Sehan and Mina
Ten years ago, a group of gods turned everyone on Earth into players of a sadistic game that forced them to kill monsters in real life — or be killed themselves. Sehan Kim has already seen how this game will play out: everyone in the world dies except for him. When he’s given the chance to go back in time and start a second playthrough, Sehan is determined to change the course of events and beat the gods at their own game.
—Return To Player splash page description
Return to Player
is a Korean webcomic by Sehon Umky where the Gods have imposed an MMO game interface on the world. Sehan Kim has achieved the "Bad End" as the only survivor of humanity. While contemplating his final fate, the game interface informs him of the option for a second playthrough. He accepts it, suddenly finding himself transported back to the day the original game started. With all the knowledge of his first playthrough, he hopes to change things for the better.
It updates every Saturday.
Return to Player provides examples of:
- Above the Gods: While the Gods are quite powerful and manipulative, above them are the Game Masters. Above them is The System, which runs the whole thing.
- Amusement Park of Doom: Sehan's third quest involves not only going through an amusement park, but saving as many of the innocent people forced to operate the park as he can.
- Boss Battle: Every quest has a tough monster that is sometimes necessary to defeat in order for the quest to be completed.
- The Chosen Many:
- The System picks a bunch of mortals to be "players", giving them supernatural powers based upon itself and the gods. Most of humanity is not so empowered and are left as "NPC" victims. There is no known means of promoting NPCs to players outside of the System's choices. Even the gods lack the ability to appoint players.
- Each god gets to accept a single player as their "avatar". The god treats their avatar as an equivalent to their Player Character. They cannot control their chosen avatar, but they focus their attention on them and give them the occasional sponsorship in return for entertainment, such as juicy info or skills. While avatars receive benefits, they also receive restrictions that normal players are not subject to, which is why Sehan tries to avoid letting his party members become avatars except when strictly necessary.
- Divine Intervention: All the time, much to the displeasure of the mere pawns that humanity has become.
- Driven to Suicide: In the first timeline, as the Sole Survivor of humanity, Sehan almost impales himself on his sword as he sees no point in continuing to live. The System opens up the DLC store just in time.
- Game Master: A god is appointed such a role in each locale, giving them limited authority over the System to setup the players' next challenge.
- God Guise: Just by being able to log into the Gods' chat room, the Gods think Sehan must be a God when he's there.
- Home of the Gods: The Gods meet and talk to each other in what is depicted as an internet chat room.
- Informed Equipment: Some items have the option to be invisible while worn.
- Item-Drop Mechanic: How most players get extra equipment.
- Jerkass Gods: A major part of the whole story. The gods only see mortals as toys and invade entire worlds to use them as disposable game boards. The invading System forces mortals to kill or be killed by monsters and one another. Players must fulfill the System's quests on penalty of death. The System disrupts all of society and humanity dies off in these quests at a faster rate than they can reproduce. The gods won't leave until they get bored or humanity's numbers have dropped to a certain level. If the mortals fail to provide the gods with enough entertainment, the gods finish off all of the survivors as punishment. Even demons are less vile, as they have actual pragmatic reasons to participate in the game.
- Kill the God: Might be possible. The Guild Sehan starts is named Deicide, so it's on his agenda. Whether he likes it or not, Earth needs the gods for its continued survival, but that doesn't mean he can't take out the worst of them. He eventually manages to kill the Titan acting as administrator over Earth and transfers his position to an allied god.
- Level Goal: Every player is informed of the quest win conditions. With the third quest, Sehan discovers that not everyone gets the same win conditions.
- Level Scaling: Starting with the third quest, Sehan discovers that the System is putting tougher monsters in his way. He takes it as proof that his actions are having an effect on the world.
- Lovecraft Lite: Outer gods, despite originating from Lovecraft, aren't particularly alien and can relate to humans just fine.
- Optional Boss: There are tough monsters that aren't part of quests but are good for level grinding and loot.
- Place of Protection: There are Safe Zones which monsters can't enter. Guild Halls become Safe Zones which the Gods can't send their Observers into. Mina can make barriers that create small, temporary Safe Zones.
- Rage Against the Heavens: The gods killed Earth and everyone on it for fun in the previous timeline. The vast majority of the gods only see mortals as toys and take far more from the world than they give. Needless to say, Sehan hopes to use his knowledge of the future and a secret about the System that even the gods didn't know about to take revenge.
- Reasoning with God:
- As part of Sehan's Second Playthrough, he has access to the Gods' chat room and logs in as Anonymous User 48. The other Gods just assume he's another God who doesn't want to reveal himself. Sehan takes advantage of this constantly.
- In a dungeon that uses a sort of Dream Land to simulate Set Right What Once Went Wrong, Sehan persuades the gods to change their minds about destroying Earth in the first timeline by appeasing them with sufficient entertainment.
- Regenerating Health: All players regenerate to some degree, but there are ways to greatly increase it, to the point where others are surprised that Sehan is even walking after a fight.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Sehan hopes that a second playthrough will turn out better.
- Shout-Out: When Sehan confronts Cheolwoong to kill him, Sehan has a new weapon.Sehan: "I brought a little friend with me this time. Do you want to say hello?"
- Sole Survivor: How it starts, with Sehan being the last mortal on Earth, everyone else having been killed as they were no longer useful for entertaining the gods. Sehan notes that he survived, not because he was the strongest or smartest player, but due to caution, ruthless pragmatism.
- Start My Own: Kicking out the game entirely isn't an option, and like it or not, Earth needs sponsorship from the gods to survive. But Sehan does manage to kill Earth's previous administrator and hack away his authority over the System. Sehan derides the game's previous management as horribly run and decides on new rules for the game. So long as they figure out how to keep the gods entertained, there is no need for the new game to be anywhere near as murderous.
- Sudden Game Interface: The Gods/Game Masters of the world seem to have arbitrarily decided to have fun by turning the world into an MMO.
- Unlockable Content: As part of Sehan's second playthrough, he has access to the DLC store. The points he had at the end of the first playthrough are available to spend in it. Good thing he had kept so many, because buying the second playthrough cost one million points.
- With much of the equipment Sehan buys in the store and gives to others, he lies and says that it came from defeated monsters.
- It's also what gives Sehan access to the forums.
- You Have Failed Me: Most of the gods, even the seemingly more benevolent ones, see mortals as nothing more than toys. What do you do when you get tired of a toy? You throw it away. In the first timeline, since Earth was arousing less and less entertainment from the gods, they decided to punish their toys with a Downer Ending by killing everyone. In a dungeon representing how a tragic past could have gone differently, Sehan Kim needs to not only re-complete the quest he was fulfilling at the time, but pull it off so spectacularly that the gods will take interest again and permit Earth to have a Bittersweet Ending instead.
- You Know the One: A couple pages end with one character pointing out the significance of another character in the last panel, without telling the audience which of the two characters in the scene is being referred to.
- Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: Sehan has no reason to believe it isn't the end of the world (on the first page!) until he's offered the second playthrough.
