So You Want To Run An Isekai Campaign...
There are several questions you have to consider when running an isekai campaign. The first of these is what 'genre' of isekai you're going with. The most common version is the type like Maar, trapped in another world with my smartphone, or SAO where the protagonists trapped in the game are super-mega-jesus-kun levels of powerful, and never really have any major conflicts. This would be a monty hall sort of campaign, where everyone is just horrendously OP and spends their time more concerned with helping people who may be friends and/or gathering some form or fashion of harem (even if there is an official 'Best Girl,' seriously, Kirito what the actual heck is wrong with you?). These tend to be light on real danger, but can be interesting if done correctly. The key here is to use political intrigue and pressures, rather than any direct monster... but be prepared for canny PCs to find ways to use their hideously op cheat abilities to blow through even social challenges without an issue, as their high diplomacy modifiers seem to make everyone magically like them. A subgenre of this is the sort where they bring modern-day knowhow to the past and modernize everything, making themselves rich and powerful in the process.
The other main genre of isekai, seen mostly as a deconstruction of the genre, has the people transported over be utterly underpowered. They would still have NPC levels and probably subpar stats as well, and the entire world would specifically be out to get them because they're weak. Generally, this sort of series either ends with the protagonists meeting hideously terrible fates, or else with becoming OP and winding up exacting intricate revenge upon the people who were previously trying to torment them--depending largely on who is writing the isekai series. This is basically the equivalent of becoming the living embodiment of the killer gm, aiming to utterly wreck everyone's face in for daring to think they might be special or even 'above average.' There's still usually the capacity to get some kind of cheat skill, but it usually has to be 'earned' through a contrived series of fortunate events.
Finally alternatively, you could just watch Konosuba and do that, since they somehow manage to do both main genres at once.
Actually, yeah, just watch Konosuba.
Also get your friends to watch Konosuba.
Konosuba is really good, is what I'm getting at.
Konosuba rocks! Darkness forever!!!
In a different RPG we started to do the 'ourselves as RPG characters' idea, but the results were obviously wildly imbalanced and the game died before it got off the ground.
Edit: twice actually. The second time was Mage: the Ascension and that did run for a while before breaking under the conflicts in that system.
My stats suck, any way I can get a reroll?
My stats suck, any way I can get a reroll?
No good way, no.
My stats suck, any way I can get a reroll?
I'm afraid you're stuck using Tomes of Understanding and Manuals of Gainful Exercise. Fortunately, many of the Tomes and Manuals have been printed for free on the internet.
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depending on the how they get there.
NPC levels that they can convert as they 'try to learn' might be good for comical based campaigns.
Personally I'd like to try Log Horizon style game. Group of friends sucked into a game, really powerful, but now the NPC's are aware and learning and monsters just magically appear in 'spawning' area's. They function as "summon monster traps" with Detect Alignment as the trigger. (Since most NPC's are going to start likely just being Neutral of course this campaign might be good with the no alignment rules instead and PC's have to pick Neutral, Shadow or Radiant as 'group' to belong too. Kinda like world of warcraft only with neutrals being the 'common' group.
I did something similar back in the day with 3.5 Dragonlance, but the PC's found out THEY where the artifical characters and the powerful NPC's where humans that would login to adventure every once and awhile. (Thus the reason monsters could go so long without being noticed by these 'heroes')
The genre get's a bit funny in reverse.
For a homebrew, if you want to go story over conflict[combat] level 12 with 20 points for stats is generally really fun, we even in a game I was in given 6 Mythic Tiers to put us above the "NPCs" that had similar abilities. It's fun as long as the story has draws one in, villains where generally other 'players' or NPCs that disliked the more powerful 'adventurers'
I've played in a few. My group always called them avatar games.
For stat generation, we've tried:
Online quizzes that try to peg down your stats, which always seemed to end up with our stats all crazy high.
Proposing to the group 'I think I have an X in Y stat' and the GM gets final say, which mostly just caused hard feelings.
Normal Pathfinder build points, which was the most fair I think.
For classes, we usually just tried to find the closest analog to what we were good at. In one game, since I worked in QA at the time and was good at breaking things, I made a rogue and focused on Disable Device. In another, since I'd recently finished a biology degree and took a lot of chemistry classes, I made an alchemist.
One way to handle it might be to run the intro, with them ending up in the other world and having a few sessions of the 'fish out of water' stuff where they're really outmatched, but they fall in with a group that's willing to help them (maybe others who've been pulled through before them). Then cut to 6 months/1 year later and then they're level 1 in whatever class they want and have a reason to have picked up things like Knowledges that will make them effective adventurers.
Probably the biggest problem I've seen is that, if there's interpersonal conflict between the characters, it can be harder to separate that from interpersonal conflict between the players (since they are, after all, playing as themselves).
Another thing is player knowledge. If they're playing as themselves, they're probably gamers, and will be able to readily identify lots of spells and creatures without making a roll. That's not necessarily good or bad, mind you, just something I've noticed in my current game. If you want to keep some mystery there, you may need to reskin your monsters so they don't immediately say 'Oh, that's a behir, it breathes lightning.', or 'They fired a green ray at me, that's probably Disintegrate.'.