RPGs for the Mundane GF (including Jane Austen RPG Blerg)

[kent_allard_jr]

My GF is a mundane, but an open minded one. I never hid my hobbies from her -- I devote an entire room of my apartment to RPGs, so that would have been impossible -- and she's shown some interest in learning about them. So on Sunday night I decided to introduce her to the hobby the conventional way: Having her roll-up a character.

First, I asked "what kind of character would you like to play?" and she said "an otter." So I pulled 4th edition Gamma World off the shelf and we created a mutant otter with a carapace, air sails, a "poor dual brain" and "density control (others)." (Man, I love that crazy game...) She was amused at first, but was turned off by all the number crunching that followed.

So I turned next to Everway. She came up with a fairly original concept from the Vision Cards, a woman who read minds, was surrounded by darkness and had children without male contact. We assigned our 20 points and did the whole thing with the Fortune Deck, which she thought was kind of goofy. (Admittedly, so did I.)

Afterward she asked "is there a Jane Austen roleplaying game?" I assured her that there had to be one, possibly several. The idea was so obvious! Oddly enough, though, a quick Google search didn't reveal any. Sure, there's a "choose your own adventure" Austen pastiche on Amazon (with poor reviews); there was a group-storytelling effort at Yahoo! in the early aughts; a couple of discussions of playing Austen with existing rule systems. (Yeah, I'm sure the GF would love GURPS Age of Napoleon for that sort of thing...) Naturally there's some talk of RPGs for the "Jane Austen with Monsters" sub-genre, but to me that's cheating. Rules for called shots to the head don't belong in an Austen game! Anyone who knows better examples can point them out to me.

Honestly, I suspect the best way to approach the problem would be to create a semi-RPG like En Garde in reverse, then add opportunities for roleplaying as they come up in game. Everyone plays an aristocratic lady looking for a good match, each defined with a set of simple non-numeric traits, along with variable factors like wealth and reputation. I would have to read a Jane Austen novel before I could go further -- and I don't think they're my kind of books -- but I'd be happy to hear from those who have.

Comments

[hslayer.livejournal.com]

After initially saying, "DON'T do it," to an Austen RPG and me pointing out that it sounded like she was looking for more "pure role-playing" type of thing, Michelle suggested she just join Milliways (or something similar), which already has some Austen characters running around.

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

Could be. I suspect she wouldn't have the time for such a time-sink. (She's not a fan-fiction writer like Michelle.) I was thinking of something a little more structured, but with plenty of room for creativity nevertheless.

[viridian.livejournal.com]

Pfff, Milliways is not a time sink unless you really want it to be. I put a character into play like once every few months. And I haven't written actual fanfiction in something like a year. :P

But yeah, if you don't want monsters it's basically going to have to be a pure role-playing game, and I'm not sure what you'd do that would be very interesting. I feel like it would end up the equivalent of Princess Maker, in RPG form.

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

I'll have to check out Princess Maker (someone mentioned it when I said I wanted "estates" and "heirs" in WoW).

My guess is everyone would play an aristocratic woman, and there would be a number of "eligible bachelors" equal to the number of players, each with randomly selected attributes. As I said, something a bit more structured than a standard RPG (there wouldn't be a Game Master, after all), but players would pick their character's names, choose noteworthy characteristics and so forth.