[OOC] Suddenly, My Favorite MMORPG has Become Real?! — A Log Horizon-inspired RP

[FujiwaraPhoenix]

It has been five years since the release of Emerald Odyssey in Japan. Lauded highly for its engaging gameplay, story, and high level of customization coupled with an affordable price and multi-platform integration, this MMO has made a stake for itself in the ever-shrinking PC game market of the nation. And this day, of course, marked the release of their newest expansion.

With the maintenance slated to start at midnight, many players were busy handling whatever needed to be handled before the servers went down. But as the clock ticked down and the minutes passed by, an odd phenomenon began to occur—players simply began to disappear without a trace. The number was small enough to warrant minor concern, but in the end every one of those missing now was simply marked as such.

And life went on.

---

Of course, those who had disappeared had not simply been 'erased from existence', but had instead been transposed into the world of Emerald Odyssey—within the bodies of their characters, no less. With no clue what had just occurred, these former players must now come to terms with their new situation and carve their own path from here on.

---

There's not much else to really say about this, when you think about it; it's a Log Horizon-style RP, which in other words is simply an extension of the isekai genre. Surprising, I know.

The RP itself will run with, ideally, mid-level characters (despite the talk about a new expansion in the opener), and will be co-GMed by me and @VitaVitaAR. Now, for a quick rundown of the relevant mechanics for the RP...

In terms of skills, we're probably going to be fairly lenient so long as things fall within the realm of 'feasible for a given class at a given level'. Doesn't hurt to run things by us first, though.

Player-created NPCs do exist, and like in Overlord, anything written about them has thus become reality. Or something like that.

The relative technology level of the things in the game are about on par with medieval Europe reaching into Renaissance-era things like cannons. There is one exception to this rule thus far, which will be elaborated upon when it becomes relevant in story.

Menus and hammerspace inventories do exist for the sake of convenience. This includes things like a chat button, call function, and even silly things like achievements.

In any case, here's a form if people want to get started early.

Form

Name (Former):
Name (Character):
Age:
Appearance:
Character Level:
Character Class:
Personality:
Abilities:
Skills:
Backstory:
Other:

Any questions? Pop in and ask away.

[FujiwaraPhoenix]

@VitaVitaAR@Rin@Saarebas@Vulkan@DocRock@Bone Father@Rabidporcupine@KoL
Here we are.

[VitaVitaAR]

Co-GM reporting again!

[Rin]

Working on my ditzy sword-y demongirl, hopefully she'll be done before this actually starts!

[DocRock]

Present and accounted for. Dragonoid Artificer will be hopefully ready within six hours, still working on ideas in my head. Do you want us to put the unapproved sheets here in OOC, or just PM them?

[FujiwaraPhoenix]

Either or is fine.

[Rabidporcupine]

So what server is this on? Because I think I remember them all being connected somehow, but the country you start in means some classes and stuff are different. Like... I think there's a thing where most places have the pirate class, but in Japan it's replaced by Samurai? It might not have been pirate, but I know there were a bunch of region specific class replacements, and I don't wanna accidentally pick one of the wrong ones.

[FujiwaraPhoenix]

@Rabidporcupine: I think I mentioned 'inspired' but not 'directly analogous to' Log Horizon.
So don't worry about that. Assume an entirely new game, with an entirely new world removed from anything in Log Horizon.

This includes skills, classes, etc.;

[Rabidporcupine]

Ooooohhhh, ok. Don't know how I missed that bit actually, because now I can see how you've said that pretty much everywhere...

[Vulkan]

I have to admit, i've been intrigued by the genre, but i've never actually watched any Isekai anime. (unless you count Sword Art Online Abridged)

This might be a challenge.

[Milim]

I'm interested if there's still room

[FujiwaraPhoenix]

Yeah, there's room.

Edit: SAO Abridged works better if you've seen how bad the original is IMO, but it shouldn't be too bad.
I'd still say Log Horizon s1 is worth a watch if you have time. It holds up well quality-wise.
Don't touch s2. It doesn't.

[DocRock]

This is a bit of a WIP, mostly because I'd like feedback. Did my best to adapt the Artificer class to the setting of the MMO, made Dragonborn a Dragonkin(And a cash shop item, if that's fine), if pictures are needed for Meg and Chris, I can try and get them. I actually lowkey based Meg on a CC from another series, at least appearance wise. While she's a hunter currently, may change her to a bard. Didn't know if we needed a space for items, but if we do, I'll add that later. Artificers are basically magical crafters and inventors, their board counterpart has some fun inventions, like folding boats(aka a small box that can turn into two types of boats, a small row boat I think, and a larger sailing vessel), or night vision goggles(enchanted stuff). I'm not that indepth with Log Horizon themed stuff, but I had a friend who knows Log Horizon(Bone Daddy in fact), help a bit. I'll take this upper bit out for the final draft.

Name (Former): Christian Light
Name (Character): Indiana Jones(an inside joke on his part, due to his love of adventuring, and now he's stuck with it)
Age: 22
Appearance: Standing at an imposing seven feet due to his race of Dragonkin, Indiana was presumably a fire dragonkin, due to his red scale color, with a toothed snout and small, yet free moving eyes in his skull. He often wore traveling clothes, and while having horns, often tried to perch a fedora atop his head, one of the few times he bought an item that had almost no direct benefits in gameplay for personal appeal. He almost always has a crossbow handy, and various assorted items ready for usage, but thanks to the storage system, isn't usually visible.
Character Level: 40
Character Class: Artificer
Personality: A kind hearted player who despite his fearsome appearance, had a love for helping others. Whereas some who went his route did so for the power that came with being able to craft valuable magical items, he did it out of a love for adventure, to aid others. Why charismatic and confident in the game, this hides a nervous fellow, who was always nervous about fitting in, and in part took a path to stand out to inspire others. Studious and observant, his tendency to binge read information makes him both a valuable source of data, and a dangerous foe due to his extensive knowledge. While most players will just run in and slash, Chris will carefully investigate his surroundings, looking for hidden monsters, doors, or treasures. Or traps. He makes mental notes, and will, if able, leave markers for other players to know where to not step, or where hidden enemies are. Always check the ceiling, never know what's up there.
Abilities:
Dragon's Breath - A racial skill that allowed the player to breath an element tied to their race's heritage. In Indy's case, it was traditional flames, in a spread like pattern. However, it could only be used once a day.
Dragonscale - Takes reduced damage due to his dragonic nature. Unless its a weak spot, then its normal damage.
Identify - A basic spell that allows one to identify an item of a magical nature, its akin to appraisal.
Detect Magic - An omnidirectional spell that tells a user if any magic is present in an area, can be used to detect magical items, or opponents with magic, or hidden spells.
Other abilities will be implemented as needed or thought up(Not limiting myself here now, so much as I am just moving carefully, no need to be super crazy all at once).

Skills:
As a more hybrid-esque class, Artificers have a skill tree that revolves around the production of items, magical or not, but primarily magical. Combining features commonly found in crafting and artisan related classes, a good Artificer benefits from careful resource management, and careful time management. Not recommended as a class for beginners, or casual players, or for the more aggressive playing style of some. The Artificer takes their time, and as such, are seen as a valuable commodity in the game's economy, due to the ability of high level artificers to make incredibly rare and powerful items. Artificers are most commonly found in hub areas, but some can be found in the wilderness, seeking out dungeons or areas overlooked for rare items to add to their collection. While incredibly valuable, they aren't good for direct combat, instead relying on ranged combat or simple weapons, and are best when supporting a tank type class, or as the loot carrier in a party. While unclear what would happen with them in the new expansion, the adventurous nature of Artificers, and their overall usefulness as crafters, would likely benefit.

Backstory:
An American player, who moved to Japan as part of his studies, and was part of Heaven's Door, a crafting guild dedicated attaining status as one of the top guilds in the game via various trades. An aspiring archeologist in the outside world, and a college student in his final year, Chris was a lore fanatic, digging into the game's secrets whenever new information came out, using his love for exploration to roam the world, whether by himself or with others. While Dragonkin weren't as common as other players, due to being in part, seen as "ugly" by most, Chris's own love for dragons, especially the western types drew him to the often overlooked type. Mix in his love of adventure, and it explains his pick of the more recently added artificer. In part why he named himself Indiana Jones. He was frugal with his ingame resources, only buying accessories he felt were really needed, though it wasn't unheard of him to spend a lot of game currency on rare magical items or components, partly making him a lower ranked member of the guild, despite being the valuable Artificer class. He tended to keep to himself even with the guild, often spending long times away, with only one or two other members tagging along. But those were his friends, who he cherished, and took care of. He often gave them the magical items he made, preferring the support role, due to a slight aversion to extreme violence. For him, it wasn't about being the best, but about enjoying the journey along the way, and a small blog he ran when not playing, chronicled his experiences from just going out and enjoying the world the developers had crafted, seeking out the lesser visited areas, even if it meant hours of work just to get the perfect picture.

As the hours ticked down towards the servers going down to add in the new update, Chris had returned his character to his workshop at the Guild Headquarters, for safety reasons, adding finishing touches to an NPC he'd been working on incase he ever had to go out by himself again, as admittedly, the long hours aloe did in fact, bother him, having no one else to share them with in real time, even if a creature he had made, as opposed to a friend, was that person. It didn't bother him, perhaps a clue to his own aloofness, or his desire for well, a sibling. That was the curse of an only child, let alone a stranger in a foreign land. So he had created a hunter NPC elf named Meg, after another game character, or at least their nickname, and as the time slipped away that night, he had turned from working on her skill tree, racial traits, and equipment, to personality. It was easy enough to code in the character's personality to be a bit of a big sister type figure, but not in the aggressive "I'm going to beat the crap out of you if you don't behave," but more the "We're in this together, so let's get going." A fellow explorer in other words. He had no idea just what was waiting around the corner for him, for while he was aware of the strange bug, due to commentary in the chat rooms, he had paid it no mind, chalking it up to a random bug that would be fixed come the new expansion. And such things always happen to other people, right?

Other:
Chris, despite not being one to spend resources where they were not "needed", decided to invest time, patience, and resources into making his NPC Meg, perhaps a hint to his own occasional sense of loneliness. Meg, being an elf he programmed to be like well, a friend and a sister. So imagine his surprise when she came to life, and started playing the part of a sister. His extensive knowledge of the game's lore and inner workings, and exporative nature means he's been almost everywhere a level forty player can go, and well, he's gathered information from others. While unaware of what's to come, that knowledge is going to come in handy later.

[FujiwaraPhoenix]

@DocRock: Well, if it's feedback you want, it's feedback you'll get. Lessee...

I'd recommend reading the form out loud to catch any grammatical or spelling errors, but let's dig into the form itself.

1. Japanese server, American player? I do believe proxies are a thing, but I guess it's on us for not implying that there were global servers. If you can come up with justification (e.g. transfer student or study abroad or something), it's fine.
2. You can get away with being relatively vague in regards to what a character can or cannot do in terms of abilities or skills. Hell, I'm expecting a lot of people to make stuff up on the fly, so no need to explicitly limit yourself to what you have there. It's fine to be vague.
(Besides, MMO skill trees are giant. No need to make it a list, basically.)
2.5. I think I'd consider 'investigation' a personality trait more than a skill, but details.
3. You can cut out most of the stuff after the character gets chucked into the game world and use that as an intro instead. No need to place that into the backstory when it isn't really 'backstory' as much as it is current events.

That's my 2AM two cents.

Edit: Right. No cash shop races. That's NG. I'd appreciate if you could tweak that.

[Rabidporcupine]

One more question before I start my cs, was Emerald Odyssey a vrmmo, or just a normal computer one? Because I'm planning a good ol' orc battle chef, but I want to know if the food they made was just an item on a computer game, or a virtual reality (anime style virtual reality, of course) item that a pc could actually eat and taste?

[VitaVitaAR]

@Rabidporcupine: Regular MMO, not VRMMO.

[Rabidporcupine]

@VitaVitaAR
Nice, then this'll be a whole new adventure, filled with cool fantasy ingredients!

[Rabidporcupine]

Also, seeing as this isn't actually Log Horizon, I'm one hundred percent saying my guy watched it and therefore has some ideas on how he can go about this, like the whole capturing animals to butcher them properly instead of killing them for drops.

[DocRock]

@DocRock: Well, if it's feedback you want, it's feedback you'll get. Lessee...

I'd recommend reading the form out loud to catch any grammatical or spelling errors, but let's dig into the form itself.

1. Japanese server, American player? I do believe proxies are a thing, but I guess it's on us for not implying that there were global servers. If you can come up with justification (e.g. transfer student or study abroad or something), it's fine.
2. You can get away with being relatively vague in regards to what a character can or cannot do in terms of abilities or skills. Hell, I'm expecting a lot of people to make stuff up on the fly, so no need to explicitly limit yourself to what you have there. It's fine to be vague.
(Besides, MMO skill trees are giant. No need to make it a list, basically.)
2.5. I think I'd consider 'investigation' a personality trait more than a skill, but details.
3. You can cut out most of the stuff after the character gets chucked into the game world and use that as an intro instead. No need to place that into the backstory when it isn't really 'backstory' as much as it is current events.

That's my 2AM two cents.

Edit: Right. No cash shop races. That's NG. I'd appreciate if you could tweak that.

@PKMNB0Y

Alright thanks, tbh, I was writing it at about one am myself, and rushing(since at the time I had to get off early), so if I did overlook some spelling or grammar errors, whoops. I can fix up the skills, and change stuff that are implied or outright stated as cash shop to normal stuff. I can also slip investigation into personality, and go for transfer student route. Same for removing the bit at the end about arrival. Anything else? I'll make the changes when I get back from my winter term class, early morning college courses are painful.

[Rabidporcupine]

Ok, so here's my guy! I just wanna explain right now that, while his goal was to play a villain for fun, he's gonna abandon that pretty much immediately in the shift, probably try to rebrand and change his guild into one of monster hunting battle chefs so no one starves to death, and the food doesn't suck like it did originally in the anime. Also I know I kind of made some assumptions with the games fantasy metals, but I'll change them if you want. And yeah, just let me know if anything else sucks and needs to be changed!

Orc Battle Chef

Name (Former):
Igarashi Kaito

Name (Character):
Danongorf

Age:
Twenty Four

Appearance:

Not obvious in the picture, but his character model is quite big, at like 7'5.

Character Level:
50

Character Class:
Summoner

Personality:
Kai is a relatively friendly person, easygoing and friendly to just about everyone he comes across. It takes a hell of a lot to stress the guy out, and he is quite capable of relaxing and enjoying himself even under high pressure situations, which has served him well in his real life job as a chef. When he does get serious or upset, he has a tendency to go very quiet, usually shutting himself off from other people unless he is particularly devastated.

Of course, he has so far portrayed himself quite differently during his time in Odyssey, due to entering the game with the intention to play a Dark Lord character. True, this was also essentially done with the idea of making more fun for other players by making an unofficial dungeon, but with the exception of the small inner circle of the guild he created for that very purpose, he forces himself to play the part of a ruthless, cruel king. He still loves to ham his performance right up of course, but other than that, he acts quite cold.

Abilities:
Summon Phantom Soldier
The general minion spell available to non-necromancer summoners, summoning a weak suit of phantom armour to serve as a basic soldier. Available to summoners as early as level one, but can still follow simple orders, and have a reputation as a good 'worker ant' unit even at high levels.

Summon Fire Wyvern
Allows Kaito to summon a fire breathing wyvern, which can function both as a mount or as a follower. A good mid-level flying mount, capable of melee combat and fire breath attacks.

Summon Giant Toad
Summons an intelligent, horse-sized toad, which has a variety of water based magic attacks as well as a few melee attacks. One interesting feature of this spell is that the toad levels up alongside the summoner, gaining new, stronger spells in the process.

Summon Carbuncle
A targeting spell which summons a floating crystalline entity. The carbuncle attaches itself to the target, all magic, both positive and negative, as long as the level of the caster is equal to or lower than the level of the carbuncle target. Higher level spells are reduced by a percentage equal to the reverse of the number of levels the attacker has over the summoner up to 50%. For example, if Kai is level 50 and the attacker is level 51, the attack power will be reduced by 49%. If the attacker is level 99 though, the attack will only be reduced by 1%.

Summon Golem
Summons a large, permanent golem created for a large chunk of magic. These constructs fight and defend the summoner from threats, as well as performing a variety of other tasks depending on the summoners commands. In order to summon a golem, the summoner must sacrifice ten units of the material they wish to create it from. For example, to summon a stone golem, all you need to do is give up ten stones. However, for the higher level golems, like adamantine or mithril, the summoner has to be willing to give up ten of some of the rarest, most useful materials in the game. However, the more powerful the materials sacrificed, the greater the reward, and adamantine golems can be some of the most dangerous non-boss enemies in the game to any who would pick a fight with them. Sadly, in order to keep them from being too overpowered, golems are only summoned with the ability to move in a seventy meter radius from the spot they awaken in. In order to make sure a ridiculously rare golem can be recovered without being lost forever, they can be 'put to sleep', at which point players can begin the long, difficult task of moving the golem to a new location for them to 'reawaken' in.

Lesser Mirror Soldier
A target spell that, when fired at a creature, creates a silvery, transparent copy of them. However, in the case of Lesser Mirror Soldier, all stats are halved from the original entity, making it far less difficult to deal with one on one than True Mirror Soldier, which copies the entity exactly. It can also be fired at humanoid monsters, in which case a generic reflection will be summoned, with skills that have been (usually crudely) translated into PC skills.

Skills:
Cooking
Being a chef in the real world, Kai naturally has a deep interest in cooking systems in any game he plays. Naturally, the extremely versatile cooking system in Emerald Odyssey dragged him in immediately. He has put even more time into burning through that skill tree than he has with his villain plans, coming dangerously close on more than one occasion to just giving up the demon lord thing and opening an in game restaurant for fun. At this point, considering how high he has raised this skill, one could almost consider his class a 'battle chef' rather than just a summoner.

Carpentry
Along with Masonry, Carpentry is one of the main skills used to build player made structures. Due to his plans of creating his own player-made questline with him as the villain, he took this skill to begin making a big bad citadel for his big bad guild. However, he hasn't put as much into carpentry as he has masonry, as the citadel he is building would mostly be stone.

Masonry
As mentioned above, Masonry is one of the other main skills that let players build their own structures. Kai has put more into this skill, as he plans to build a lot more with stone than with wood.

Logistics
A rather boring skill tree, Logistics allows a player to organize and command npcs in non-combat situations, such as building and trade. It is largely seen as a flavor skill, but it is handy when creating and maintaining player structures, so Kai has invested into it despite not being really into, or even all that good at it in the real world.

Tactics
The tactics skill tree allows Kai to give commands to small groups of npcs in a combat situation, largely using premade formations, rally points and certain specific action commands. The number of options grow as he progresses through the tree. He can also use these commands on PCs, in which case the players in question will see what he wants them to do, but it is up to them if they want to follow his plans.

Backstory:
Igarashi Kaito is an avid gamer and chef, currently living in Osaka. Even before getting into Emerald Odyssey, he'd grown up with an interest in games, despite being kinda limited due to growing up in a relatively small town in the mountains. Therefore, to even convince his parents to let him get games during the early days, he had to make them think they had something they could 'teach' him... Considering how much he liked food, he decided he'd pick go for a few with cooking.

Sadly, his clever plan to fool his parents ended up backfiring, and the poor soul ended up actually getting interested in cooking, sealing his new, dark path...

Over the years, his interests in both gaming and cooking only grew, until he decided to leave home and move to the big city of Osaka at the age of twenty, getting a job working at a pretty decent ramen restaurant. It was also around this time that he got into Emerald Odyssey, and after seeing a few interesting anime with particularly good villains, along with having recently consumed almost every Legend of Zelda game over the course of a few months, he decided it might be fun to come into this and be the bad guy. Not just some small scale PK bandit though! No, he was gonna go in full force! He was going to become the big bad guy, and if he managed to pull this off, he might even be able to make it some kind of cool unofficial questline for other players! And so, after reading up a little on building in the game, he got to work. He started a guild, which consisted of literally just him for a full year, until he managed to scout a few other players who liked the idea and put a nice little fortress together. This eventually grew, and along with the creation of a few mindless npc minions, he had a decent villainous castle on his hands!

Of course, despite his goal, Kaicouldn't quite manage to avoid the extensive cooking system the game offered, and by the time of the shift, he had put even more effort into maxing out the skill tree than he had into building his castle.

Other:
Did I mention he likes cooking?