Animal Crossing RP [working title lol]

pronounsshe/her
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dellybirdearned bits
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dellybird
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Essentially, I want to create an RP to allow people to play as villagers and NPCs from the Animal Crossing series. All the villagers have amazing designs that give them ton of personality! However, the AC games probably won't ever flesh them out as well as they deserve. So, I'd like to create a space for people to develop their favorite Animal Crossing characters, in one small town setting.

This is still very much in the early brainstorming phase, so any suggestions are appreciated. Here's a list of my current ideas. 
  • Creating Your Character: Players would be allowed to claim any villager or NPC that has appeared in an Animal Crossing game (possibly with some exceptions) and make a life for them in this new town! They'd keep their canon personality type, but players would expand on their backstory, occupation, motivations, and personality quirks. 
  • Moving Into Town: After a character is accepted, they would set up a house thread describing their character's house and yard, with screenshots from one of the games if desired. There's opportunity to implement a furniture and plant collecting system here, but that may be more complicated than it's worth. At the very least, it would be easy to implement a Home Upgrade system, allowing players to buy extra house space over time.
  • Building Up the Town: Of course, certain parts of the town would be bare at the beginning. There could be a museum that needs exhibits, a couple shops that need upgrading, a boat to an island that needs repaired. Unlike the games, town growth is only limited by our creativity, but we'd need to develop some good systems for it to feel rewarding. Maybe players would be allowed to buy space for their own shop, in case Merengue wants to open a cafe, or Eugene wants to start a night club?
  • Expanding the Lore: To fully realize some characters, we will need explore some of the stranger parts of Animal Crossing lore. Why do Coco and Clay appear to be animated statues? What's the deal with Ribbot and Sprocket? It's important to develop site lore that explains these mysteries, so that the world these villagers live in makes (a little) sense.

All that being said, here's some questions that I have for anyone interested in the concept:

  • What do you like and/or dislike about my current ideas?
  • What mechanics would you like to see implemented in a site like this?
  • Would you be interested in acting as a staff member or helping to build the site? (not an immediate need, but if anyone happens to be interested, help would be appreciated)

Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think, or if you have any questions.
aliaspor, sef, jdawg
pronounsshe | her
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I am all over this idea and I would love to see it happen!

What do you like and/or dislike about my current ideas?
Creating Your Character is what sold me in terms of the availability to play the animal villagers and NPCs. While I'd like to be able to create my own animal villager, I can understand why that is a hit or miss thing to do.

For Moving Into Town; I'm not sure if I would personally like to use bells earned by posting or otherwise on house upgrades. Nor to collect furniture. But being able to use it to buy plants / fossils / fish / bugs to collect would be nice. Like even if it was a randomized, seasonal drop from a chart where you roll dice for a chance.

On the topic of Building Up the Town, I think it'd be fun to have a project or two each month with milestones. For example, to build the museum takes 50,000 bells and for X amount of members to complete this prompt. People donate their bells to this project and thread the prompt. Then, when those requirements are met - we get the museum! Which could unlock the ability to collect / identify fossils (which could be a chart that determines the fossil on dice roll like above).

What mechanics would you like to see implemented in a site like this?
I think you covered most of it in which I gave comments above! For an RP site, I wouldn't want to see this too complex. Since, even Animal Crossing at its roots is a very casual game.

Would you be interested in acting as a staff member or helping to build the site?
As much as I would love to, I am running a site and won't have any time to help with another for the far foreseeable future.
pronounsshe/her
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dellybirdearned bits
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Thanks for the feedback!

I can see that using bells for furniture and house upgrades might be too much of a hassle. It may be a better experience for players to just build their characters' houses with whatever size and furniture they think is appropriate.

Additionally, maybe it would be a good idea to allow people to create custom animal villagers, as long as they ask permission before using someone's OC (I'm a little hazy on the etiquette there). It could even turn into a lowkey Panfandom RP that way, with Epona and other Nintendo-based villagers in the games already lol. I'm definitely open to allowing original villagers, I'd just have to think about how it's implemented.

I'm definitely very prone to going overboard with ideas for intricate mechanics, but it's probably best to avoid complicating things, especially at the beginning. After all, an Animal Crossing RP should be relaxing, not overwhelming.

I think I will stick to a town milestone idea, along with some sort of collectible that people can spend their bells on. Maybe a bug/fish/fossil catching mechanic similar to how Pokemon RPs handle wild Pokemon? People could pay a handful of bells for a chance to bug hunt, fish, or fossil hunt.