New Relationship System

Ok, so we are not harvest dreams, therefore we decided to make our own relationship system.
Ok, so there are three different relationship statuses your character can have, they either--

Easily Fall in Love (EL)-- These characters fall in love very quickly

The confession event for these types of characters cannot take place until after 6 meetings (not including confession and marrige) the character has known his/her potenial love interest for 6 meetings.

total meetings: 8

Fall in Love Normally (NL)-- These characters just go at their own pace and fall in love gradually.

The confession event for these types of characters cannot take place until 8 meetings (not including confession and marrige) after the character has known his/her potenial love interest.

total meetings: 10

Take Longer to Fall In Love (HL)-- Similar to NL, only these characters take a longer amount of time to fall in love with someone.

The confession event for these types of characters cannot take place until 12 meetings (not including confession and marrige) after the character has known his/her potenial love interest.

total meetings: 14

Whichever one your character is depends on his/her age, or personality.

Personality:
In retrospect, I think personality overrules age in how fast someone falls in love. There could be a 14-year-old girl who's just not interested in boys, so if she does fall in love, it takes longer. Or there could be a 17-year-old boy who's completely infatuated with every girl he sees. So in most cases, personality is more important than age in deciding how fast your character falls in love.

Conflict/Resolution
People aren't perfect. Therefore, relationships aren't perfect. There should be conflicts and resolutions in a relationship between two characters. They don't have to be constant, but they should exist. In this case, age might overrule personality by a tiny bit. People who are younger tend to break up quicker then people who are older, but that depends on the character's personality. Some conflicts might never be solved, leading to a breakup, but that is completely up to the users whose characters are dating.

Confession and Marriage
The confession event is a speical event in which one character confesses his/her love to another character.
If there's one thing we're keeping, it's the confession and marriage events. However, marriage and confession events could be rejected by one character, depending on how long it takes them to fall in love. That could either ruin the relationship between both characters or make it stronger. But like I said, that is up to the users to decide. The same goes with Marriage. After one character proposes to the other (if it isn't rejected), you may have the wedding whenever you like, however, you cannot get hitched the next day unless you plan to go to Vegas. You must wait 2 days till after the proposal, then you can get married whenever your little heart desires. However, I only recommend quick weddings for people who want to get married fast to get the whole thing over with. If you want a more traditional wedding, You might want to wait a week or so to have your wedding so your characters have time to plan and prepare themselves for the HUGE step they're about to take.

Divorce?
Out of the question. You married each other, darn it! NO ONE SAID MARRIAGE WOULD BE EASY. I don't expect this to happen with you guys in particular, but it very well could happen. Say if Susie Jay and Michael finally get married, then the lovely Miranda comes waltzing into town and Michael decides he likes her better. He could just easily divorce poor Susie Jay and hook up with Miranda. If i were to allow divorce, it would be, once again, between you and your partner. But i'm not really allowing divorces. Make sure you absolutley want your characters to be together for the rest of their lives before you jump into things. However, if there is honestly a problem you feel need to be dealt with, PM me or another mod/admin and we'll take care of it.

Children
OK, so after you get married, you have to wait at least a month to have your first child. Although I love picking on people, I will let it slide and say you are allowed to decide what gender of child you want (if I had it my way, you'd all be using the randomizer >: D). You may have two children if you and your spouse so desire, but you must wait until your first child is at least a year old, then you and your spouse can decide when to have the child. Even though this system is somewhat more realistic, for the sake of all of your character's ages, your child will age one year every 3 months on their birthday. If they grew any faster, we'd have a star wars problem and all of your children would be close to or the same age as their parents, which is just weird. Your children may grow until they reach the age of tweleve, then they will stop growing (once again, for the sake of your character's ages). Children are mostly NPC's, and cannot be active without a parent around. However, if another user wants to take on the identity of that child, they may do so when that child is old enough to speak.



Opposites Attract?
OK, so here's the tricky part, "What if I want my character to get together with another character, but they have two different love statuses?"
Well, the answer is pretty simple. if you want Susie Jay who has an "EL" Status to fall in love with Michael who has a "HL" Status, Susie Jay might have to do a few extra events with Michael so he can have more time to fall in love with her. However, if it is time for Susie Jay to confess her feelings to Michael, she may do so if she pleases, or she can wait until she thinks Michael is prepared or she is ready to tell him. However, if you have the same love status, it's obvious your characters can just do their thing.

What is the Likely Hood of Successful Relationships?
That depends on the personality and the love status of your character. Characters who have the EL love status may break up sooner then they planned, just because it went sorta fast. Characters with the NL love status might have a more steady relationship, but still have a good chance of breaking up. Lastly, characters with the HL love status might have the sturdiest relationships because they took a longer time to fall for that person and trust in their feelings. However, nothing is ever set in stone, so this might not apply to your character depending on their personality.

No dating, please.
'Perhaps your character isn't interested in dating right now, or you don't want them to date. In that case, right next to your Love status you would put, "neutral" to indicate your character currently isn't interested in a relationship. However, the status can change over time.

Age Is Key
Sure, preteen and teen characters can date, but what age can they wed? You can get married at 16 with parents permission, but since parents on here are NPC's, that seems a bit out of question. However, I will allow the marriage age to be 16 if you so desire to get married at the age. The only exception to getting married younger is if you're royalty. Becuase marrying off a 4-year-old girl to a 32-year-old man is one of the lovely practices practiced amonst the royals.

What's your status?
Ok, so lets go facebook here. You know how people have relationship statuses, right? Well congrats, you get one too In your profile right under "Relationship Status" (EL,NL,HL), you will put "current relationship" in which you may put nay of the following.

Neutral( as shown above)- this means you're currently not interesting in dating
Single- you're currently no seeing anyone, and you really don't expect to anytime soon, but you’re available.
Looking- you are looking for someone to share your life with.
Currently Seeing (insert name here)- you're not exactly dating this person, but you really like them and you've been hanging around them a lot.
Currently Dating (insert name here)- obviously you're taken and dating someone
Married to (insert name here)- it means your married. Need I say more?

Your status can change as your character develops or relationships change.

Between you and your partner
Ok, so I've explained everything pretty clearly. There are a lot of different things you can do with this and I think we have given you a lot of elbowroom. First off, you must be in agreement with another user if your characters are to get together. Say I ask Lollie if she'll do some rp's with me and we later decide we want them to date, OK, that's great. But you must discuss with the user what the character's relationships are going to be like based on what I told you here. What you choose to do with your characters' relationships is up to you and your partner. If there are any questions, comments, concerns, or problems. PM me or any other mods or admins and we'll take care of it.

Please enjoy the new system!

--Kazu

Wow! You did a pretty good job. I'm in agreement with everything you said and I like your reference to a Vegas marriage. I just have a few questions. 1) What's a confession event? Could you explain that somewhere in there? Is it a topic where the character tells the other character that they love them? If so, can the character develop early feelings for the other character, even if the character is HL? For example, Michael likes Susie Jay a lot, but he's afraid of telling her because he doesn't want to get hurt, so he just lets things flow. 2) Is marriage the end? How many posts or days before they can have a kid? How many kids can they have? Are their kids side characters or do other members have to be them? Also, can characters get a divorce? I know that’s very unpleasant to think about, but it happens. One more thing, what is the age when characters can get married?

Ah, good questions. I'll include those, thank you. And to anwser your question, it's possable for Susie Jay to fall in love ealier with Michael since she's an EL, but it would take longer for Michael to fall in love with susie since he's an HL. Once he falls in love, Michael can be afraid to tell susie and maybe wait a bit longer. However, that is up to the partners.

Edit: I now added more things.

I don't think it's fair with the divorce thing.. I mean, sure, we all want to live in a perfect world and stuff, but it happens. What if Susie and Michael get married, but then Michael develops a bad temper and starts being abusive? Or any other problem like that. They should at least be aloud to be seperated. Like Susie leaves for a few days so they both can have some space to think. No cheating though. I wouldn't allow that either. It's cruel.

Well, it's more realistic, but keep in mind this is all fake too. This is a PG website, so there shouldn't even be abuse. It does seem a bit unfair, but there really is no reason to get a divorce in the first place. It's only role play, after all. I will not allow divorces just becuase there's no point to it. However, husband and wife are allowed to fight, that's normal. But I won't allow divorces.

hahh, also, you don't have to rush into marriage just because that's the next topic. ^^' you can let your characters develop an even deaper love before proposing. take your time, make sure the partner is the right choice for you. then there shouldn't have to be divorces.

Can someone check if I've got this right?

Okay, so say Susie-Jay and Michael are NL. They meet ten times in the rp world. Each time they meet, they like each other a little more. Then the eleventh time they meet, they confess their love yadda yadda. Then soon after, Michael proposes. They get married. The end [obviously they'll do more rping before the proposal, you know what I mean]. That's basically it right?

And I have a question! Once Susie-Jay is married she can't do 'heart events' as it were, with anyone else? I'm just thinking of HD, where, once the characters are married, they can only do HEs up to a certain level. What happens here?
Thank you!

Well, i'm trying to make this as free but still stric as possable. I might change uo the meetings later depending on how this goes. And no, once you're hitched, no more "heart events" as it were ;-D However, you can do "friendship events" which is basically the same system as the one shown above, but instead of falling in love you become friends with the person.

Two things:
1) Thanks for correcting me and whatnot! I just wanted to be sure y'know in case I went in and started messing it up
2) I think the system is genius! It's original and easy to use! So congratz on the idea.