get, too. The characters are so far out of their comfort zones, maybe out of their own bodies and quite possibly out of their minds, that you get to think about what they're thinking and feeling in pretty unusual situations that would never occur in real life. (Maybe drawing an analogy with the exploration is a stretch, but certainly I like both aspects)

I don't think the system matters much, either; the world that you're spending all or almost all of your time in is the fantasy world and it runs on fantasy rules, so just using whatever ruleset you would for a regular fantasy game is usually just fine or close enough as makes no odds. I've played in games like this run in D&D or Pathfinder and it's worked just as well as those systems normally do.

[SMARTAgentKC]

I written a few stories in my younger years in which I had a more or less self-insert hero character be transported to a virtual realm through his computer screen (basically Tron Style with a laser scanning and transmitting the target) and be more or less uploaded into a video game realm where people lived in several modern city areas (think late 90s early 2000s) and some surrounding lands that were watched over and maintained by the leaders of that world.

Back then I didn't know what 'isekai' was, but I always liked stories like Tron, Code Lyoko, heck I even liked the anime of Swords Art Online when I learned about that story because I loved the idea of computerized realms hosting virtual worlds and I loved Kingdom Hearts and how it explored the various Disney worlds from the eyes of an outsider to those worlds.

As for Isekai games on Mythweavers, I've been a part of a few Sword Art Online knock offs that ran D&D5e and did alright for about the first level but people just got bored of it, I guess. There was also another Isekai game using D&D5e I was a part of in which a bunch from the real world came to different locations in another world and I just happened to be one of the world residents who got involved with one of those characters.

 

[Roughtrade]

On 1/20/2024 at 4:19 AM, Eagleheart said:

especially if they must also adapt to having new abilities and/or a new body

You might like books by Jack Chalker. He has an almost fetish for body changing.

Straight up Iskei would be his River of the Dancing Gods series. A trucker and a housewife end up in a fantasy world.

Most Famous of his books are the Well of Souls series. Sci-Fi series with strange world and body transformation.

Four Lords of the Diamond series. Sci-Fi. An agent has his mind sent into the body of a stranger to infiltrate an enemy's ranks.

Changewinds series. Just a wonderful weird fantasy set up where mysterious storms can blow through and alter the landscape and bodies in their path.

Soul Rider series. Sort of a fantasy but with maybe sci-fi explanations. A world where strong minds can shape the land and people.

 

[TheFred]

That's interesting. The Changewinds thing sounds oddly like a concept for a game I had way back when. I can't remember if it was inspired by something similar in someone else's game so, who knows?, maybe a thread of it originated from the same place.

At any rate, whilst there are quite a lot of different concepts for games that could fall under this banner, I think most of them would garner interest. I mean, heck, most D&D or PF games do, pretty much regardless, but these tropes are popular enough in their own right.