Romance in RPGs

[WayneLigon]

In his Strike Force supplement for Champions, Aaron Allston mentions an idea I've used to great effect: it's called 'Blue Booking', named for those cheap blue essay folders you can buy at any office supply place. Though today we might just use email or (better) a special blog set up for the purpose.

It's like 'instant messaging play by mail' - Write out things in the book, give it to the player and they give it back when they're done. Or at the next session, or whenever. THis gives people who want to pursue their own agendas (and almost by definition pursuing an in-game romance is going to be a one on one thing where other people are going to be bored) a way to do it.

With a romance subplot this is an especially good means of 'distancing' yourself from the characters; some people are just going to be uncomfortable with roleplaying their character being all romantic around others. This gives them a means of being objective. Also, the slower pace means more time to really put some thought into poses and descriptions.

The books can be easily hole-punched for storage, or the blog printed out from time to time as a record for both parties.

 

[LeifVignirsson]

I can tell you for a fact that my DM loves to use relationships/love for children/etc for and against us. Heck, we had a daunting adventure to save one of our fellow (deceased) PC's children after finding out that the OTHER (noble) woman that had another one of his children was interested in hunting down his children. Guess who got to be babysitter? Yep, you got it.

Often, our DM just lets us do our thing in regards to it and makes a note or two (either mentally or hand written). Like Hand of Evil said, our DM keeps sex and procreation as a side bar, asking every once in a while after an "encounter" to roll a d20 and then making note of that roll too.

All in all, it isn't a bad idea if your players express that is what they want to do. You can get a lot of leg work out of one child being born and kidnapped or the PC and the other person involve have a dispute of custody that leads to a war... There are so many possibilites for you and your players...

 

[Mr. Kaze]

It sounds good when you're modelling the world (kind of like "realistic economy!"), but I think you'll find that the implementation is disappointing.

Consider these scenarios --
1) brave young warrior goes a'wenching and has ends up with a kid to continue his dynasty. Except that he doesn't really know or care because he does this sort of thing all of the time.

2) brave young ranger settles down, has kids. Takes favored enemy Diaper Golem. Doesn't really have time to go adventuring and risking life and limb with his friends anymore. (Heck, I'm concerned that my Thursday game may be down two players at the start of next year for this very RL reason...) So the player ditches the character and gets somebody more interesting.

3) brave ranger has kids, but gets restless and wanders off to go adventuring with friends and never makes it home due to a TPK. Kid grows up resenting dad for abandoning them and the continuation of the dynasty is mere fluke rather than deliberate choice at that point.

4) brave cleric/wizard settles down and such but then takes a PrC and becomes and Outsider/Elemental/Lich and, at best, just isn't interested in their spouse any more or, at worst, kills them in an opening bid for some world domination of their own.

In my character experience, our party isn't rebuilding a broken-down tower we bought a year ago, isn't building a mansion on a burnt-out plot of noble's hill we bought a couple of months ago, and we're currently 1000 miles away from both our not-a-tower and our not-a-mansion actively slaughtering a really freaky doom-cult because we enjoy death and mayhem almost as much as the realy freaky doom-cult does. Now, really, would you want to try to settle down and have kids with folks like us?

If you're not convinced by that, then check out the Samurai X sidebar to Ruroni Kenshin(sp?). Frankly, it's kind of dull and fairly depressing, but it may help convince you that families and going out and slaughtering menaces from beyond the nth dimension just don't make for an entertaining fantasy role-playing game. Role-playing, sure. Fantasy, no.

My advice if you really want to pursue this idea is to tell your players to start their characters with retirement plans and a retirement age. When they get to that age, they retire (no penalty, just bring in a new character). And then after a one or two rounds of characters like this, those that had the good plans may also have kids who can start adventuring with bonus feats/skills/gear with no in-game time spent on diaper changing matters.

::Kaze (doesn't play Sims Online, either.)

 

[CarlZog]

I have found that, at some point, mechanics influence roleplaying goals. A certain level of metagaming always occurs. What I would like to do is not only offer encouragement, but counteract the metagame reasons not to become romantically involved. If that makes sense?

That makes sense. A couple simple reasons to get involved might include:

Money. Nothing like the prospect of rich in-laws to get things moving.

Quicker healing. The spiritual sustenance of a relationship translates to physical well-being, relected in quicker healing times if a loved one is present to provide care and succor.

A general experience point bonus. Not just for playing the role of a romantic necessarily, but for doing stuff that advances the goals of the relationship. You said that a reason you wanted to include romance was to produce a next generation of characters. If their actions are working toward that goal, reward them. I'm not talking about experience points for sex, mind you. But if they're clearly putting their treasure and some effort into family, let their advancement reflect it.

zog

 

[CarlZog]

My advice if you really want to pursue this idea is to tell your players to start their characters with retirement plans and a retirement age. When they get to that age, they retire (no penalty, just bring in a new character). And then after a one or two rounds of characters like this, those that had the good plans may also have kids who can start adventuring with bonus feats/skills/gear with no in-game time spent on diaper changing matters.

This is an easy way to the goals of having a next generation to play. It would totally work in a lot of games, and there are many players for whom this would be enough to make it worthwhile.

But I like players who are invested in their characters, and building a progeny helps create that sense of investment.

It does not mean, however, that I think you have to spend a lot of time roleplaying the mundane aspects of this. Those can get handled in short one-on-one sessions with DM and player.

And there can be plenty of adventure on the homefront. Intrigue that puts families at risk -- or in which family members are active participants -- is one of my favorite devices.

zog

 

[Cor Azer]

I've included romance and children into my last couple of games. But as has been mentioned above, it really only works well in certain types of campaigns. All of mine have been confined to a certain region or kingdom for the most part, and have generally had some sort of political subthemes to them. This allows the characters to build up a local stronghold, as well as relationships with many different people.

As to how I've introduced it. In some cases, the PCs initiated it (one character had a wife from his background, one expressed interest in looking for a girlfriend, one had a habit of going a'wenching until she found a particularly virulent wench), in others an NPC initiated it (and was rebuffed for a while, until pressing family matters in the character's life changed, in in at least one case, a political marriage was set up and ended up with the PC and NPC falling in love. Children have resulted from two of these relationships, but mostly stayed in the background because in both cases the wife was an NPC and both PCs had plenty of NPC help in the form of servants, castellans, or maids.

When it comes to the actual sex though, I fade to black.

 

[Raduin711]

There are some rather interesting ways for the characters to form legacies, other than children.

When the character retires, he can train someone of the next generation as his apprentice. This is especially true for Wizards, Fighters and Monks. If the character had a nickname or something similar, the apprentice can "take up the mantle" like in DC comics.

Also, if a character is content to be a lonely bachelor with no successor, he can take up the child of another character who had multiple children. Afterward, if you want to revisit the original bachelor, there could be a "lost bloodline" that pops up unexpectedly, a la Raistlin's Daughter.

 

[the Jester]

I love it when there's a lil romance in the game. One sytem to help reward it is to have a systematic method for awarding roleplaying xp. This encourages players to go for that xp. For instance, I award xp in four categories each game for rp (class, race, personal and alignment)- thus, someone involved in a romance in-game knows they already have some xp coming as long as they rp some piece of it at some point (from a comment about how they miss their lover all the way up to getting married).

The way I do it, is each category is worth 25 xp/character level (so get all four and you gett 100xyour level xp). I also halve monster/challenge xp.

My epic game has a lot of romance:

The fighter npc Thrush is in love with and engaged to Sybele;
Sybele's half-dragon lovechild daughter cohort Jezebel is dancing on the edge of getting engaged with another pc's cohort, Orbius; Angelfire and her cohort, Londo, are married. Also, a prominent ex-pc is married with children, and Sybele has three kids (Jez plus twins via Thrush). Also, Lester has a girlfriend whose friends are adventurer groupies.

 

[Thanee]

Romance is part of an adventurer's life the same as fighting and dungeoneering.

Some players/DMs like to focus on it, some don't.

In our games romance often is part of it, altho we are not always totally serious about it, sometimes it's described in a more comedy way as well, depends on our mood. You don't really need to have candlelight and soft music to describe romantic encounters, romance can be seen from a lot of different angles. Sometimes the romance is incorporated into the campaign, sometimes it's just a sidetrek. Sometimes the PCs make the first step, sometimes they are approached by an NPC.

We rarely have PC-PC relationships, tho (one, that I can recall, which was born out of a coincidence more than anything else). It's usually PC-NPC and it generelly doesn't matter whether the PC, player or DM is male or female there for us.

I don't think it should be rewarded, tho, because then some players will try to have romantic relationships just to reap the rewards, so to say.

Either the players like it or not.

Bye
Thanee

 

[DonaQuixote]

Legacy

I am currently in a game named, appropriately, Legacy (or Legacies, we can't ever quite pin that down) in which two of us are playing children of PCs from our last big epic game. And yes, there is an elf who was in the last and is sheperding us younglings through the present. There is also a clone (by which I mean literally a clone) of a former PC, played by a different player than the original, whose player is also in the game, playing someone else. It's fun!

Interestingly, the characters are half siblings, one the result of a marriage of love between two PCs and the other a second marriage of convenience with an NPC that took place when one PC ascended to godhood and the other got left holding the crown.

Fun stuff. Anyway, having been one of the PCs involved in the "marriage of love" plot in the former game (and being the wife of the DM both now and at the time!), I have a few ideas:

First, I really like having romantic subplots. It makes the world more real, and makes my characters more human. Love is such a huge part of real life, such a huge dimension of who we are, I tend to see the potential for these plots just sortof springing up naturally whenever people start having really well defined characters. Helps that, as a chick, I always play in mixed-gender groups. I think it is a bit of an art, just like everything else we do, to figure out how to do it in a balanced way that adds to the overall game instead of sucking too much energy into one PC/PC or PC/NPC relationship.

Second, having some type of system or something might be not only be a good way of making the idea of romantic plots more appealing, it might also kind of provide a bit of artificiality to keep folks from feeling too uncomfortable roleplaying this type of thing. It would be a reminder that this is a _game_. Sort of a buffer. I wish we'd had that last time, though we did something similar with magic items (wedding rings, for instance).

Third, lots of talking OOC is a good thing. Checking up to make sure everyone is comfotable, no boundaries have been crossed, etc. etc. We did that periodically in the last game. In my experience, it's important to make sure everyone, meaning all the players, not just the ones involved in the romance, and the DM, is comfortable with this subplot. That's a good way to avoid the maturity issues that someone mentioned above. It's also important for players to know that this is not a case of OOC stuff crossing over into the IC universe. Especially when one of the PCs is married to the DM ...

Forth, like others have said, roleplaying sex is right out. You _will_ make someone uncomfortable.

Fifth, the children thing seems to mostly make sense between stories. Especially if you have female PCs who will be pinned down taking care of them. And if you have an all male group who goes out adventuring while Mummsy is back home doing the childcare work, you may want to account for that type of extreme gender divide in your culture, and that type of distant father/child relationship in later roleplaying.

Sixth, wedding gifts, especially if your PC/s are important heroes, can be very very fun.

Sorry to go on so long. The romantic element of the last game I was in was one of the most rewarding roleplaying experiences I've had, and playing the child of a former character is too cool for words. I will post more if I think of it.

Should see if I can get former IC hubby and current IC little half-brother to post here too ...

-Doña Q.