A high school RPG... with a plot?! Details inside!

I know, I know, high school roleplays are horribly overdone and cliched to Vega and back, but if my title caught your attention enough for you to click into the topic, please give me a little bit of a chance.

I'm going to hope this is in the least bit original - at least, for here - and I know that boy characters are hard to come by, mainly because said boy characters are only wanted for romance, but again, give this a little bit of a chance.

This is only a base idea and help fleshing out the idea would be lovely <3

Things in bold can be changed/altered.






Located on the edge of the Ohio and Indiana state line, about an hour's drive from Indianapolis, Richmond is the home of the aptly-titled Richmond Red Devils. The community houses less than forty thousand people; a little over fifteen hundred high school students. Despite the fever and the hype that the adults and administration try and keep up, Richmond isn't what it used to be... and neither is it's high school.

The drop-out rate is increasing, teen pregnancy is at an all-time high, and, even with the attempts made to keep the teens in school, Richmond just isn't what it used to be. The population is lowering, less students are being enrolled each year in the borderline rural community.

The town isn't what it used to be. The school isn't what it used to be. As people move on and grow up, as minds open and the community remains stuck in the 90's, Richmond begins to crumble.


Jared Walton steps in and hopes to change everything, with a group of boys, a gaggle of helmets and a hell of a lot of practice.

If anything could bring Richmond back into the twenty first century - and put the town's name back into the papers - it's the reputation he's going make for the high school's football team. With some guidance, some enthusiasm and some school spirit, he intends to bring back the reputation the town had as a 5A football team and take them through sectionals.

But when something happens to one of his players and a prospective second-string shows him skills that nearly dwarf his starting player, he is forced to put his faith into a wanna-be player with no skill but a raw talent that can't be matched.

Even if that player is the first female player the town of Richmond has ever seen.



Inspired heavily by Friday Night Lights and, well, the town I live in (...Richmond) and the circumstances I'm in currently (hahaha. Way to make lemonade out of lemons. I laugh.)

Football is big here. It isn't as big as Texas, but with nothing else to do but sports or drugs, football is often a saving grace for the community and the teens here. It's looked forward to every Friday. Homecoming is huge, games are huge...

But, honestly, we aren't very good.

And this is what I want us to become.


I want to bring my town to life, bring my favorite sport to life, add some twists and almost drop the high school aspect - but not. I don't want gobs and gobs of girls, but I want realistic dynamics without all the drama.

Football player who's dad is forcing him to play - but his heart isn't completely in it.

The player who has made some mistakes and football is the only thing keeping him from the fringe.

The player who is relying on his football skills alone to get him into college.

The coach trying to keep his players in line and bring prestige to the town he used to love.

And the girl who just decides to try for something... and finds out that being in the game is different than watching it.


All Richmond High School is, is a 9-12th grade institution, providing all your basic classes, as well as classes more suited for the agricultural, straight-to-the-workforce Indiana: we offer construction, machine shop, automotive, drafting, and the small town next door offers agricultural and animal science.

We're a little narrow minded here because we've never been challenged in ways larger cities have: girls on boys teams, homophobia to a degree, teen mothers are shunned. Things happen and we'd rather not talk about them than bring them to light and realize that we're evolving.


I don't know how interested anyone would be, but I had the idea and I just needed to get it out.

We wouldn't need the whole football team in terms of characters: have a few dynamic ones and the rest could be NPC's. The coach for sure would need to be a playable character, as would the girl. We'd need people willing to play cameos of parents, cheerleaders, opposing teams, etc.

It would be really dynamic but we'd have to have a cohesiveness to it in order to get the storyline going.




Jared Walton, 34, Richmond High School alumni. After growing up and leaving Richmond - just as he said he would as a teenager - he comes back, family in tow, for a job opportunity at the one place he never believed he'd see again, only to see that it has grown up around him in some aspects, and in others, not at all.

The football program is struggling, the drop-out rate is disturbing, and the athletic director is under pressure to hire a new head coach that will bring Richmond Red Devils back on the map. Jared Walton is that coach. Faced with circumstances he never believed he'd have to fix, boys he never thought he'd have to save from the edge, and a rally of young men questioning their masculinity at the face of a teenage girl, the man realizes he has his job cut out for him.

Vaughn Clark, 16. A construction student with an uncanny knack for football and a love for getting dirty and proving people wrong. After Coach Walton is directed to her from a fellow shop student and she makes the team, she's put in a position to put her love and passion to work... but sometimes, being as good as people expect you to be is harder than it looks, and in a quest to prove her teammates that she's good enough - and prove to herself as well - she grows in the process and brings the team closer together after her gender threatens to alienate them completely.

Jason Wickett, 18. Being the only nationally-ranked player on the team comes with it's own sets of challenges and perks, but when the quarterback takes his skills for granted and gets injured during the first game of the season, he's benched for three games. In a scramble to find a new quarterback, he's replaced by a girl half his size and nearly as good as he is. With his skill and now his position in limbo, the boy does everything he can to turn the team against it's new leader.
(could be changed to: penalized for unsportsmanlike conduct, fighting, etc)



ideas? Suggestions?

I honestly think that this would make an amazing roleplay if we could get a few dedicated people with some rich, evolving characters.

I've wanted to see a high school RP that focused on a sports team for a long, long time. (I actually went to a school that put a female in pads for homecoming. She pounded it in from one yard out, and I've heard tell of female place-kickers for extra points.) As romantic as the tale of the little player that could is to a lot of role-players, I can see several practical issues with this plot.

For one, short quarterbacks usually don't live long, as they have to see past the chaos on the line of scrimmage to diagnose the coverage and where their receivers are, not to mention running the hell away from a blitz. I could see Vaughn being a running back that's pressed into quarterback duty with the injury to Jason (maybe she ran reverses a few times?), but in any case, with an inability to see the coverage past the line, Vaughn would likely be asked to hand off the ball a lot, with the occasional quick-out screen pass to try to keep the opposition off balance.

Opposing defensive coordinators will prey on these tendencies and put eight guys in "the box" to stuff the run, with blitzes being dialed up frequently to deny the new quarterback the time she needs to learn how to be a good quarterback. No joke, Vaughn Clark is going to struggle mightily against competent opposition, and trick plays only work so often.

Finally, as jealous as Jason might be of his replacement's skills, all well-coached football players have it drilled into them to put the team's needs ahead of their own, which Mr. Walton is certain to stress. Jason is more likely to share with her the fruits of his experience than intentionally wreck her ability to win games, because as long as he's on the bench for whatever reason, he needs her to be at her absolute best if they're going to have any hope of a playoff run.

/twocents

Like I said in the post, we could switch around the positions, and, to be honest, the whole "jealous Jason" thing came in just in case the original plot wasn't strong enough.

And heck, even if we ditched the female player aspect, I still would love to see a football roleplay that develops the characters, gets in their heads and evolves, you know? The first thing that comes to mind when I think of football is Friday Night Lights (the movie, not the series, I haven't seen that) and I loved the storyline and how real the characters were and how crushed I was when they lost.

I think it would test my own writing capability - as well as others, possibly - to have such a rich and evolving cast of characters, playoffs or not.

Bamp for interest?

Bumping...because. Dx
Like, even if this DOESN'T become a roleplay, i would still love some feedback because I do plan on making a book/story out of this for my own doings.

Just some feedback: for any good quarter back the is an equally good receiver. The quarter back and receiver should be good friends so that they can work on the same page. There could also be some bad accident that would cause the community to come together and help the coach and football team. Usually the football teams are better when they have major support. I'm from Georgia where everyone lives breathes and sleeps football.

Deathrisesagain makes an excellent point. A quarterback and a receiver have to practically read each other's minds. Vaughn would also have to be very comfortable staring at a whole lot of butts on the offensive line...hell, she needs to be on good terms with ALL of the other starters. Perhaps as they start to win with a few key turnovers or a Tebow-time miracle, the team and the community get behind her as "their" quarterback.

I for one would be interested, if anyone else is (or heck, if push comes to shove and you still want to do this we could probably make it a 1x1 RP- though it would take some work).

But yes, I like the idea a lot. A sports-based HS RP (instead of clique-social base, like we see so often) is pretty original, I think. The whole female aspect... you would do better making her a running back and utilizing her shortness and the natural agility of women rather than placing her in a position where those things would only hamper her. (I'm female and I was on my school's football team and this use to be my position. However, she could also actually be a linesman if she was ok with taking a bit of a beating- being an ankle-biter and playing a bit dirty, as in instead of overpowering the other team they would attack the lower body and force them off balance, etc.) So there are some ideas...

Oh my gosh I love you right now.

Like I said in a previous post, the quarterback idea was just to throw a position out - it wasn't a serious idea. And after listening to you guys and joking myself about how I would make a terrible quarterback or receiver based solely on my size (I'm barely five foot even... no perks to that), I realized it was a little foolish to expect Vaughn to be able to take quarterback position.

Crimson, you have no idea how happy it makes me to find someone else who's gone through the same thing as I have/am currently. I've Facebooked girls, I've googled players and tried to e-mail them, and not a single girl has even e-mailed me back. I just wanted someone to talk to and to be able to compare stories with and no one was willing to listen, so just keep in mind that you're going to be very closely watched and probably babbled at, story aside. :)

I need to think up a few more dynamics and come up with character sheets, but at this point in time I'm still willing to get something thought up and posted. If any one else is interested - hey, even if we get rid of the girl, I'd still love to do this roleplay - I'll have it posted as soon as I can.

I've just been busy with, uh, football conditioning. ...haha, this is my life.

Ah, no problem. And don't ya just love hell week? -.-

But seriously, I'd love to do this RP, even if it was only as a team manager character or something.

If I could get paid for every time a football player has asked me variations of, "You're playing football?" and following it up with, "no, seriously?" ... I'd be rich. XD

I'm getting it set up right now so... it should be up tonight. Just watch for it! (...That's assuming I find a decent football-y title...)

I know right?! It was even worse when I got injured and still wore the jersey to the games and sat/stood with the players on the sidelines on crutches and then they asked "You play football?" or something to that degree and I couldn't help but think, "Yeah, I'm linebacker, totally. That's how I got this injury..." I mean, yeah I'm the only girl on the team and wasn't actually playing but I was on freaking crutches and standing on the sidelines with the team danngit! So yeah... I totally know how you feel... >.>

Good luck on the title hunt!

Just when you thought you won them all over, one more has to come and prove their ignorance, don't they?

THE ROLEPLAY CAN BE FOUND HERE. Go nuts.
...or not. That's cool too. :)

Eh, it wasn't too bad. I don't look like a football player at all- I think it was more that than the fact that I'm a girl really... I did look kinda funny standing next to the rest of the guys when they were in full gear and I, well, wasn't... ^-^'

Well, it sounds like you've had it a lot easier than I have...

I'm from California, so that may have something to do with that... but I was injured for most the season, unfortunately, so I couldn't play in most the games, though I did go for support. It was one injury right on top of another and the second one wasn't one that would heal fast. Actually, it still hurts a year later. Knee injuries aren't fun D:

Indiana isn't exactly known for being open-minded, and the fact that there's only been two other girls in Indiana - one in Marion County and one somewhere else - who have gotten onto their football team (being allowed to play is a different story) doesn't really help my case much.

If the original post is anything to go by, my town's small and it's not the greatest and it's been harder than nails just to get to preseason. I've gone through a head coach who discriminated against me and then quit in order to get out of apologizing; I've had an athletic director try to slough off his duties of getting me an apology and keeping me up to date, treat me as if I'm dirt on his shoes, and scare me into not opening a discrimination case against him; I've had an assistant director who turned his back on me in order to keep his job, a new head coach who won't play me on offense because "I don't want you to get hurt" and a group of twenty or odd boys who have tried everything they could to keep me from continuing.

It's been hard, I've gone through three or four bouts of wanting to quit just to spare the looks and the rude comments and hateful words, and I'm not even through preseason, and there's a chance I won't even get the position I want because I have some rivalry for my spot.

It's worth it. It always has been and it always will be. Someone has to be the first and enact the change in order for others to follow, and change is never NOT painful.

I'm happy to see that it isn't the same everywhere (as much as I'd love to have compare stories with you). I hope it gets to the point where it'll be like Cali, everywhere. You know? That'd be nice.

It might have helped that the entire team (including me) numbered about 13 people on a good day... >.>

But yeah, keep working for it if it's what you want to do! Gooooooo Gracie, Fight! ^-^