Inner circle post for 0.3.24 (Patreon)

Hi all,

I've had some issues with stress & insomnia over the last week or so which have made it hard to focus. However, when I have been focussed progress has been going very well indeed, so hopefully it'll all balance out.

The next release is one of the two big scenes that still need to be done before 0.4. In this case, the house party. This is always hosted by the pc, as NPC houses aren't something I want to start adding until NPC careers & wealth-levels are in the game.

I've decided to implement it as a teen/student style house party rather than a fancy dinner party or whatever. It might seem a bit odd that the PC can invite a bunch of 40-somethings over to play spin-the-bottle, but I think that sort of chaotic sexually charged atmosphere will be better for the game than a more mature evening.

There's a number of decisions that are perhaps worth discussing:

I was originally going to have a pre-scene where the pc chooses who to invite. On reflection, I think this adds quite a bit of micro to the scene before getting into the fun parts and so instead I think I'm going to have the guests be chosen semi-randomly with the pc's friends being likely to come but also a sprinkling of other NPCs who could be gatecrashers, friends-of-friends or similar.

This also lets me say that there are more people there that the PC might know, but aren't important enough to warrant their own description - similar to how the nightclub is supposed to be full of hundreds of people even though only a half dozen or so are significant to the pc.

This is useful because it lets the scene branch off into things like the pc going off to play a sexy party game with a few friends without odd situations where that'd mean one guy left alone not playing in a different room.

Second, there's a question of what games can be played. I might implement some party games as simple single-turn actions but I'd like some at least to be extra scenes in their own right that the party branches off into - similar to how dancing at home with a date uses a different scene.

There are two types of games I want to implement: drinking games and sexy games.

Drinking games run into the problem that I haven't yet found one that would be interesting to play through in a game like Newlife as well as reasonably straightforward to implement. I could add something like a simple version of 21, but without the ability to make up new rules and without the time pressure of the IRL drinking game, it seems fairly pointless.

At the moment, my best plan is to have a drinking version of blackjack, separate from the strip version. Other suggestions for drinking games are welcome.

Sexy games are obviously where a lot of the content is going to end up, but this means they'll also be slower to implement so I need to be careful with them and try not to be over-ambitious. I've taken "truth or dare" off the list as a decent implementation in Newlife would be far too big to include in a release that also has another large scene in the form of the party scene itself.

Top of the list is a simplified version of blackjack, which I plan to add as a strip game. This will have some issues due to men's clothing being way simpler than women's, but I might just "cheat" by having the men take off their socks or something first to give them an extra few rounds of failure.

The second option is Spin the Bottle, which has the advantage of being quite simple to implement. At least the game parts are: adult content can always end up ballooning.

One question with spin-the-bottle is how to handle various pairings. A game could be a mix of men and women, all men except the pc or all women. MF kisses (or more than kisses) are obvious. What do you think about lesbian and/or male-homoerotic encouters? I'm tempted to add some FF kissing along with a simple straight/lesbian/bi value for female NPCs. Kisses between male NPCs are another question though, as I've had lots of requests for lesbian content but I've never had a single one for gay male content in Newlife. Is that something that people would want me to put time into adding, or would it be better to adjust the rules so it'll only choose MF or FF couples?

Lastly, do feel free to suggest other adult party games, although of course I don't guarantee that I'll end up adding them. Even if I don't put them in in this version, they might end up on the todo list to be considered for later additions. The party won't just be games, by the way. It'll also be possible to just drink, chat and dance and then maybe hook up with someone at the end of the night.