Do your characters have love interests?

[Kilmore]

Available NPC girlies

In the campaign I'm running, there's a few female NPCs I've seeded into the campaign. The most *ahem* available are a bard and a priestess of a goddess of hanky panky. The most unavailable is a priestess of the death god who is cursed to cause the deaths of anyone she loves.

Guess which one the PC's are most interested in.

 

[Neo]

Well for myself I have always liked the High Romance of Fantasy novels and so forth and have tried for years to incorporate such possible love interests into my games..... HOWEVER the group I run for consisting of mostly 25-29 year olds isn't the most mature bunch...so it's been a long road.... however I think real life is finally catching up with most of them on the maturity stakes and they're finally beginning to go for the idea... as such In the latest campaign I have tried to incorporate love interests into it, and left it to the players characters as to whether they pursue them or not..and EUREKA! finally one has.

As a reward for "Flavour" roleplaying like this i tend to give good RP'ing exeprience awards.

Of course the mian intent behind this kind of thing in my games despite adding to the story experience and making things more relevant and important to the characters themselves, has been the hopes of having a generational campaign, where the first lot playout thier story be the heroes, save the world whatever.. before eventually setting up home, lands, business and so on, and settling down for a quiet life to raise a family. Thereby allowing a second campaing to follow on whereby the players play thier original characters children, and must face some new crisis...

Of course so far I haven;t managed to even get close to that dream..but this time I'm hoping this is the campaign.... my players are finally well tuned roleplaying machines, with the maturity to finally (hopefully) pull it off.

 

[Old One]

The Swashbuckling Cards Sound Cool...

More on point, however...

I usually try to tie some romantic involvement into the campaign. In my current Faded Glory Campaign we have a couple of entanglements:

• There is a romantic quadrangle between a female NPC (Drusilla, last surviving daughter of a powerful NPC family) and Quintus (Sorcerer), Sextus (Bard) and Rowan (Ranger). The quardrangle is further complicated because Quintus and Sextus are brothers, Sextus feels horrible guilt over the death of Drusilla's two sisters (killed during a failed rescue attempt by the party) and one of Quintus/Sextus's sisters has her eye on Rowan.
• Quintus and Sextus have LOTS of younger sisters and are trying to get them married off. One has fallen for a member of a rival adventuring group and is currently his mistress. One is "dating" Rowan, who also like Drusilla.
• Quintus's former fiancee, Abrigal, has disappeared. He secretly fears she has been caught up in an evil cult the party has been battling.

The players have been very good about biting on the various plot lines (even if it does seem like Days of Our Lives at times)!

I think romantic involvement adds to the "Real Life" feel of a campaign...

~ Old One

 

[dcorbin]

It's everywhere....

In the campaign I play, of the five most frequent players, four have love interests (the other is a half-orc, if that matters). Two of them are now married. All the relationships are Male PC to Femail NPC.

Kavel's "girlfriend" is a CHA-19 half-elven bard, but she originally was spying on him, and had some other questionable intentions (Kave'ls brother was sure she was going to steal everything). However, Kavel won her love because he showed her something she had never experienced before-- love. Kavel has a twin sister that is very close, and that relationship profoundly affected her.

We don't generally do a lot of "romantic roleplaying" during a session, though motivation and concern are factors, but we often do extended on-line role-playing between sessions, and we get pretty romantic there (it makes it easier for us guys but I try to avoid making it into pornography

 

[Corey]

Old One beat me to it but there are certainly some love interests floating around in the Faded Glory Campaign (see Old One's post above for details). These sub-plots can be a fun way to keep the campaign from becoming pure hack-slash and hunt down the bad guys. However, it can be really awkward to talk to your female love interest while looking at a male DM.

(Side note: Thank God my RL wife's interest in the game does not extend beyond my yes or no answer to her "Did you have fun?" question. I'd hate to explain my progress with my love interest to her.)

Quintus's fiancee Abigail was one of my character background plot hooks. He broke off the relationship when she began to dabble in Necromancy, but he is still very hung up on her. Our main opponent appears to be a Necromancer. When another party member suggested Abigail may have gone over to the other team, Q almost decked him. Made for some fun, but harmless, in-party tension.

 

[Kai Lord]

(Side note: Thank God my RL wife's interest in the game does not extend beyond my yes or no answer to her "Did you have fun?" question. I'd hate to explain my progress with my love interest to her.)

Heh heh. One of the funniest things about D&D are the potential "Three's Company" moments that arrise when playing in a room within earshot of nongamers.

Of course this extends beyond role-playing romance, a simple "the goblins are attacking!" taken out of context is sufficient to make people think you're nuts.

 

[Hand of Evil]

You know, I'm just going to have to post these somewhere. Morrus?

The idea is that each session, you hand out a card to each player. Some of the cards are very specific (automatically make one saving roll), others are more generic (natural phenomenon lends timely aid), while still others are story-affecting (NPC falls in love with PC, or NPC turns out to be long-lost acquaintance). The players can "play" the card at any time, at which point they get a new one. In practice, it's rare for any player to use more than one card per session -- often the card doesn't get used at all.

The "Love" card has had the most impact on the campaign, but all of them are great -- and allow things like romance to develop on the PCs terms.

Email me, I'll send the set to ya. Dunno where they originally come from -- I got mine from a post on the WotC boards.

They sound like 'plot cards/whimzy cards' that was put out bu Lion Rampant (the first Ars Magica producers).

---------

Love takes many forms in my games, this is where background of the characters is important. I have performed arranged marriages for noble players to having NPCs telling rich players that they need to find a wife and settle down.

When I do use love, it is a plot element.

Then there was a dwarf that loved gold!

 

[BigFreekinGoblinoid]

I love killin' people. I'm always interested in that.

LOL ! This just might become a favorite quote of mine, especially in context of the thread.

I myself have limited experience with "love interests" during game play for PC's anyway. It hasn't come up very often that it would really add much to the roleplaying experience. Perhaps if there were some XP's involved. ( Story award? )

 

[Knightcrawler]

As The General Dungeon Lives

All the best campaigns that I've run or played in had at least a little "love interest" thrown in here and there for the PC's. It provoids great roleplaying opertunities for the players. And as long as your players are at least slightly mature it can be rought off without people feeling uncomfortable.

One of my favorite romance moments involves a campaign I'm running now. We have a Cleric of Gond in the party. Quiet, somber, and not very socialable. Well he ended up drinking a potion of love and become enamoured with the female apprentice of my sorcerer.

She had given him the potion on purpose, so that she could cause trouble in the group. He played the jealous boyfriend to a tee. My sorcerer didn't have the slightest idea what was going on, and niether did anyone else in the group. We even cae to blows several times.

I ended up dispelling the love potion and then setting up the girl. We pretended to get into a major fight in the middle of an inn. We made it look like he had killed me. Hell we even put him in jail for a couple of days. Just so that we could find out who was giving the girl orders.

You can't imagine the freedom when everybody thinks your dead.

Many interesting and tense situations. If nothing else it gives the players somebody their PC is supposed to worry about and protect other than themselves.

Knightcrawler

 

[Taloras]

Hmmm....my character hasnt gotten to a love interest yet (hes a priest of the god of wine, women, and song, who needs to be tied down to 1 woman, when you can have several at once?)