Afterword

Hello there, and thank you for reading this work. I know the inclusion of an afterword is somewhat unusual for online erotic fiction, but I’m quite proud of My Isekai Life in D&D and I am hoping that you’ll indulge me just a little bit.

I began writing this series way back in the summer of 2018, inspired mainly by the glut of “isekai” anime that were (and still are) being published in large numbers. For those who don’t know, the term “isekai” is Japanese, used to indicate stories that involve a person from our normal world being transported to another, often a fantasy world, and having adventures there. While the term is relatively new, the idea is not- for example, the Chronicles of Narnia could be described as a series of isekai stories.

In modern Japanese isekai, the fantasy worlds often take on attributes of JRPGs or MMORPGs even when they would otherwise be unexpected in the context of the setting (for example, That Time I Recincarnated As A Slime or Rising of the Shield Hero). Because of this, I had begun wondering what an isekai story might be like based on the pen and paper RPG systems of the past, particularly the more brutal, less consistent systems of the 80s, such as Tunnels and Trolls, the original edition of Shadowrun, RIFTs and, of course, AD&D.

This is how My Isekai Life in D&D was formed, with partial inspiration from modern anime and partial inspiration from the RPG games I would play as a teen. Even the fact that it’s an erotic story is a reaction to the otherwise sexless nature of harem anime.

To address some of the questions that people have about My Isekai Life in D&D:

When I began writing, I know that staying true to the randomness of the system was going to be very important to the feeling of the story. To that end, I wanted to make sure that I resolved conflicts as much as possible using dice, as if this was an actual RPG campaign. While I have manipulated results on occasion in order to keep the story moving, many elements of Book 1 happened because of odd results changing my plans- everything from Theodore’s initial hit point total, to Voss’ continued survival, to Calliope sitting out the mansion infiltration, to the exceptionally generous treasure drops from various enemies are all the doing of the dice.

I attempted to keep the fudging of dice to a minimum- as I recall, I saved Theodore from death at least twice (ironically, both times were after he advanced to level 2), and had rerolled his initial Intelligence because I knew I wanted him to be a Transmuter. But rest assured this sort of thing happens very infrequently.

So, if you find it unsatisfying that Theodore doesn’t follow a traditional hero’s journey, it probably has to do with the will of the dice.

The last three chapters of the story being somewhat slow and very short came from an attempt to chronicle Theodore’s downtime between quests as a series of “Daily Life &” chapters that I have since renamed and republished as normal “Isekai Life &” chapters. I intend for the “Daily Life &” chapters to return at the end of Book 2, as a way of changing perspective to Theodore’s companions, in order to get their reaction to the events of the story, catch up on what they’re doing during downtime, and otherwise cleanse the palate before I begin Book 3. At this time I do not intend to retroactively add content of this type to Book 1.