It's been said that this forum is bit dead and fair enough its not as popular as some of the other forums. But It like sunandshadow said most people existing member have asked all the technical questions they need to ask, and for some reason no one really post much on the writing they are doing or working on. With that in mind I'd like to hear peoples views for how I can flesh out a little something I've thinking about doing. The entire scene takes place at a party. When the Main character arrives things are already going strong. Most of the people there are strangers but the main character knows a few of them. This particular party take places on the 7th floor an apartment building that has 4 common areas and half a dozen bedrooms. The only actions the player will have available to them are a variety of social interactions. The entire scene will last 4 hour at the end of which the player will leave. The scene will also be like a free form social sandbox game. With that in mind what sort of social dynamics would make for an interesting playing experience?

stuff like this

So what is the goal of this game?
Is it a Sims type of game? Or a "Whodunnit"?

Other than obvious realistic party-attendance goals like trying to make friends with or sleep with as many people as posible... Well if you treat the people like puzzle pieces, your goal could be to manipulate them into one of several patterns. Like, I dunno, get them all into room X and the floor will collapse comically, get them all into the kitchen and one will produce a dramatically flaming baked alaska, get two jealous of each other and they'll have a big fight... I'm just repeathing the sims here, aren't I? If the game is intended for repeated reply, hide lots of stuff that the player has to complete various patterns to unlock.

"The Engineered Hit"

You got the call from your middleman just that morning, so no time to research the job. The money was quite good, though, and the general nature of the task was perfect for the short schedule: You could pick anybody at the party to kill, the client didn't care who.

There was a catch, though. The client didn't want you to be the one to pull the trigger. He wanted you to engineer a situation in which one of the other guests would do it. As near as you could tell, the idea was to thoroughly discredit and/or incarcerate the inner circle of friends at the party, turn them into utter pariahs. Why, you weren't sure, though if you've got some extra time at the party you might try to find out (or not... the money was quite good). Anyways, no guns, no garrotting wire, no poison. Just you, your winning ways, and a few sketchy notes about who had dirt on who and your normal intuition about who was likely to be packing and/or drunk to the gills.