Hot ginger and dynamite!

[pyat]

What the world needs is a console simulator with the same quality of character play and interactivity as Grand Theft Auto or Vice City, except set in the literary world of P.G. Wodehouse.

Instead of playing gangsters who indulge in all sorts of anti-social, violent, and misogynistic behavior, gamers will take on the role of an upper-class twit (male or female) in a somewhat sanitized version of 1920s London. It would be reasonably easy to construct a random plot generator (using common Wodehousian elements) that will grant a potentially infinite gaming experience.

I’m serious. Wodehouse’s protagonists always seem to meander aimlessly through the story in a reactionary fashion, acting as they are presented with problems and challenges. If left to their own devices, they just hang out and invent silly games. This seems to perfectly describe the attitude of the average computer gamer.

So, someone just needs to come up with software that intelligently takes a cast of about 100 recurring characters, which can manage their different relationships and desires, and let them evolve as the game progresses. This week, “Bingo” Little is engaged to Daisy Scumblethropingham-Smythe and he needs your help to impress her godfather. Sadly, The Affair of Uncle Wilbeforce’s Silver Cow Creamer backfires, and she dumps him. Next week, old Bingo hooks up with a foreign opera singer, and needs your help to make him look like a refined man of culture!

The player’s standing within his social web would be determined by his/her success or failure in dealing with these plots. If he/she has a string of failures, he/she might end up engaged to an amateur spiritualist who writes poems that compare the stars God’s Own Daisy Chain. If he or she fails to respect the Old School Tie, or spreads rumours about a lady, or fails to come to the aid of a chum, his or her standing in the eyes of the computer-controlled characters will fall.

The player could also completely ignore the ongoing developments in his/her social web and concentrate entirely on a life of leisure. Things like getting drunk and stealing policeman’s helmets, learning to play the trombone, going to the club and throwing bread rolls at people - these are all important elements of any Wodehousian plot. The “Club Games” (like bread roll tossing and spittoon use) could also represent stand-alone mini-games for those days when you don’t have time to tackle a full plot.

Each player could invest points in an NPC assistant, or assistants. This would reflect your household. You could be like Bertie Wooster, and spend the lot on a single super-human valet named Jeeves, or buy yourself an indifferent cook, butler, house-keeper and chauffeur.

At the very least, a game of this sort might encourage a little historical awareness and a few laudable virtues in players. Instead of forcing them to shoot cops or slap women to advance the plot, why not give them a game wherein they must compete in sack races, conduct midnight raids on the pantry, or try to smooth the course of true love for old chums?

It would even have a good rap soundtrack, by Jack Hylton! "Back in Nagasaki, where the fellers chew tabacky, and the women wiki-whacky-woo!"

I’d play it! And I’m cool!

Comments

[etherlad.livejournal.com]

But my mom says I'm cool! (http://www.doheth.co.uk/episodeguide/1f16.shtml)

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Heehee. :)

[cargoweasel.livejournal.com]

Surely you're familiar with the Drones RPG:

http://www.unseelie.org/rpg/drones/

[pyat.livejournal.com]

I am!

We just need to port it to a console.

[dramagirl42.livejournal.com]

Today you are my hero. Ho de ho de ho, Sir.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Top drawer!

[anidada.livejournal.com]

I would SO play that. But, I'd want to play Jeeves. ;D

[pyat.livejournal.com]

You'll have to wait for the add-on missions.

[jadecat.livejournal.com]

Now that sounds like fun! AND like something I would play.

Now you go ahead and start writing and see who you can sell it to. ;)

[pyat.livejournal.com]

I just need to learn how to program!

[jadecat.livejournal.com]

Nah, just write up the idea, and perhaps some outlines of missions, cast of characters- see if a gaming company will do the rest... It could happen- right?

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Hmm. This is true... hmm.

[jadecat.livejournal.com]

And with this post you even have a bit of a start... ;)
The hard part would be some of the 'if then' scenarios.

Hey, the people who do The Sims might be interested.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Excellent idea, sir! My hat would be off to you, if I wore a hat dared expose the niobium antennae on my skull.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

You have antennae? *looks closely*

[thebitterguy]

I’d play it! And I’m cool!

I'd say you're more amusingly anachronistic.

[anidada.livejournal.com]

Takes one to know one! ;D

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Are you calling me an anarchist?

[thebitterguy]

If you get to have a big mustache and one of those black bombs with the fuses sticking out of it, would you complain?

[pyat.livejournal.com]

I.... no.

No, I would not.

I have to run an anarchist of that type in a game sometime.

[thebitterguy]

Oddly enough, the Masque of the Red Death setting does not have stats for "a black powder bomb that looks like a bowling ball."

[jirris-midvale.livejournal.com]

I love you.

I would so play that game.

However, I know 'the kids' wouldn't like it, as my high school english class showed me. I really liked the 1920's. No one else did.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

We simply need to replace all other media! Their brains will rewire themselves to accomodate the new reality, in time.

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Hurrah for the 20s and 30s, even though I was never there! In fact, neither were my parents. Maybe if you can't do something like this as a game, you could write up something as a very amusing, tongue-in-cheek, super-short RPG or supplement.

Or, who knows? With all the bread-tossing, it could be a LARP.

[easyalchemy.livejournal.com]

It sounds wonderful. I agree: You should try to sell the idea. Please write a clause into your contract that says I get to do the voice for at least one major-ish character. That would be fun.
When I think about Vice City, a small part of my soul dies a little.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Please write a clause into your contract that says I get to do the voice for at least one major-ish character.

Coitanly!

[perlandria.livejournal.com]

My gods, it would eat all my free time. Lovely!