Cliches Can Be Awesome
I had this really intense, really meta dream where while playing a fantasy RPG, I got sent to a magical world where magic was real and that everything in the game was based on this world. There, I became a wizard, and, yes, I had to fight a war to restore the balance of power in that world. (So cliche, I know, but read on).
I later ran into the man responsible for my teleportation into the world. He said he did it because his side was losing, and he realized that the only way he'd be able to get enough competent magic-users and soldiers on his side was to outsource them from another world. He managed to get the RPG based on his world (and its events) published, and it even became an animated series and a video game. But there was a spell tied into all of those, a very weak but specific one - only players, readers, and watchers who obssessed enough over the world would get transported to it. I think my transportation was triggered when I started arguing on a gamer forum about whether this spell I madeup in the fanfic I wrote about the series would be feasible in the game's setting. I never managed to finish the argument, but I was very happy to know that in the game, my made up spell was both possible AND very useful. :P
I was not the only geek who got sent there - in fact, I ran into a couple of fellow geeks in that world (Beejay, Phil, and Bryan) all fulfilling some sort of niche in that setting. I later ran into the protagonist of the animated series - turns out he was one of the earliest geeks to be sent to the world, and what happened in the series ALL REALLY HAPPENED TO HIM. Sadly, I only watched the series up to episode 6, so I couldn't talk much to him, but he was so sad.
I also ran into a husband-and-wife couple who were commanding an army together. I mentioned to the husband that according to genre conventions, he and his wife would die horribly soon thanks to Tropes. He laughed, and mentioned that he got transported to the world while in an edit war at TV Tropes with the girl who eventually became his wife, and then promised to me to be extra cautious in the next encounters. (And yeay, genre-savviness worked, because they managed to not get killed!)
Then our side won the war by using conventional weapons from "real" earth combined with magic and dirty tactics thought up by war gamers. We figured out loopholes in the system to bring in guns and grenades, then freed the other world, and managed to come back.
Then I woke up.
I later ran into the man responsible for my teleportation into the world. He said he did it because his side was losing, and he realized that the only way he'd be able to get enough competent magic-users and soldiers on his side was to outsource them from another world. He managed to get the RPG based on his world (and its events) published, and it even became an animated series and a video game. But there was a spell tied into all of those, a very weak but specific one - only players, readers, and watchers who obssessed enough over the world would get transported to it. I think my transportation was triggered when I started arguing on a gamer forum about whether this spell I madeup in the fanfic I wrote about the series would be feasible in the game's setting. I never managed to finish the argument, but I was very happy to know that in the game, my made up spell was both possible AND very useful. :P
I was not the only geek who got sent there - in fact, I ran into a couple of fellow geeks in that world (Beejay, Phil, and Bryan) all fulfilling some sort of niche in that setting. I later ran into the protagonist of the animated series - turns out he was one of the earliest geeks to be sent to the world, and what happened in the series ALL REALLY HAPPENED TO HIM. Sadly, I only watched the series up to episode 6, so I couldn't talk much to him, but he was so sad.
I also ran into a husband-and-wife couple who were commanding an army together. I mentioned to the husband that according to genre conventions, he and his wife would die horribly soon thanks to Tropes. He laughed, and mentioned that he got transported to the world while in an edit war at TV Tropes with the girl who eventually became his wife, and then promised to me to be extra cautious in the next encounters. (And yeay, genre-savviness worked, because they managed to not get killed!)
Then our side won the war by using conventional weapons from "real" earth combined with magic and dirty tactics thought up by war gamers. We figured out loopholes in the system to bring in guns and grenades, then freed the other world, and managed to come back.
Then I woke up.