rhythmsoundmotion
Adventurer
Make your own romance RPG with this SRD.
(Found this appropriate for the discussion.)
(Found this appropriate for the discussion.)
Rules for Romance in TTRPGs
- Thread starter Starfox
- Start date
Gorgon Zee
Hero
[double post; deleted]
Last edited:
Gorgon Zee
Hero
I’ve run romance in quite a few games.
PENDRAGON has a number of systems devoted to it. There’s a “fine amor” version that comes into play midway through the Great Pendragon Campaign, in which your love has a resistance that needs to be worn down by undergoing trials for the romance to progress. Those trials can be simple rolls, or require entire sessions to resolve. There’s a set of rules for marriage, and many adventures all about romance. And, of course, the passion system allows a GM to set up situations where your love is in conflict with hospitality, loyalty, honor or religion. An entire era in the GPC is devoted to romance. The Queen has a court where they question knights about proper romantic etiquette. It is easily the most “romantic” system I have run.
Outside Pendragon, FATE is the easiest I have found to model romance. At its simplest, it’s an aspect of your character, but you can define obstacles to love that need overcoming and feats that build on aspects very easily.
DramaSystem (e.g. Hillfolk) is a game devoted to relationships and is ideal for romance-focused play, but it may be too extreme for many players.
Traditional systems based on action resolution are a lot less easy to implement romance in, as, at least to me, it works better as a state or set of attributes rather than as a set of actions to be performed. You don’t really “do a romance task”, you become romantic in some way, so for systems focused on resolving actions, it’s a hard fit. For D&D in particular, although pretty much every game I run has characters marrying, dating, and flirting, it’s done outside of the rules, pretty much.
PENDRAGON has a number of systems devoted to it. There’s a “fine amor” version that comes into play midway through the Great Pendragon Campaign, in which your love has a resistance that needs to be worn down by undergoing trials for the romance to progress. Those trials can be simple rolls, or require entire sessions to resolve. There’s a set of rules for marriage, and many adventures all about romance. And, of course, the passion system allows a GM to set up situations where your love is in conflict with hospitality, loyalty, honor or religion. An entire era in the GPC is devoted to romance. The Queen has a court where they question knights about proper romantic etiquette. It is easily the most “romantic” system I have run.
Outside Pendragon, FATE is the easiest I have found to model romance. At its simplest, it’s an aspect of your character, but you can define obstacles to love that need overcoming and feats that build on aspects very easily.
DramaSystem (e.g. Hillfolk) is a game devoted to relationships and is ideal for romance-focused play, but it may be too extreme for many players.
Traditional systems based on action resolution are a lot less easy to implement romance in, as, at least to me, it works better as a state or set of attributes rather than as a set of actions to be performed. You don’t really “do a romance task”, you become romantic in some way, so for systems focused on resolving actions, it’s a hard fit. For D&D in particular, although pretty much every game I run has characters marrying, dating, and flirting, it’s done outside of the rules, pretty much.
Starfox
Hero
I actually own all of these
, played quite a lot of 1E Pendragon back in the day.Similar Threads
