Seaside School Roleplay Group
Proposed by: Buffy Aura
TYPE: Official

SLURL: School located in Vodou

BACKGROUND: OOC BACKGROUND: Buffy Aura (Buffy Ella Millet) and Lena Hartle (Lena Millet) propose to jointly run the existing, currently inactive CD Seaside group to create a hopefully lasting, interactive youth and parent roleplay for Crack Den. Seaside in itself is a large group which will take patience, effort and loving care to revive, which we believe two people will be able to provide. OOC Buffy would look after the development of youth roleplay and Lena the school staff/PTA. Both will interact with existing CD groups such as the Hathian Police Department and Civil Services. Both will also play the NPC role of The School Board, sometimes creating stories and plotlines that could ripple through the school (nothing like a school inspection to put the fear of god into the staff!) or a sudden exam to put the chills down the kids spines.))

IC BACKGROUND: IC Background – the private investors group that have operated the Sunnydale School have applied to the Parish Council to take over the running of the larger, defunct Seaside School to better cater for the needs of the always plentiful Hathian youth (we all know there’s something in the water that keeps on making babies!) If the application is approved, they will appoint a new local Headteacher with plenty of experience dealing with children.This isn’t unusual these days as private entities are always taking over crumbling state infrastructures. The investors group remains anonymous (and NPC’s), but at their heart, they will be as corrupt as the HPD and will be known only as The School Board. The School Board (NPC’s): This is so the Headteacher and the staff always feel they have someone breathing down their necks. A pressure to meet targets. To issue directives that sometimes the teachers themselves may not agree with. The higher power of the school. Little will be known about them except in hushed whispers in the staff room.

UNIQUE: Seaside has been an existing group in Crack Den for a long time now, but it’s never really had a chance to flourish. It had its brief moment when the school was first launched, with its own sim and everything, but the amount of roleplay generated just wasn’t enough to justify the investment in a full sim – not when it seems the kids preferred to hang out in Hathian anyway along with the other yellow dots.

However as the number of children played in crack den continue to be constant, there needs to be an outlet for that youth roleplay. Having done a test run with Sunnydale School I think there is definitely interest in a running school, and alongside that the roleplay that goes with it. However it’s not enough just to have a building and expect people to flock to it.
The roleplay needs to stretch out and become entangled into a characters storyline, and it can only do that with official sim support otherwise there is no come back for youths who don’t attend or parents who let their children play on the streets rather than go to class.
So parents, kids, social workers, cops and whoever else might care where that child is meant to be, we’ve created an NPC class schedule. This will not replace actual IC classes, but will be considered to be going on all the time. Here is the current schedule, which can be updated with different classes or amended times as suits:

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Seaside School – NPC Class Schedule

*timings are in SLT, and set in increments of two 6 hour slots per 24 hours. Timings don’t reflect real school hours but more the majority of active time between European players and US players. *Actual IC classes by PC teachers can be held anytime and if clashing with an NPC class, would automatically replace that.

SCHEDULE 1

1600 SLT-1730 SLT Mrs Mangles Home Cookery – location Classroom B Teaching the basics of cooking and baking and dish washing. *Mrs Mangle is a battleaxe of a woman, with muscles and whiskers on her chin. She speaks in a gruff manly voice and is a big fan of corporal punishment for even the slightest misdemeanour*

1730 SLT-1900 SLT Mr Squits Puzzles and Conundrums – location Classroom A Teaches basic maths and English but with a twist. Squits class includes solving crosswords, playing word games, or number games, or even riddles. *Mr Squits, as expected, smells of human farts constantly. He is tall, skinny, balding, bespectacled and speaks with a stutter. He is a useless disciplinarian.*

1900 SLT-2030 SLT Miss Du Pointe’s Local History – location Classroom A Lectures on local Hathian and Louisiana history. Class projects include things like hathian family geneaology, history talks and walks, show and tell of family heirlooms or family stories. *Miss Du Pointe is a charming, blonde southern belle. She speaks in the local YAT dialect, and is a complete and utter racist. She will use corporal punishment on any non-white student only*

2030 SLT-2200 SLT Professor Giles Literature Class – location Library Involves the reading and study of classical books like To Kill A Mockingbird, Huckleberry Finn, the works of Shakespeare and modern books like the Harry Potter series. The class focuses on trying to get students to appreciate the joy of reading and imagination. *Professor Giles is from England and speaks in a slightly befuddled English accent. He uses terminology like “tea cosy” a lot, and also frequently uses the words “bloody” and “bollocks.” Giles only use of corporal punishment is to whack a student on the hand or at the back of the head with a really heavy book!

2200 SLT Classes End

SCHEDULE 2

0400 SLT Classes Start

0400-0530 SLT Sister Paris Religious Redemption – location Classroom A A series of classes talking about religion with a heavy emphasis on catholocism and atoning for your sins. Each class will involve “confessions” of any sins commited that week, and a good round of whipping with a heavy belt for any sins Sister Paris particularly frowns on. *A petite brunette with big chocolate eyes and freckly skin, Sister Paris is the meanest motherfucker in the school faculty.*

0530-0700 SLT Mr Ghandi’s World Of Wonders – location Classroom B A science class with the emphasis on cool experiments like vander graf generators, looking after the classes pet mice, and dissecting dead animals. Expect lots of wacky experiments that will make your hair stand on end or stare wide eyed going “no fucking way!” *Ghandi is an Indian professor who has escaped to Hathian after a series of strange experiments at his Mumbai university left several students dead. He is polite but very literal and doesn’t understand slang. He is a pacifist so does not believe in violence of any sort*

0730-0900 SLT Buster’s Beat A Bully – location Gym A self defence class held in the boxing ring that teaches children how to stick up for themselves. *Buster is a former featherweight boxing pro who was unbeaten in at least two fights in his whole career. He is now down on his luck and so teaches the only skills he knows for a pittance. He treats children just like adults, cusses and swears at them a lot, and doesn’t have much in the way of brains. He doesn’t need corporal punishment, piss him off and he’ll put you in the ring at unfavourable odds*

0900-1030 SLT Miss Star’s music club – location Playing Fields A class that focuses on the learning and playing of music, songwriting, and expressing yourself through music. Includes musical pop quizzes on famous artists, and playing “name that tune” on Song Pop whilst drinking sodas and group singing on the bleachers. May sometimes feel like the character is trapped in an episode of Glee. *Miss Star is a washed up hippy, who likes weed and other harder drugs. In her prime she was a beauty, but years of addiction have taken their toll. She doesn’t really care what kids do in her class or whether they show up at all.

* 0900 SLT Classes End ****************************************************

One of the big things we would like to introduce – and one of the few things that would require CD admin help – would be an active truancy system. With Buffy’s test run of Sunnydale some members were allocated a truancy officer role – the concept being to go out and catch truants. However this fell flat because of being unable to wear their tag on sim, and having no actual IC authority. Having rethought the idea, we would like to implement something like this as a process: ……

Concerned adult finds child playing truant. Contacts HPD. . HPD check NPC class schedule – which will show if it is an hour where there is a scheduled class or not. ((OR AN ALTERNATE TO MAKE LESS WORK FOR HPD – truanting child im’s school to say if they’ve been truant or not. Truancy list prepared and sent to HPD/Social Services weekly.)) . Truant cited and fined and told to get ass back to school. . If fine unpaid within a certain time, child reported to civil services. . School provided with a list of fined truants each week, so disciplinary action can be arranged. Of course the child avatar may not necessarily have any income to pay such a fine, which will encourage roleplay with them trying to come up with the money without their parents finding out. Or imagine a parents shock when their chased by bailiffs for truancy fines for their children……

((It’s been pointed out by one of my HPD friends that under current rules a child cannot be fined, so if thats the case, the child would be required to give the name of their IC parent/guardian so the fine would go to them and the child reported to social services. My only concern with that is there’s no real IC consequences for the child rp’er, and many don’t have IC parents so again – lack of consequence, which is what I think could be a core issue with youth roleplay in general. But that could be another discussion for another time.))

This whole idea is a workaround to make things work within the current CD system. The ideal would be to have actual Youth Officers who would police the misdemeanours of children and have their own system tweaked to minors, but understand that would take work, effort and expense of which resources could be better spent elsewhere.))

Requirements for this to work – Truancy added as a fine-able option to the HPD citation book. Seaside NPC class schedule to be accessible to all on the forums

Another active role idea – to once again go out and bring the roleplay to the people, rather on trying to rely on it coming to us, would be something like a school bus driver – someone with a vehicle permit who will go out on a school bus to collect the kids from their homes, or at least their local bus stops. Again the idea is for the school to reach out to the players, bringing the school story to them.

Just because Seaside School is for youth characters, this is Crack Den, so there also has to be an element of darkness. Corporal punishment will be an allowed method of punishment staff members can utilise (at their own discretion and of course the youth player’s discretion.) as well as any cruel and unusual punishments the staff can come up with that will adhere to the Youth Guide and LL TOS. School should be an oppressive environment in this fictional setting. Of course some staff will love kids, some will hate them, just like the HPD has its good and bad cops.

Eventually it would be great if Seaside could benefit from the same “experience points” that CU is now getting, but we’re here for the role-play, not the kudos.

The group will be run both out of the existing Seaside Youth Centre and my own private build in vodou not far from the youth centre. The youth centre sees almost no roleplay, but I see it being a great venue for kids parties, a youth club, an IC roleplaying group (I can just imagine mini LARP’ers running around Hathian with their plastic swords slaying imaginary dragons!) Whilst the school is bigger and has more room and more facilities. Classes – Rather than typical school classes focusing on maths or science, life skills will be considered much more important at Seaside this time around. Things like maths may well be replaced by Finances, health classes will be important, as well as important things to Hathian such as First Aid and what to do if a creep asks you to come try his candy. Traditional teachings will be accepted as well. Classes should be open to any Seaside Youth 5-17 because there isn’t enough active members to justify seperate elementary and high school level classes. Detention Class – this one is easy because all it requires is at least one child and one staff member. Detention is a good ad-hoc class any teacher will be able to organise, to encourage school roleplay without needing to prepare a subject or lesson, so can be done at a moments notice if necessary. Roles available – Pupils, teachers, janitor, coach, doctor or nurse, librarian, security guard, guidance counsellor, truant officer, and anything else that would add to the environment. There are already people assigned to these roles in the private Sunnydale group and so all that’s needed is to ensure they have applied to Seaside.

Groups – if the activity can grow we can also see smaller groups forming under the official Seaside umbrella, much as CU has official groups like the Cheerleaders. But I’m thinking things like the Seaside Glee Club, Seaside Scouts, Seaside Young Delinquents (a youth gang of sorts) – these are just ideas off of the top of our heads but are things that could be developed down the line.

EXPERIENCE:Buffy has ran various groups in CD with different degrees of success. Sometimes she’s accused of moving from one thing to the next a lot, but believes if something is clearly not working, try something else! However everything she’s ever tried had been solely to try and generate fun rp for the other players in the sim. There have been drama and crisis-is-ises (????) along the way, but a lot of fun, and she believes she has a great relationship with everyone in crack den.

Lena has been involved with school role-play at CU and helped run the SIK sorority. Also, Lena owns the Shogun Cigar Lounge in Black Bottom. Recently, she’s been trying to get other members and leaders involved in role-play that benefits everyone, such as the Job Fair. Although, Lena has a busy schedule outside of SL, she does set aside time to role-play and plan events that is fun for others in the community. Outside of Crack Den, Lena has helped run clubs and events. Getting creative is something she does well in.

IDEAS:We’d like to hold a regular OOC Youth Forum once a month that would engage new and current players in the Seaside group and outside of it. This would help any new players, go over any issues players are experiencing, and try and develop youth roleplay over time to make it as exciting and engaging as the adult roleplay is in CD.

OTHER:A school Talent Show which would feature a big family picnic, stalls from local businesses, and most importantly the amazing talents (or even more amazing lack of talents) from the citizens of crack den.