D&D General How do you handle Romance in D&D games?

[payn]

Romance can be a fun role playing element, as well as, a good story motivator. Sex stuff though, is fade to black. I'm not acting out sexual fantasies with my beer drinking gaming buddies.

 

[iserith]

In this case, as a magical academy, chances are any romance for any character would be their first, cringey foray into that world of hormones, crushes, infatuation, and equal chances at bliss and disappointment.

furiously tapping the X-card

 

[Minigiant]

I typically ask "None, Light, Heavy, or Crazy" the first time anyone does anything romantic in a game I DM.

They almost always choose Crazy. The FOOLS!

 

[Parmandur]

My only experience anywhere adjacent was a drop in player deciding that he was going to rape an NPC and the DM trying and failing to diffuse the situation. Broke the group.

So, that's a "No" from me.

 

[el-remmen]

My only experience anywhere adjacent was a drop in player deciding that he was going to rape an NPC and the DM trying and failing to diffuse the situation. Broke the group.

So, that's a "No" from me.

I mean, you shouldn't have anything in the game you're not comfortable with and that experience sounds awful, but also what you described has nothing to do with "romance."

 

[Parmandur]

I mean, you shouldn't have anything in the game you're not comfortable with and that experience sounds awful, but also what you described has nothing to do with "romance."

Absolutely true, but that is still the closest I've come: "romance" is not on the menu for D&D in my experience, just not what I or my family & friends are playing for.

 

[prabe]

My only experience anywhere adjacent was a drop in player deciding that he was going to rape an NPC and the DM trying and failing to diffuse the situation. Broke the group.

So, that's a "No" from me.

Yeah. Two thoughts, that don't feel as though they conflict:

That experience has nothing to do with romance.

That experience had to be terrible to sit through, and it makes total sense if it's put you off romance in TRPGs.

EDIT: It's not something that's come up in the games I'm running (as yet) but the thought/s here that if a PC is involved then that player needs to ... instigate it, and if it's two PCs everyone needs to be cool, and a preference for allusions/fade-to-black: That's where I am, too.

 

[Ancalagon]

Usually it's more alluded to than explicit in my games.

There was one notable exception however:

In my Yoon Suin campaign, one player (who was pregnant in real life) decided that her character would have a child with an NPC. Given that her character was a slugman - and slugmen are (in my version of yoon suin) the nobility in Yoon Suin and hermaphrodites (see Slugmen Biology ), it was... complex.

 

[GuyBoy]

Romance works just fine and can be a useful plot device as long as it is handled maturely and with sensitivity. My own bard’s romance with Ireena added roleplay spice to Curse of Strahd.
Sex fades to black.

 

[Umbran]

My games don't feature any overt sex, so anything beyond torrid handholding is likely to fade to black. And I don't generally position NPCs as to be targets of PC romance.

Between mature, consenting adult players, romance is fine.

When one of the players is immature, and using in-game romance for expression of out-of-game desires without discussing that aspect of it first, there is very likely going to be a problem, and making a problem will get you removed from the table.