Geron Raveneye
Explorer
Depends a lot on the style of play you and your players prefer, and what kind of person that player is, really. I'll simply give a few examples off the top of my head, maybe something helpful comes up.
One romance I ran was in a pretty high-level game. The game was relatively immersive where social scenes were concerned (this was 2E, by the way), and the "target" was a player who was himself a bit egocentrical, and played a boisterous, slightly aged (40something) swashbuckler who suddenly found himself as the main representative in a friendly fencing contest between two nations celebrating a century of alliance. He got involved with a fencing teacher in the nation's capitol...and his younger daughter, who was at least 20 years younger than him, very popular, a brilliant fencer for her age, and extremely flirtatious. She also saw him as a big prestige bonus to her popularity (and her dad liked the attention his school got, of course). On the other hand, there was the older daughter, who was a more rough character, being a mercenary leader and a fighter more used to the heavier blades. While the younger sister went the more flirtatious route, playing to his ego and being a challenge at the same time, her older sister went more for the "support in tight spots" route, trying to help him out whenever there was some combat going on and impress on him that she valued his honesty more than his flattery. It was interesting for me to play two pretty different sisters after the same guy, and I made him sweat pretty much when at some point, the older more or less opened up to him, forcing her younger sister to counter the move, and leaving him in the middle to make a decision. A bit expected, he went for the younger one...which left me with the older sister turning to an immortal patron of passion and war, praying for her guidance to help her win him from her sister. Sadly, the game stopped shortly after that, so it didn't get concluded.
Another romance was with my last L5R group. The female Lion bushi had taken a few disadvantages at character creation that had left her with a dependent child, and a history of being fooled by a Crab bushi who left her with child (unbeknown to her family), a dark secret, and a scorpion ally who wanted to help her take revenge. I sent her and the rest of the group as Imperial Magistrates to a Crab fortress, where the commanding Lord had fallen ill and jade transports were raided without a trace of the raiders. While the plot was pretty supernaturally heavy, they found out the lord of the fortress was the Lion's former lover who had been under a Pennangolan's influence, slowly being sucked dry by the vampire. They managed to root out the vampire, follow it to a black magician who used the jade for a dark summoning ritual with the child of the Lion and the Crab, everything got solved...and the Crab, after being healed, saw the error of his ways back then, and petitioned the Lion for a chance to erase the disgrace on their souls, and went to the Wall to do a year's worth of service as penance, promising to officially start the courtship with her family if he survived the Wall. The courtship was an affair of letters and messengers sent, of course, so by far not as interpersonal as the first example.
The same group saw the Scorpion shugenja find a sword (and kill a ghost with it) that was attached to a marriage promise of the daughter of the lord of the nearby Phoenix city. That romance also went more with mentions of letters, haikus and small gifts exchanged.
Third romance was one of my own characters...and sadly, it started as a row of pranks by our DM. The half-elven bard in our group contracted a girdle of sex-change, and turned into a female. A few adventures later, my wizard swallowed a Philter of Love and the first person he saw was...that half-elven bard. Well, one thing came to another...sadly, the player left, and the whole relationship went on a backburner, as the DM wasn't that comfy with more personal roleplaying (admittedly, neither was I back then). It still developed into a marriage, three kids, and plenty of plot around them kids (gods, THAT was a weird family...one son aged in minutes and turned into a copy of my character who went off on his own adventures, the second son grew up normal and started training as a paladin, and the daughter got kidnapped and turned into a vampire, which sent my wizard on a quest to cure her after killing her master with a few friends of mine).
Dunno if any of this helped, but romance in roleplaying heavily depends on how immersive you want to get, and what the players are like.
One romance I ran was in a pretty high-level game. The game was relatively immersive where social scenes were concerned (this was 2E, by the way), and the "target" was a player who was himself a bit egocentrical, and played a boisterous, slightly aged (40something) swashbuckler who suddenly found himself as the main representative in a friendly fencing contest between two nations celebrating a century of alliance. He got involved with a fencing teacher in the nation's capitol...and his younger daughter, who was at least 20 years younger than him, very popular, a brilliant fencer for her age, and extremely flirtatious. She also saw him as a big prestige bonus to her popularity (and her dad liked the attention his school got, of course). On the other hand, there was the older daughter, who was a more rough character, being a mercenary leader and a fighter more used to the heavier blades. While the younger sister went the more flirtatious route, playing to his ego and being a challenge at the same time, her older sister went more for the "support in tight spots" route, trying to help him out whenever there was some combat going on and impress on him that she valued his honesty more than his flattery. It was interesting for me to play two pretty different sisters after the same guy, and I made him sweat pretty much when at some point, the older more or less opened up to him, forcing her younger sister to counter the move, and leaving him in the middle to make a decision. A bit expected, he went for the younger one...which left me with the older sister turning to an immortal patron of passion and war, praying for her guidance to help her win him from her sister. Sadly, the game stopped shortly after that, so it didn't get concluded.
Another romance was with my last L5R group. The female Lion bushi had taken a few disadvantages at character creation that had left her with a dependent child, and a history of being fooled by a Crab bushi who left her with child (unbeknown to her family), a dark secret, and a scorpion ally who wanted to help her take revenge. I sent her and the rest of the group as Imperial Magistrates to a Crab fortress, where the commanding Lord had fallen ill and jade transports were raided without a trace of the raiders. While the plot was pretty supernaturally heavy, they found out the lord of the fortress was the Lion's former lover who had been under a Pennangolan's influence, slowly being sucked dry by the vampire. They managed to root out the vampire, follow it to a black magician who used the jade for a dark summoning ritual with the child of the Lion and the Crab, everything got solved...and the Crab, after being healed, saw the error of his ways back then, and petitioned the Lion for a chance to erase the disgrace on their souls, and went to the Wall to do a year's worth of service as penance, promising to officially start the courtship with her family if he survived the Wall. The courtship was an affair of letters and messengers sent, of course, so by far not as interpersonal as the first example.
The same group saw the Scorpion shugenja find a sword (and kill a ghost with it) that was attached to a marriage promise of the daughter of the lord of the nearby Phoenix city. That romance also went more with mentions of letters, haikus and small gifts exchanged.
Third romance was one of my own characters...and sadly, it started as a row of pranks by our DM. The half-elven bard in our group contracted a girdle of sex-change, and turned into a female. A few adventures later, my wizard swallowed a Philter of Love and the first person he saw was...that half-elven bard. Well, one thing came to another...sadly, the player left, and the whole relationship went on a backburner, as the DM wasn't that comfy with more personal roleplaying (admittedly, neither was I back then). It still developed into a marriage, three kids, and plenty of plot around them kids (gods, THAT was a weird family...one son aged in minutes and turned into a copy of my character who went off on his own adventures, the second son grew up normal and started training as a paladin, and the daughter got kidnapped and turned into a vampire, which sent my wizard on a quest to cure her after killing her master with a few friends of mine).
Dunno if any of this helped, but romance in roleplaying heavily depends on how immersive you want to get, and what the players are like.
