Why do people find concept of mmo-rpg setting so appealing...

That and it makes it easy to write strict rules for your setting based on the most popular medium Japanese consume: video games.

Japans main exposure to western fantasy was through D&D and MMO's rather than direct contact with Tolkien. It's why JRPGs used to share most of the same plot, monster, and character archetypes. Basically for a lot of Japanese people these heavily structured fantasy worlds with precise rules for magic and such are what fantasy is supposed to look like. There are other cultural reasons as well.

All this then get re-exported back to the west because of weaboos.

I quite like this though. A lot of Japanese fantasy tends to be different from the usual tolken tropes that almost all western fantasy slavishly mimics. Orcs, Elves, Dwarves, oh my.

I have seen that a lot of Japanese stuff loves it's classical mythology, perhaps because all these old greek spirit of nature are somewhat similar to Shinto spirits as well.

Because it doesn't require much effort or thought.
It's pretty easy to balance an mmo setting, at least compared to coming up with your own magic and powers system with all the hows and whys, why-don't-they-just's that accompany it.
With an MMO you can say "It's because it's an MMO setting and WoW did it"

Disagree %110 percent. MMO anime exists so you can have a fantasy setting that breaks the fourth wall for easy comedy while simultaneously pleasing /a's autism for world coherence

I remember liking this movie. Worth watching nowadays?

Don't rewatch it, at least if you want to remember it as a good movie.

This makes more sense.

But it won't satisfy OP's rage boner.

It's mostly a power fantasy, since it provides a reasonable excuse to essentially put 'you' into the RPG.

Overlord is actually kind of an exception, since the MC by and large lacks the general appeal of other examples of the genre, since starts a loser, does nothing to escape his loser status, and then ends up as a sociopathic loser. The only people who actually develop are his minions.

>since starts a loser
Highly debatable. Having a job was literally a requirement for joining his guild.

I liked Grimgar

I usually can't stand shows of that kind and would find playing on a setting like that very boring

He had a job and nothing else, though.
He was a lifeless wage slave.
He was gainfully employed, but he had no hobbies or friends outside the game.

whatever happened to Dot Hack? It did the trapped in an MMO thing before it was cool.

Jeeze I remember that being particularly incomprehensible.

I think that had did it well because it didn't really Define itself all that well you know until the video games came out but by that point the main series was over that and it didn't really go into the playing the game aspect much it almost didn't need to be in a computer program it was almost here in this strange alternate universe where people and things breaking the rules of the game all the time

Overlord is basically DnD though not mmo.

Literally the first time I've heard of anyone actually going through with it.
The world is not seen through one lens you narrow-sighted git.

>he "big" advantage of a setting like that is that the players at the table are players IC
That's kind of lame IMO.
I mean, we're here to play pretend anyway.

>It did the trapped in an MMO thing before it was coo
so did Hunter x Hunter

Except in HxH it was only for one arc and didnt define the series

Because it was a dystopian shithole. Seriously the real world in overlord sucked balls.

Why does no one mention .Hack when video game anime is brought up?

>people should have job before they can engage in entertainment
>dystopia
Are you liberal or what?

Where did you get that? I understand you have a "times I've called random people liberal on the internet" quota to fill, but really?

I don't think .Hack ever enjoyed a large amount of popularity in the States.

I only ever saw it on TV at, like, midnight when I was still in elementary school and it didn't run for very long. High school library had the first four books or so but I could never find any more of it.

Because the people bringing up this question were not old enough to be here when it aired.

... so.. anyone here read MOGworld? If I was to ever do the "MMO" setting, I would have it like in MOGworld, where the main characters are actually in setting NPCs that are slowly realizing that they're merely created for another's amusement.

What? I don't know where you got this idea from. All I remember about the 'real world' when it was brought up in Overlord didn'y makke it sound to different from the current day. Although its mostly stuff about the game, like hint websites and paying real life money for good shit in the game. Or stuff about Flying squirrels comrades, like Touch me (Kamen Rider Paladin) had a wife and kids and looked like Sebas. The guy who created Shalltear was the younger brother of the creator of Mare and Aura who was a hentai voice actress. And other shit like that. Just because Momonga's life sucked IRL doesn't make it a dystopia.

He's talking about the chapters included with the BluRays, the ones with lines like "Momonga, are your cortical nanites running low? We wouldn't want you to start lagging."

Because it fucking sucked. I watched .hack SIGN as a kid, and it killed the concept for me for TEN YEARS.

Then I saw SAO and it was like coming home. If I had watched SAO as a 14-year-old, that show would have DESTROYED me. No joke.

The setting is easy because it makes it feel more like it you playing your character. So it may be more relatable, or just some shit.

As for why those shows are popular, shit taste mostly. Aside from Overlord, having a huge lich as the main character was a breath of fresh air. And that first episode gave me feels.

People want MMOs to be good, since the concept is awesome. Since they actually aren't they turn to fake MMOs instead.

But in my sci fi universe, everything is the product of a simulation played out by characters from my capeshit universe; the players aren't always privy to that fact, however.

>Overlord is basically DnD though not mmo
Did you mean accidentally add a "not" to your post?
It was literally a MMO that had just ripped off DnD.

It was specifically stated that people in the real world often needed to have artificial lungs implanted and the had to wear respirators outside since the air was absolutely lethal due to pollution from factory production and from the fallout of resource wars (in one of which a political party styled themselves after the Nazi party, just for reference on how bad things had gotten).

Also, people could hack your brain while you played VR games in order to steal company or government secrets, thus the government required surveillance at all times in order to insure it didn't happen.

Also, it was normal for companies to work their employees nearly to death though this isn't to different from Japan and China nowadays.

I couldn't really say why I like the concept, though the execution often falls flat by a combination of lack of consistency/worldbuilding and the endless stream of half-ass copycats out there.

Any recommendations besides overlord or konosuba?

>guy has autism
>wants to play pretend pretend
This should answer all of your questions.

Also this

Log Horizon was fun.

Politics, an interesting twist on the stuck in the MMO thing, a cool intro.

I kinda fell off the wagon for it, though. Exams happened and I never got around to finishing it so I can't tell you how (or even if) it ends.

As much as I hate anime, it's a good concept and provides a unique take on classic storytelling.
The problem is that due to the intrinsic meta of it all, it really only works as a book/film.

>Any recommendations besides overlord or konosuba?
Re:Zero is pretty good, and it's airing this season.

I wonder how hard it would be to run a game using a system similar to Overlord's. It hasn't even come close to being fully explained but from what's been laid down, it seems pretty interesting.

It's based on D&D but uses a Mana system rather than spell slots, just like the alternative rules in the BRB.

Class and Race systems also seem pretty creative, with players getting the option of leveling up their Racial class instead of their Class as is the convention. This gives the option of unlocking subRaces that often grant new powers/weaknesses while strengthening any that the race may have already had.

The World Class item system seems pretty cool. Certain lootable items would be completely game breaking, but were extremely limited in number: only one of each item existence and only 100 of these items in the entire game. The majority of these items were infinite use with a cool down, but 20 of these items were so powerful that they could only be used a single time before disappearing.

Neat ideas for any homebrew setting I'd say.

This totally isn't just a shameless bump, I swear.

.hack

>It's somewhat popular in anime
>You don't have to explain the world because it runs on game logic

That being said, I still don't see the appeal. I'm writing a novel about it, because people able to create their own worlds and leave reality is ripe with drama.

But why would I want to play a game where I play a game? It's just an extra layer of abstraction that makes immersion harder.

Because the dual reality provides different potential interactions.

A,B, C and D are friends in real life. A is a nerd girl, B is a nerd boy, C is a programmer guy, and D is a classy girl at school and doesn't usually play vidya.

B & C meet up in the full immersion MMO, and meet E, who is a warrior, but in really is actually D, who is indulging in a guilty pleasure and knows who B & C are. A shows up later, knowing who B is, but not C and "E".

Cue shenanigans.

>It was literally a MMO that had just ripped off DnD.

And the show is not set in the game.

Doesnt have anything to do with video games though.

Log Horizon, people ranting about SAO. Not the actual show, but some of the more vitriolic critiques are quite entertaining.

>a campaign about group of adventurers trying to survive in world where god-tier liches and demons run loose.

>not being a dragon dming a game of humans and homemakers.
>not having uour dragon group have to roleplay being humans in a modern world.

You sicken me.

There is already a dmpc called momon the black too. It runs off dnd rules as well.

The entire setting is a ready made scenario/module.

It was at least in the start based in an MMO that was based largely on D&D.
Then the setting was shifted to a world that operated on almost the exact same mechanics as the game, and as such almost the same mechanics as D&D.

In terms of the discussion, I think the new world could also be considered to be based on an MMO just as well as it's based on D&D, considering that the game it is seemly copying was a mixture of the two.

If the small number of changes that the new world brought make it not an MMO world, then the way the MMO game originally altered a few of D&D's rules and systems makes neither based on D&D.

>DNPC is an op as fuck twink with BSed stats
Like pottery, Sasuga Maruyama-sama

Konosuba is pretty fucking great.

SAO is really the only terrible terrible one

Link? I'd prefer not to sift through the boring reviews if you know of some really fun ones.

The new world didnt have DnD style magic until MMO people introduced it. Before that they had wild magic that ran off souls.

>adventurers that have no idea what's going on poof into existence there
>have to survive in harsh world full of iron fisted emperors, retarded kings, genocidal "holy" men, strong monsters on roads and in forests, annoying NPCs trying to steal the spotlight with DMPC actually succeeding at this, lich necromancers summoning eldritch horrors while being followed by equally powerfull demons, vampires, bugs, elf children and more.
>they encounter MMO-related stuff that are deemed normal by natives.

Sounds like an interesting campaign.

There is a part where momonga tries to drain the xp of some soldiers but instead drains their souls.

Dnd often uses xp for spells.

They may not be equal but there seems to be some correlation.

Even SAO is at least ok for the first 14 episodes. After that though it's a nose dive.
Log Horizon first season was also pretty good but they went full retard in the second and killed it for me.

I know that the new world originally ran of wild magic, I was more saying that it by them time Ainz and Co. showed up, it had already began to closely resemble the MMO (and thus D&D) as at least 600 years had already passed since the introduction of tiered magic and Ygg players.
Seeing as how we only ever see the new world in this current state, it's not a stretch to call it a game world as we've only seen it work off the mechanics of one for the most part.

>Even SAO is at least ok for the first 14 episodes
It's more, like, two. Or 1,5. There's a massive mood swing from thrilling deathgame to standard action adventure anime.

It was way more than 600 years. The greed lords were there over a thousand years ago and they dropped the collective difficulty of the world down to noob levels before self destructing.

Hm? While I can't relate to the concept, there's some, at least, theoretical worth to roleplaying yourself or someone similar in a fictional scenario. That worth may not be enough to try it, but at a minimum it saves you any need for infodumping at the beginning.

Your enjoyment of this stuff will mostly depent on how much you dislike the tropes the show uses and how much you know about MMOs. I don't know many of the top of my head, but after some clicking around:

Some guy who runs too many channels:
>youtube.com/watch?v=3uON7ANNOi4
>youtube.com/watch?v=CHhebk70xRo&list=PLw6UBKuaMyFANdpg4H8DRLdOHSTIaZTys
>youtube.com/watch?v=6n1uYr-Eya4
If you already hate the show or the standard Light Novel formula in general, here's a lot of content. Even has a bit of the games, which are utterly terrible.

First things I could google that seem somewhat decent:
>youtube.com/watch?v=Vh0qWtYmAjs
>youtube.com/watch?v=WlVId8QvjPg

And the abridged version, which is handles pretty much every aspect better than the original. Not really people hating on it, but it's still a great mockery.
>youtube.com/watch?v=V6kJKxvbgZ0&list=PLuAOJfsMefuej06Q3n4QrSSC7qYjQ-FlU

>I know that they like it, I just don't understand why.
I don't know about SoA but Overlord is the story of a fatherly Lich taking over the world, what is there to not like?

>Monsters drop little bags of gold upon slaying
>XP is a known and quantifiable factor
>People freeze for a second or two when entering a new building
Shit would be eerie.

Wild Magic is also similar to the magic in Ygg that ran of EXP rather than mana.

Considering that the drained life force of resurrected adventures manifests as what seems to be a reduction in levels, it's not a stretch to think that in the new world life force is equivalent to Ygg's experience points.

If one considers the world from such a perspective, then the strength of one's soul equivalent to the accumulated life forces they've collected via adventuring and killing monsters, similar to how leveling worked in Ygg.

This would mean that life force/soul-based Wild Magic would be similar if not identical to EXP based spells from Ygg.

The Six Great God's of the Slane Theocracy appeared before the Eight Greed Kings, as the last surviving Great God (The God of Death, who was likely undead and thus able to survive the 100 year period between the arrival of the Six Great Gods and the Eight Great Kings) was killed by them, thus making them the first Ygg players we know of to enter the new world.
They arrived roughly 600 years ago.

>The greed lords were there over a thousand years ago and they dropped the collective difficulty of the world down to noob levels before self destructing.

Source? Sounds like absolute headcanon based on what has already been stated.
The only thing that they did was steamroll Demihuman and Heteromorphic races in such a way as to ensure the survival of Humanity, and it's never exactly stated how powerful those races were beforehand compared to the YGG standard.

Considering that the 13 Heroes could beat the Demon Kings (leftover Eight Greed Kings NPCs), I doubt that the Greed Kings were too high of a level.

Are you going to tell me next that Fluder is Lvl 80 or PDL is Lvl 120?

At least in the anime, it never really goes anywhere. We have a little bit of setup with how a little bit of screwing with NPC data utterly wrecks them once they become real people, but then they don't develop so could have just stayed as soullles automatons.

There is an entire arc where daddy lich is trying to teach them to be better people.

Or did you never read the novel?

He did say 'at least in the anime' so he probably never went any deeper into the novels, as the first season only adapts the first what, three volumes?

I didn't, and I said so.In that case it's a fault of the anime for not adapting the story in a way that fits the medium's limitations.

Nah the anime just never got to that point yet.

And it never will
Thanks Madhouse.

i don't really like mmo-rpg setting, What i like is the "transported to a FANTASY world" part. But then again if you only got transported. What's the point if you don't have any powers? THAT is where mmo-rpg (or any game really) comes in, so we are reincarnated INTO our game character TO fantasy world. That's it. (that's also one of the reason i play CYOA. There's sooo many posibilites

I did a game like that where we cut between VR/Real World and found clues about crazy shit going on IRL in the VR setting - the VR setting was actually another dimension and the barriers between worlds were breaking down.

>why do people find concept of mmo-rpg setting so appealing?
Cuz people who grew up on RPG video games and fantasy grew dissapointed in these genres.
Aside from quality D&D session - nothing can be better than good RPG\New World setting novel.
We need to develop AI now.
Then taught it D&D and set up a MMORPG with AI as DM.

so my point is, if you only get transported to a fantasy world WITHOUT powers you're gonna get fucked real quick (even subaru from re:zero who only have power to "revive himself" still get fucked pretty bad) that's why a lot of NEETs and Hikkis love this genre so much, not only because the fact that the main character is strong so that they can self-insert into them, they also can relate their chuuni-imagination characters into them like the fact that their main character is not your typical mc where they are not dense, heck make it so that your main character is an edgy teenager where he just kills and obliterates people with his power.

I don't really like mmo-rpg setting, What I like is the "transported to a FANTASY world" part.
That's a good point. You could probably argue that the reason this type of "escape your current world" cliche is popular in Japan is because their culture ridiculously stressful and there's so much pressure is on you from school to work.
I imagine any form of escape from it is welcome, espcially if in said world you're some powerful guy in control of his own fate.

It could be that a similar phenomenon could be happening in the US/UK, but who knows.

You could write a twist on that old premise, where the game world is actually real in another dimension and sold as VR to fund the villain's scheme to bring the monsters into our world.
I've seen that in a tabletop RPG. I'm guessing it's almost as common as playing the trope straight by now.

Never done it, though I could see some potential if you were constantly in and out of the virtual MMO, and the actions within the online MMO had impact on the real world drama.

Particularly, as with most of these plots, there's some possibility of getting killed in the virtual MMO due to some bug/exploit, and there's a murder mystery.

Some russian book series is about that exact thing, it was pretty dumb from what I remember.
The 'transported to another world' or isekai(world transfer) as they call it is mostly done by amateur writers on a fanfic site. Some get picked up for anime, which is a very niche directed medium in the first place. It mostly still appeals to teenagers who are always looking for some fantasy where they matter and can do things instead of feeling like the powerless children they really are.
Overlord is special in that it was made for manchildren. The whole story is about a guy who doesn't think he can handle his position but does amazingly despite his worries. Its the ultimate fantasy for the people who never really graduated out of the "I'm a powerless child" stage and hit their 30s

I bet touch me was a cunt like you.

Ulbert, pls go and stay go

i agree with you, in this world we are powerless, but in isekai we can do everything we want (assuming you are transported as your in-game body) want to bring peace to the world? no big deal, want to bring destruction instead? just snap your finger want to demolish slaves? just say the word, i just hope everyone in this world who wants to go to fantasy world REALLY go to that fantasy world, like when they die they just be "reincarnated" there, heck make it right now so that we won't wait any longer.

>genocidal "holy" men,
If you ignore the whole kill all non-human species thing, they're actually pretty nice.

Play to live by d rus. And the books rock you cunt.

You'll have to excuse my taste I didn't grow up in russia idolizing people who wear jerseys and squat on sitwalks with "water" nearby.

There is nothing wrong with the books other than a bit of russia wank but it also paints russia pretty fucking badly.

>feeling like the powerless children they really are

That`s just reality though user. Even if they didn`t feel that way it doesn`t change the fact that they are powerless. Then again, I don't think people have to be immature, escapist, and delusional about their place in reality to enjoy a piece of fiction.

The fuck is a sitwalk?

>Why do people find concept of mmo-rpg setting so appealing?

ask the design team for 4e D&D lol

It was incredibly boring, I get its a character driven story but the pacing was awful and I'm pretty sure there were entire episodes dedicated to farming and questing but no actual fights. I don't know why people want to bring it up other than it was one of the firsts to try "trapped in a MMO" but it was so poorly executed and paced.

Also it had the weakest fanservice

>mostly done by amateur writers on a fanfic site
How many D&D modules have you read and played? Shadowrun? Whitewolf?

Yeah, it's not the deepest thing in the world, but by RPG standards, it's more nuanced than most, and the main thing is whether it's going to be any fun for the group.

I'll give you that it is more than a little half-assed when storytellers or GMs start lifting worlds from Chinese cartoons verbatim, but virtual world within a virtual world is as valid a plot as any.

I would do the "trapped in an mmo" setting mostly because the anime a are such huge letdowns and I feel I could do it better.