MC trapped in a video game world. I can't figure out how to make this work

[UltimaBahamut93]

I was working on a novel idea that takes place in a world that operates with "rules" like you would find in a tabletop rpg. Things like classes and stats and levels exist as a common thing in the world. At first I wanted the world to operate like this, but I've been having ideas about revealing halfway through the story that the protagonist is in a video game and that everyone he has been interacting with are actually npcs (he's the only real person in the game world). I'll explain why further down in the post but I'm having a hard time coming up with how it works that he's trapped in a game world. Most litrpg's or anime that I've seen that have something similar is that the MC died and is reincarnated into an actual other world (isekai'd), or it just is not explained at all. The questions I have are: How is his consciousness trapped? What happened with their body in the real world? How does the world/other people react to this? These things aren't important to the story but I feel like I should have an answer for them. I'm thinking of having it that he is in a coma and his mind is somehow currently connected to this game world. I admit I don't 100% love this idea but it's the best one I have come up with. Any ideas or suggestions?




(Why I'm thinking of changing the original design of a game-like world to an actual game)
There is a main theme I want for this story of running away from reality in fear vs facing the difficulties of life with hope. The MC is a selfish and manipulative jerk who only ever increased his luck stat so that he could have a carefree life that required no effort and he could just coast and succeed. When it is revealed that he is in fact in a video game it is revealed that he had a very poor life who even hating life and himself, and used video games as an escape from reality. Now he is literally escaping reality. He doesn't want to return to reality because it was too hard for him. But even here in what he thought would have been a dream come true, he still has to face the truth that he is afraid of living and failure, hence why he wanted to put all his points into Luck to automatically succeed with no effort. He can run away from life but he can not escape himself.

I originally got the idea to make this a video game world by having a side character be a very powerful and righteous paladin who finds out the truth that not only his world but also himself is a lie. It drives him to madness and he becomes a nihilistic villain, intent on destroying the world because essentially nothing matters. The villain and MC will be opposed by how they respond to harsh reality, with the MC initially using the harsh truth to justify his immoral behavior but over time realizing that he must face his fear and truth with the faith to overcome it and endure it, where the villain is to represent who the MC would have eventually ended up becoming; a person who can not accept truth and will justify their own evil because of their pain.

 

[Queshire]

Hm, maybe he was caught in an accident and now his heavily damaged body is floating in a medical tube somewhere. The game could have been a rushed method to ensure that his mind remains active & engaged. Part of facing reality could be facing up to being heavily disabled in the real world.

 

[pmmg]

You should watch Tron.

I think he is connected to a vid game through a neural implant and there is a malfunction.

 

[Jackarandajam]

it was all a dream....

jk. I hate that trope.

I really like how much thought you've put into the plot. I like the mc being kind of an asshole in both realities and having to deal with that, that's raw and I think you're on the right track.

I would suggest EITHER "steal like an artist" and don't concentrate so much on trying to make the "why" SUPER original, just make it something that is believable enough to keep the reader in-world and concentrate on other parts of the story for flare,

OR have you considered something wizard-related? Like sort of a fantasy Truman Show, where a crazy ideologue wizard has a bunch of people-experiments in a fake country, earning points to live according to the rules he made? He brainwashes people nobody will miss and replants them in his utopian experiment?

 

[Devor]

As luck would have it I've got a plan for a trapped-in-a-game story which I'm putting into a Trope Reboot article in the coming months. The ideas I share there are all "free to use," so I'll drop part of the story idea now because I think it's relevant.

The idea I had was that the video game.... is actually a prison. Criminals would be put into the game as a chance to live new and reformed lives, while their bodies were held in a hospital, in a coma. I know in your idea the character is alone. But I think realizing you were a villain in another life - or maybe, wrongfully convicted - could have similar results to one you're looking for. And if you want your character to be alone in the setting, maybe each convict simply gets their own single-player world.

 

[TWErvin2]

Over the past eight or so years, a subgenre of fantasy (and SF): LitRPG and GameLit have come into play, with a solid readership. You might look into some of those books to give you ideas of how the character could become trapped in the game and the other questions you have (such as with his body, consciousness, etc.

As an aside, have a LitRPG series (fantasy) based upon players trapped in a tabletop game, seven books published so far. It's interesting and fun to write, and there is a wide scope of where you can take your tales. Good luck!

 

[Finchbearer]

Whilst I am not overly keen on the ‘trapped in an alternate reality’ trope, I think that there are a myriad of ways you can approach something like this.

I really enjoyed the Netflix series Maniac, where although not trapped in a video game, the two main protagonists suffer from poor mental health, and enter a pharmaceutical trial. During which they take a control drug and are wired up to some brain wave technology, and subsequently enter a very visceral dream land, where they meet up with the other participants. The one caveat is that if they die in the dream, they die in real life too. They also dip in and out of real life while they participate in the drug trial.

Anyway, in a roundabout way I suppose I am saying that I think you could take your character, who you’ve described as wanting to run away from the harsh realities of life, and have him drive the story. So whilst he ends up trapped in a video game, perhaps he sees an advert for life coaching, or something to help him cope better with things, and is not what it appears to be. Perhaps he is taken to a trial where a video game is used to build confidence, but it instead pulls him in and he finds himself in peril.

You could also play more with metaphors and have the story be more about struggling with life, and running away from reality by entering a digital world, and the perils of that. *who’d have thought*

You also have the format of the novel or story to play with. Do we go in a linear direction?
man struggles with life > enters video game > tries to escape video game. Or you could start in the video game and work backwards. Perhaps we are dropped in the middle of the video game at the inciting incident and we (the reader) don’t know it’s a video game yet?

 

[Jackarandajam]

What if he thinks he's in a video game, at the climax gets plugged into a machine that the doctors promise will send him into the real world. As he lays on the table, plugged in and catatonic, the POV switches to a long, ominous scene of the doctors taking his vitals and making notes.

At the very end we get a short scene of him, standing in front of a picturesque cottage, looking happy over a sloping arcadian vista, the sun setting. It begins raining lemonade, and he sets out the jars, and goes inside to his seven-armed, chicken-headed spouse.

He's very happy to finally be in the real world.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

I originally got the idea to make this a video game world by having a side character be a very powerful and righteous paladin who finds out the truth that not only his world but also himself is a lie. It drives him to madness and he becomes a nihilistic villain, intent on destroying the world because essentially nothing matters. The villain and MC will be opposed by how they respond to harsh reality, with the MC initially using the harsh truth to justify his immoral behavior but over time realizing that he must face his fear and truth with the faith to overcome it and endure it, where the villain is to represent who the MC would have eventually ended up becoming; a person who can not accept truth and will justify their own evil because of their pain.

As someone who's nutty as a fruit bat, just my opinion but you may hear this in other places, as well. The 'he was driven to madness and became a bad guy" is a pretty common trope, but it also does a disservice to your readers who suffer from mental illness. If it were me writing this character, I wouldn't tie his insanity to his becoming a villain. That's easysauce and anyone can do it. It's so common as to be accepted with a nod and "Of course, madness made him evil." And that only contributes to the stigma and prejudices we carry against the mentally ill. Maybe instead the pain he uses to justify his actions could come from somewhere else, like a crushing betrayal or a tragic loss. Or maybe he's just a nihilist. He'd fit right in taking any college philosophy course. And maybe he blames a world that turned its back on him in his greatest need, and he wants revenge. They let his world burn, so he'll return the favor. Stone sane and sober, still filled with pain and rage under that attitude of nothing matters. Dig in deeper. Let's get complicated.

 

[Queshire]

Or maybe he's just a nihilist. He'd fit right in taking any college philosophy course.

I'd say that this characterization does a disservice to those with an interest in philosophy. The pop culture view of Nihilism is bad. It makes for easy villains, but it cuts off a lot of neat ways you can play around with the idea. I mean, Buddhism can easily be described as nihilistic and that's pretty far from how it's often portrayed.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

I'd say that this characterization does a disservice to those with an interest in philosophy. The pop culture view of Nihilism is bad. It makes for easy villains, but it cuts off a lot of neat ways you can play around with the idea. I mean, Buddhism can easily be described as nihilistic and that's pretty far from how it's often portrayed.

Having taken college philosophy, I'm pretty sure it's the interest in Philosophy that does the disservice.

 

[pmmg]

In an insane world, the sane ones appear crazy.

Finding out nothing it is real, and adopting an outlook that many would call madness, seems like a reasonable, and possible, outcome to me. Who is the crazy one? The one who wants to destroy the make believe world, or the one who want to keeps it? I am not sure mental illness is even in play.

Having taken college philosophy, I'm pretty sure it's the interest in Philosophy that does the disservice.

I dont even know what that means. I must be crazy.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

In an insane world, the sane ones appear crazy.

Finding out nothing it is real, and adopting an outlook that many would call madness, seems like a reasonable, and possible, outcome to me. Who is the crazy one? The one who wants to destroy the make believe world, or the one who want to keeps it? I am not sure mental illness is even in play.



I dont even know what that means. I must be crazy.

I started college very late due to some issues with my financial aid. It was pretty simple. My parents refused to fill out the parental finances section of the application. Yeah. So, I didn't start until I could file as an independent student at 24. I came in as a Medieval Studies major, and that part was awesome. Then someone talked me into trying Medieval Philosophy, and I was excited about that because the professor teaching it had a really great reputation as someone with a great depth and breadth of knowledge. It was 25.

No one should take philosophy at 25. 24 may even be too old. Philosophy and the adult mind don't mesh really well.

So there I am, listening to the lecture and within that first class period where St. Augustine was the topic of the day, I came to two conclusions. One, Austine was a jerk who hung around his mom's house all the time with his friends drinking her wine, and if video games had been a thing concurrent with the early church they would have had all of them.

And the second one was that all of this crap was made up. While drinking.

Also, there's only one degree that is even more useless than Medieval Studies, which is a self-perpetuating discipline with only a few actual applications, like writing. And that is Philosophy.

 

[Queshire]

Counterpoint; philosophy is good actually.

 

[Jackarandajam]

Everyone has a philosophy, and there is probably at least one philosopher who fairly well represents the believe system of anyone, were they to think their belief system through.

Counterpoint; philosophy is good actually.

Certainly. To say "philosophy is bad" would be as inane as saying "thinking is bad."
Even philosophers I find utterly inane I respect. Coughcoughjeanpaulshartcough.

Also, there's only one degree that is even more useless than Medieval Studies, which is a self-perpetuating discipline with only a few actual applications, like writing. And that is Philosophy.

This also sounds quite true. I can't imagine the dumpster fire higher education makes of this pursuit, and I can't imagine what a fresh faced graduate would do with a brain full of warring ideas that historically double back on themselves and each other like one of those snake mating frenzies.

So there I am, listening to the lecture and within that first class period where St. Augustine was the topic of the day, I came to two conclusions.

Desiderius Erasmus beats Augustine hands down every time, IMHO. Beats Luther too, for that matter. Even beats Calvin by half, maybe not in technical study but certainly in thinking like a human.

 

[pmmg]

I started college very late due to some issues with my financial aid. It was pretty simple. My parents refused to fill out the parental finances section of the application. Yeah. So, I didn't start until I could file as an independent student at 24. I came in as a Medieval Studies major, and that part was awesome. Then someone talked me into trying Medieval Philosophy, and I was excited about that because the professor teaching it had a really great reputation as someone with a great depth and breadth of knowledge. It was 25.

No one should take philosophy at 25. 24 may even be too old. Philosophy and the adult mind don't mesh really well.

So there I am, listening to the lecture and within that first class period where St. Augustine was the topic of the day, I came to two conclusions. One, Austine was a jerk who hung around his mom's house all the time with his friends drinking her wine, and if video games had been a thing concurrent with the early church they would have had all of them.

And the second one was that all of this crap was made up. While drinking.

Also, there's only one degree that is even more useless than Medieval Studies, which is a self-perpetuating discipline with only a few actual applications, like writing. And that is Philosophy.

Sorry your parents weren't the cool ones you wanted.

The rest of this, I would disagree with almost all of it. But...you seem pretty dug in so there not much point in refuting. I might agree younger people are less set in their ways, but philosophy pervades everything about everything. It is perhaps the most worthy pursuit.

I feel I want to say something about the value of college degrees in general, and that most of them have no use, but maybe another time.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

Sorry your parents weren't the cool ones you wanted.

The rest of this, I would disagree with almost all of it. But...you seem pretty dug in so there not much point in refuting. I might agree younger people are less set in their ways, but philosophy pervades everything about everything. It is perhaps the most worthy pursuit.

I feel I want to say something about the value of college degrees in general, and that most of them have no use, but maybe another time.

No going to disagree on that. College served me well, but that was only because I made it. I took everything I picked up and used it to augment and strengthen my writing, even when I thought I was going to go down another path. It really was my mentor, and she is still, who read some of my fiction and asked me what I was doing there. That kicked me in the butt a bit, and I eventually grokked that I didn't need college or grad school to be a writer. I already had enough education in Medieval Studies to forge the foundation for writing Fantasy. So, I ran away from the Ivory Tower, an offer from the University of York to attend post-graduate study in hand, and turned this thing around to focus on writing fiction. I didn't need college to write. No one does. But it did teach me how to research like a beast, and how to organize my thoughts and my work, and to do things with language that really should be illegal.

And as to my philosophy perspective, I'm an idealist and a cynic. It can get a little weird.

 

[Michael K. Eidson]

Different basic ways of becoming trapped in a game world, some already mentioned:

1. MC dies and discovers the afterlife is a game world.
2. Living MC's consciousness enters game world, leaving unconscious physical body in real world.
3. Living MC is physically transported to game world

Already a no for option 1....

If you want the MC to eventually return to the real world, option 2 makes it easy. With option 2, the MC might be rigged up (perhaps wearing a suit of some sort) so that their physical body can still feel the pain when attacked. If the MC is wearing a suit, it might be the only one of its kind, and the MC is testing it, making the MC the only PC in the game world. Issues with option 2 is figuring out what happens to MC's physical body while unconscious. One solution is that family, friends, employer, or other external entity is caring for a comatose MC. Another solution is to have time pass at a different rate in the game world than the real world, so that perhaps years pass for the MC in the game world while only hours pass in the real world. It only feels to the MC that they are "trapped" in the game world. Perhaps they are, unless they find a way out. Perhaps their physical body in the real world will start to suffer from malnutrition if left indefinitely in its unconscious state, but the MC has years or maybe decades in the game world before negative effects begin taking their toll on the unconscious physical body in the real world.

With option 3, if the MC's physical body is transported to the game world, you have to figure out how it continues to live in the game world. Is the body transformed so it can survive in the game world? If the game world is actually a video game, how does a physical body from the real world even exist there without some kind of transformation? Must they eat? Must they breathe? Must they void themselves of waste? What happens to their body if the MC is killed in the video game? How are they able to return to the real world? If they were transformed on entering the game world, won't they need to be transformed back to their natural state when returning to the real world?

Once you decide which of the three basic methods you'll use, then you can think about specifics. Is the MC in the game world because of an act of nature or an act of some sentient force--maybe the MC themself? Is the tranpsorting of the MC an accident, or is an ulterior motive involved? If it was an accident, how can one reverse the accident and return to the real world? If it wasn't an accident, then what's the ulterior motive, whose ulterior motive is it, do they have to be the one to send the MC back to the real world, or how else might the MC get back?

Whatever you decide, you don't have to make the MC or even the reader aware of all your decisions. But making the decisions will help you be consistent in your story. You can also be inconsistent from the perspective of the reader at times, when you don't reveal every decision you've made to the reader. Perhaps you can reveal everything over time, so the reader will eventually get the larger picture and see that what they thought were inconsistencies actually weren't. This can easily be the case when there are multiple ways by which the MC or others could enter/leave the game world.

The main thing, if you're writing LitRPG, is to make it clear that the game world--whether a video game or something else--abides at least in part by game-like rules rather than only real-world rules. That's what the LitRPG target audience will expect. They're likely to be forgiving on certain specifics, such as how the MC got to the game world and how the MC can get back to the real world--as long as you make it easy for them to accept.