Sex, Marriage, and Families

Greetings!

In my own campaigns, in the longer-running ones, there are families that have developed over time. How do you develop children of adventurers into your campaigns? Are there family dynasties and such?

How do you handle weddings and pregnancies in the campaign? Do your players develop any in-depth social relationships?

For example, in one campaign, there are two characters-female- that have a diverse array of family, friends, and lovers that they are always interacting with at every opportunity. They get involved with romances, family disputes, jealousies, as well as adventures with siblings, lovers, and so on. They keep track of who's who, their personalities, histories, and so on. I can ask one about her lover's birthday, and she's got it down. Or I can ask about her younger sister, like her personality, and what her favorite color is, and what temple does she go to, and what her sister does at the wizard's guild. She can tell me all about it, and when the opportunity comes up to interact with her wizard-sister, she can have lots of fun on adventures, shopping, exploring, whatever.

Then, there are two other characters, who have a basic description of their girl-friend. They don't know much about them, nor do they seem to want to. Their interest extends to "Does she go upstairs with me?"

Their interaction with their father might be--

"Does the old man give me the loan, or what?"

Or,

"Yeah, it's dad's birthday. I mak sure to pick up a case of good whiskey for dad. Oh yeah, and a silver necklace for mom. Next, I need to go to the armorer. When do we go to the dungeon?"

What level of involvement with the many different types of side characters do your players get into?

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Since I don't allow ressurection and even raise dead is practically impossible (unless you happen to be a god) I require all my PCs to create Factions -family, friends and allies - for their characters from whom any replacement PC will be drawn in cases of death.

Each game session involves a section in which the faction is managed (think strategy game like Civilisation!) before the adventure section starts.

This faction section may have an impact on the adventure depending on what orders were issued and the outcomes.

I also tend to work issues from the adventures in faction 'decisions' and faction outcomes in adventure play.

The depth of this however is up to players and this varies...

Since I don't allow ressurection and even raise dead is practically impossible (unless you happen to be a god) I require all my PCs to create Factions -family, friends and allies - for their characters from whom any replacement PC will be drawn in cases of death.

Click to expand...

What a great Idea, never thought of this about the family infrastructure. Kinda keeps the PC's in line and from doing stupid things to get killed. A tad of realism never hurt anyone

Not quite as detailed as some of the things you mentioned, SHARK. In my game all but two of the group are pretty far from home so family rarely comes into it, and one of the other two didn't do much with family. It tends to be more the NPC's I create and throw at the group. From the little old lady ruling the samurai PC's house with an iron fist to other people they work with or interact with, I'm slowly developing continuing characters. Sex, Marriage and Families can come up. The samurai knows there is probably some plan to arrange a marriage for him down the road, as is traditional. I'm hoping to keep introducing more of this element though.

Wish me luck.

Well, in my old Planescape campaign, there was some elements of this kind of thing.

The bariaur fighter/Champion of Va'asha didn't have any old family ties, though when he became an important member of the Ragers sect they became a bit akin to a family for him.

The half-dragon paladin had a very odd family - after being seduced by a erinyes, she bore a child who she raised as a anti-paladin in hell. This character, his son, came back to haunt the party later on as the right-hand man of a very powerful baatezu mage. Both Palanar (the son) and the erinyes princess survived the entire campaign.

The enchantress managed to compliacte things by beginning a sort of love affair with Palanar - they first met in the City of Splinters in Baator, and things developed from there, usually on a battlefield when they were both on opposing sides, She did manage to bring out some of the good streak within him thta came from his fathers heritage, and saved his life from a solar's killing blow once - the rest of the party really weren't very happy about that, though the paladin father was in a bit of a tricky dilemma over it.

The drow rogue had no family ties after he had been cut off from his people by arriving in Sigil and realising that frankly he had more opportunity here than he would ever have back in the oppresive drow society. IF anything, the closest he got to a family was the Fated faction.

The aasimar cleric had no family, nor any real relations - I'm sad to say that the player just didn't roleplay very well during that campaign, and the character was rather two-dimensional.

Finally the Sensate tiefling sorceror/rogue... well, he had lots of liasons and one-night stands, but nothing more serious than that

In my current campaign, which has only just started, I'm hoping to develop this side of things fairly well since I have some truly excellent roleplayers on hand.

Oh Yeah!

Most of the PCs IMC have very intricate family entanglements...I believe it brings a much higher level of believability and enjoyment (not to mention lots of plot hooks for the DM).

Just a few of the current issues, all of which have been discovered "in-game", include:

(1) The father of the sorcerer and bard was permanently crippled in a mine cave-in several years ago. A local trapper/scout began providing him with a narcotic plant extract to ease the pain, leaving the father slightly unhinged mentally and dependant on th plant. Then the father lapsed into a coma and they discovered he had been poisoned. They are trying to discover who poisoned him and why.

(2) The sorcerer and bard have 5 younger sisters and are trying to arrange suitable marraiges for them. The oldest sister has run off with one of their main enemies in town and is currently a "kept" woman. One of the other sisters shows a keen interest in one of the other PCs.

(3) The sorcerer's former fiancee (they broke up because of her unhealthy interest in necromancy) has disappeared...she came to visit the sorcerer while he was out of town and no one has seen here since.

(4) The barbarian's grandfather is the Warlord of one of the most powerful barbarian tribes in the campaign, but he is the bastard son of the warlord's daughter and a rogue general of the Emorian Empire.

(5) The barbarian fell in love with a girl betrothed to the son of a chieftain from a rival tribe and got her pregnant. Sometime later, she saved the party, but was mortally wounded in the process. With her dying words, she introduced the barbarian to his 2-month old son.

(6) The party rescued the daughter of the most powerful landowner in their town from an assassination attempt put together by her stepmother and executed by her stepbrother (the other two daughters died). She has shown interest in 3 of the party memebers so far. The ranger, who is also interested in one of the sorcerer's sisters, has been flirting with her - much to the sorcerer's grand irritation!

(7) The cleric's younger brother, also a cleric in the same church, blames him for the death of their parents and won't have anything to do with him. Several attempts at reconciliation have failed and now the brother has left the town to travel to other temples.

There are a number of other entanglements, but those give a good idea of some!

Old One

The closest we've every come (and it's not very close) to developing any kind of social connections beyond the group is this:

One player in our group always creates new characters that are the son of the last one. So, when "Hodo" dies, "Dodo - son of Hodo" joins the group. If Dodo dies, then "Bodo - son of Dodo" joins the group.

Their character stats may be entirely different (ie: he's not just playing the same ranger with a different name), but the names always rhyme.

- HM