D&D 5E Treating characters in the game as being part of a LitRPG novel/anime

[keynup]

I had the thought and was wondering if anyone has done or know of treating the game as an actual game instead of a fantasy reality?

Could be as a VR simulation or just how that reality work.
Pop up screens with stats or a tattoo on the back?

 

[Omand]

I think you are going to have to give more detail on what you mean with your question.

I always treat D&D as a game. Yes, it is a game about a fantasy reality, that is where the role-playing comes in, but it is a game.

Cheers

 

[overgeeked]

I think you are going to have to give more detail on what you mean with your question.

I always treat D&D as a game. Yes, it is a game about a fantasy reality, that is where the role-playing comes in, but it is a game.

Cheers

I think OP means something like Sword Art Online. Treat the characters as avatars of the players in a fantasy world the characters know is a fantasy game world. Things like not being afraid to die because you know you will respawn.

 

[Omand]

I think OP means something like Sword Art Online. Treat the characters as avatars of the players in a fantasy world the characters know is a fantasy game world. Things like not being afraid to die because you know you will respawn.

OK, that make a bit more sense.

Not sure what you would get out of it though. For that kind of experience I would just play an online MMORPG with friends.

Cheers

 

[Bacon Bits]

I think you are going to have to give more detail on what you mean with your question.

It means the character can see and understand the mechanics of the game. They can see their own character sheet, and they understand what they mean. LitRPG novels are very often portal fiction or "isekai" where a character is pulled out of our world and into a game world, but it's not necessary. The characters may or may not understand that they are in a game. They may simply have a magical interface that quantifies their abilities.

I don't really see any benefits to it. If it makes it easier for the table to interact with the world it's fine, but I think it would constantly pull me out of it. My nephew recommended The Land: Founding by Aleron Kong and that's the problem I often had. Then again, I had the same problem with Thomas Covenant and Three Hearts Three Lions! Maybe it's the portal fiction aspect.

 

[Blue Orange]

There's an indie, The Dungeon Zone, using Powered by the Apocalypse rules, where you play gamers playing characters. There's drama at the game table and the like, tables of gamer day jobs (with the expected things like 'IT/Sysadmin' and 'Software Engineer'), and it has lists of standard stereotypical characters for your characters to play.

 

[Tonguez]

Have you ever read Quag Keep? In it real world characters are magically transported to 1978 Greyhawk and become their characters. The characters wear a braclet (which they cant remove) which is set with tiny dice. Whenever they go to do something the dice in their bracelet begin to spin.
During the course of the story the characters realise that the spinning dice indicates that they are being controlled by some ‘higher power

cant remember much else about the story but the characters recognising that someone else was spinning dice to determine their fate stood out for me - and that could be a feature you use too

 

[el-remmen]

It was not part of the setting, but I did play in Starfinder campaign where the background involved my PC's sibling (the other two players) discovering them connected to VR training game where they'd existed (Matrix-like) for years. The character's gimmick was that they were unsure if they were still in the game and sometimes took big chances assuming they'd respawn. The other PCs were not always happy about this.

 

[tetrasodium]

I had the thought and was wondering if anyone has done or know of treating the game as an actual game instead of a fantasy reality?

Could be as a VR simulation or just how that reality work.
Pop up screens with stats or a tattoo on the back?

You could probably do it pretty easily but would need to decide how serious you want to take it & what level of abstraction you want character facing. Just to name a few examples, you've got the already mentioned SAO where characters often physically interact with VR interfaces & they know the world is a game, that time I reincarnated as a slime & warlock of the magus world where only the main character has some kind of mental ai assistant to abstract the "game" details to the character with very different levels of grittiness but exists in what seems to be a real world, & throne of magical arcana where the world seems completely real but the character has some kind of loophole allowing them to treat it & think of it like a litrpg to some degree. At the other end of the scale you have things like this where it's right out in the open

 

[NotAYakk]

I have a sketch of a plan sort of like this.

Kids go to a school while asleep, being trained to become Protectors. The school is in the Feywild; there, life is abundant. The native life is reborn every dawn and dusk, and you are only there as a dream, so you just wake up.

So it isn't a game, it is a dream world.