Quote from: Bren;831740I found that doing some or all of the conversation in third person is often helpful for me as it puts some distance between me and the player which can be a lot more comfortable for all concerned.

Sometimes another player has played the romantic interest NPC which can also work well. If the other player is the real world romantic interest of the first player that can avoid some awkwardness since not everyone is cool with roleplaying out romance between a third person while their real life other half is sitting their watching (or critiquing and laughing).

I agree with those who mentioned taking a cue from your player and I agree that including ordinary events that couples might do like gift giving, eating a meal, going to the theatre or opera (depending on time, location, and degree of historical accuracy), attending a dance or masquerade (trying to evade chaperones to get some time alone on a terrace could be a minor subplot to a ball or masquerade scene). Another popular thing in the time period was reciting and/or composing poetry which could be a thing that is done without necessarily having to recite or compose actual poetry. They could go to the market and shop or just walk around and look at the booths. They could also interact with various vendors street performers who may try to get one of the two to be involved in a skit or to buy flowers for the other.

Bren, the chaperones slant is pure roleplaying gold! Can't think why I haven't thought of that before - definitely stealing that for my upcoming 18th Century game.

And what everyone says here about knowing what your people are comfortable with is perhaps the golden rule. Some people are happy with first person narration from the GM (yes, I have been the innocent Princess to one of my player's handsome rogue), while others find it less icky if you stick to third person. And then there is a sort of group consensus that needs to be reached over when to fade to black. Find out what everyone - including yourself - is comfortable with, and then stick to it.

Romance, love and sex turn up quite frequently in our games, and the level of detail tends to vary depending on which of the three is being played out at any one time. This stuff is a part of life, so our group likes to include it. One irregular player however, sees it as a waste of time when we could be getting on with 'the game', so if he's playing we tend to cut down the time spent on the romance sub plots.

trick is not to kill them off for drama i hear players hate that.of course they can be killed repetedly if there on a plane that resurects them the next day

Quote from: Ravenswing;831903Alas.  I'd been in the middle of quite pleasantly surprised at the level of maturity displayed up until this point, given that the majority of "Romance in RPGs" threads are dominated by the "Ewww, COOTIES!!!" types for whom The Mushy Stuff is a signal to revert to junior high school.  Mind going elsewhere to threadcrap?

Anyway ... not much I could add to the good advice already proffered.

I like to play D&D to have adventures, not simulate the entirety of a life.  Others like to simulate more than I do.  That doesn't make it a threadcrap, and I didn't revert to Junior High school.  I gave an opinion, succinctly, and without crapping on people who feel differently.

Something you failed to do, O mature one.

EOTB, it's good to hear you didn't mean to threadcrap, and your explanation of your play type makes sense, and doesn't strike me at all as threadcrap, but your previous post also landed with me as putting down the whole idea for others, because you didn't say "to me", making it sound to me like you were trying to tell everyone else what would be better for them.

I've seen a range or romance and no-romance in RPGs. It's a "same page" issue, but in general, I think romance is part of life, so to the degree that your game includes most/all aspects of life, and that your players are interested and mature enough to enjoy it, go ahead and include it. It can go all the way up to mechanical sex rules - see the Naughty & Dice generic rules module, for example - I've played in games with the authors, and despite how that might look to some people, it can be quite natural and not disruptive to include in a game. But in general, I just roleplay it like any other human interaction. There are all sorts of ways to handle it.

Sometimes I roll for my own PC, and often for NPCs, to determine their interest level or the success of advances. I wouldn't tend to roll as a GM for PCs' reactions, but it might make sense sometimes, though I'd usually give the players authority of what their characters do about it. After all, in real life, many people frequently feel attracted to others, but don't act on it for whatever reason. An advantage of rolling routinely and letting players know when their PC is feeling attracted to someone, is that then if there is a situation where something unusual is making the PC feel attraction, it won't be obvious to the players that this is some special game situation. This allows something like a love spell/potion to be as subtle/effective/unsuspected as it should be, without breaking the "third wall" and requiring players to pretend they don't know something artificial is happening.

Quote from: EOTB;832200I like to play D&D to have adventures, not simulate the entirety of a life.  Others like to simulate more than I do.  That doesn't make it a threadcrap, and I didn't revert to Junior High school.  I gave an opinion, succinctly, and without crapping on people who feel differently.

Something you failed to do, O mature one.

Yeah, nice try.  Tell you what: go back and reread the OP.  You might have missed, the first time around, where the OP didn't invite commentary as to the value, propriety or purpose of romantic plots in gaming.  He didn't even invite comments on whether he ought to go through with it.  He was asking for the best way to go about it.  Period.

And your answer was that it was a waste of time and not to bother.  That's the frigging definition of threadcrapping.

And no, I didn't sneer at people who felt differently than I do.  I sneer at people who act immaturely on the issue.  Not wanting romantic plots in your gaming, that's a preference, no different from the many other preferences that permeate the hobby.  You're the best judge of how you want to play and what elements you find interesting.

The whole notion of romance/sex in gaming, however, may be the issue that provokes the most immature sneering: why do we need rules for that? Why should we waste time on that? What's wrong with people who like that kind of gaming?  What are you, some kind of pussy or pervert?  You might as well go play FATAL!  Or something.

You do romance in your game like you handle other aspects of your game: by investing in the importance of such things.

If you don't do that - what do your characters do? Count their gold? Do they go to inn's and get drunk? Do they tumble a wench or two? Do you give your female characters male foils that are intriguing?

Romance like combat is something the PC's can be enticed into - but the GM is the deciding factor as to whether it will be quality gaming or not.

My PC's definitely engage in romance. Sometimes for all the wrong reasons. Sometimes for all the right ones. Your PC's need to be engaged on the level their PC's play at with the promise that it actually matters. If you can't get your player's buy-in on it - then that's what you need to be sharpening up on your GMing skills. Buy-in to murder and gold-acquisition is easy. Buy-in to emotional investment - that's what awesome campaigns are made from.

I usually don't built up NPCs as potential, long term romantic interests. Short term romances, brief flings and so on are there if the players have an interest in that. If a player then wants to turn one of these encounters into a long-term relationship, this might work out, but it is usually not the case, and in my opinion actual long term relations are in my experience better left to those situations where all involved characters are PCs - the players tend to care more about them, and as a gamemaster, I don't have to focus a lot of my intention on a subplot that usually only affects one player.

Quote from: Beagle;832414If a player then wants to turn one of these encounters into a long-term relationship, this might work out, but it is usually not the case, and in my opinion actual long term relations are in my experience better left to those situations where all involved characters are PCs

It's a good point, I've thought about how to make the situation interesting for the other payers as well. Someone suggested the PCs could chaperone or be wingmen to the romantically involved character - and think this could work, given that my group is very inter-party focused. Long term... yeah, I'll have to think on that. I don't want to just kill off the PC's intentional partner for dramatic effect, but having a relationship going on in the background might also take some focus away from the important in game stuff. Maybe I could use the romantic interest for a recurring NPC, the paty's go-to girl for sepcialized knowledge on guns and blackpowder weapons?

Romances IMCs have always been NPC/PC or NPC/NPC, not PC/PC. Usually they occur in the background and don't take up much screen time if any.

Quote from: The_Shadow;831639I recommend really getting into character, and emoting, with LARP elements. Basically, dry humping while spouting lines from your favorite erotic fan fic.

Woot!

That's essentially how my old crew did it. Of course, it helped that we drank when we gamed and we were all buddies.

Quote from: S'mon;832427Romances IMCs have always been NPC/PC or NPC/NPC, not PC/PC. Usually they occur in the background and don't take up much screen time if any.

I've had a few PC/PC romances in my campaigns, S'mon. They're simple - let it go, as the song says.

-clash

Quote from: S'mon;832427Romances IMCs have always been NPC/PC or NPC/NPC, not PC/PC.

I've done this.  We bluebooked a lot.  Sometimes we'd just play some downtime of our characters either before everyone showed up or after everyone left.  It was definitely some of the most rewarding character time I've ever played.

Quote from: Zevious Zoquis;831693Hmmm....for myself, I'm inclined to think that romantic attraction falls into the realm of the GM ftmp.  As a player, I don't feel like I get to say "I fall for that npc."  It doesn't feel like that's the way it works.  I'd be more inclined to say that the GM could determine "you find beguiling and you are strongly attracted to her/him."  Then, it would be up to me to respond to that.  If I didn't want to proceed in a romantic way it might come down to a test of my characters willpower to resist the attraction.  I just feel like "love" is something that happens outside of our control and therefore is more of a nature thing that the GM would manage.  

But then I'm a guy who isn't really looking to roleplay romance anyway and I like PC death to be on the table so what do I know?  In other words, I actually like the suggestion up thread to "use dice to handle everything."  lol...

its like im seeing monsterhearts from a difrent angle. On that note dont go anywhere monsterhearts for insperation (althougih a lot of people here seem to like it)

my group being a bunch of colosal perverts who make pornographic visual novels we dont fade to black at all and romances tend to be a bit of a joke but i have been wondering lately what it would be like to pretend to be a sexualy normal group. It would be roleplaying how we we roleplay very meta

mostly i want to learn how to give good advice on this matter

Quote from: tuypo1;832477its like im seeing monsterhearts from a difrent angle. On that note dont go anywhere monsterhearts for insperation (althougih a lot of people here seem to like it)

hmm...don't know what that means.


Just to clarify, I wasn't suggesting the GM should outright tell a PC that his character is in love with a given NPC.  It was more along the lines of having it come down to a dice roll - some sort of "romance mechanism" to handle it - to determine if "the spark" is there.  It's the whole "I think it would be interesting for the story if my character and that NPC had a romantic involvement" deal that feels story-gamey to me.  But again this thread isn't really for me since the level of romance I'd generally want would be along the lines of what you might find in a Conan story or something...