Open world Isekai RPG looking for worldbuilding imput. And ideas for improvement.

[Stormwolf69]

Open world Isekai RPG looking for worldbuilding imput. And ideas for improvement.

Setting the players are some how stuck in the bodies of there video game characters along with about a few thousand other players from the same MMO As a new patch just gets released.
Note all players are level 20 geslate. Knowing that the patch notes said that lvl 30 will be the new max. I am going to limit them to one epic class.
The game it self always had a big thing on keeping secretes. As there was a few ways to avoid permadeath. Not with out the risk Chance of fighting a Maruts.
The players will start out in their friend’s bar. Robert a Thallheard. He is considered a laid-back guy willing to help new players. giving practical advice. To his friends he is even more open about what he knows.

There will be a meeting of player guilds Robert will ask you to come along as back up. This is intended as an opportunity for the players to get into city politics as the main guilds are forming an Alliance to run the city.

Map of world is the continent map from Gorgans Crown.
Factions and events
The Raids every mouth there is an area of the empire that is going to be raided by portals of monsters. The players can go and help save the locals or and kill the raid boss or just let the locals die. The players will have to go to temples to discover when and were the next raid will be.
Enemies there is a group of jerks that will summon a Demon lord. And I am thinking of using Dragon mag Demonomicon of Iggwilv ones but I don’t know what.
One Malcanthet is good for cloak and dagger. With setting up cults sending assassins. But just as a villain that a villain group will summon and realise that they have bit off more then they can chew I don’t know.
The Empire.
The Empire has no idea what the payers are up to. Or how to deal with them. As the players are mostly stronger than them. And invite the players players to a ball so the nobles and the emperor can use politics to feel them out. The Emperor Shaddam the 4th rules. Well there is below him a large number of dukes that have their own duchies. As it is a Feudalism. With each duke tying to secure power for his own family. And having a group of heros defending his lands form a raid would be in there minds a step in the right direction.

The lvl 20 geslated goblin is trying to rally all the worlds goblins in a revolution of sorts. Using Socialism. Will try to take over the empire. Will the players stop him?

As I am setting this up for an RPG is there anything I am missing also how will the world react to what is going on.

[KragBrightscale]

Well, hmm. I’d say it sounds pretty straight forward at the moment. Classic trapped in game world situation. You seem to have some simple political groups set up which is good. Any reason for starting all players at lvl 20? I get wanting to play a high power game, but that makes the list of potential challenges a bit limited. Like you mentioned: maybe the big bad(s) are other players.

The issue with this 1)finding a good reason for the players to do anything other than try to escape the game. 2)the players relationship to whom they previously considered just npcs.
3)players will have to deal with the moral questions of killing other players, considering they come from modern society and that they might not know what happens if u die in the game.

Apart from figuring out those, check out some web-novels for more inspiration. I enjoyed one called “thread bare” or thread bear or something.

Another thought I had is that if the game is supposed to have already been accessible prior to the update, wouldn’t the players know everything already? The only new stuff is the patch content. Maybe their game content was limited to a single small country but the patch opened up the rest of the world? Something to think about.

The socialist goblin revolution player: why would the player do this? Would it be a bad thing anyway? Can your “real” Players join in on that party? How much freedom are you giving them?

[Excession]

I assume you've watched Log Horizon? This is pretty close to the same plot starter. If not, watch the first season at least (or read the source material) as it will give some good ideas.

Some things to consider:

• Rather than just player and player character you now have three levels to refer to: IRL players, PC, and the MMO character that PC was playing at the time. Plus some of your NPCs have two of those levels themselves, while others are NPCs from the game that are now apparently real people. Some consistent terms might come in useful.
• You're dropping a few thousand people, a few of which are you PCs, into a disaster scenario. You'll get people desperate to get home, right through to those excited about what just happened. A few thousand desperate, confused, scared, and angry people makes for a very complicated situation.
• Nobody is going to want to test what happens if you die in the game. Well, not on themselves at least. Still I wouldn't expect people to suddenly go crazy with the PKs.
• Some will be stuck with bodies that are the wrong... well everything really. Playing a cute elf girl in a game might be fun, suddenly being one gets a lot more complicated. Others will be stuck on low-level alts. Imagine getting stuck in an MMO... as that character you created to hold all your crafting materials.
• Presumably PCs need to eat, so there is at least some timer on getting a disaster recovery effort, off the ground. You might want to push your players toward being part of that as it would tend to lead toward more permanent government stuff.