What settings/genres are ripe for a new successful RPG?

[Tanarii]

Sometimes genre expectations are sacrificed to the piller of good gameplay. I'm fine with that.

Highly specialized niche protection does not automatically equal good gameplay.

C.f. Shadowrun

[Ameraaaaaa]

Highly specialized niche protection does not automatically equal good gameplay.

C.f. Shadowrun

Fair enough. Shadow run is a mess.

[Quertus]

Hmmm… at the moment, I’m in the market for 2 RPGs: Isekai, and an excuse to play a good space combat simulator (of the “everyone has a ship or fleet” variety, not “we’re all crew aboard the same ship”).

Looking broader… I think that a Harry Potter RPG might do well.

How about an isekai game? You'd pick a starting class based on various modern vocations, like engineer, chemist, or doctor. Later, you'd be able to pick up fantasy classes, like mage, priest, or warrior. But you wouldn't be able to multiclass into any modern classes except what you started with, because there's no where to learn those skills.

I dunno, I think I could take levels in the “Couch Potato” class (among numerous others) in any genre.

Hmmm… to generalize this… each setting could have its own rules. Including supported classes and skills.

Each Isekai method (transferred bodily, reincarnated, shoved into a new body… any others?) could have their own rules.

Then you could run a D&D character bodily Isekai’d to modern Earth… or a Star Trek character reincarnated Isekai’d to Equestria… or even Sherlock Holmes Isekai’d in the body of a Transformer in Hogwarts.

Although Sherlock Holmes struggling to Detective Conan cases while trapped in an unfortunate body (“malfunctioning” Wand, someone’s familiar, whatever) actually sounds kinda fun…

(EDIT: yes, people most often think of Isekai as “themselves into fantastic world”; I intentionally chose examples to point out how the genre is much broader than that.)

Re Isekai. As previously pointed out I think the main problem is not so much character creation, but what happens once the character is in world. Maybe if you allow the PCs to alter the rules of the game, explained in universe as exploiting the programming or by using their previous life skills, that could make it novel. If you think it sucks that fighters can’t fly you combine this with that and hey presto your fighter can fly, but now every other fighter can either fly or learn to fly. Obviously this would have to take a non trivial amount of resources.

I’m really not getting why you think the Isekai’d characters need to be able to change the rules of the game in order for the action to be interesting.

[Tanarii]

Fair enough. Shadow run is a mess.

Specifically it's the "each person takes turns playing one mini game while everyone else goes and makes a sandwich" niche protection game play that's the biggest issue.

[NichG]

Oh, that reminds me, a dedicated cultivation/Xianxia RPG could easily be a thing.

[Lord Raziere]

Oh, that reminds me, a dedicated cultivation/Xianxia RPG could easily be a thing.

not gonna lie, it'd probably only rpg where a leveling system actually makes sense (yes I'm including Dnd in things where it doesn't), because the genre RUNs on explicit actual levels of enlightenment being a thing and the highest levels of enlightenment being like....actual omnipotence and such.

[Pauly]

I’m really not getting why you think the Isekai’d characters need to be able to change the rules of the game in order for the action to be interesting.

It’s about 2 things.
1) respecting genre tropes where the characters change the world they are in.
2) differentiating the game okay so it isn’t a JADR.

Fair enough. Shadow run is a mess.

But such an interesting and stylish mess..

[False God]

It’s about 2 things.
1) respecting genre tropes where the characters change the world they are in.
2) differentiating the game okay so it isn’t a JADR.

While I'm not sure what a JADR is, while changing the world is one of the tropes in some isekai, it does feel like there's a lot of hangup on that being the core idea of all isekai.

[MrStabby]

So I probably don't have the breadth of knowledge to really answer this, but I look forward to finding out what I have missed:

1) A Fairytale Horror game. Horror is poorly covered by a lot of RPGs. Things with more of a heroic fantasy bent just don't really work well. There is the missing visceral fear of real consequence on most actions, and a faint footstep heard means XP not "oh crap, we need to improvise an escape plan". And fairytales... because so many of them are badass and feature exeptional antagonists of great power and subtlety.

2) An old school D&D remake. XP comes from treasure, and the progression is through a heist type approach. Using the lessons learned from the past several decades of gaming, lets build that into a system where we care as much about avoiding combat as winning it.

3) An Excorcist game. Now kind of, you can do things like this with games like D&D or pathfinder. A nice monster of the week setup and a strong tradition of smashing down doors etc.. The issue is balance - with some classes being so much better against undead or demons and that kind of being their thing it would result in a lot of samey characters. Also, I would like a greater span of development and progression with less global strategic powers being in play. Strong elements of investigation, a little horror, quite a bit of combat...

[Pauly]

While I'm not sure what a JADR is, while changing the world is one of the tropes in some isekai, it does feel like there's a lot of hangup on that being the core idea of all isekai.

JADR = Just Another D&D Ripoff.

If all you’re doing with isekai is playing D&D but with a different back story then I don’t see why anyone wouldn't just play D&D instead.
But if you’re playing a game where you can alter the rules of the game, class features, setting etc. as a PC ability that occurs during gameplay then you’re playing something fundamentally different than a D&D clone.

I’m thinking about what is the unique and different gameplay experience a setting or genre can offer. Isekai broadly is either about reshaping the setting or being the chosen one accumulating a harem.

[Pauly]

Hmmm… at the moment, I’m in the market for 2 RPGs: Isekai, and an excuse to play a good space combat simulator (of the “everyone has a ship or fleet” variety, not “we’re all crew aboard the same ship”).
.

Have you tried adapting the Full Thrust wargame universe to an existing RPG? FT is probably the best space combat game out there and has an interesting fictional base. There was a conversion for making Traveller ships compatible with Full Thrust so if Traveller rocks your boat that may be up your alley.

So I probably don't have the breadth of knowledge to really answer this, but I look forward to finding out what I have missed:


3) An Excorcist game. Now kind of, you can do things like this with games like D&D or pathfinder. A nice monster of the week setup and a strong tradition of smashing down doors etc.. The issue is balance - with some classes being so much better against undead or demons and that kind of being their thing it would result in a lot of samey characters. Also, I would like a greater span of development and progression with less global strategic powers being in play. Strong elements of investigation, a little horror, quite a bit of combat...

Is this something Call of Cthulhu can handle? I know CoC is traditionally stronger on horror and lighter on combat, but the system seems quite capable of handling a higher mix of combat.

[Maat Mons]

I find Call of Cthulhu to be simultaneously too granular and not granular enough. Each time your skill goes up by one step, you get +1% chance of success, at most. That's too granular. Each time the difficulty of a task increases by one step, your odds of success are cut in half, or worse. That's not granular enough. Skill should take bigger steps, and difficulty should take smaller steps.

Also, your attributes are rolled randomly, and the number of points you can spend on skills is determined by your attributes, so you wind up some players in the same group having more skills than others... in a system where skills are pretty much everything. Really, they should have just given everyone a consistent number of points to work with at character creation.

[MrStabby]

Is this something Call of Cthulhu can handle? I know CoC is traditionally stronger on horror and lighter on combat, but the system seems quite capable of handling a higher mix of combat.

Maybe - its decades since I played CoC and even then I didn't really know what was happening! So whilst my experience doesn't jive with what I am looking for, it might just be the game I played rather than the system.

[False God]

JADR = Just Another D&D Ripoff.

If all you’re doing with isekai is playing D&D but with a different back story then I don’t see why anyone wouldn't just play D&D instead.
But if you’re playing a game where you can alter the rules of the game, class features, setting etc. as a PC ability that occurs during gameplay then you’re playing something fundamentally different than a D&D clone.

I’m thinking about what is the unique and different gameplay experience a setting or genre can offer. Isekai broadly is either about reshaping the setting or being the chosen one accumulating a harem.

I think you're fundamentally missing the point of what an isekai is.

There's value in recognizing the simplicity of the concept: It's you in another world. Altering the rules, changing the world, being the chosen one, accumulating a harem, the important point is your choices. How do you respond to your new life?

Pretty much everything can be emulated to a moderate level of success in D&D. I don't think "If it's not XYZ, why not just do it in D&D?" is a fair argument against anything at all.

[NichG]

Another form of isekai is the explicit metaknowledge type of isekai - you enter a story or plot you have prior knowledge of, and can use that to achieve a different outcome (often despite a lack of direct power in that subgenre).

[Tanarii]

2) An old school D&D remake. XP comes from treasure, and the progression is through a heist type approach. Using the lessons learned from the past several decades of gaming, let's build that into a system where we care as much about avoiding combat as winning it.

This one would be really cool if it wasn't just a D&D clone for classes. Ie not 4 classes of warrior guy, offensive spell guy, healer/warrior guy, and sneaky/trap lock guy.

Of course, this has been attempted many many times in a variety of formats, to one degree of success or another. For some very not-D&D-clone attempts: Dungeon World, Torchbearer, Blades in the Dark, and Forbidden Lands.

[Pauly]

I think you're fundamentally missing the point of what an isekai is.
.

I’ve been living in Japan for the last 10 years, I doubt I miss the point of Isekai. Isekai is a cry for help against the soul crushing conformity demanded of the Japanese school system and low level salaryman life.

There's value in recognizing the simplicity of the concept: It's you in another world. Altering the rules, changing the world, being the chosen one, accumulating a harem, the important point is your choices. How do you respond to your new life?

Pretty much everything can be emulated to a moderate level of success in D&D. I don't think "If it's not XYZ, why not just do it in D&D?" is a fair argument against anything at all.

There are reasons why being able to change the world, regardless of the specific process of how it’s done, is a core element of Isekai. The reasons lie within Japanese culture, and I don’t think I am able to elaborate further without risking running afoul of the forum’s rules.

Isekai is responding to a desire to change the rules people are being forced to play by IRL.

[Satinavian]

There are reasons why being able to change the world, regardless of the specific process of how it’s done, is a core element of Isekai.

I don't really agree.

Sure, power fantasies are common. But you don't need a special system to have a power fantasy nor the ability to change game rules. And yes, another common occurance is that modern knowledge or whatever relatively unimpressing abilities the character had is now suddenly appreciated, admired and opens many gates instead of disregarded as in the real world. But again, that is not really something to craft a system from nor does it require any rule-changing during play.

I mean, look at a couple of popular Isekais : Re:Zero, Konosuba, Ascendance of a bookworm, Vision of Escaflowne, Overlord, My second life as villainess, Shield Hero.

How would you design a system that would be a proper fit for all of them ? Are the similarities really something that lends itself to rules while the differences are where no rules are needed and GM fiat would work best?

And is there even a single example where the Isekaid character actively changing the rules of the world instead of using/exploting them is a prominent theme?

I wouldn't really want to use D&D for most of them. D&D is crappy with skills and knowledge (= things the character takes from his world), bad at crafting not combat related things (introducing/emulating real world convenience is also a common theme ) and its magic system is too specific to emulate all the setting dependent ones (which is most of them).


But i don't think a system particcularly for Isekai would work well or that "PCs changing the game rules" should be an important part for it.

The problem with generalist characters is that rpgs focusing on adventurers (like dnd or superheroes in general) are very much about niche protection. Plus it helps distinguish the cast. A 5 player group can have Johnny the master of the whip (fighter) Frank the wise cracking detective (the skill monkey) David the chemist (scientist) Sarah the mind reading dilettante and Jessica the invisible woman (both gimmicks) and all can contribute to the adventure.

Let's say they are investigating cult activity. Frank can do the bulk of investigating, Interrogating ect ect. While david can scan for fingerprints, while Jessica sneaks into guarded facilities to gather clues. Sarah can sense that somethings off about the residents and Johnny can deal with any cultists seeking to take them out in their sleep.

That's just one example.

As seen in another thread, actually enforcing one-trick-ponies is one of the reasons so many people have a problem with PF2.

And that matches my experience. Over many systems played and many groups my observation is that most players want to have a character who has competence in secondary and tertiary abilities as well. They don't need to excel in the same way as in their primary thing, but should still be useful and competent.

[LibraryOgre]

I briefly worked on a "run an association football club" setting for Savage Worlds. I haven't gone back to it in about a year, though.

[False God]

I’ve been living in Japan for the last 10 years, I doubt I miss the point of Isekai. Isekai is a cry for help against the soul crushing conformity demanded of the Japanese school system and low level salaryman life.

There are reasons why being able to change the world, regardless of the specific process of how it’s done, is a core element of Isekai. The reasons lie within Japanese culture, and I don’t think I am able to elaborate further without risking running afoul of the forum’s rules.

Isekai is responding to a desire to change the rules people are being forced to play by IRL.

Ironically, your stance on the subject comes off as soul-crushingly conformist. "Isekai must be this or its not isekai." Which makes me entirely uninterested in continuing talking to you.

[Pauly]

I don't really agree.

Sure, power fantasies are common. But you don't need a special system to have a power fantasy nor the ability to change game rules. And yes, another common occurance is that modern knowledge or whatever relatively unimpressing abilities the character had is now suddenly appreciated, admired and opens many gates instead of disregarded as in the real world. But again, that is not really something to craft a system from nor does it require any rule-changing during play.

I mean, look at a couple of popular Isekais : Re:Zero, Konosuba, Ascendance of a bookworm, Vision of Escaflowne, Overlord, My second life as villainess, Shield Hero.

How would you design a system that would be a proper fit for all of them ? Are the similarities really something that lends itself to rules while the differences are where no rules are needed and GM fiat would work best?

And is there even a single example where the Isekaid character actively changing the rules of the world instead of using/exploting them is a prominent theme?

I wouldn't really want to use D&D for most of them. D&D is crappy with skills and knowledge (= things the character takes from his world), bad at crafting not combat related things (introducing/emulating real world convenience is also a common theme ) and its magic system is too specific to emulate all the setting dependent ones (which is most of them).


But i don't think a system particcularly for Isekai would work well or that "PCs changing the game rules" should be an important part for it.
.

Isekai isn’t a power fantasy. It is a fantasy about changing the norms of the world, or at the very least not being required to conform. In a traditional power fantasy power is acquired to be successful in the world.
D&D, as do most western RPGs, is responding to the power fantasy. Changing the world is not part of the game for the PCs, it’s the GM who creates and changes the world..
An isekai RPG is responding to a different fantasy, which is that the character(s) is an agent for changing the world.

Ironically, your stance on the subject comes off as soul-crushingly conformist. "Isekai must be this or its not isekai." Which makes me entirely uninterested in continuing talking to you.

Well you have your own soul crushingly conformist take on what isekai must be. However I am open to continued discussion to get closer to a true understanding of what the core appeal of an isekaii RPG would be and how to implement it. I must admit I find it difficult to reconcile the proposition thar players should be free to and capable of changing anything they don’t l8me about the game with being an agent of soul crushing conformity. So a further explanation in your part would be appreciated much more than simply declaring yourself the winner then picking up your bat and ball and going home.

My take on isekai is rooted in my experience of living in Japan for an extended time. My perspective is therefore biased and may well be missing what appeal, if any, isekai as a genre has outside of Japan.

[Ionathus]

Me and my dragon.
The PC and a dragon are a symbiotic pair.
Example sources. Dragon riders of Oern. How to train your Dragon. The blonde chick with a shoulder dragon from GoT.
Issues/Problems. If you go full sized dragons you end up with the Mechwarrior problem of having a detailed “big” combat as well as a detailed regular size combat system. If the dragons are big how do they contribute to social/indoors events.
Shoulder dragons may be cool, but people want to ride big full size dragons in combat.
You could combine both and have shoulder dragons who transform into full sized dragons but that seems like trying to have your cake and eat it too and I see that it would be easy to lose immersion if you don’t get it perfect.

This sounds fun as hell.

If you've got the group dynamic for it, you can take this a step further: you're allowed to play either a dragon or a human, and most players at the table will pair up. Dragons are massive powerhouses but have no precision and massive social disadvantages (at least with the setting's humanoids). Humans (or humanoids) are squishy but also able to use tech, repair gear, and go inside buildings.

You might say "why would anyone choose to play the humanoid?" and that's a fair point but I think you could set it up in either the mechanics or lore such that it's a rewarding experience either way. Maybe dragons are second-class citizens, maybe they simply don't care about minutiae and consider the humans their pets that "do all the busywork," maybe the dragons are keepers of ancient lore and butt heads with these short-lived idiot mistake monkeys constantly. Dragon-human interactions in D&D are already a wonderful opportunity to play with ego and social dynamics, so imagine building the whole game around that!

I'm having a ton of fun brainstorming the mechanics here. You could have "rider mode" where the pair is together, and "separate mode" where they're split and fighting individually. Maybe if solo they both get a bonus to maneuverability, but they have lower defenses since they can't cover each other's weaknesses. When together, they have lower top speed and agility (gotta keep that useless human from falling off your back, after all), but they can also execute some sort of flashy combo system. Separating lets you "divide and conquer" and gives you each more actions, but if you join forces you get fewer actions with a bigger payoff and higher chance of success (sort of like rolling 2 attacks vs 1 attack with advantage in 5e).

The possibility of having an odd number of players isn't a bug, it's a roleplaying feature: play a dragon that lost their rider, or a young upstart rider who hasn't "earned their wings yet." There's no rule that says you can't swap riders, or have two humans ride a single dragon...maybe those scenarios open you up to new moves and options but come with their own drawbacks like poor synergy from a new pairing or being much slower thanks to the extra weight.

Other examples: I always think of Eragon as an extremely archetypal "D&D-style hero riding a dragon" example. It's derivative plot- and lore-wise, but it's also extremely straightforward and it sounds fun tbh, so I do think that's the closest to the vibe that many PCs would want to hit.

On the other end of the spectrum is something like the Temeraire series (dragonriders during the Napoleonic wars) which really took a nifty approach to this: dragons aren't limited to a single rider unless the dragon is, like, horse-sized. The captain is the one who has the "dragonrider's bond," but there's an entire crew if it can fit, and the biggest dragons have entire squadrons of bombers strapped to their underbellies and gunners strapped along their spines. You could do something creative with different sizes of dragons and their different breath weapons if you really wanted to introduce crunch.

At that point it basically becomes an airship building simulator though

[NichG]

My take on isekai is rooted in my experience of living in Japan for an extended time. My perspective is therefore biased and may well be missing what appeal, if any, isekai as a genre has outside of Japan.

Even Japanese isekai is broader than what you're describing though. Certainly there is isekai that aligns with what you're saying.

But just as much there's, for example, isekai that has strong elements of bragging about the superiority of a particular cultural value or innovation by contrasting it with a primitive background either uncritically or ironically. GATE and Outbreak Company are explicitly this, as well as that one about highschool prodigies that effectively take over a country with mayonnaise and idol culture. As well as the various isekai cooking genre ones, which are all sort of 'here's this demon god/dragon god/princess/etc who is incredibly impressed by hamburger steak or ice cream or tonkatsu or whatever' - Restaurant to Another World is one, I forget what the other one was... As far as playing it ironically, there's for example an isekai where the protagonist basically starts their own black company using stuff they learned from being abused by such companies as a salaryman, and another currently simulcasting where the protagonist having grown up in (and was killed by) a cult ends up having to start a cult.

You also get more traditional power fantasy ones which fixate on the protagonist having a personally potent 'cheat skill', nowadays usually explicitly lampshaded by the protagonist's dialogue, rather than on the protagonist bringing about change via transforming society. Stuff like the Spider isekai for example (Kumo desu ga nani ka) is more LitRPG/powercurve stuff mixed with a bit of zombie genre/survival game ethos of learning to discard regular morality. Along those lines, there's a lot which is about the transformation of the protagonist e.g. discarding some particular social norms or values, rather than transformation of the society in the world the protagonist enters. Overlord does have transformation of the world, but it also largely has this sort of protagonist transformation element as well.

There's also a variety of isekai which is basically 'real life is hard, so lets relax by playing easy mode' - protagonists who specifically don't want to change the world or society or even be noticed or involved in things, but want some kind of vacation. The "I've been killing slimes for 300 years" one for example. The most extreme versions of this have things that cause things to go well for the protagonist without the protagonist even having to act or engage with the situation or make a choice, not just passive powerup but even passive success. In particular, current season, there's an isekai where the protagonist's sister also gets isekai'd, ends up OP, and basically does everything for him but encourages him to take the credit.

And there's also as I mentioned upthread the subset of isekai which focus on exploiting metaknowledge, the fantasy of entering a known story. Either because its actually a known story where the protagonist came from (Next Life as a Villainess, Taming the Final Boss), or through groundhog day/timeloop types of things as in Re: Zero.

So yeah, I think there's a lot of people trying to express different things in this genre of which social change is certainly one, and general exhaustion with day to day life in the real world another. But you could do other things as well while still having an isekai feel.

[Quertus]

Have you tried adapting the Full Thrust wargame universe to an existing RPG? FT is probably the best space combat game out there and has an interesting fictional base. There was a conversion for making Traveller ships compatible with Full Thrust so if Traveller rocks your boat that may be up your alley.

I, sadly, haven't played either.

Hmmm... hmmm... bolting an RPG onto the best space combat game I have access to (yes, I did reverse that, on purpose, as the space combat game is the important part here)? I mean, I could even use D&D, and just say that the "Spelljammers" available / common / known in one crystal sphere (a crystal sphere which doesn't know the tech to get outside itself, and is far away from other spacefaring spheres) just happen to be completely different from the "standard" array, utilizing completely different rules, create some excuse like having everyone run an allied captain, and call it a day.

There's value in recognizing the simplicity of the concept: It's you in another world. Altering the rules, changing the world, being the chosen one, accumulating a harem, the important point is your choices. How do you respond to your new life?

Although I agree with the "choices" thing, even as kinda a general RPG principle, not just Isekai, to my mind, an Isekai character needn't be "me".

Another form of isekai is the explicit metaknowledge type of isekai - you enter a story or plot you have prior knowledge of, and can use that to achieve a different outcome (often despite a lack of direct power in that subgenre).

I... huh. I guess it is. I had thought of that as a factor present in some Isekai, while placing things where "changing an existing story" was the explicit intent in their own box. But, yeah, that's an artificial boundary that serves no good purpose.

[Pauly]

I, sadly, haven't played either.

Hmmm... hmmm... bolting an RPG onto the best space combat game I have access to (yes, I did reverse that, on purpose, as the space combat game is the important part here)? I mean, I could even use D&D, and just say that the "Spelljammers" available / common / known in one crystal sphere (a crystal sphere which doesn't know the tech to get outside itself, and is far away from other spacefaring spheres) just happen to be completely different from the "standard" array, utilizing completely different rules, create some excuse like having everyone run an allied captain, and call it a day.
.

Full Thrust’s previous editions are available for free download on their website.
https://shop.groundzerogames.co.uk/rules.html
There also is the FT Light available for download too, maybe have a tinker with that and decide if it’s a system you and your players could use.

[gbaji]

Specifically it's the "each person takes turns playing one mini game while everyone else goes and makes a sandwich" niche protection game play that's the biggest issue.

It wasn't really "each person" though. Just "the party decker". But yeah. We'd literally all walk out of the room and go eat food, hang out, watch some TV, etc, while the one player was "doing their thing".

I find Call of Cthulhu to be simultaneously too granular and not granular enough. Each time your skill goes up by one step, you get +1% chance of success, at most. That's too granular. Each time the difficulty of a task increases by one step, your odds of success are cut in half, or worse. That's not granular enough. Skill should take bigger steps, and difficulty should take smaller steps.

Skill going up "by one step" is a bit of a misleading statement though. Exp gains go by D10%, which is equivalent to going up by up to +2 in a D20 game (ie: pretty darn significant increases, but then again... death rate is an issue here). I haven't actually played the newer rules for CoC, but yeah, I can see how the difficulty levels are not so granular. But it's pretty easy to just apply -% difficulties instead if you want more granularity (so -20%, -40%, or whatever).

I regularly use a modified opposed skill rule for any percentile games I play. Just roll for both skills, and whomever makes it by the most percentage points wins. Easy. You can actually think of it as "how much you make your skill by becomes the difficulty -% the other person has to overcome". Whcih makes both difficulty *and* opposed skills effectively use the same rules. And it provides the same granularity all the way through the system.

Isekai isn’t a power fantasy.

...

An isekai RPG is responding to a different fantasy, which is that the character(s) is an agent for changing the world.

Except that in Isekai, the character *is* the player (or a version of themselves). So yeah. It's about the player fantisizing about haivng the power to change the/a world.

And is in stark contrast to other forms of RPG where the player fantisizes about playing someone else who has the power to <do various things which could include changing the world, or not>. It's the difference between imaginging that you are someone else living their own lives and doing their own things versus imagining that *you* are capable of living that life and doing those things.


How that difference manifests in terms of game design/operation is probably subject to some debate. But recognizing that key difference is probably pretty darn important to the process.

[False God]

Although I agree with the "choices" thing, even as kinda a general RPG principle, not just Isekai, to my mind, an Isekai character needn't be "me".

I guess I generally find most RPGs give you mostly false choices.

No, the Isekai character in question doesn't have to be you. But playing "a made up person" who then gets isekaied is IMO, little different from the basic adventure format. IMO, playing yourself is what would make the Isekai "genre" stand out, in particular I find it useful when playing with highly skilled, highly educated or very meta-knowledgable players. I can leverage their IRL knowledge to make in-game decisions instead of just having them "roll to see if your character knows that".

[Tohron]

Interestingly, the "Original" isekai TRPG would arguably be Arneson's Blackmoor campaign, which was the direct inspiration for the original D&D. So isekai TRPGs have been around for a while.

[Hrugner]

The world changing stuff just happens to be a feature of some isekai that's hard to model in most current ttrpgs because it has it's own power curve and the world levels up with you as part of the in world narrative. It's specific enough that it certainly wouldn't work for many isekai stories, but it would need it's own system. Metaknowledge, timeloop, John Carter/cheat power, isekai could fairly easily be modeled in existing games, so it makes sense not to spend too much time thinking about them. "In another world denying the call for several years" type stories could need expansive downtime rules to make not adventuring interesting, and could probably be built up with similar rules to the world changing type as you're trying to flex your power without changing the world or attracting attention.

What other isekai types don't work in the standard plot format of ttrpgs. Or, which ones would work well enough for the world altering types that we wouldn't need a new game for it?

[Easy e]

Interesting topic and one that needs better discussion. Here are some general thoughts:

- A game that focuses on Fairy Tales/Fables with a mix of humans and animal characters available could be cool.

- Something with an Ancient History bend like Greek Heroes of Myth, Early Imperial of Republican Rome, or something set in a time frame we do not hear too much about, like Napoleonic Europe and the Med could be fun or pre-WWI European spies.

Honestly, I feel like Urban Fantasy, Sword and Sorcery, Weird Wild West, Supers, Moderns, and Weird World War II is pretty well represented