Celebrim
Legend
My history book reading pile is not small, and I took Medieval History under Richard Gerberding. For the sake of the OP, I'm just not going to engage further, but you don't know as much about the topic as you are pretending.
On Behavioral Realism
My history book reading pile is not small, and I took Medieval History under Richard Gerberding. For the sake of the OP, I'm just not going to engage further, but you don't know as much about the topic as you are pretending.
I'm with you. I have a BA in Medieval Studies and a Masters in Medieval English Lit. I'm pretty ok with my grounding in the period. But yes, back to the OP!
BrokenTwin
Biological Disaster
Specifically towards the OP... I'm not overly sure how you could mechanically incentivise or encourage the behaviour in 5e without some fairly extensive houserules. I find the gold economy in 5eto be weird. There's so little to actually spend your coin on that mechanically benefits the PC, yet players hoard so much of it "just in case".
I remember seeing a few ideas in regards to OSR games about having treasure acquired only count towards experience points if it was spent friviously (carousing, fine goods, donations). Which, personally, gives the players a nice meaningful choice on how to spend their treasure. But I'm not sure how easily it would translate into 5E. Useless if you do milestone leveling.
I also find games without granular coin tracking to be a lot better about that kind of thing. In a game where taking a bath doesn't cost you a potential mechanical resource, it's a lot easier to do things just bcause they make sense for the character as a person.
I remember seeing a few ideas in regards to OSR games about having treasure acquired only count towards experience points if it was spent friviously (carousing, fine goods, donations). Which, personally, gives the players a nice meaningful choice on how to spend their treasure. But I'm not sure how easily it would translate into 5E. Useless if you do milestone leveling.
I also find games without granular coin tracking to be a lot better about that kind of thing. In a game where taking a bath doesn't cost you a potential mechanical resource, it's a lot easier to do things just bcause they make sense for the character as a person.
I think we have beaten the inn/bath thing to death, so let's talk about some of the other "realistic behaviors" that get short shrift in RPGs.
Characters rarely, IME, get married and have kids, or buy a house, or join a club (I'm thinking things like the VFW). In real life, even people with dangerous careers that take them away from home do these things. Pirates very often had families they came back to, and they are about the closest analog of the D&D adventurer you can describe.
Characters rarely, IME, get married and have kids, or buy a house, or join a club (I'm thinking things like the VFW). In real life, even people with dangerous careers that take them away from home do these things. Pirates very often had families they came back to, and they are about the closest analog of the D&D adventurer you can describe.
Celebrim
Legend
In my experience this is generally a function of how short of a span of time is covered by the careers of the PC's. Often a whole level 1-20 campaign which takes 5 or 10 years to play in real life, only covers six months or a single year in the life of the player characters. As such, there isn't a lot of time or reason to get settled down. There is an evil bad guy to stop and a world to save.
Another issue is that these events are not usually a form of group play. Even if you do have a PC interested in Romance and Marriage, this is melodrama which isn't really suited to a large group. It's not usually a problem that the group works on together as equal partners. So even if it happens, it's not really a focus of play.
You see a lot of focus on these sorts of things in say a MUSH environment or a LARP environment, where groups can break into smaller elements to pursue individual concerns, and then join back together to pursue larger group plots.
I think that kind of thing is on the GM. If you want them to get married, you need to introduce a love interest. There has to be a club for them to join. They need to feel invested in the community to want to settle there.
I think it's definitely collaborative. Of course, this thread is about how to encourage such behavior so what concrete steps would you take to promote connection.
Adventures in Middle Earth has the (most excellent) Mirkwood campaign, which takes place over 30 years(!) Since adventures are basically once per year, the Fellowship Phase (extended Downtime) becomes more important, and includes things you are mentioning here. The author suggests in the book that new characters could be the sons and daughters of the older characters as they age out of their adventuring primes. New political leaders become old, and are replaced, some NPCs die of old age...it makes the passing of years front and centre.
By setting the pace this way and really demonstrating the passage of time, it encourages the players to think of their PCs in a different light.
I think, though, that D&D - at least in its default presentation - is a bit weak on tools to make social interactions or certain sorts of exploration integral to play. D&D 4e is something of an exception, because it has a generic non-combat resolution framework (ie skill challenges).
Are you talking about characters in D&D games, or in fantasy adventure RPGs in general?
I agree with you about D&D. But I don't find what you say to be true of fantasy adventure RPGing in general. In my Rolemaster games PCs have had rmonatic interests, real estate interests, and memberships of social groups. In my Prince Valiant game romance and marriage have been recurring themes, and all three of the PC knights are now married. Two of them also started a military religious order, the Order of St Sigobert, which is travelling east from Britan to the Holy Land recruiting as it goes.
What distinguishes those other systems from D&D is that they have the mechanical resources to support the fiction when it strays from combat or physical adventuring into social and emotional affairs. If I wanted more of this sort of thing in a D&D game, I'd consider looking hard at what might be done to beef up social resolution.
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