Family
The core unit of society (and the game) is the Family. With the chastity of unmarried persons at peril from all those outside your family, your closest companions and confidantes are those to whom you are too closely related to ever marry. But the family is not just close blood relations - more distant family connections and unrelated people may be adopted into a family.
Players can arrange themselves into groups of between 2-6 people, who will be the representatives of your family at the ball. As the primary purpose of characters attending the ball is to marry off debutants, debutants should form the majority of the group. The rest play chaperones, there to see the debutants behave in a suitable and chaste manner. Every family must contain at least one debutant and a chaperone. One of the chaperones should be a senior married member of the family who will represent each debutant’s parent in approving or refusing matches for them.
When creating a family, you should be setting up antagonistic relationships between family members. These should primarily surround beliefs around who is suitable to marry and be resolvable within an evening's dispute through compromise on those beliefs. For example, a family head might have a deep and long-lasting dislike of another family head, due to having been jilted by them at the alter many years ago, while debutants of each family fall in love and determine to marry. Perhaps the debutant could convince the family head to reconcile through inducing an apology or a confession from their counterpart; perhaps the family head could instead convince the debutant that their lover is likely to desert them, possibly even setting up the lover to be compromised by an outside party.
NB: If you are interested in playing, but would rather not find people to form a family, there is the option to play some pre-written characters who will be grouped into families.
Debutants
Unmarried young people. They have spent the last few months at a series of balls and other social events hoping to gain a proposal from a suitable partner. Alas, this is their last chance before society declares them unmarriageable and their chance of future independence and happiness disappears forever.
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NB: Debutants are expected to have a chaperone
This would be a good role to play if you want to:
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Do a lot of dancing or gambling
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Fall in love/ prioritise personal happiness
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Reject, and be rejected by others.
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Flirt and scheme with other debutants to secure the person you want
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Pass secret notes, play parlour games trying to get to know your prospective partners.
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Have conflicts with Chaperones (who want to ensure you stay chaste) and Family Heads (who wish to marry you off to the person of their choice)
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Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor,
which is one very strong argument in favour of matrimony.
Letters of Jane Austen
Chaperones
Either married or clearly of impeccable reputation. Your goal is to ensure your charges make a suitable match without compromising your reputation. Chaperones will have access to additional information about other characters, to better represent their long experience of society and its ways. You are expected to support and assist the family head.
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This would be a good role to play if you want to:
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Do a lot of talking
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Spread gossip and collect information about others
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Do some dancing or gambling.
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Be antagonistic to the debutants - keep them from being alone or too intimate with anyone until they are safely engaged.
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Look for lovers - you are free to flirt and be much more outrangeous with your language and action, as long as your charges don't find out.
"I am sure your mother will not object to it; for I have had such
good luck in getting my own children off my hands, that she will think me
a very fit person to have the charge of you; and if I don't get one of you
at least well married before I have done with you, it shall not be my fault.
I shall speak a good word for you to all the young men, you may depend upon it."
Sense and Sensibility
Head of the family
Before any engagement can be announced, you must come to terms with the other family - see the section on marriage for more details.
You should be representing a particular agenda on behalf of the debutants parents. Suitable agendas might be a desire to see them married into wealth, or a dislike of a specific family. Ideally, this agenda would be at odds with that of your charges.
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NB: Every family must have a family head - this character cannot be unmarried, but could be a widow/widower.
This would be a good role to play if you want to:
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Be in charge of a group
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Negotiate marriage contacts
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Be the gatekeeper for permission to marry - make the suitors work for the right to marry into your family!
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Make public announcements about your family
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Prioritise long-term family stability over the personal happiness of debutants
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Enforce the societal norms - lecture debutants, rudely ignore those who go too far
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Do some gambling and dancing
Some mothers might have encouraged the intimacy from motives of interest,
for Edward Ferrars was the eldest son of a man who had died very rich;
and some might have repressed it from motives of prudence, for, except a trifling sum,
the whole of his fortune depended on the will of his mother.
Sense and Sensibility
Adoption and Repudiation
Additional people can be “claimed as kin” and fostered into the family. While this is traditionally done to allow a couple without children to adopt an heir, you can also recognise sisters and cousins which brings them into your family without giving them the right of inheritance. Adoption occurs by making a public declaration by in front of numerous witnesses from one’s peers - it is not possible to do this in complete secret.
The counterpart of this is repudiation - the casting out of someone from a family. By formally declaring someone not longer your kin, you implicitly ban them from associating closely with your children, retracting any invitation to enter your house. With the queen’s permission, you may also strip them of any Titles or inheritance they gain directly from you.
“An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth.
From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents.
Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins,
and I will never see you again if you do.”
Pride and Prejudice
Chastity
Due to the stringent chastity restrictions on unmarried individuals, it is a scandal if you are discovered alone with anyone outside of your family before you are married. It is technically legal to marry someone within your family that you are not blood-related too, but it is a massive taboo and would destroy the reputation of your entire family. In particular, it would cast doubts on the chastity of all unmarried relations.