A good romance?

[haakon1]

IME interest in a romance plot is more common with my Dragonsfoot chatroom games both because of the medium, the text chatroom is a lot more amenable to a romance subplot than is a crowded, noisy pub function room at the D&D Meetup.

On pro-activeness and role playing depth, I have a similar experience.

My email campaign is DEEP. The only problem in running it is people getting distracted by real life and not posting. Which actually doesn't matter much when they are "in town" and pursuing different RP activities, but it's a pain when we're in combat and somebody doesn't post for a while.

My live campaign is much more shallow, and almost completely combat oriented. Mostly that's because we're starved for time (we only play max 3 times a year), so what little time we have, we want all red meat, no fluff.

Romance is actually quite limited in both.

In the email campaign (10 years strong):
-- The male human Fighter (male player) fell for an NPC party member (female human rogue) who retired from the party when a PC rogue joined. Later on, he's hit on barmaids, and had one-night-stand with an NPC farmers daughter (who turned out to actually be a plot point, of course). The Rogue bought the Green Man Inn at the Keep on the Borderlands, which is more or less the party's home base, so they do visit once in a long while. It's sort of assumed they'll eventually settle down together.

-- The male human Wizard-Sorcerer (NPC who effectively became my DMPC, played as normal PC) had a crush on the new PC female human Rogue-Ranger, as he taught her to speak Common, but she didn't understand his interest, for cultural/social class reasons (this was discussed offline and hinted at in game; we're both male and straight, and have D&D'd together for about 20 years). This guy has also hit on some NPC's in taverns, to comic effect.

-- The human female Paladin (female player) fell in love with and wooed a gate guard. (Yes, gate guard encounters MATTER to us!) When the player decided to leave the game, they settled down together at the Keep on the Borderlands. Awww.

In the "live action" campaign, the only thing approaching romance is the male elf rogue (male player) hit on the female elf ranger (female player) in the first session, but she shot him down and we all told him to stop being creepy. (He's like that, they are old, old friends and she's married to his best friend, who was the only other player at the time.)

Rogues seems to get more than their fair share of loving.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Oh god I'm late to the party. Can't believe this hasn't happened yet:

http://music.yahoo.com/videos/Lady+Gaga/Bad+Romance--218606963

 

[Virel]

Have the PC take the lead and make a move. Briefy roll play discussion. Roll dice & hand wave the rest of it.

 

[Quickleaf]

In the email campaign (10 years strong):
-- The male human Fighter (male player) fell for an NPC party member (female human rogue) who retired from the party when a PC rogue joined. Later on, he's hit on barmaids, and had one-night-stand with an NPC farmers daughter (who turned out to actually be a plot point, of course). The Rogue bought the Green Man Inn at the Keep on the Borderlands, which is more or less the party's home base, so they do visit once in a long while. It's sort of assumed they'll eventually settle down together.

Aww, brings a tear to me eye. If that's not winning D&D I don't know what is.

Rogues seems to get more than their fair share of loving.

...from behind?

Sorry, couldn't resist.

 

[Walker N. Waistz]

There is a player in my regular group who is always saying we need "more romance" in our games. And by "more", he probably means "any significant element." Usually for us it is just saying a character has a love interest, who can then be occasionally kidnapped or threatened as an in-game complication. I have no idea what to do besides that. The few times I have had to role-play a conversation between a PC and me as his imaginary NPC gf/wife/intended, it's felt creepy to have to look each other in the eye and say things like "I love you" and "Please don't leave me."

We role-play more deeply than the average beer & pretzels game, I think, and there have been some epic monologues, but this is an area most of us tend to find paralyzing.

So I am reading this thread with interest.

 

[haakon1]

The few times I have had to role-play a conversation between a PC and me as his imaginary NPC gf/wife/intended, it's felt creepy to have to look each other in the eye and say things like "I love you" and "Please don't leave me."

We've never quite done that.

Talking about it in the third person -- or by email -- is somewhat less weird.

 

[Cor Azer]

I frequently set up potential love interests for many of my players, but I usually let the players take the lead in following through on them. Occasionally, I will poll everyone OOC to see if there's anything they want to pursue (particularly useful with the shier/more oblivious players who may still want some depth to their characters).

I've no problem speaking in character most of the time, but then, several of my games are PbeM or PbP, so there's a bit of a disconnect there anyway. Still, I've done both the first- and third- person in face-to-face games, but yeah, the third-person stuff is easier.