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Comments

Domestic Life Game

[(Anonymous)]

So, this was mentioned here, but no on the ideas thread. As well, I couldn't mod it, so here's hoping someone picks it up!

Basically, the characters wake up in a house. Not just any house, but supposedly their house. There are photographs of their family, which they'll be sorted into upon arrival. NPC townspeople will look at them strange when they ask about where they are, asking if they're all right or a bit sick, because they're home.

So, basically, it's like Mayfield, minus any signs that anything is wrong. The point is for them to doubt their canon memories while adjusting to domestic life, perhaps even embracing it.

If a character is dropped, they "move away." It's explained that the family was having trouble, so Mom and Dad (or Mom and Mom, or Dad and Dad, etc) split up and the dropped one moved away.

Anyway. again, there would be nothing besides their memories that tells them something is wrong. They will be lead to believe this is, indeed, their life, and they have a family to feed, etc. Also! Unlike Mayfield, homosexual and childless couples will be present. There would likely be a place in the app to specify this kind of thing. A bit more work, but it'll make things a bit more interesting.

Re: Domestic Life Game

[(Anonymous)]

I just realized it's sort of like Once Upon a Time...

Re: Domestic Life Game

[(Anonymous)]

I've never seen that. >:

[(Anonymous)]

What is Once Upon A Time?

Re: Domestic Life Game

[(Anonymous)]

anyone want to help make this a reality?

Re: Domestic Life Game

[(Anonymous)]

yes

Re: Domestic Life Game

[(Anonymous)]

New anon here, I've been watching the discussions and I'd love to pitch in! What needs to be done?

Re: Domestic Life Game

[(Anonymous)]

I'm game to help. I can even draw on some local townships for inspiration!

[(Anonymous)]

were doin this man were makin this happen

But seriously, how are you doing, presumptive-mod anon? What do you think of the discussions so far?

BRAINSTORMING

[(Anonymous)]

beautiful things happen when everyone contributes ideas!

i'll make a couple of sub-threads for name ideas, time, etc and other people can chip in sub-threads as they think of them

and from there we can start collecting ideas and making this into an actual thing

GAME NAME

[(Anonymous)]

Re: Domestic Life Game

[(Anonymous)]

So basically a direct rip off of Mayfield in almost every way except genre.

The housing thing is generic enough but once you decide to make it small town USA, it really seems like you're ripping off an existing game.

Re: Domestic Life Game

[(Anonymous)]

I guess by its nature the game will be making everyone at least slightly AU.

Any thoughts yet about whether or not OCs will be allowed?

Powers and Personal Belongings

[(Anonymous)]

What would be the game's take on this?

In Mayfield, I recall that the game's policy on them is to strip practically just about anything the character may have before waking up (E.g. A's military uniform is replaced with an outfit from the 1950's, Homestuck trolls waking up as human beings, etc) with the possibility of regaining any of those at a later date.

Would it be something like this? Or will there a cap on any game-breaking powers while any personal belongings might be either missing or the item can be found somewhere around the character's assigned home.

Re: Domestic Life Game

[(Anonymous)]

As for events we could have things that mimic real life "news events". Sports teams, riots, robbery, mass shootings (though that one would have to be well organized and handled with sensitivity), shitty weather.

More athletic characters can be on sports teams. Lmfao church potlucks as mass meet and greets! The annual hoe down. We could even have characters come into the game engaged and connected as the children of other families and have weddings as events.

Events don't always need to be supernatural in nature. "Cracky events" could consist of the town's teenagers/hooligans teepeeing an entire block's worth of houses.

Re: Domestic Life Game

[(Anonymous)]

...so it's basically Mayfield, but without any of the horror events. Hey, maybe people can wake up with tiny and mysterious wings! Or maybe the whole thing is actually run by some sort of facility with experiments every week! Ooh, I got it, what if the Earth's been destroyed and town's actually a spaceship ala Hitchhiker's Guide?

Seriously, I know it's inevitable that games share some similarities (although really, if you look at the bigger RP games around, they all have unique premises), but there's a huge difference between inspiration and blatant rip-off. (And no, games do not 'rip off each other all the time', please tell me where you're getting this from.) Slice-of-life domestic game in a modern town? Fine, even if it does sound incredibly boring. But once you start taking details that are unique to a game that already exists - characters are assigned into houses, there are photographs of them with their 'families', everyone tries to convince them they've always been there - you are crossing a line. Even the premise written without mentioning Mayfield sounds almost exactly like Mayfield's own written premise. Waking up in a house with evidence you've been there your whole life even though you can't remember it - yeah, pretty much exactly what Mayfield has on their profile summary, down to the last two sentences: "You're going to love it here! Whether you like it or not."

You want to do a domestic modern day AU game, great! But put some of your own creativity and effort in instead of just blatantly copying another game.

Re: Domestic Life Game

[(Anonymous)]

I don't really care about the anons trying to argue otherwise here- this whole idea really, really looks like it's just a direct rip-off of Mayfield with the horror aspects dropped. It's so blatant I honestly find it a little bit jaw-dropping.

I can't see this game surviving at all.

Re: Domestic Life Game

[(Anonymous)]

Since everyone's having a cow baby about Mayfield, what about making it a slightly tweaked modern AU? Taking away all similarity to Mayfield except the family aspect and even that being dramatically different.

It's set in the modern world and characters have lived their entire lives in this town and they know it. However there's this new program. All the people involved would be compensated for their participation, maybe with housing and monthly checks. So all the characters would be in this program of their own free will. This program is designed to create the ideal marriage for characters. (Of course, the system is still wonky, so the results wouldn't always be desirable.)

So based on the program, a couple would be selected and would have to marry. Additionally, if applicable, foster children could be assigned to the new family. This whole thing could also explain dropped characters and why they're replaced, even with the kids. 'We think this child would be better suited for this home's family.'

So ICly there wouldn't be the creepy 'is this my life or not?' Instead, characters would know this is their life, but would be struggling with the family they now have. Some want to make it work, some just want the money.

Idk, I just like this domestic family idea and want it to work.

A few ideas

[(Anonymous)]

1. Okay so I had an idea that perhaps people can choose where in the process to app their character in at. Since everyone will be coming in as being established there already what if we allow canon characters to be apped in as basically AU because they believe the ruse and pay no heed to their other memories. That way the game won't be overrun with "You have memories of another life too? WE ALL HAVE MEMORIES OF ANOTHER LIFE WTF tinfoilhat.jpg"

Additionally, we could use the good old dreams excuse to explain memories. In the world of the game perhaps vivid dreams memories of another life are like nightmares. Everyone has them or at least has had them and there's nothing to worry about. If two characters from the same canon realize their dreams/memories are complementary it can be told to them that they have this discussion all the time and then forget about it. We could perhaps have OCs or other characters that were apped in more AU or (once the game is more established) character from the same canon that have been there awhile brush it off as something that happens to everyone and "well duh, you told Steve about your dreams weeks ago and it's no wonder he's started latching onto them with the amount of time you spend babbling to him about them."

2. As for communication I liked the idea of social networking that was brought up earlier and thought what if instead of the traditional "Text, Audio, Video" we have "Facebook, Twitter, Video Blog" or something to that effect. People could even post manips or drawn pictures of something relevant to their character as photo posts and other people could comment. Idk, what the consensus on this one will be but I'm just throwing it out there!

Discussion Points

[(Anonymous)]

Here's a couple of points that I thought were worth talking about.

1. Jobs- Obviously, parents (and some teenagers) would need work to get a living, but if this is small town America, what sort of jobs could be provided for? Should the choice of job be voluntary or forced upon them? And what pay would they expect to get?

2. Schools/College- There would also need to be a school for all the younger characters, and maybe a college, since for some characters, it would be hard to justify them not entering higher education.

3. ~Wacky~ Japanese Names- Okay, let's face it, any game is likely to have a fair share of characters from a Japanese canon. This also brings up the topic of having two white parents magically spawning a child of a different ethnicity- Handwave with adoption, choose families carefully or just slap a weirdness filter on everyone so nobody notices than John and Jane have a baby named Sakura?

About 4th Walls

[(Anonymous)]

4ths walls and soul bonding, though I don't want to pick on them comes to mind.

So far most of us are choosing modern time, 'normal' USA. People are geeks. If someone goes around claiming to be a Jedi Knight, they'll recognize the term.

I play in CnC, so I know their solution is to retcon the canon's material from that world. All movies disappear, etc etc. It works for that game since there are entities who can do so.

Most of us want the oddities to be subtle and easily questioned. A character from House would recognize a Star Wars reference, and possibly recognize the character.

What are some ways of addressing this hole in the 4th wall?

AESTHETICS

[(Anonymous)]

i know it's not as important as hammering out game details, but i've got time to spare so i'm going to mess around with things over at abode. if we decide on a different name later on layouts and such can easily be moved over to a different comm.

what are some things you'd like to see in the presentation? some things you'd hate to see?

The first discussion:

[(Anonymous)]

For those who joined the chat after it was moved over here, the initial discussion was over here. (http://rpanons.dreamwidth.org/565.html?thread=890677#cmt890677)

It looks like we started out thinking, "what if we took the parts of Mayfield and Kon Ran that we like the most, and make something different with them?"



Did we have any other threads through the meme? This is the main one I've seen, aside from the linked one and a brief exchange linking to this, on the last page. I want to know if there are any ideas we had but forgot to mention over here.

Places?

[(Anonymous)]

alright, so i think we've settled on small town usa being the setting, but i think we should discuss the specifics! like the town/city name, plus the names of the neighborhoods and the suburbs. also what kind of landmarks and other places there should be. i know there's supposedly going to be a college, maybe a public and a private school, but should we give out names to them? what other places would you guys want to see?

Re: Domestic Life Game

[(Anonymous)]

I'm having a hard time seeing the "uncertainty about canon memories" angle. Player characters will obviously be primarily interacting with other player characters, who have the same memory issue, with the possibility of castmates. Retconning for drops really seems like it would weaken the illusion too. And heck, if you're doing apps in batches then groups of characters would arrive at the same time. When you have a dozen of these people comparing notes and supporting each other, I'm sure there'd still be doubt, but wouldn't it stop being a major focus pretty quickly? For that matter, what happens when a character just plain refuses to go along with the setup?

Maybe it would be interesting if the characters also get memories of their new life, so they have two sets of conflicting memories to sort out, and a lot more personal investment in the gameworld?