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Message: <blockquote data-quote="steenan" data-source="post: 6305614" data-attributes="member: 23240">What system do you use? What your sessions typically focus on?It's hard to give you much useful advice without having more context.But having run some romance plots (and having been in some as a player), I may give you some universal tips:1. Track how much time you spend on the romance. It's typically very fun, but only engages one player. So keep things moving, but don't spend more than about 10 minutes a session in solo play. Of course, if one PC's lover is another PC's old nemesis, you get more people engaged and things get much more interesting.2. A romance plot is mostly about finding what one truly feels, what the other person feels and deciding what they want to do about it. 50% (or more) of the romance plays out before the first kiss. It's not really important if you want to keep it PG or not, because sex is the least interesting part, so you won't waste play time for it anyway.3. There is a good guideline for using rolls or not, and it applies to romance too. Don't roll if either success or failure is not interesting. Roll if a player wants something but you don't think they should get it easily. Don't solve big things with a single roll, but have each roll gain something significant (or cause a significant complication, if failed).So you never roll for "do I get her to love me". But you roll for reading her emotions, for buying her something beautiful with the few coins you have, for avoiding her overprotective brother and for getting upper hand in confrontation with her other suitor.4. Make sure that the NPC in the romantic plot feels like a person, not a plot device. They should have their beliefs, their fears, their areas of competence. If you have them fall mindlessly in love (or deny love for no good reason), it feels flat. If they can't really do anything useful by themselves and only exist to be kidnapped, it's cliche, boring and somewhat offensive.</blockquote>

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