School set VNs too redundant?

[Alera]

Wow, that's nice MiSi!

And school can really kill!!! So it's nice to be included. XD

[MiSi]

yeah, thanks... but I think, some people don't really appreciate it that it's BL...

[Alera]

Awww, then it's going to be sad, because I'm not a BL fan either. ^^;;;

[pondrthis]

BL>Fantasy characters

[MiSi]

Just what I said...

[KomiTsuku]

Reading all this stuff has frightened me. I'm 28,000 words into my script and realized it's mostly what has been listed in the above posts

Like I said before, do what you love.

[LVUER]

You can try also try to avoid high school and collage and try elementary school with an adult mind set.

That sounded very loli and a bit wrong until you clarified!

@LVUER
There are indigenous people living in small villages in jungles in South America - far deep into the heart of the jungle. They would be surprised to learn they aren't supposed to be able to survive there. Don't worry - they'll never find out you said that since they don't have electricity or the internet.

I think it would be kind of neat to set a VN with teenagers in such in a village. "School" would be learning together the skills they needed to survive. How to hunt, how to gather, how to craft items and weapons. You can even have roughly equivalent events to the traditional "worrying about passing the college entrance exam" by having the teens worry about passing their (possibly actually dangerous) coming-of-age tests.

You could have a nice cast of characters, though almost ALL the girls would be the "girl next-door". You could have a possible romance carried out in secret with a girl from a neighboring village who you meet in the jungle one day. Maybe foreign missionaries or anthropologists visiting the village for the summer have brought their daughter.

I see a ton of possibilities for such a setting.

Yeah, I know, that's why I wrote that you are right in the previous post and that we have to think about all possibilities ^_^

And there's Nagasarete Airantou where teenagers are all placed in the middle of isolated island (which have lots of jungle too).

It seems I still have lots to learn as a writer T_T

[clannadman]

Maybe Japanese school VNs are too overplayed by Western indie game makers. Since alot of amateur game makers in the West or anywhere else didn't grow up in Japan, take in the culture or go through their school system, it's a little difficult to emulate that since it's something they're not familiar with and can't use from their own experience. So a lot of the time, they just end up copying what they've seen in other VNs and anime.

[PyTom]

High school and college provide an interesting setting for a number of reasons. A big one is that those are the times of life when people's freedom is maximized. In those years, a person is thrown together with a large number of other people of their age - with a roughly 50-50 gender mix, which is rare in the professional world. You have a relatively large amount of free time - when I was in high school, class ended at 2:30 or so, and there was a lunch period in there - that's a lot of free time. There's a kind of feeling that since they have to take you, you can get away with big dumb gestures that wouldn't fly if you had a day job.

Of course, much of this is a guy looking back at high school from half a life a way. I suspect that a lot of the high-school-focused visual novels are actually aimed more at people my age, rather than people who are currently experiencing it. I remember that, a couple years into the forum, the average age was relatively high - like 25 or so - which might have made such games more popular.

But some of my favorite games are relatively light ones about a half dozen girls in high school - mere commonness is no reason not to make them.

[fleet]

Make a trade school where students learn a craft (welders, machinists, automobile/truck mechanics, airplane pilots).
Or military boot camp.

[LVUER]

Try watching Infinite Stratos. Another high-school VN with interesting twist ^_^

[Snowflower]

I think I have some what of an idea... but I guess I just have to wait and see the reaction from you guys when I finalize the post for the WIP

[Alera]

I think I have some what of an idea... but I guess I just have to wait and see the reaction from you guys when I finalize the post for the WIP

Yup- that would be best. ^^ Then we could judge the story as whole and not just some element of it. Characters are important too! ;'D

[LateWhiteRabbit]

Make a trade school where students learn a craft (welders, machinists, automobile/truck mechanics, airplane pilots).
Or military boot camp.

Military boot camp doesn't sound too likely a setting, even for homosexual relationships. First, the genders are segregated, meaning if you see someone of the opposite sex it is usually FAR FAR in the distance. Second, at least in U.S. Marine boot camp, you have ZERO private or personal time. We got 1 hour 'free time' a week, after worship services, which meant we could sit on our foot-locker and read or write mail or straighten uniforms in a little 3x3 foot area without being screamed at for 60 minutes. Once a week.

There isn't much romantic about boot camp. Even if you were attracted to the same gender, the stress is so high and constant that most guys think they are being drugged due to the inability to get or maintain an erection. The fear and stress just makes it impossible. Now, I heard 'scuttlebutt' (rumors) from one drill instructor that his sister, a female drill instructor, would routinely catch her female recruits having sex in bed with each other at night, but how much of that is true or the wishful thinking of men knowing that elsewhere on the island groups of 60 women are showering together and letting their imaginations run wild is another thing.

Besides, the opportunities for even holding conversations of a non-romantic sort are few and far between - a quick bit of talking in a corner during a cleaning detail, or whispered conversations on fire-watch duty at night while constantly looking over your shoulder . . . .

Watch the first half of Stanley Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket" and tell me if you could work a romance into that somehow. I couldn't, but if you can, I'd love to hear how.

This clip (Warning: it is loud) is also a real video showing what recruits hear and experience in boot camp everyday, most of the day. I've heard it said and I often say it myself: "I wouldn't trade my experiences in boot camp for a million dollars, but you couldn't pay me a million dollars to go through it again either."

I honestly get shivers and flashbacks watching clips like those.

[Kittylove]

I think that VNs set in school are overdone, because that's because I'm so glad to get out if that that I don't want to go back, even for a game. Still, if your heart is set on it then do what you want. It's your game in the end if a school setting is what you want then go for it.

But I implore you to please, please, don't make it a Japan high school setting just because. Have a reason for why it's in Japan. Don't have average american students in a average american high school with Japanese names(unless of course one of those american students was a Japanese-American). Not that I hate Japan or anything, but it doesn't have to be just Japan or nothing else.

I like my stories to have logic. So I don't like it when something Japanese is in a story where it should not be possible. (ex: born and raised American students from all american families with Japanese names, just because). Changing the timeline and setting of your school VN can make it more unique than the average school VNs. Several people up here have posted examples and new ideas already.

But still, do what's best for you. If you like it what your doing. Than go on with it. People will play regardless.