I had been travelling for two days with my aunt Amelia in her private carriage when upon arrival at the Fleckcot Glebe Inn, an establishment of some ill repute, Aunt Amelia received a letter that so altered our plans it leaves me in a whirlwind of mortification. My name is Flopsy McCanada, a Regency era girl of large oval face and low social standing. My aim? To find my way through the confusing customs and daily rituals of Jane Austen’s age without committing a major social transgression over tea.

I’m playing Ever, Jane, a virtual roleplaying game by Judy L Tyrer, formerly of Linden Labs, which created the seminal online world Second Life. As avid fans of Jane Austen, Tyrer and her team at 3 Turn Productions have worked to unify the worlds of Austen’s writing, from Lady Susan to Sense and Sensibility, turning them into Tyrehampton, a place where women in bonnets lounge about in day rooms and dissect their rivals.

“Gossip is our weapon of choice,” reads Tyrer’s Kickstarter pitch. “Instead of raids, we will have grand balls. Instead of dungeons, we will have dinner parties.” Ever, Jane, currently a free playable prototype, has strict social rules. To navigate its mazes of etiquette, my character keeps a Lady’s Magazine to hand. Drinks with characters are scheduled via requests sent by letter, while the importance of social conduct is reflected in the fact you have three buttons, each offering a different kind of curtsy or bow. “It was about finding out what the characters in her novels did,” says Tyrer, “coupled with the etiquette of Regency period.”

Status, kindness, duty … our writer’s alter ego, Flopsy McCanada. Photograph: 3 Turn Productions

Austen opens Pride and Prejudice with what are essentially the rules of Ever, Jane: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife,” she writes. “However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.”

You pick your gender, skin tone, outfit and create a backstory. My Austenian alter ago is single and ready to mingle

This story, in other words, is about a competition. Austen’s narratives dwell on matters of the heart, but they’re also about positioning, strategy and working the system. The game has many of the classic features of conventional online fantasy adventures, but they have been Austenified. While World of Warcraft has Guilds, or teams of players who work together, Ever, Jane has families whose status can be influenced by the actions of individual players. Characters progress not just through experience but also by orchestrating social engagements and by avoiding scandal through dialogue. Quests take the form of social gestures that raise your character stats. Strength, Dexterity and Wisdom – classic World of Warcraft terms – are replaced with Status, Kindness, Duty, Happiness and Reputation.

“Ever, Jane is completely focused on role-play,” says Tyrer. “We throw plot points at players to give them jumping off points so they can improve their stories.”

At the start, you pick your gender, skin tone, Regency outfit, then come up with a backstory. Where are you from? Who is your family? Are you single, married, betrothed, widowed? My Austenian alter ego, Flopsy, is single and ready to mingle. After being abandoned by her aunt at the house of a Mrs Hatch, she ties on the nicest bonnet in her inventory and begins her first quest: the search for a lost handkerchief, which Mrs Hatch has misplaced in her two-storey flat, all wooden floors and finery, in the style of Austen’s time.



Bonnets and battles … a window in Ever, Jane. Photograph: 3 Turn Productions

Flopsy wanders the rooms and halls before locating the lost item in an upstairs bedroom. She hands over the prized handkerchief to Mrs Hatch, who suggests having a chat with the handsome Shepherd Brimley. And so Flopsy wanders Tyrehampton in search of love, gliding down its streets, passing an ivy-covered church and sheep stacked on top of each another – the Austen livestock algorithm clearly has some glitches to iron out.

Flopsy eventually meets Master Brimley outside the sheep pen on the village green. As a commoner, Lady’s Magazine reminds me, he isn’t someone a woman of my standing would normally talk to. But in the chat window I write: “Good day, Shepherd Brimley!” He has beautiful square blue eyes, like a polygonal Colin Firth. Shepherd proceeds to tell Flopsy about his sheep problem, how they’ve escaped and are grazing in a nearby field, again standing on each other’s backs.

I curtsy to Master Brimley and he is added to my list of acquaintances. Eventually, after I complete enough tasks, there is the possibility of having a deeper relationship with him, the options being marriage, divorce, hiring and – strangely – adoption. Suddenly my chat lights up. “Hello, Lady Flopsy McCanada!” shouts Miss Esther Stapleton from a house across the street. Miss Stapleton is with three other players, who stand in a circle and curtsy to one another. Every week, Miss Stapleton tells me, they meet in Mrs Hatch’s parlour for Working-Class Wednesday, a role-playing session where they take on the part of the proletariat rather than the gentry.

Lost his sheep … suitor Shepherd Brimley. Photograph: 3 Turn Productions

Role-playing is a significant part of the subculture surrounding Jane Austen. As the 2013 film Austenland showed, the novelist’s works have a fanbase that rivals those of Star Trek and Harry Potter. Reading groups the world over celebrate the antiquated anglophilia of the Regency period, costumed balls are thrown and pilgrimages undertaken to Austen’s place of birth in Hampshire.

So perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that users of Ever, Jane revel in the role-playing. A Philadelphia man, aged 37, who started playing a year ago as Silas Turner, has created alter egos including a young, gay former opera singer studying to be a barrister who must keep his love a secret, and a travelling vicar who’s settling into his first long-term job after falling in love.

“Ever, Jane sounded different,” he says. “I enjoy games that are about physical challenges, but there’s also a world of amazing drama to be had when the focus is on what’s happening socially in an era of restrictions and startling debauchery. My characters have experienced sweet and tender poetic courtships, hot seductions, shame and subtle triumphs. They’ve loved in secret, made calculating connections and stupid mistakes in the name of friendship.”

The Regency-style world of Ever, Jane. Photograph: 3 Turn Productions

The greatest way to ensure one’s happiness in the game is to fulfil one’s social obligations – and find the perfect mate

Players take to the game’s messageboard to discuss their experiences, with comments ranging from grand introductions written in-character to bug reports. Some discuss the game from a historical perspective. A Washington DC user who plays as Emilia Bexby says this was her first MMO (massively multiplayer online game). “Because this takes place during the Regency era,” she says, “I felt confident enough to finally take the plunge and give online role-playing a go. I love how the players share Regency history. I thought I knew quite a lot, but it pales in comparison to what I have gleaned from playing with others who share my love of Austen.”

As in Austen’s day, the game has rules for paying and returning visits, for mixing with different ranks. “Whom do you wish to gossip about?” a window will prompt. The dialogue system lets you tell the truth or lie about acquaintances based on their romantic status, money, age, health or character. “You can decide to take a player down by lying about them,” says Tyrer. “This could be, as in the case of our Sabotage story, to turn the eye of a gentleman. Or it could be just for the sheer pleasure of destroying another person – as Mr Wickham does to Mr Darcy in Pride and Prejudice.”

The system will notify someone if they are being talked about too often. If you’re a good enough sleuth, it’s possible to find out who’s spreading the rumours. Likewise, if a player gets caught out lying, the consequences intended for their target rebound on them two fold.

So how does one win in the universe of Jane Austen? “The greatest way to ensure one’s happiness,” says Tyrer, “is to fulfil one’s social obligations and find the perfect mate. We have many players trying to lure Shepherd Brimley into matrimony. We’ve had two weddings and one birth so far. We do allow women to be single and become aunts or pursue careers, such as writing and painting. But it entails having a male relative willing to support one – and one’s allowance might be rather pitiful.”

• This article was amended on 29 September 2017 to correct the headline, which referred to Jane Eyre instead of a Jane Austen work.

