Romance In Role-Playing Games
When I used to run Drama related Role-playing Games like Love & Life Bytes it was easy for Players to get their Characters flirting, romantic or even the very opposite. In a setting that surrounds battle and exploration that is typical of such Role-playing Games as Dungeons & Dragons having Romance as part of the Scenario may be less appealing or is it? As a GM / Dungeon Master / Referee have you attempted to allow Characters to become Romatic towards each other or NPCs in which they come in contact? What about a Scenario based on Romance of finding love, would that make a good game? What are your thoughts?
Romance In Role-playing Games (Hover)
It's highly group dependent really. Some players don't want romance in their game, especially if it's all men playing around the table.
My gaming groups have a really decent mix of male and female players, and we have games where romance is a big part of the game, and games where it doesn't turn up at all.
For example, I'm currently running a game called Monsterhearts, which basically takes the premise of all those teen supernatural romances and asks, 'What if these sort of stories actually took place with real, messed up teenagers trying to decide who they are and what their place in the world is?' Questions of who's dating who, and who's popular and who's not and the like are all very relevant in that game.
We just finished up playing through The Flood campaign for Deadlands. There was no real romance in that beyond a brief flirtation between my character and a woman we knew was an official of an evil cult. A flirtation that we all knew would never go anywhere, but made for a more interesting scene.
Personally, I like including romantic subplots in games I run. It makes the characters and their situations more real.
I love to lead on and then give heartache! I used to do that a lot in the drama games. The only thing is it should not become the center of the game. An off shoot relationship between two characters should be just that and not involve everyone in the game as in we have to wait for you to come up with an action because you're too 'in love' to make a move. .
I forgot to mention that I'm working on a solo Role-playing Game that involves a strangely romantic relationship in a modern setting. Doing it without having to worry about other players makes it easy to manipulate where every emotion goes.
Romance? Not for me. I'm actually in a game where one of the characters has a home and a partner. They really do not do any romantic stuff but then again we aren't in a position to be romantic with everyone being killed around us.