How would you handle a PF/3.5 isekai?

[Calthropstu]

Just brainstorming some ideas, asking opinions that sort of thing.

On the gm side, how would it work? I thought of making some crazy skills like knowledge: science and similar stuff to represent the knowledge we have from our world.

I have 2 theories on how to run it, one is the players running themselves through a fantasy campaign trying to either set themselves up within their new world or trying to get back home. The other is making characters and bringing them into a world portal.

Naturally, many adjustments would need to be made to the character creation process. I doubt skill adjustments would be enough. I considered wrapping it all up into a single knowledge check... knowledge: Our World. Another idea was announce the campaign idea to the players at session zero and say "You have 72 hours to email me all the links for what you want to know in the next world." It's not enough to say "I want my character to know how to build a jet" they need to demonstrate an understanding of how to build a jet before their character is sent back. Same with guns, metal working, agriculture improvements, etc.

I would then run them through a kingmaker like scenario where they would try to take over or carve out a kingdom for themselves where their advanced knowledge would take root and make an empire all while they lived out a fantasy adventure.

On the player side, what would make you want to play in a campaign like this. Would it gain your attention? Any suggestions on how you think a character like this would work? What would you guys like to see in such an adventure?

[MaxiDuRaritry]

I have a D&D crossover story going where the main character was isekai'd into a new body with abilities he doesn't yet understand. He IS familiar with D&D, but he hasn't gotten to the point where that particular penny drops for him. Once he does...

I've also got a collection of other D&D crossovers I've been reading here and there where this happens. Some of them are really good. Others, maybe not quite so much.


Just brainstorming some ideas, asking opinions that sort of thing.

On the gm side, how would it work? I thought of making some crazy skills like knowledge: science and similar stuff to represent the knowledge we have from our world.Ah. Self-inserts in an actual D&D game? I thought it was more a fanfic or original story thing. So you get to use OOC knowledge IC, so long as it's from before the game's start?

Modern education is both incredibly vast and deep, and also has some seriously gaping holes in it.

Math, science, reading and writing, biology, chemistry, physics, music, art, and lots more.

On the other hand, "survival" in a modern First World country doesn't really have much to do with roughing it in the wild, being stealthy, gathering and hunting food, tying knots, wearing caring for and using weapons and armor, farming using ye olde teche, or protecting oneself from rampaging monsters and ravening hordes of vicious humanoids.

Lots of very broad skills, quite a few skill points, but unless the players do a lot of wilderness survival camping, things are gonna be really rough on the in-game skills.


I have 2 theories on how to run it, one is the players running themselves through a fantasy campaign trying to either set themselves up within their new world or trying to get back home. The other is making characters and bringing them into a world portal.You could always LARP.


Naturally, many adjustments would need to be made to the character creation process. I doubt skill adjustments would be enough. I considered wrapping it all up into a single knowledge check... knowledge: Our World. Another idea was announce the campaign idea to the players at session zero and say "You have 72 hours to email me all the links for what you want to know in the next world." It's not enough to say "I want my character to know how to build a jet" they need to demonstrate an understanding of how to build a jet before their character is sent back. Same with guns, metal working, agriculture improvements, etc.There are a lot of things that we know that we really don't know that we know until it comes up.

Like, I wouldn't say I'm at all useful in a survival situation, but at the same time, I've read books like The Clan of the Cave Bear and its sequels, and there's a surprising wealth of knowledge in there for this kind of thing. I might be able to get along, at least theoretically, but at the same time, it depends entirely on what's needed in the scenario.


I would then run them through a kingmaker like scenario where they would try to take over or carve out a kingdom for themselves where their advanced knowledge would take root and make an empire all while they lived out a fantasy adventure.

On the player side, what would make you want to play in a campaign like this. Would it gain your attention? Any suggestions on how you think a character like this would work? What would you guys like to see in such an adventure?Watch the old Dungeons & Dragons cartoon, maybe?

Also, I suggest that whatever you do, have guides to help the players out in their new world and to help them get a grip on things for awhile. Maybe someone who's willing to teach them stuff like politics and survival and stuff if they're willing to learn.

It'd suck to get a knife in the back or starve to death by getting thrown in a situation where they have no idea what's going on.

Plus, give the players some amount of power to swing around. Even if it's just some modern tech the locals would want to buy for a fudgeton of money, or something. Maybe a kindly wizard is fascinated by their smartphones and wants to make a magical one for himself. He'll give 'em a lot of money to borrow them for study. He'll also give them some magical enhancements so (for instance) they'll never run out of power, and they can make long-distance calls to people back home. Eventually.

Also, there are resources for this kind of thing. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0DOLanJYCU)

[AvatarVecna]

General knowledge of how to work on/fix tech is not the same as knowing how to build one from scratch without having specialized tools already in existence. A mechanic might very generally know how to make a car, in a "gas bone connected to the engine bone" kinda way, but they're not necessarily gonna be good at mining gasoline, or smithing engines, or programming the engine's computer in the first place. Somebody with significant aeronautics experience might be able to make a Wright Brother's esque plane to get the ball rolling, but unless you've already spent your life crafting jets from scratch without the help of others, your IRL knowledge isn't gonna be too useful when you get Isekai'd into D&D world (or wherever). It's the difference between knowing how to assemble a complex object, and knowing how to craft the pieces that make it up. This isn't anything specific to engineers, either, people's perceived IQ just generally drops like 30 points when they lose access to google. Everything we do in a modern world is the last couple steps in a very long process involving dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of people we've never met to produce and deliver the whatever it is.

Let's be overly-optimistic and say that every person Isekai'ing in has done homecooked meals their whole life, and as a result of that, they know hundreds of recipes by memory, know how to clean/maintain their cookwear, and know what seasons various fruits and vegetables are good in...they're maybe not screwed, because now their only concern is acquisition via hunting, foraging, farming, or buying - and, I'll wager, they only really know how to do one of those four things. Hunting is dangerous and farming takes time, so really their options are foraging in the wilderness or (if they're lucky) starting somewhere vaguely civilized and being able to get a job in order to afford to buy food from hunters/foragers/farmers. As far as foraging goes, good luck: even being a local doesn't necessarily mean you're going to know what's safe or not (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaKp5LxvwUY), but also even if you're a survivalist expert in our world, the flora/fauna in wherever you Isekai'd (particularly into D&D) might be so different that your existing knowledge is only just this side of useless.

So more than likely, even if you're already pretty knowledgeable about cooking, getting dropped in the wilderness without access to civilization still means you're screwed unless you've also trained to hunt for the purpose of gathering food. Trained without guns, I should add (yes, PF has them, but I doubt most modern firearm enthusiasts know how to care for a flintlock-era rifle). Oh yeah, and most people probably aren't gonna be that knowledgeable about cooking in the first place, even though that's a kind of knowledge that's 100% relevant to every person both IRL and inside the Isekai world.

This is just the way our world is. Every advancement society's made along the way for the sake of convenience is making life easier for us specifically because we no longer have to worry about knowing how to do whatever that thing is, because now it's a specific person's job to worry about doing that thing for a whole bunch of people at once. But that means if we're plucked out of our modern lives and dropped off in some pseudo-medieval setting, we'd barely know how to do anything that (for those who've lived in such a setting their whole lives) would be basic knowledge fundamental to continued existence, and our head is crammed full of useless knowledge vital to surviving modern life that's useless in the medieval setting.

To use the above as a jumping-off point to answer your actual question, there are two ways to approach an Isekai game, and thus two ways of mechanically handling the OOC knowledge as IC knowledge. Firstly, the mind Isekai'ing into the D&D world is the actual player - you're playing yourself in someone else's body inside the world of Golarion or wherever. Secondly, the mind Isekai'ing into the D&D world is, itself, also a fictional character created by the real-world players for the purposes of having that character's "IRL" skills given to their character in the game world, in such a way that the latter character possesses the former's skills even though it doesn't make sense for them to have learned those skills. Put that way, how to handle the knowledge transfer becomes exceedingly simple. Here's what I would do:

"I Trust My Players Method", or "Player-->PF Character":
"Technologist" feat for free. Players are familiar with the basics of technology, and could at least take a stab at operating most technological devices found in-game.
PC starts with two traits appropriate to the Player. Player Traits and Character Traits can have overlapping trait types, but must follow normal trait rules regarding each other (so you could have player traits be social/faith and character traits be combat/social, but you couldn't have player be social/social and character be combat/faith). If "Additional Traits" is taken, they can be applied to either side of things.
PC starts with "Background Skills" appropriate to the Player. If the game already allows for Background Skills, these are in addition.
Players gain three new skills, titled "Isekai Primary Skills", "Isekai Secondary Skills", and "Isekai Tertiary Skills". All three are at full ranks for the character's level. Primary and Secondary are always class skills, while Tertiary never is. The character gains "Skill Focus: Isekai Primary Skills" feat for free. When a player goes to roll a skill check, if it's a skill they have to some degree IRL, they can choose to roll one of their three Isekai skills instead (adding whatever attribute is normally appropriate to their Isekai bonus), reflecting whatever degree of mastery they possess over that skill that doesn't rely on looking things up (since they couldn't look such things up if they were actually Isekai'd in).


"My Players Are Cheating Optimizers" or "Player-->Modern Character-->PF Character":
"Technologist" feat for free. Players are familiar with the basics of technology, and could at least take a stab at operating most technological devices found in-game.
"Skill Focus" in one skill appropriate to the modern character.
PF Character starts with two traits appropriate to the Modern Character. Modern Traits and PF Traits can have overlapping trait types, but must follow normal trait rules regarding each other (so you could have modern traits be social/faith and pathfinder traits be combat/social, but you couldn't have them be social/social and combat/faith). If "Additional Traits" is taken, they can be applied to either side of things.
2 additional skill points per level, which must be spent on skills appropriate to the modern character.
PF Character starts with double "Background Skills" appropriate to the modern character. If the game already allows for Background Skills, these are in addition.

[Falontani]

Bring them in game with access to google. Then if they want to do something that would require their IRL skills, then have them demonstrate IRL. If they fail then they fail. If they succeed they succeed. If they have magical assistance then give them an IRL tool that is roughly equal to whatever assistance they would be getting.

[Ssalarn]

I would run it much like a standard game but with some loosened restrictions for the players. They know they're in a game, so if they use the rules of the game to their advantage by e.g. using OOC knowledge to target an enemy's weakness, that's actually good roleplaying. I'd go in prepared for all kinds of meta-knowledge on the player's part, and if I was worried about them breaking the game's framework too badly (which may not be a concern if that's part of the genre you're okay with) then I'd put the limitations in at the character creation and leveling phase by using fixed ability spreads or point buysand gating away any easily abused materials.

If I was just opening up the metaknowledge tap completely for the players, I might even let them know that the game (if that's the flavor of isekai you're using) has a "debug" system that automatically corrects glitches and sends out "antivirus" software in the form of like, shadows or other powerful undead or outsiders, so if the players are doing something the game (you the GM) sees as an abuse or "glitch", the PCs might have a deadly combat and then learn that the game has deleted the problematic rule from the system (at which point I'd probably allow them a free "rebuild" if the thing that got changed was a core part of their build).

[MaxiDuRaritry]

As far as tech goes, remember, we're well over a hundred years of steady development into our current tech trees (not including the tens of thousands of years of development up until the Industrial Revolution). Not only will the PCs not have the tools to make their current tech and couldn't develop such on their own, but they don't have the tools to build the tools to build the tools to build the tools they'd need for even the most basic of computers or modern generators or engines.

Now, that said, certain ideas could be invaluable to Middle Ages/Iron Age-level peoples. For instance, the idea behind the printing press is easy enough to understand and describe, and anyone with halfway decent smithing skills could build one. It's also the absolutely most important development of the past several centuries, because it allowed for fast and easy reproduction of knowledge (books) that could then be passed on. Do some research and note just how slow technological progress was up until the widespread use of the printing press, then note how exponential it was afterwards. Before then, everything was taught either through word of mouth or through painstakingly hand-written books. Type simply wasn't a thing, and reproducing a book or a scroll was a very time-consuming, work-intensive process, especially for anything complex. A printing press, however, could reproduce hundreds of pages a day with relative ease.

Likewise, the knowledge of germ theory and preventing the spread of disease, basic genetics and how it applies to breeding plants and animals for (un)natural selection, nutrition and what people need to be healthy (and why), how fertilizing soil works, how to add carbon to iron to make steel, how to make concrete, how to implement the standardized production line, metal toxicity, accident prevention, basic safety procedures, food safety procedures, basic psychology, and more could be MASSIVE boons to pre-industrial societies, as a lot of that stuff just wasn't common knowledge (or known about at all). Nothing even very technical, but stuff that's capable of massively changing what they thought they knew.

So basic ideas would be (by far) the most important things to know, while the high-end stuff would be nigh useless.

[Asmotherion]

General knowledge of how to work on/fix tech is not the same as knowing how to build one from scratch without having specialized tools already in existence. A mechanic might very generally know how to make a car, in a "gas bone connected to the engine bone" kinda way, but they're not necessarily gonna be good at mining gasoline, or smithing engines, or programming the engine's computer in the first place. Somebody with significant aeronautics experience might be able to make a Wright Brother's esque plane to get the ball rolling, but unless you've already spent your life crafting jets from scratch without the help of others, your IRL knowledge isn't gonna be too useful when you get Isekai'd into D&D world (or wherever). It's the difference between knowing how to assemble a complex object, and knowing how to craft the pieces that make it up. This isn't anything specific to engineers, either, people's perceived IQ just generally drops like 30 points when they lose access to google. Everything we do in a modern world is the last couple steps in a very long process involving dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of people we've never met to produce and deliver the whatever it is.

Let's be overly-optimistic and say that every person Isekai'ing in has done homecooked meals their whole life, and as a result of that, they know hundreds of recipes by memory, know how to clean/maintain their cookwear, and know what seasons various fruits and vegetables are good in...they're maybe not screwed, because now their only concern is acquisition via hunting, foraging, farming, or buying - and, I'll wager, they only really know how to do one of those four things. Hunting is dangerous and farming takes time, so really their options are foraging in the wilderness or (if they're lucky) starting somewhere vaguely civilized and being able to get a job in order to afford to buy food from hunters/foragers/farmers. As far as foraging goes, good luck: even being a local doesn't necessarily mean you're going to know what's safe or not (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaKp5LxvwUY), but also even if you're a survivalist expert in our world, the flora/fauna in wherever you Isekai'd (particularly into D&D) might be so different that your existing knowledge is only just this side of useless.

So more than likely, even if you're already pretty knowledgeable about cooking, getting dropped in the wilderness without access to civilization still means you're screwed unless you've also trained to hunt for the purpose of gathering food. Trained without guns, I should add (yes, PF has them, but I doubt most modern firearm enthusiasts know how to care for a flintlock-era rifle). Oh yeah, and most people probably aren't gonna be that knowledgeable about cooking in the first place, even though that's a kind of knowledge that's 100% relevant to every person both IRL and inside the Isekai world.

This is just the way our world is. Every advancement society's made along the way for the sake of convenience is making life easier for us specifically because we no longer have to worry about knowing how to do whatever that thing is, because now it's a specific person's job to worry about doing that thing for a whole bunch of people at once. But that means if we're plucked out of our modern lives and dropped off in some pseudo-medieval setting, we'd barely know how to do anything that (for those who've lived in such a setting their whole lives) would be basic knowledge fundamental to continued existence, and our head is crammed full of useless knowledge vital to surviving modern life that's useless in the medieval setting.

To use the above as a jumping-off point to answer your actual question, there are two ways to approach an Isekai game, and thus two ways of mechanically handling the OOC knowledge as IC knowledge. Firstly, the mind Isekai'ing into the D&D world is the actual player - you're playing yourself in someone else's body inside the world of Golarion or wherever. Secondly, the mind Isekai'ing into the D&D world is, itself, also a fictional character created by the real-world players for the purposes of having that character's "IRL" skills given to their character in the game world, in such a way that the latter character possesses the former's skills even though it doesn't make sense for them to have learned those skills. Put that way, how to handle the knowledge transfer becomes exceedingly simple. Here's what I would do:

"I Trust My Players Method", or "Player-->PF Character":

"Technologist" feat for free. Players are familiar with the basics of technology, and could at least take a stab at operating most technological devices found in-game.
PC starts with two traits appropriate to the Player. Player Traits and Character Traits can have overlapping trait types, but must follow normal trait rules regarding each other (so you could have player traits be social/faith and character traits be combat/social, but you couldn't have player be social/social and character be combat/faith). If "Additional Traits" is taken, they can be applied to either side of things.
PC starts with "Background Skills" appropriate to the Player. If the game already allows for Background Skills, these are in addition.
Players gain three new skills, titled "Isekai Primary Skills", "Isekai Secondary Skills", and "Isekai Tertiary Skills". All three are at full ranks for the character's level. Primary and Secondary are always class skills, while Tertiary never is. The character gains "Skill Focus: Isekai Primary Skills" feat for free. When a player goes to roll a skill check, if it's a skill they have to some degree IRL, they can choose to roll one of their three Isekai skills instead (adding whatever attribute is normally appropriate to their Isekai bonus), reflecting whatever degree of mastery they possess over that skill that doesn't rely on looking things up (since they couldn't look such things up if they were actually Isekai'd in).


"My Players Are Cheating Optimizers" or "Player-->Modern Character-->PF Character":

"Technologist" feat for free. Players are familiar with the basics of technology, and could at least take a stab at operating most technological devices found in-game.
"Skill Focus" in one skill appropriate to the modern character.
PF Character starts with two traits appropriate to the Modern Character. Modern Traits and PF Traits can have overlapping trait types, but must follow normal trait rules regarding each other (so you could have modern traits be social/faith and pathfinder traits be combat/social, but you couldn't have them be social/social and combat/faith). If "Additional Traits" is taken, they can be applied to either side of things.
2 additional skill points per level, which must be spent on skills appropriate to the modern character.
PF Character starts with double "Background Skills" appropriate to the modern character. If the game already allows for Background Skills, these are in addition.



I'd argue against the technologist feat; just because everyone can handle basic usage of a Gui device doesn't mean they know how it's built, how a gun is made or how a DC motor is made. Arguably they may even fail in opperating them if you remove the user friendly parts.

[Calthropstu]

I'd argue against the technologist feat; just because everyone can handle basic usage of a Gui device doesn't mean they know how it's built, how a gun is made or how a DC motor is made. Arguably they may even fail in opperating them if you remove the user friendly parts.

That's why I wanted to give them 72 hours to send me links of stuff they wanted to know.
However, despite me not knowing exactly how a gun is made, I know enough basics that I could fund trial and error research based off my knowledge. The basic mixture of sulfur, charcoal and saltpeter for gunpowder, a barrel, a container, a fuse and a trigger mechanism, plus a description of what I have seen before should be enough to make a gun.

Likewise, the description of the body of a plane would likely be enough to build something that could concievably fly if told to the right engineer. Propelling the plane would be the main issue, which could, in theory, be solved in any number of ways especially when you add magic to the mix. But it would require massive effort and likely a lot of money.

I doubt a jet engine or a nuclear weapon is within the realm of possibility. But I wanted to give them at least a fighting chance at one, hence the "send me links" thing. One of the players in my group is legit a physics major so it could get... serious.

[AvatarVecna]

I'd argue against the technologist feat; just because everyone can handle basic usage of a Gui device doesn't mean they know how it's built, how a gun is made or how a DC motor is made. Arguably they may even fail in opperating them if you remove the user friendly parts.

The "Technologist" feat doesn't give any of those things, it just means "you don't automatically fail at things related to technology". It doesn't prevent failure, it just makes it so failure isn't necessarily the only option. You still need Craft skills and oft-times a special "crafting tech" feat (such as Gunsmithing). It doesn't mean you necessarily know how the thing works, it just means you're vaguely familiar enough with the tech involved that you could at least attempt it.

As an example, the AutoDoc is more or less a "programmable" surgery robot. I have no idea how programming, surgery, or robots work, but it "programming" sounds like it's gonna involve inputs on a computer screen, so...I could try? I understand the mechanisms of operating a touch screen, and how to navigate computer menus, and the auto-doc has self-correcting/self-completing parts in it's program explicitly that'll allow even an idiot like me to try and complete a "program" (in the sense that I type in the diagnosis/what operation I want done on the recipient), but it's likely the computer is gonna need that in proper scientific medical terminology and my dumb lizard brain only remember so much jargon from House MD. Around the time I have to word-salad it into performing lasik eye surgery for the 20th time, I'm probably gonna be screaming in frustration. But somebody without that understanding of how computers need rather precise commands (not to mention the very basic knowledge of how to even attempt going about putting commands into a touch screen) isn't even gonna have a chance - you could be the most brilliant doctor in the D&D world, it doesn't matter because you don't know how to talk to computers in a way they understand you, so you fail before you've even started.

It's possible I don't have a full grasp on the Technological ruleset, and Technologist is supposed to be for technology that's just utterly inscrutable - the feat did mention that even with it, sometimes actual skill ranks would still be required to even try, after all. But it really just feels like you're vaguely familiar enough with Technology that you could at least attempt to use it without failure just being inevitable.

[lightningcat]

It is odd how rarely these questions come up. Considering that the very first D&D novel was an isekai story.




"My Players Are Cheating Optimizers" or "Player-->Modern Character-->PF Character":
"Technologist" feat for free. Players are familiar with the basics of technology, and could at least take a stab at operating most technological devices found in-game.
"Skill Focus" in one skill appropriate to the modern character.
PF Character starts with two traits appropriate to the Modern Character. Modern Traits and PF Traits can have overlapping trait types, but must follow normal trait rules regarding each other (so you could have modern traits be social/faith and pathfinder traits be combat/social, but you couldn't have them be social/social and combat/faith). If "Additional Traits" is taken, they can be applied to either side of things.
2 additional skill points per level, which must be spent on skills appropriate to the modern character.
PF Character starts with double "Background Skills" appropriate to the modern character. If the game already allows for Background Skills, these are in addition.


This is what I would go with, although without #4 if the characters are stuck in the fantasy world. If they are bouncing back and forth, then it would work.

[GrayDeath]

With a 20ft insulated adamantite Pole with Tweezers on the tip, of course!











More serious:

Now D&Ds Skill System is not really built to do the often used Import of Knowledge very well, given its setup, limitation of values to level and such. So I would either introduce a completely overhauled Skill System, or use another RPG System altogether, if the "realistic" Usage of Isekai Knowledge was important for my/my Players enjoyment.

As others have mentioned, as long as your Players dont intend to do the whole uplift thing, a "Renessaince Man/Technologist" Feat might do the trick, roughly yet easily.