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My girlfriend is a keen fan of The Bold & The Beautiful, and I am a keen fan of the episodes in which Ridge's sexy daughter takes her clothes off in the name of some contrived plot development and / or fanservice. The upshot of all this is that I reckon it would be a lot of fun to play an over-the-top soap opera RPG.
Join me in my brain as I go through the steps of turning this whim into the core of a game, 24 Hour RPG style. I'll start by taking the Pineapple Salad approach of reducing B&B to its main tropes. To me, these are:
Character names that are either wilderness things or saintly virtues
Typically these are something animal ('Hawk'), vegetable ('Thorn'), or mineral ('Ridge') found in the great outdoors. Occasionally you get a non-wilderness name embodying one of the seven heavenly virtues ('Hope', 'Faith', etc).
Meaningful stares
These ham-fistedly convey an emotion that sums up the characters' feelings about the something. Hmmm, she looks confused by the unexpected results of the DNA test. These stares tend to go on a bit too long with a lot of cutting back and forth between the actors, with the net result being unintended comedy.
Constant affairs with anyone who isn't the character's biological mother or father
Stepfathers, adopted sisters, nuns, etc are fair game.
A chain of ludicrous happenstance leads to a ridiculous betrayal
You can't make this stuff up.
Cylic plot with no final resolution
Hundreds of episodes pass as every possible permutation of affair and betrayal is played out.
Slow moving plot with repetitive expository dialogue
Characters continually paraphrase and rehash statements from the past 3-5 episodes, in case the viewer missed a few.
Men are wealthy magnates, women are celebrities
The women here are models, actresses, singers, tennis players etc. This makes fashion, jewellery, magazines, the music industry and so forth good things to be a magnate of.
Community service messages
TV networks can be excused from broadcasting a community announcement if they put the equivalent message into one of their soaps. Perhaps Ridge starts smoking crack and has to choose between keeping his luxury yacht or selling it to buy more rocks.
"This crack won't smoke itself."
Where to from here? Having identified the themes, next I'll have a stab at turning them into game mechanisms. If that's done as exhaustively and realistically as possible, you end up with a simulation rather than a game (which may be appropriate for a wargame, but doesn't float my boat as an RPG). So there's a balance to be struck between evoking theme and making things too crunchy.
Uwe Rosenberg says that he likes to bring the enjoyable activities in a game to the fore. Those are the things that would be fun to do even if you weren't playing a game. So for Bohnanza, that's haggling and swapping, and for Agricola, that's making a little toy farm with wooden animals. So, what are the play activities inherent in the list of tropes above, and how much fun are they? From most to least fun, I reckon they are:
1. Meaningful stares
The potential for eyebrow acting, scenery chewing, and giggling here is excellent. Try it with a friend! This activity is fun enough that I reckon it should ritually end each scene of the posited RPG. (Perhaps an egg timer should be involved...)
2. Chains of ludicrous happenstance leading to betrayal
This is not a million miles from the core fun in Fiasco. We know where the characters are now, we know we want them to end up in a certain dumb situation, and we are authorised to join the dots by making up whatever stories we like.
3. Constant arbitrary affairs
This sounds to me like the mechanism by which 1. and 2. are accomplished, with any intrinsic fun value lying in the reveal of the affair du jour. In a soap opera there's generally one spotlight affair happening with a true love type scenario for contrast. The relevant characters could rotate from scene to scene, or be predetermined at the start of the game.
4. Incorporating community service messages into regular conversation
Entertaining in moderation. We can't have every character doing this or else it would dominate the game. Perhaps one message per character per game.
5. No resolution
And therefore no conflict resolution mechanism... every scene is a cliffhanger!
6. Repetitive expository dialogue
It would be fun to have every scene begin with a clunky expository rehash.
7. Men are wealthy magnates, women are celebrities
Should be a fun wrinkle for character creation. Choose your business or describe your fame.
8. Funny character names
These are mildly amusing, but you only want to invent them once per game. Too many of these can be annoying, as anyone who's read a published Paranoia module can attest.
OK, so now I shall invent some point-form rules that broadly implement the above findings.
1. It's a 4-player game, because there are four types of name
2. It's GM-less game because passive consumption of a soap opera plot is too simulationist for my tastes
3. Each PC has one type of name (animal, vegetable, mineral, virtuous)
4. Two male PC business magnates, two female PC celebrities
5. Character creation consists of choosing a name type + name, a gender, a magnate or celebrity type, an a community service message
6. Each PC will frame four scenes (in any order): a colour scene of their happy relationship, an affair with another PC, a contrived betrayal of another PC, and a community service message relating to another PC
7. A scene begins with the active player naming the scene type and casting the scene. The target PC for that scene type must be included (e.g. the PC receiving the message in a community service message scene), but the other two players may be cast any combination of PCs, NPCs, or props (trees, cars, etc).
8. The scene proper starts with a clunky expository rehash of the situation leading up to the scene. The scene then continues until there's a conflict related to the scene type. The conflict does not get resolved.
9. The scene ends when the PC and the target PC start staring at each other meaningfully because the conflict isn't resolved. Other characters or props may join in the staring.
Polaris has a clever idea for handling the relationship map that point 4 implies: seating arrangement. Using seating arrangement in a four player game, you can have a two-way equivalent relationship with the player opposite, and a pair of one-way relationships with the players to your left and right. These neatly map to the three scene types: an affair with the PC opposite, a betrayal of the PC to one's left (mnemonic: betrayal is sinister), and a community service message about the PC to one's right (mnemonic: you are right about whatever it is). Having an affair with the person opposite implies an offensively heteronormative boy-girl-girl-boy seating order, meaning that you begin the game in a relationship with the adjacent PC of the opposite gender. You could be married, engaged, dating, whatever makes sense. Here's an example of a relationship map:
And a character sheet looks something like:
Name Type: Animal / Vegetable / Mineral / Virtue
Name: Hedge
Gender: Masculine
Internationally Famous As A Wealthy: Gold Bullion Magnate
Relationship: Married to Crystal
Having An Affair With: Chastity
Will Betray: Crystal
Has A Community Service Message For: Bobcat
And That Message Is About The Evils Of: C02 emissions from container ships causing global warming
Scenes Left:
- Happy Relationship
- Scandalous Affair
- Ludicrous Betrayal
- Annoying Community Service Message
Keen to hear your two cents.
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