Last last week, I posted a bunch of games that were about romance and love, and I realized that none of them fit the vibe I was looking for. I wanted to experience the fun of the Monster Prom series, but on a tabletop. If you wanna skip the spiel, scroll to the bottom for the alpha copy. If you playtest it, I'd love to hear what you feel running it and how your players feel (or if you pass this to your GM, how your GM feels).
Then I remembered making something for the Team Name: Pending group, way back when...
THE IDEA
I played Monster Prom (Monster Camp) a couple of times, and when I was working on the Hope system with itsvin, I tried to make it work with the dating sim. That's the version you see in the video above. While it looks like it worked, it felt a little jank mechanically, and I wasn't really into the adrenaline mechanic.
That being said, I did like rolling d6s, and the reality is that the funnest part of the game were the quips and the flirting.
.Scratch it, and I'm gonna start making it again from scratch, but keeping what I love about it. We're stealing the starting gifts to the contestants, and the locations for dates are fun. When we did the pre-date questions like in those dating game shows, it provided a really fun moment to learn more about each others characters.
THE FEEL
Unlike with games typically, TTRPG design (in my opinion) starts with the feel that you want from playing the game. D&D and other high fantasy games are typically meant to make you feel heroic, epic, and like a fantasy superhero. Call of Cthulhu, the End of the World, Delta Green and Mothership are meant to make you feel like you're always almost dead, and you're barely making it through.
For the list mentioned, I had only played Firebrands/Stewpot and Monsterhearts in the past 365 days. In my research, I also found Dating.sim, which is the closest I could find to the game I want to play. We're gonna borrow some terminology from this game, in particular, the Prize (the main target of the other players affection), the Contestants (the people hitting on the Prize), and I'm adding the Narrator, who acts as the game show host and voice to the audience, and as mentioned there, the Audience. It's a bit meta, but I think it makes it less awkward to hit on someone when you're actively pretending to be the person watching the game, whilst playing a character in the game. The game, Dating.sim, does a really great job at making the players feel like they are in the game show. Not gonna lie, almost just decided to run this game instead. Most of the work done, and the system is pretty good for a 3 to 4 hour session. However, I couldn't shake that it wasn't the feel I wanted.
For this game, I would like people to feel like they are watching a dating show. Whether or not the game succeeds in this, is out of the question, but that's the goal post. As with some D&D games that feel like death, and Mothership games that feel like a comedy show, hopefully this game provides a framework of replicating the experience of watching the a dating show. This would mean that the audience should be established as a clear player role. In the older shows, the audience are typically not involved with the dates. However, in the newer YouTube dating shows, the audience (or vicariously a secondary host or hosts) often interject the date, asking questions, laughing at the answers and questions, and sometimes even send suggestions. The Audience shall be present.
I want to allow the fictional flirting to flow smoothly, so this system should be dice light. I also don't want people who aren't great at flirting to lose immediately, but I'd like the skill of flirting (or, to be more honest, skill of getting the table to laugh) to be rewarded as well.
We have lots of inspiration from monster prom, the dozens of dating shows that are popping up in YouTube, and the old school dating shows of the past.
THE MECHANICS
Dice light and less math to me defaults to d6 systems. Of course it isn't the only dice light/less math way to do things (you could do away with dice altogether, but I do want to keep some click clacks cause it feels nice to roll). Secondly, minimise arithmetic. It's hard enough to come up with witty phrases, don't need to double this up with math.
I'll steal an idea from Firebrands here - prompts. Whatever we can't do with dice, we must cover with something else. Ideally, the players are able to get into a flow state and watch and improv in game, but to push things forward, we need good prompts.
This is where a bulk of the work will go, but playing Monster Prom a few times should be enough to inspire ideas. The basic idea from the games I had tested that I want to keep are the individual dates between one contestant and the prize (the main date), whilst non-dating individuals can pitch in for ideas or environmental settings. This way, while there is a spotlight (on the CONTESTANT who is creating the date), the other players have a stake in it to either worsen or smoothen the ride for the contestant. Hopefully, to hilarious outcomes.
THE GAME
I'm gonna name the game Charm Person. After the Dungeons and Dragons spell, it simply makes sense. Definitely gonna come up with another mystery TTRPG called Find Person one day. Back to the topic on hand, Charm Person: Horror Homecoming will be the working title as an alliteration that has a similar vibe to Monster Prom.
I have the initial parts of this game tested, and I need to put all the awkwardness in my head into words. You can access the alpha copy here. Comment below or on the itch page if you would like to see more of this game, or join the Fried Dice Discord if you wanna test this out with me~
KTHNXBYE, who's awesome? You're awesome.
0 comments