Players: it's your responsibility to carry a story.

[Barastrondo]

D&D has no rules for romance.

Or funny hats, or silly accents, or wearing clothes of a certain color. Yet if people describe their characters as wearing funny hats and their elves as wearing green, or speak in a silly accent when in character, they are still playing D&D. By that token, those who roleplay romantic subplots are either playing D&D, or there is a double standard at work that's unsupported by anything in print. Perhaps by a given table rule, of course — if romance makes a player uncomfortable, he can say "We're here to play D&D, not to roleplay romances!" Sure. Enforcing his comfort zone's very reasonable. But that statement doesn't mean his personal definition of D&D must apply even at his table, much less beyond it.

By the same token, if you take D&D and start spinning off romantic subplots, you are really using a totally different game (of your own making, based on your judgment) and no longer playing D&D.

Or you are roleplaying.

It's the same process that can be used to introduce any element to the game. A wounded messenger stumbles across the street. There are no rules for NPCs appearing with fewer than ordinary hit points, or for offering rewards if they are helped. A player orders a meal in a bar. There are no rules to determine what is on the menu. Improv RP is older than Black Dougal.

I mean, it's cool if romantic subplots are totally uninteresting to any player or if they'd rather not see them in a D&D game. But subject matter that's written right into every D&D setting ever — the Tanis love triangle, Strahd's obsession, Palace of the Silver Princess — it doesn't transform D&D into a separate game. It's just a different play style than the "keep romance away from the table" play style.

I'm not criticizing anyone who chooses to do that. I think it is actually great. I just dont think it is D&D anymore.

I guess that depends on how you define D&D. I can see it as "the formative experience and collection of feelings I associate with how I learned to play D&D." Sure, we all carry our own personal D&Ds within us. As a greater whole... man, couldn't disagree more. One of the most beloved Story Hours on this very board spun out of the potential romantic subplot between a paladin and a succubus, and I never saw anyone say "that's not D&D."

This sounds like True Scotsman to me. Or nostalgia.

For what it's worth, I find the "romantic subplots change the game" line of argument similarly reminiscent. Many D&D games do feature romantic subplots — ones I've been in, ones I've heard about, ones I've read about. To say they become different games once a PC decides he's interested in kissin' — that seems textbook "well, no True D&D games feature romantic subplots."

 

[Lanefan]

D&D has no rules for romance. [...] if you take D&D and start spinning off romantic subplots, you are really using a totally different game (of your own making, based on your judgment) and no longer playing D&D.

I'm not criticizing anyone who chooses to do that. I think it is actually great. I just dont think it is D&D anymore.

What???!

D+D has no rules for a lot of things*. And if you're working up to suggesting that as soon as the game goes beyond the written rule-set it isn't D+D anymore then get ready to be soundly disagreed with by a whole bunch of people.

* - 3e's best attempts notwithstanding.

Romantic subplots crop up on a regular basis in my game. Thus far in the current campaign there's been, oh let's see...one marraige (albeit unintentional), three romances/affairs (one lesbian), one PC-vs.-PC murder over affairs of the heart, one pregnancy-childbirth (not from the marraige), and several failed pursuits and courtships. All of this while at the same time getting on with some serious mule-kickin' in various dangerous adventures.

In another game - I was a player in this one - my dumb rookie PC managed to attract the fondness of one of the senior PCs in the game over the course of a few adventures. My guy then died, and failed his raise roll when she tried to bring him back. Undaunted, she built up her levels and saved up her money until she had enough of both to walk down to Niflheim (Norse hell; and this represented an entire adventure all on its own) and steal him back, so she could later marry him. So yes, romance and adventuring *can* be intertwined.

Are you honestly saying we're not playing D+D???

Lan-"roleplaying how a character changes when a loved one dies can be fun too"-efan

 

[GregChristopher]

For what it's worth, I find the "romantic subplots change the game" line of argument similarly reminiscent. Many D&D games do feature romantic subplots — ones I've been in, ones I've heard about, ones I've read about. To say they become different games once a PC decides he's interested in kissin' — that seems textbook "well, no True D&D games feature romantic subplots."

Poor language use on my part. I shouldnt have said subplots. My apologies. We were talking about the whole game being consumed by romance, and that is not a subplot.

I was referring to when the game is dominated by these elements that you are really making your own game up at that point.

That should teach me to not post with a 2 week old baby in my lap. Short circuits the brain a bit.. whoops.

 

[Ariosto]

By the same token, if you take D&D and start spinning off romantic subplots, you are really using a totally different game (of your own making, based on your judgment) and no longer playing D&D.

I think you are in disagreement both with Mr. Gygax, developer of D&D, and with Mr. Arneson, innovator of the "dungeon adventure" concept and the role-playing game as we know it.

It's not a simple binary switch. It is certainly not the case that the game is defined only by numbers looked up in books! There are balances, as with dangers and treasure and a lot of things.

I think there are stages, perhaps something like this:
A). Part of the natural developments, even of "role-playing mastery", but still the same game. A witch keeping a high charisma character enchanted as a lover is mentioned in Vol. 1. The section on relatives therein is about as long as the combat system (sans tables).
B). Not very good D&D. This would -- considering "romantic subplots" -- kick in earlier in considering tournaments. The rub is, good tournaments tend to be "not very good D&D" by the campaign standard.
C). Not proper Advanced D&D. Gygax had less to say about this when he no longer had a vested interest in it. Gamers continued, though, to be more interested in AD&D than in Lejendary Adventures.
D). Not really even house-ruled D&D. Congratulations: You are a game designer!
F). Not really a game. Maybe "role-playing" in a theatrical or psychotherapeutic sense.

 

[Hussar]

D&D has no rules for romance.
/snip

By the same token, if you take D&D and start spinning off romantic subplots, you are really using a totally different game (of your own making, based on your judgment) and no longer playing D&D.

I'm not criticizing anyone who chooses to do that. I think it is actually great. I just dont think it is D&D anymore.

But, as Lanefan says, D&D doesn't have rules for a lot of things. Heck, there were no rules for swimming for a pretty long time.

But, I think the developers just presumed that the groups would make up their own rulings on these things. They didn't think the game needed that level of detail because their own games didn't. If the character tried to swim, the DM made up a ruling.

But, as far as making a D&D romance game, using 3e rules, it wouldn't be that difficult. You can certainly extrapolate from existing rules without needing a whole new rule set. The skill system gives you the concept of DC's and the encounter system gives the idea of challenges. Combine the two and you have a mechanical framework for conducting romance.

4e would probably wrap things up in an extended skill check framework with X successes resulting in romance and Y failures resulting in getting the brush off. The degree of successes vs failures can also be used to determine the nature of the relationship.

Certainly not my cup of tea, but, also quite easily do able in a 3e or 4e framework without having to invoke completely new rule sets.

I'm quite sure that someone who is much more mechanically inclined than me could come up with something better.

Would this be a version of D&D I want to play? No. Not interested at all. But, I can see it being done.

 

[pemerton]

So far from having ended, it seems only the more pervasive in WotC's scenarios from what I have seen at firsthand and from from what I have read.

I'm one of many who thinks that WotC's 4e modules don't remotely live up to the potential of the system, or even the epxress promises of the DMG.

Those possibilities -- worlds enough, and time -- are supposed to be wide open, to the extent that they remain wide open! It is more the people who want to narrow them who are getting into difficulties.

<snip>

No, if you really truly want a game that is vague as to what it is about, what you're supposed to do, then you want GURPS.

I'm not going to argue with you that GURPS is more open-ended than D&D. Or even Rolemaster, for that matter.

Nor am I arguing against those possibilities being open. I think you're interpreting me as a critic of D&D for being so open. But what I'm actually trying to do is to agree with Nameless1 that (i) the OP's problem about passive players might result from the open-endedness of what it means to "play D&D", and (ii) that a solution to this might consist in an individual GM and his/her players agreeing in advance about some aspects of the game like theme, tropes, relationships embedding the PCs into the gameworld, etc. This isn't a criticism of D&D or a suggestion for reform/revision. It's some advice about how to set up the start of a particular D&D campaign.

S'mon, and (if I'm understanding you right) you, and (maybe to a lesser extent, because his examples are from a game that I think is more focused than D&D) The Shaman are saying that the OP's issue can be resolved in the course of play, by having active players engage the gameworld to find out what is going on in terms of theme, tropes, possible relationships etc. In contrast to this, I've agreed with Nameless1 and Hussar that I'd rather have a game in which we just cut to the chase. I also think that if your problem is inactive players, a metagame solution might be more likely to work than an ingame solution that presupposes active players.

How the hell do you get into looking for stray cats that need houses?

Because somewhere upthread an ex-GM was complaining about players who failed to stumble onto this particular element of the game that s/he was running.

 

[pemerton]

the peripheral activities can make an impression on the player's perception of their character's growth quite out of proportion of the amount of energy and resources the party invests.

This fits with my experience. In the longest running 2nd ed AD&D campaign I played in, most of the interest for me was in the personal relationships between PCs in the party - my PC's romance with one of them, and his fellow warrior friendship with another, and our shared annoyance at yet another, who was the "prophesied one" in the GM's story.

A good part of what drove this was that PC interactions and interrelationships were a place where we, as players, could have control over the game, whereas as far as the NPCs and external environment went it was pretty railroady.

In Rolemaster games that I've GMed romances and flirtation have been pretty common, but always between PCs and NPCs rather than between PCs. Because Rolemaster (at least in its more full-blown forms) takes a "totality" approach to character building, in the sense that the character sheet is a total description of the PC, it has a range of social skills including Etiquette, Seduction etc from which one can get a pretty good picture of a PC's personality (for example, a PC whose only social skills are Duping and Lie Perception is probably not a very appealing person to hang out with - those skill and nothing more strongly suggest a manipulative user). So when romance and fliration come up, there is a bit of a mechanical peg on which to hang the resolution. And in one game, a player had his PC develop skill ranks in Seduction in order to try and consolidate a budding romance (Rolemaster has a type of siloing aspect to skill development, so that this sort of thing doesn't purge the adventuring effectiveness of the PC).

I'm therefore very comfortable to say that one can be roleplaying romance, or other social dynamics, and still be playing Rolemaster. But Rolemaster is not so different in this respect form D&D that I'd say if you're doing it in D&D you're no longer playing D&D. This is especially so when it is going on between party members, as in the 2nd ed game I mentioned above - because traditionally social interactions between party members in D&D have never been governed by action resolution mechanics unless magic has been used.

D&D has no rules for romance.

This isn't true when it comes to PCs interrelationships - the rule is that (absent Charm Person spells or Philtres of Love) players are free to specify how their PCs feel about one another.

And even when it comes to PCs interacting with NPCs, there is Charisma, reaction rolls etc (as Barastrondo, I think, noted upthread).

4e would probably wrap things up in an extended skill check framework with X successes resulting in romance and Y failures resulting in getting the brush off.

Where the outcome of the romance constituted the result of an encounter (rather than simply something in respect of which the GM should say "yes") - let's say an attempt to woo an NPC who is on the rival team, but whom the PC is persuaded has a spark of good in him/her just waiting to be rekindled - then a skill challenge would be the obvious way to handle it.

I don't think the DMG or DMG2 give examples of this sort for skill challenges, but it could be pretty easily extrapolated. And Robin Laws gives an example of courtship as an extended challenge in the original Hero Wars game - a D&D GM who drew on that to run the romance skill challenge in a 4e game would still be playing 4e, I think (especially given that Robin Laws has incorporated big chunks of HeroWars/Quest into D&D via his chapters in the DMG2).

 

[S'mon]

If I play D&D that doesn't rely on high adventure, is it still D&D? I think it is. Not to my taste honestly, I like high adventure. But, I'm certainly not going to begrudge someone using D&D to play a high rp, court intrigue game. It certainly can be done.

Court intrigue absolutely can be part of the game - and often is, in my campaigns. There were two great old White Dwarf articles on this - "Scenes from Courtly Life" - back in the '80s.

However D&D is a silly choice for a game which is only about court intrigue and nothing else, where all the fighting and wars and adventuring is ignored or abstracted like in "The Tudors" Court-of-Henry-VIII TV series.

 

[S'mon]

No, what is said is that if you don't want a game of high adventure, then you are unlikely to find D&D to your taste. The actual responses of people seem to bear out this prediction!

"You must spread some XP around..."

 

[S'mon]

I fail to see the distinction.

As far as the quote goes, it does seem that it isn't born out by observation. I mean, Dragonlance, Immortals rules, Ravenloft, Birthright - are all attempts to adapt D&D to a mold that is pretty far removed from those particular examples of Conan or John Carter.

I totally agree that the base for D&D is high adventure. But, I do think the tree has grown rather broadly over the years to the point where you can use the D&D mechanics to do a lot more than just high adventure.

All your examples - "Dragonlance, Immortals rules, Ravenloft, Birthright" are "high adventure" games/campaigns/settings. Is this just a semantic quibble?