I had one idea that might work well for this type of game. I actually got the idea from an old movie called “The Pagemaster” if any of you remember that, and if you’ve never seen it, go watch it now. To start with, the main character is just a regular person, nobody special in a normal world like yours or mine. One day while at the library he starts encountering strange people trying to force him into strange situations, like one person proclaims the player to be the Chosen one, and must recover the medallion to save the princess. Another says the player is special agent 81, and their mission, should they choose to accept it, is to stop the syndicate from leaking the presidents private emails. We then learn that the player is caught in a spell that is causing books to “leak” into the real world around him, and to stop utter chaos from ensuing and probably destroying society, the player must travel through a series of stories, including various genres, to find the wizard (or whatever) to get them to fix the situation.
This idea is meant to be tongue-in-cheek humor, with a little bit of meta self awareness mixed in. It’s one of about two dozen half baked ideas I have for games.