D&D no Isekai

Hold the phone! Forget about making a medieval fantasy RPG like D&D awhile. I've an idea of a completely new genre of role-playing.

Ever heard of Isekai? It's a sub-genre of Japanese fiction (anime, manga, light novels, etc.) where a normal person is transported to another world (usually medieval fantasy). Usually the person has some sort of advantage including their understanding of modern medicine and technology or even having overpowered abilities they never had in real life. (Otherwise the hero would die in an unfamiliar fantasy world very quickly)

Examples: Sword Art Online, Overlord, World Customize Creator, The Rising of the Shield Hero, Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash, KonoSuba: God's Blessing on this Wonderful World, and plenty more.

So the idea for this RPG system is that players will play as themselves, but transported to a fantasy world. They probably (but not always) have some advantages which allow them to thrive in this new unfamiliar world and thus able to go on dangerous adventures. Every campaign, the fantasy world will work under different rules and cultures. So expect a lot of discovery and experimentation.

Lots of variation options means that I'll need a very flexible and rules-light system. I'm thinking checking out how Night's Black Agents varies it vampires. Character sheets can be as simple as writing a bit about yourself.

Some variation ideas:
1. Advantages (egs. video game qualities, P&P rpg qualities, specific powers, items from modern world)
2. Player's physical bodies (own body or a local person/monster)
2. World setting (MMORPG, generic fantasy, gothic horror, historic)
3. Magic and world physics rules (realistic, no guns,
4. Monsters


My housemate isn't too excited though. "Why would I want to play as myself? Don't I do that enough already?" Hahaha... gosh, that sounds like a good point.

Hrmmmmm.

Apparently, isekai stories are often a form of wish fulfillment because the protaganist has an overpoweringly huge advantage. I'm not sure how well that would work in a P&P role-playing game: conventional wisdom holds that players need to be challenged in order for the struggles to appear to be meaningful.

Ironically, I find quite a few people are essentially playing as themselves in most P&P role-playing games, personality-wise anyway.