The greatest thing, you'll ever learn,
Is just to love, and be loved in return.
- Nature Boy, David Bowie (from Moulin Rouge OST)
"Mawwiage, that bwessed awwangement, that dweam wifin a dream! ... Twoo wuv will follow you forevah, so tweasure your wuv."
- The Impressive Clergyman (Peter Cook), The Princess Bride (1987)
It's Valentine's Day, so I have a question for my fellow gamers: how do you handle "romance" in your games?
I'm not talking about a quick bunk-up with a barmaid (
a cliché of most teenagers' D&D games) but genuine courtship, marriage etc
Has such a scenario ever cropped up in your games or don't your campaigns run long enough to contemplate the need for love and heirs?
Has anyone been involved in a game (
non-Pendragon or Blue Rose) where a player has gone the whole hog in his attempts to woo a maiden fair: cards, flowers, dancing, cinema dates, meals out etc?
Since I first started thinking about this aspect of long-running roleplaying game campaigns many years ago, it feels as though the topic of in-game love and romance has become more
de rigueur with the younger generation of gamers.
However, that still doesn't mean it's easy to deal with in a satisfying manner.
Romance is a staple sub-plot of many comic books (
Comic Book Resources has a list of the 15 most screwed-up relationships, if you need reminding) , but have you, for instance, introduced it into a tabletop superhero campaign?
I know this is something that Aaron Allston advocated through '
blue-booking' in his legendary
Strike Force campaign; is this how you would handle romance in your game, would the process be entirely role-played or would there be some mechanics and dice-rolling involved?
Personally I'm in the "more roleplay, less mechanics" camp.
Is romance - either being player-characters or between a PC and an NPC - something you'd even think about or encourage as a gamesmaster or player?
Do characters date? Do their iPhones come with Tinder, Ashley Madison, Grindr etc installed?
Then, from romance, comes the question of children....
While the concept of a generational game is integral to
Pendragon, do you think about it in other long-running campaigns?
In a contemporary game have your player-characters become parents and had to deal with daycare, nannies etc while they run off to fight crime? Or is this too close to the real life that they are escaping from in your games?
The delightful Ginny Di has produced a couple of videos on this topic, including a round-up of possible
Dungeons & Dragons game mechanics to help navigate this touchy subject:
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