Well not going to lie, this is the first time I've really explored this section, and this is mostly because the idea I've currently been ruminating on is pretty much not based on any other particular series outright, instead mostly based on a certain trend we've been seeing a lot in Manga with Fantasy series coming out with some sort of Meta Element involved. The usual execution of this trope is naturally the one where a hero is summoned from a more normal world like ours and he comes with certain game mechanics involved like status screens, inventories or whatnot.
Well thanks to one particular series which summoned multiple heroes, one of which was highly interesting, I suddenly realized that this idea can be used in a more interesting way instead. What if, in one of these scenarios, the one who is summoned is an Old Man with no idea of how game mechanics work. The idea naturally took off from there.
The initial premise by itself naturally isn't enough to build a story off of, of course, but it's certainly something interesting to get the ball rolling. A lot of world building would have to be involved to make the story and scenario interesting, and indeed the fact that he's an old man can't just be used to explain why he hasn't been trying to figure out how to upgrade his skills and whatnot.
So I decided this would have to be more of a story driven on the character of the Old Man himself, which naturally meant building off of something a lot of these series with this sort of premise miss. A lot of the situations and motivations of this old man would have to be driven on the world he'd left behind, meaning over the course of the tale we'd have to learn more about who he was there to understand why he is who he is here in this situation. His family, his life, his hobbies are all factors that can be explored going from that world to this one.
For example, why was the old man summoned at all? Maybe play up the fact that it seems like the summon was meant for his Grandson instead, but due to an unfortunate sense of timing, he's the one who ended up getting pulled through himself. Nothing major certainly, but definitely a factor to consider as he goes through and faces so many troubles trying to save this world and realizes that his grandson would have had to deal with this instead had things gone as planned.
Why does he choose to group together with the people he meets along the way? Maybe they remind him of people he's lost over his life span. I won't lie, part of the joke I wanted with the 'party' he forms is that he's technically the youngest person there thanks to Fantasy Species mechanics and other oddities. Our lead is 83, and he will eventually party with an Elf Paladin who is 107, a Dwarf Alchemist who is 98, a demon possessed Coliseum escapee with a perchance for thievery who is 89, and a boy Archer of 13 who'd been frozen in time since the years of the previous summonings over 170 years ago.
That last one would have been a party member of a previous hero who would have to try and remember how he did things from his very hazy memory from his freezing and the fact that the Hero then was explaining things he pretty much does not have any context for. His input would help the old man discover things he doesn't know about how game mechanics work, but wouldn't needless to say resolve everything.
Mentally obviously the old man would probably be the oldest of the group in line with his appearance compared to the rest who all look in their prime baring the kid, but technically speaking, everyone else would have been around longer than him to say the least, in one form or another.
And while the party will be a key factor in the story, world building obviously is also going to be essential here to drive the tale. To make things interesting, I kinda wanted to drive it in a way similar to the story that inspired this, rather than a set of spells everyone can learn everyone of sufficent ability develops a particular power they have a knack for, which the lead's power interprets as a skill tree of sorts, where they can slowly unlock tangential abilities related to that main ability, but they all tend to follow a general theme.
For example the Elf Paladin? Her knack I wanted to be for creating solid electric weapons for herself. She doesn't carry around a massive heavy broadsword, she just summons a huge one made of lightning to cut and electrify with. Tangential abilities would include being able to slash out electric blasts with it, increase her speed even in her armor using electromagnetism, electrify her armor so anything that touches it will receive a shock, throw electro daggers at foes, and summon a big massive spear of lightning to hurl at enemies from afar.
Dwarf Alchemist makes potions and whatnot to help heal and buff the party (Which becomes more useful once the lead figures out how the inventory works), but his main gimmick is general alchemy with earth and metal. Any of it he touches or connects via symbols, he can move or alter the structure of. His ability requires a bit of setup but he could do things like sudden generate spikes from the ground, turn mud into solid rock for better footing, crumble the ground he runs over to trip up foes, launch out projectiles from a safe distance, and stuff like that. Plus with the Elf's electro power this means he can also create metal lightning rods to help better direct her power.
The Time Displaced boy's power is pretty simple, basically the ability to multiply any inanimate object of limited size that he touches within his general area, the generated objects still retaining the momentum and direction of the original object. Any object he generates with this ability will naturally disappear with time, but needless to say the utility of this for a bow user once properly upgraded is quite obvious, doubly so when the alchemist can make explosive shots and stuff for him. He literally only needs one copy of each type of arrow and he's basically set, never needing to fire a real one while being able to fire out a dozen at once with one shot. Can even use the ability defensively with a small buckler, to create a wall of them to block return fire and physical blows, and hell mutiply earth or metal the dwarf touched to help him set up traps.
Demon Possessed girl, not going to lie, is based around that Ripple ability I made that I love, which is the power to treat space like water. This leads to fun things like her being the go to teleporter between towns once she gains that tangential ability, the ability to cause 'space quakes' with physical blows to deal devastating armor ignoring damage, divert projectiles by causing space to ripple and bend in a different direction, and warp around the area with quick movements, even kick the ground to cause space to ripple out from that contact point and slam foes into the ground as the ripple reaches them. Her key synergy is that she can bend space in areas around the fight that cause projectile attacks to divert and potentially hit foes they otherwise would have missed.
As for the old guy, initially at its weakest form it would seem like a simple strength/durability upgrade in key situations, but once he finds his skill tree screen and discovers the skill tree screen he's got quite a few points stored up for the utility will increase quite a bit. Got a name for this one, Soul Echo, an ability that increases in strength when taking an action replicated from repeated experience/strength of the memories. So while you can say a person has only thrown a punch so often in their life, doing more simple things like taking a step? Tapping his cane against the ground? Swatting dust off a piece of paper? Quite a bit of difference to say the least. Doubly so when granted the tangential ability to project this outside his body, use it to slowly heal injuries of himself and others with contact, reinforce his body so his old age doesn't screw him as much, and so on.
With that covering the general abilities of the group, another thing I was considering was language. Specifically going to a fantasy world language is generally going to be an odd thing to gloss over. It's another world afterall, bit of a coincidence if they all speak the same. Therefore I added it as one of the special properties of 'Summoned' the ability to generally understand any language, written or spoken in the world. Needless to say the utility of this is quite a bit high for archeological purposes beyond just the speaking to others thing, but also allows me to introduce interesting group dynamics.
Like the Demon Possessed Girl who escaped from the coliseum life she'd been in for 80 years? Never learned to speak the general language. Instead she has a relatively simple language she really only spoke with to the demon prior to this and only limited commands from the general language outside of that. The old man however? Can understand her just fine, though she speaks a bit simply. The others in the group, not so much.
The Time Displaced boy? Languages can change quite a bit over centuries, so while the others in the group can get the picture, the Old Man will have that buffed quite a bit out for him.
Dwarven and Elven languages the two non-humans will sometimes lapse to? Understands that just fine too.
As for the big overarching plot, I didn't want to do a simple story with them going to defeat the demon king, so instead a war situation seemed to make a bit more sense, doubly so since I can introduce down the line that the other countries may also be using summoned to do leg work only they can do. Monsters would still be involved naturally, but it's less directly about them than you'd usually see from this sort of thing. Instead, I wanted to rip a bit from SotC in a sense. Summoned are the only ones who can enter special zones with a limited number of people where special monsters reside, which can be controlled with a particular object only they can bring out. Once it's out of that special zone however, they can then give it to whoever they want to use.
Needless to say that's every bit as bad as it sounds, and obviously there's a reason these objects are locked away in a place where no one who resides in this world can naturally reach, but allows us to build up the importance of the summoned to each group involved, given them something difficult to overcome, and add a goal all in one.
Doubly so when that goal changes from collect the controlling objects to 'destroy the super weapons' instead, which leads to the user to turn into something worse, so then the end game accidentally creates a demon king by total accident.
Well that's about all I got thus far, baring key plot moments I've cooked up involving the elements above. Seems like a fun idea all around, not sure if I'll ever do more with it than play with it though. Has potential certainly however, just not sure if I'll be able to see where it goes.