Love and the DnD experience

[iwatt]

It really easy to do. Just think of the character's abilities, envision a man, and remove reason and accountability- ta da!!
(not at all serious)

As funny as that quote is, I'm the kind of man that always makes jokes of that kind. Believe me, it doesn't help to role-play women when the first thing to come to your mind is a joke. And the second and third.

 

[merelycompetent]

(Note: Minor editing - MC) I think that was the problem and actually was related to another thread I posted a while back. This was an NPC the player created (without my knowledge) and threw at me. She had already introduced it in game so I didn't want to retro something that could be worked out. All of a sudden I find myself stuck playing this NPC I didn't create and whom seemed a bit out of place in the world.

I've had this happen to me before. IME, it is a warning sign that you and the player are going to have problems. Solutions I've employed in the past, after I went through pretty much the same thing:

1. Killed the NPC in a gruesome manner, with a new BBEG leaving his calling card. Instant character development and motivation. Revenge, especially for a slain love, is fun for most players.

2. Disallowed the NPC - it wasn't approved, so anything attached to that NPC is GONE and has no existence in the campaign.

3. Called a halt to the game and had the player accompany me out to the porch. There, I politely and succinctly explained: "This sort of activity is not only rude, but it is explicitly not allowed in my game. As written on the player handouts that I gave you when you joined/the campaign started, player-created NPCs, spells, magic items, and the like have to be submitted for DM approval at least two days before the next session or they are automatically disallowed. This is strike one. Don't do it again. And no, you can't have the NPC, spell, magic item, or whatever unless you follow the house rules." Then I went back inside to continue playing the game.

#3 worked best.

Hope this helps!

 

[GVDammerung]

Love. Sex. Romance.

Howard's work had it.

Leiber's work had it.

Moorcock's work had it.

Tolkien's work had it.

Wagner's work had it.

Dumas' work had it.

etc.

If you don't have _any_ love, sex or romance in your game, you are running prepubescent/self-abusing otaku D&D and need to get out of your parents basement more, ya smelly Fat Beard.

Joke? Sure.

 

[Goldmoon]

My NPCs do tend to hit on th prettier players more, but thats more of a coniencodence. I realized that the prettier female players in my game tend to play prettier, higher charasmatic characters where others tend to play low to normal charisma characterss.

I havent played with many other females in games. I think I play a good mix of the femme fatales and the roguish tomboys though. One thing I have noticed is that when I play a male character, one of the men will play a female character and try and have his character sleep with mine. Can I get a hormone check please?

 

[Christoph the Magus]

Groups that I've been in have always kept it in the background, so its never been an issue.

 

[Ycore Rixle]

I've had romance in every campaign I've ever DM'd. Some of the relationships: gambler - loan collector; rogue - bard cohort; cleric of Thor - paladin of Sif; barbarian Int 8 - wizardess int 25; dwarven barbarian - human sage specializing in dwarven barbarians; grand master of flowers - grand master of flowers from another prime material plane (GMF = max. level monk in 1e). It's great, and I would never want to DM a campaign without it!

As to whether WOTC should publish a book on it, I definitely think they should. Given some of the things they've edited out of books I've contributed to, however, I conclude that they are not interested in doing so - at all. I don't speak for WOTC in any way on this, though, and I could be completely wrong. But that's my strong impression.

As for not needing rules for human relationships, I don't think they'd be rules any more than the Diplomacy, Bluff, Intimidate, and Sense Motive skills are rules for human interactions. More like guidelines. Suitable for a handbook, or a guide, or a manual, but certainly not for a rulebook.

 

[Orryn Emrys]

I've run a number of successful campaigns in which romance figured quite prominently... between PCs and PC/NPCs alike. It is, in my experience, an undeniably potent element of high fantasy, and most of my players tend to be purists... for whom a playing experience that has no option to explore such things would seem shallow and incomplete. Not to say that every player jumps on any opportunity to explore such relationships, but even though we've never actually discussed the place (or lack thereof) of such elements in gameplay, I think that my players would, by and large, be enormously surprised to discover that such concepts are strictly off-limits for some gaming groups. It's kind of like meta-gaming away some defining aspect of characterization, leaving the player unable to organically pursue the growth of his/her character.

Perhaps it helps that I've rather persistently enjoyed player groups of a mixed gender... but I think it's just the breed of player that's developed during my years of gaming. A player who wants to explore every important experience of a character's life to some degree or another.

I think my crowning achievement, for example, was a roleplaying situation during which, over the course of about a dozen sessions, I inspired a PC who had been tragically blinded in an earlier encounter to fall desperately in love with the woman who elected to tend to him and keep him company, despite the fact that he could not see her.... That player, who never once seemed uncomfortable during the roleplay encounters involved because he was so into the character, was certainly not the type who would seem responsive to such developments in-game... and to this day, he wonders how it happened.

 

[fusangite]

A few days ago this would have been a rant, but I"ve managed to move on from the experience and walked away now forbidding any type of love in my games. I'll tell my scenerio in a later post, but I"m curious as to how or if others allow PCs to fall in love or have relationships in their game?

I don't disallow it. I don't need to. It's been pretty much an unspoken social contract in every game I have run that this is not something explored in games. Frankly, as a GM, I have less than no desire to roleplay NPCs who are in love with my PCs. And as a PC, I can't think of a player with whom I would be happy roleplaying such a thing because every other player is either (a) someone with whom you are in a romantic relationship or (b) someone with whom you are not in a romantic relationship. I cannot see any good coming of roleplaying romance with either category of person.

Should it be apart of the game? Does WOTC need to publish a supplement for fantasy relationships?

To do so would be to encourage them. In my experience, such relationships are corrosive to play dynamics and harmful of play far more often than not. WOTC would be ill-advised to publish anything that had a 90% chance of destabilizing interpersonal dynamics in gaming groups.

Should the love interest be apart of the story, sit at home in the background or be used as a plot device (the Joss Whedon's reason for having love interests in fiction).

Yes. I'm a big fan of the latter. I think that love is best represented in game as a motive or reason for acting rather than an event that is actually part of the play itself.

 

[fusangite]

My head exploded while reading the post above.

Doug, never before have you and I been so completely on the same page.

 

[Rystil Arden]

Doug, never before have you and I been so completely on the same page.

Wow, I made two people's heads explode--admittedly I did summarise a lot of plot that makes more sense in context by placing it out of context in a short summary. I wonder how many more heads would explode if I tried to do a similar summary for my main face to face campaigns--last time I did so, I got this sig quote