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DRD1812
2017-11-14, 11:38 AM
At its worst, RPG romance leads to RPG horror stories. I think that's why most groups prefer to fade to black (case in point (http://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/fade-to-black)).

We only ever seem to hear of these negative stories though. That's why I'm curious to hear about your successful romantic subplots. Have you ever had one? How did you manage to make it work?

JeenLeen
2017-11-14, 11:46 AM
One long Mage game I had sorta had some. It was minimal RP of going on a couple dates with NPCs, and the DM just let it lead to more romantic stuff as time went on. Very 'fade to black', with even the details of simple dates being off-screen. This was partially since all of us would have found it somewhat boring and be weirded out by the DM RPing that with a player.

I think the game included
1) a couple dates where the NPC didn't wind up liking the PC, mainly due to mixed priorities
2) a long-term relationship between an NPC and a PC, ended when the PC died
3) a marriage between an NPC and a PC, ended when it turned out the NPC was a Nephandi after all and killed the PC then the rest of the party after we beat the final boss

Last one ended badly, but it was a cool finale. Funny thing was my (somewhat insane) character suspected she was Nephandi, but the other PCs kept telling him he was being silly :smallcool:
DM: All right. Voormas falls down dead.
Me: Yay. I survived! 1 health left, but I'm alive.
DM: ...roll Soak.
Me: ...2 successes.
DM: Your wife kills you. Yeah, you were right, she was a Nephandi.
Me (to other players): I told you not to trust her!

BWR
2017-11-14, 11:53 AM
Horror stories about game romances have the same cause as horror stories about all other aspects of the game: people who are ***** or blindingly ignorant, often both.

You make game romances work by having sensible people who can take a character romance seriously, who can play it properly and avoid turning it into nothing but meaningless sex, and not going so far that you seriously annoy your fellow players.
It should go without saying that people who can distinguish between IC and OOC are a must, but I find a surprising number of people need to be told stuff that should go without saying.

Jay R
2017-11-14, 12:32 PM
Fade to black whenever any character does anything that ignores most of the party. Don't waste time on individual shopping, trading, exploring, talking, taking out the trash, organizing the backpack, pitching a tent, ...

... or dating.

Knaight
2017-11-14, 03:41 PM
Fade to black whenever any character does anything that ignores most of the party. Don't waste time on individual shopping, trading, exploring, talking, taking out the trash, organizing the backpack, pitching a tent, ...

... or dating.

A lot of that individual stuff can be relevant to the rest of the players, and also interesting for the rest of the players - and taking this advice straight means being completely unable to handle split parties. Maybe this is just a quirk of my group, but they have a lot of fun with split parties and seem to enjoy splitting them dramatically, to the point of occasionally having more distinct groups than players at the table.

RazorChain
2017-11-14, 04:15 PM
Current campaign I have 3 romances going.

First between a PC magus and a cambion, they're soulbound (long story) so if one dies, they both die.
Usually the player declares that him and his girlfriend spend time together followed by fade to black and an occasional RP scene to spice things up.

Second romance had the paramour of the PC transformed into statue, not much happening there discounting the PC is trying to lift the curse he's partially responsible for.

Third is that one PC she fell for the enemy. She is a witch that fell for her paladin captor. A Stockholm syndrome in action. But she might be off the hook for now but they belong to opposing factions.

Sajiri
2017-11-14, 05:53 PM
Due to the fact it's hard to regularly get a group together, a lot of my games right now are just between my husband and I with one of us the player and one of us the DM with DMPC/S.

I think every game we have done with just the two of us has had romance, and of course since we're married, we can go into it without unease and not having to worry about taking time from other players. Our first game has stretched across 12 years in-game by now I think, my character started a romance with someone, they had to split up due to reasons (namely he turned out to be a prince of a foreign nation and got called home) then discovered she was pregnant with his illegitimate heir. After a decade long timeskip, she was reunited with an old friend and is now in a relationship with him after a bumpy road.

Another game we started it with a romance in mind from the beginning. I played an android character who was forced into the care of someone who was essentially someone that was meant to track down and destroy androids (kinda like bladerunner). It didnt start as a romance but it was fun to play it gradually taking shape with all the other events going on at the time. Unfortunately that game has been on hiatus for a long time now.

The latest one we were doing, we decided that as part of my character's background she had a friend that she'd been pining for since her childhood, and it was intended that friend would be removed from the plot near immediately. Within the first session though I grew really attached to that npc friend, and I wanted to explore it more, so now he's the intended love interest with his own plots going on and a very strained and maybe tragic relationship between them.

tensai_oni
2017-11-14, 11:11 PM
Many of my characters were involved in romance. Sometimes it was with NPCs, sometimes with other player characters. Sometimes it was straight, sometimes gay. I did it all.

Romantic relationships are important as a source of a character's strength, development - or sometimes drama. As such I don't think they should be handled offscreen. Of course it helps that I played online, with dedicated threads or subforums for "offtime" activities. If your group gathers only for adventures, then spending an hour describing your character going to a dinner with a significant other is just a waste of everyone else's time - unless they are okay with it that is.

Here's an example of a successful romance between two unlikely player characters: she, a powerful but asocial, individualistic warrior. He, seemingly just a cog in the machine of war, a soldier doing his duty. When they met they didn't think highly of each other, but by interacting and exchanging views they started to slowly influence each other, learning things about independence, responsibility, and how your actions affect those around you. Both of them had dramatic stories and lost many friends and things precious to them. In darkest hours it felt like they had nothing left in the world - but then, they realized that they still had each other to rely on. A bond of mutual respect, a deep friendship - and eventually, something more. There wasn't much dating involved, both characters were way too socially awkward for that.

All of that culminated in the two becoming married rulers of a whole, if ruined nation, with the goal of turning it into a safe place to live, so its citizens could avoid the tragedies the two experienced in their lives. The whole arc took over two years of very intensive online play, with a timeskip somewhere closer to the end than the beginning.

Zombimode
2017-11-15, 02:52 AM
We only ever seem to hear of these negative stories though. That's why I'm curious to hear about your successful romantic subplots. Have you ever had one? How did you manage to make it work?

In our Deathlands Noir campaigns (Savage Worlds) romances where a regular feature. You just need the right setting and, more importantly, the right people.

Floret
2017-11-15, 07:22 AM
I think part of why we mostly hear the ones where it went terribly is the same reason why we so disproportionatly read stories where it went terribly in general - the impulse to complain might just be bigger than the impulse to share "Oh, and then it was totally awesome"-stories - the latter of which, at least for me, generally feel a bit too much like bragging to do online :smallwink:

That being said, Romance and sexuality are relatively regular parts of my games. Mostly this tends to come down to occasional flings, travelling adventurers just don't lend themselves to "settling down", even if just in the metaphorical sense.

Some exceptions I have had:
1. A Five Rings campaign that I GM, two characters are married (separately, not to each other); one being in a very "We do this for the clan and for offspring, that hopefully will turn out to be Shugenja" way, but without many feelings. One is a player that has switched characters to take over an NPC, that had been recently married (to another NPC), and is incredibly in love, mostly (Since the wife is at home, currently caring for the firstborn) consisting of gushing about her and writing sappy haikus; to the annoyance of the other characters and amusement of the other players. Much fade to black involved.
That player's old character had a flaw that basically meant she had a stalker - which turned out to be the player's (female) boss, who flirted with her relentlessly; the character herself being too thick to realise. After the character was laid to rest with some final RPing to decide how to handle her as an NPC, she has now realised the boss' affections, and an affair, that as of now the other characters (and players) still have to realise.
Then there is one character who desparately tries to avoid getting married; and one character of a oneshot that had a ****ty marriage that turned her into a deathseeker. Maybe they don't count directly, but they're at least in the same ballpark.

So... Much fade to black; and relationships that were constructed deliberately not as "perfect couples", but as narratively interesting. It should be noted that L5R (4th Edition, at least) lends itself to that sort of thing, given quite some flaws and qualities you can choose at character creation that deal with it (Blissfull/Bitter Betrothal or the Stalker; True Love, and some others).

2. My old Shadowrun group had several characters with NPC girlfriends, one of whom started cheating on said girlfriend with another PC at some point, leading to some quite interesting (purely in character) drama.

3. In Larp, I have seen too many examples to fully list them here, but I have seen how it can be a nice asset for more intense and varied scenes, especially in intrigue-heavy settings (To be noted, not necessarily between people that are in an OOC-relationship as well. The ones where the IC-relationship is based on "We are a couple OOC" most often get iffy, ime, interestingly enough.)

So... I think Romance can be quite a nice addition to games, open up quite a lot of possible plots. From my experience though the somewhat dysfunctional, complicated situations are a good bit more interesting than actual, functional ones - and easier to play, since it just feels more "removed" from the actual players, intentionally making a dysfunctional and/or dangerous romance just can't be confused for real feelings that easily. Story comes from problems; and a healthy, happy relationship that noone in the world wants to object to simply doesn't have much of that :smallwink:

RPG Factory
2017-11-22, 03:58 PM
We only ever seem to hear of these negative stories though. That's why I'm curious to hear about your successful romantic subplots. Have you ever had one? How did you manage to make it work?

I think this is because people dont like to stick to "oh look that's that couple again, arn't they nice together" :) This is often an adventure, adventurers never stick to one place at a time, they move and therefore relationships suffer?

Ezeze
2017-11-22, 04:29 PM
I'm one-half of an in-game romance right now and it's really sweet.

The setting is Lawful Neutral leaning Lawful Evil in that everyone is very collectivist and no one in power cares about much more than staying there.

The two characters in question have known each other since they were very young; they were raised neighboring farms. The older character is 8 years older and is a very rebellious rogue-character with an authority problem which, since the society is collectivist, makes him not-very-popular.

He would give someone in need the shirt off his back, though, and he's the primary inspiration for my character. She's a Paladin who leans more 'good' than 'lawful.' But since she is lawful and her family is rich she's a great deal more popular than he is.

She adores him and thinks he's perfect, which is hilarious because just about everyone else around them thinks that he's an a**hole and that she can do a lot better. He loves her and knows she needs him, and that keeps him around.


Their romance is the cornerstone of the party; we have a second rogue who is his friend. The wizard and druid are both her friends. The second rogue and the cleric despise one another and are only putting up with each other because they want to help their friends who are hopelessly smitten with one another.

Tanarii
2017-11-22, 04:52 PM
At its worst, RPG romance leads to RPG horror stories.Given how often IRL romance leads to IRL horror stories, that's unsurprising. :smallamused: