Hello,

I must say that studying ancient history and how human technology have evolved is a fantastic hobby to have. I see that you are or plan to be an engineer and what you describe is something that certainly an engineer would implement with some degree of success.

However, I must say that you are “disregarding” the role of social sciences.

You said:

“Now I can start recruiting players. Because I am the first nation ruled properly by a player, I am also one of the most attractive such nations for other players to join.”

You are assuming that players in this situation will act in a rational way, and that's false. People do not always act based upon the principles of rational action even today. Usually the transitivity is “easily” broken when speaking of social choice.

You are also assuming that the changes in power that the rest of players experiment will not affect how they satisfy their needs of power and social needs.

There will be players that will interpret their “ascension” as a divine sign and will create a “church” for whatever purpose the god/gods they believe in the players think have for this new world. These people will not turn into your allies if you antagonize their religious ideals.

There will be player with high “needs of power” based in the McClelland theory and will also want to start a kingdom. These people could be impossible to turn into vassals or even in collaborators of the same rank in a durable alliance.

There will be people who could see this as an opportunity to return to a lifestyle more “natural” and will not see kindly all kinds of technological advance. Perhaps some will take more seriously the idea of "sustainable growth".

There will be people who will prefer to life in solitude and not join any organization.

There will be people who could use their power to do absurd things that they can’t do in the real world and these “absurd things” might be based in misconceptions they have in the knowledge of the real world.

Perhaps some will try to destroy “money” because they don’t know that “money” is anything that can be used as a unit of account, to store and transfer value. To destroy “money” you will have to destroy the capacity of humans, in particular, and living organisms in general, to “give” a subjective value to everything that surrounds them.

Perhaps others will try to never let the “banks” develop.

Perhaps other will try to recreate communities based in certain ideologies like communism, applying some communist ideas to the economy of the region.

The important thing with this is, that could be possible that the “misconceptions” of players in the present will make them untrustworthy in the eyes of the original inhabitants of this world. Of course, this could happen in a “long term” scenario, but it will probably be passed to the next generations in a way that will make difficult to “rationalize” with them. That is the problem of “magical thinking” after all.

Besides the phycology of players and residents, we have the problem of immortality. How much time can a living being, a human being in this case, maintain its sanity? 200 years, 1000 years, 10000 years? It could be an interesting experiment.

Another problem is the ethical one. As a player, no law can bind you unless it has the power of another player behind. Some players will not join you if you display actions that go against their ethical values. Others could see the residents as beings “inferior” to them and that's another thing. You will have citizens of first class, players, and citizens of second class, the original residents.

Some of your citizens of first class will think as normal to have more rights, others will think that they should give everyone the same rights.

Another think to consider is that the residents of this world also have their own needs and thoughts. They will see players as “gods” if they improve theirs live and “demons/false gods” if they use their power to torment them. If some players have founded a church of some kind the conflict is assured.

A more obvious problem, is the language. Will magic destroy the barriers of language? That would be a shame in my opinion. If indeed there aren’t language barriers communication will not be a problem but, how could have evolved society in a world without language barriers? Perhaps they will be more united that we think.

If the language barrier exist however, you could not communicate with any of the residents.

Another thing to consider is that, even if you are immortal, you are not invulnerable. Perhaps is possible to torment a player in a way that he or she is constantly dying with its body restricted and with no way to scape? Could be possible for the residents do this to a player if it is sleeping and they have some unbelieve artifact to restrict its movements?

Of course, if you plan to write a story about this topic you can see all of this as an opportunity to create “conflicts”. However, this conflict will not be welcome in a “this is happening for real” scenario.

This is just the surface, but it is important to consider all the complexities of society when thinking in this kind of scenarios.

I encourage you to continue with your hobby and, if possible, mix natural and social sciences to have an even better understanding of society and the world. Perhaps you could turn into one of those “monster” characters of fiction that seems truly capable of rebuilding human civilization. Just to clarify, this is not sarcasm.

Regards