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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8144035" data-attributes="member: 42582">On romance in RPGs:Rolemaster has a Seduction skill, and a table to resolve those checks on which will give a modest degree of finality of resolution; and when we played it we also had an Amiability skill (analogous to Prince Valiant's Fellowship skill, though at the time we didn't know Prince Valiant). Romance featured in our games from time-to-time, and these skills were relevant. Other skills for resolving interpersonal interaction, like Lie Detection (RM's equivalent to Insight/Sense Motive) would also come into play. There is no fully robust system for integrating these into a conflict resolution framework, though.Burning Wheel has a Seduction skill, and unlike RM does have a fully robust conflict resolution framework. But I've not seen that particular sort of social interaction in play. Ditto for The Dying Earth.Our Prince Valiant game has quite a bit of romance and seduction. All the PCs have become married during the course of play. Relevant skills have included Fellowship (to resolve rivalry between suitors as to who would yield to the other) and Glamourie (to try seduce someone who isn't inititally inclined to be seduced, with Presence used to oppose the check). We've also had the Incite Lust special effect used, once by me as GM on a PC (so that he has an ongoing infatuation with a NPC who is not his wife) and once by a player on a NPC (so that his wife would not just marry him for political ends, but would actually be in love with him and hence continue to govern her lands as he would wish her to in his absence).Our Classic Traveller game has more romance than I would have anticipated going in, though not a lot. Some of it is largely in the background. Where it's in the foreground we've used the Liaison skill, with the reaction table as the resolution framework.Our Wuthering Heights one-shot featured romantic and failed seduction. The resolution framework practically guarantees broken hearts and consequences ranging between wistful longing and violent retribution. (We got both.)I've never done romance using Moldvay Basic or Gygax's AD&D. There is CHA as a stat but no real process for resolving interpersonal interaction - the Reaction Table would have to be adapted to that end, which isn't a huge stretch but is a slightly bigger stretch than Traveller (which is clearer up front about the range of uses of its reaction table). There are questions that would come up on in D&D that don't arise in Traveller, like whether Dispel Charm makes someone fall out of love, whether seduction attempts are to be resolved on the reaction table or via a saving throw (and from memory the Houri class in White Dwarf didn't use either of those but rather it's own subsystem), etc. This is another case where the plethora of subsystems and lack of anything like unification or integration in classic D&D would get in the way.To the extent that romance is resolved just by everyone at the table talking, I don't see that that would be very satisfying - consensus fiction can be fine in some RPG contexts but doesn't tend to make for drama.</blockquote>

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