Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8354293" data-attributes="member: 6790260">There's a slightly different take on the isekai/"the game world is real, man!!" spin that might be interesting: The game world is becoming real, and this is bleeding out into the non-game world.So, for example, I presume your MMO's world has magic in it. What the MMO designers don't realize is that they haven't just coded a virtual space where people can do things. They've accidentally hacked into the fundamental rules of existence. As more people play, the lines between the physical world and the virtual world thin. Scientists start to observe bizarre phenomena. Reports roll in of children accidentally performing magic. Strange "mutants" (in-game monsters) begin appearing. Conversely, in the virtual world, the code starts behaving oddly. NPCs designed with "emergent" behavior start acting entirely outside their expected parameters. Monsters that should be entirely mindless begin trying to ask for parley, or organize into groups that shouldn't be possible within the game's code. Gods or other spirit-beings start telling players that they're hearing strange voices (prayers/wishes from non-playing humans in the physical world), and ask them to investigate. Etc.Eventually, it's discovered exactly how powerful this technology is, and there's a race to prevent a bad person from exploiting it. Maybe it's a team-up of a Magnificent Bastard virtual NPC and a Smug Snake politician physical NPC, both of which believe they're duping the other when in fact their intended course of action will doom both worlds (making the physical world incapable of continuing to support the virtual one, but still changing the physical world in deleterious ways). The PCs must learn to leverage both the MMO's rules and the impact on the physical world in order to save the day. As an example, perhaps one of the players is a Rogue who (on a lark) has been grinding Lockpicking and Blacksmithing as skills, and unlocks the rare and difficult skill of making "skeleton keys" that can unlock any locks below a certain level. This skill partially carries over into the mortal world, allowing them to magic their way through locked doors in government buildings in order to interfere with the politician's plans (or some other similar "the game world rules are affecting the real world" situation).In the end (if they're victorious), by becoming the true champions of the MMO and saving the day, the PCs discover a way to preserve the game world and eliminate the "bleeding" effect into the physical world. Some small overlap still remains, and the game developers have to be extra cautious about inserting new things into the game world. Then, if you feel like it, there can be a stinger revealing that something important still lingers on--for example, maybe one of the PCs has a physical-world partner who gives birth after the problem is "resolved"...and they fail to catch that that child can instinctively do magic, or something.</blockquote>

Verification