Quote from: Settembrini...you are going to marry her, no?

That was 12 years ago - she married somebody else. But yeah 2 months later I was ready to propose to her.


 Oh Wait!!! We DID have a "massage" or back rub scene in a game session.

 The character of Angel McCoy had gotten in trouble with Mertactor High Port security for going berserk on therir security man in the dress shop . (its a long story)
 After she was released from the Space Station Brig - a couple of the other other crewmembers paid for a very good looking male masseuse to give her a full body mnassage in the prvacy of her cabin "to calm her down and get her to chill the F out " I think was the phrase.
 She played it that it DID relieve her character's tension and somewhat murderous urges.

The "Angel" character is played by my friend Tina.

- Ed C.

Quote from: McrowOk, here's the deal. I'm talking about intentionally avoiding it, meaning if a situation comes up in a game you just avoid it all together instead of taking at as a RPing challenge.

No, not all game,movies books require it to be good but avoinding it is a little dumb.

"Avoiding"?  

It just flat doesn't come up, because I've almost never had a group or player that was rude enough to try and force the game to go that direction.

It's impolite to expect the rest of the players to go along with your wierd little romantic fantasies.

It's all good, highly desirable from a genre-emulation standpoint, you just have to know when to abstract on both the description/roleplay and the mechanics.

Right now in our B/X game two of our characters (both cunning if not shrewd Thieves) were captured by Amazons and managed to improve their conditions by flattering the leaders and allowing themselves to be made into their "playthings". Descriptions were kept "light", no more than PG. Of course there's no real love or actual interest on the part of the PCs (at least, not mine). But I've played in other games where there was more going on in terms of emotional attachment if not graphic details. PC-NPC has a higher comfort level than PC-PC, IMO.

Quote from: J Arcane"Avoiding"?  

It just flat doesn't come up, because I've almost never had a group or player that was rude enough to try and force the game to go that direction.

It's impolite to expect the rest of the players to go along with your wierd little romantic fantasies.

So, if a player in your group says he/she wants their charter to take a run at a nobles daughter you'd all be unhappy?

Romance, usually not, but flirting, yes. Said flirting is usually done for sinister reasons, like trying to gain favor in court, trying to distract a guard while someone else sneaks by, or simply trying to seduce someone for a favor.

If a romance did come up, none of the intimate moments would get roleplayed, only public scenes where the NPC played an important part.

Anything intimate or that doesn't contribute to the overall plot is usually just said to happen off-camera.

I'm fortunate to have a group of mature players, equal numbers male and female, all socially well adjusted, so there aren't any issues.

Roleplaying it in character?  HELL NO.  3rd person narration of what your character is doing?  sure.  Charisma has got to be good for something besides spell casting.

Quote from: McrowWell, the total avoidence of it does seem a little juvenile. No one said anthing about having to RP out a romance novel. Most of "rommance" items in my games have been more or less pretty undertone in style, like going after a barmaid and revisiting if we go through town again and that sort of thing. No, we don't go into any great detail either.

Mostly I use it as bait on the GMs hook, so they have more things to throw into the game that mean something to my character.

Exactly, Mike!

-clash

I haven't seen much in the way of rules that I like for this kind of thing.  Flirting (much less seduction) often serves very different purposes in a narrative from (say) climbing a wall ... and most of the rules I've seen unify them a bit too tightly.

Romance, even casual flirting, can have all sorts of interesting issues in terms of what you know of people, what you suspect, what you just hope for, what they think of you, whether that matters to you, whether you'll change how you act in order to influence how they think of you, etc., etc., etc.

My experience, from games where it worked, is that there was a lot more attention to the how and why of flirting, rather than its success or failure.  Attention was paid to the journey, not the destination.  Succeed or fail ... that tells us something about the people involved.  But how and why, that tells us much more.  YMMV, of course.

Quote from: KoltarAny good rules for romance and flirting out there in RPGs??

Doesn't anyone just, like, ya know, role-play this stuff out anymore?

Quote from: KoltarHow often does that happen in your games? Any good charts or rules for NPC interaction for all of that kind of fun?

Romance happens all the time in the games I play in, generally PC-NPC.  It's played a very large roll in several games I've played in and GMed including the paladin who lost his way with what started out as flirting during the first session, my character's courting of the young widowed school mistress in a D&D game I recently played in (he wound up abandoning her out of duty, which probably ultimately saved her life), another player's clumsy barbarian wooing of the jilted blacksmith in the same game (who died shortly after consummating the relationship, leaving her heartbroken), the Fudge Western where more Fudge points were expended on my character's romance (and another player's attempt to thwart it) than on combat, my character who went insane with jealousy after having part of his memory voluntarily wiped (to hide some illegal activity from mind scans), my character whose romance with an NPC of another race which helped him realize that the races in the setting were more alike than different, the dwarf-elf romance and marriage in an old Warhammer FRP game that I ran years ago, the character who pursued the nice girl he was traveling with who had to deal with her taking the relationship far more seriously than he did, and on and on.  Romance is part of life and a part of the games I play in.  We just sort of role-play it out.  

When I GM and need to know how an NPC reacts to a PC, I can always fall back on the "universal table".  I roll a die and interpret the result with high numbers being good for the PC(s) and low numbers being bad for the PC(s) (the higher the better, the lower the worse, and the middle being the average or expected result).

Quote from: GunslingerRoleplaying it in character?  HELL NO.  3rd person narration of what your character is doing?  sure.  Charisma has got to be good for something besides spell casting.

What's wrong with role-playing out a romance in character?

Quote from: John MorrowWhat's wrong with role-playing out a romance in character?

Nothing.  It's the reciprocation back and forth between the GM and player that I find unsettling.  Knock yourself out if it's your character but don't expect me to roleplay the NPC in character as the GM.  I'd be more inclined to narrate out the response of the NPC for the player.  Even if it was my wife I'd be inclined to do it that way for sake of the comfort of the other players.

In my games I use a LOT of 3 x5 and 4x6 notecxards for private communication between the GM and the players. Often, the players have used these cards to write the more flowery romantic thoughts to NPCs in the game - which is fine by me. It gets the thought or action down as actually happening and makles sure the player doesn't feel  awkward in front of the other people at the table.


 This has led to interesting actions in the course of the game. Right before a plot-important dance a Player Character gave an NPC 'date' a rose. When I described what she was wearing - the other characters noted it. So, it became a part of the story.

- Ed C.

Quote from: GunslingerNothing.  It's the reciprocation back and forth between the GM and player that I find unsettling.  Knock yourself out if it's your character but don't expect me to roleplay the NPC in character as the GM.  I'd be more inclined to narrate out the response of the NPC for the player.  Even if it was my wife I'd be inclined to do it that way for sake of the comfort of the other players.

I've never really had a problem differentiating the NPC or PC from the person playing them, so it doesn't make me feel all that uncomfortable, nor does it bother anyone else at the table as far as I can tell, even when it's just guys playing.  Probably helps that I play with friends and other people who seem pretty level-headed about it.

Quote from: John MorrowI've never really had a problem differentiating the NPC or PC from the person playing them, so it doesn't make me feel all that uncomfortable, nor does it bother anyone else at the table as far as I can tell, even when it's just guys playing.  Probably helps that I play with friends and other people who seem pretty level-headed about it.

Same here. Exactly.

-clash

I think that as clash pointed out, in certain games it would be juvenile NOT to have romance. In others, romance would be utterly irrelevant.

Generally speaking, my campaigns only  have romance in them if its topical to the setting of the game in question.
In games like my FtA! game, or WFRP, romance doesn't enter into it, other than going wenching (which happens strictly "off-camera").
In games like Pendragon and Qin, romance is obviously a part of the historical story as well as an important part of dynasty building; though being a historical game of course many of the PCs are married without any real romance being involved (marriage being more about political alliance and production of heirs). One of my Pendragon PCs very uncharacteristically has a deep romance (so much so that its his highest-rated Passion) with his own wife, something that was roleplayed and that was noted for being so unusual in the society of the times.  In my Qin campaign, the relationship between one of my (female) PCs and her husband (the Han prince, Liu Bei) is a major plotline and of course of tremendous historical significance, as well as a source of conflict and plot in game as she schemes behind the scenes to help Liu Bei gain power, and she deals with the fact that she's an aging consort while Liu Bei's new young wife has given him a legitimate male heir that stands to inherit all the product of her work, while her own son (Liu Feng) will be shunted off to the sidelines.

Finally, the one game that is an absolute soap opera is the Legion game, where it is a major element of emulation of genre that teenaged romance and serious relationships alike be a major feature of many of the PCs' lives.  In fact, my players who's characters haven't been able to get a steady girlfriend in or out of the legion have been upset about that.

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