This is an attempt to gather up some ideas for a How-to article on How too run a romance in an RPG. I’m specifically going to be mentioning two Multiverser characters, and versers, that is player characters. It will probably be a mish-mash.
Rules of Romance for RPG’s
By Eric R. Ashley
1. Let us not forget the obvious–Is the target of affections? A)Attractive B)Interesting. In other words, its generally best to make the Hot Elven Princess actually considerably more attractive than the average girl. However, one does not want to go overboard here. Relations between Demigoddesses of Romance and Beauty and mere mortals fall more under ‘How to Run the Character-Deity Relationship’ as a Deity is simply overwhelming by being themselves.
So, in Multiverser terms make her 2@1 to 2@4 in Charisma or Animal Magnetism with the other one trailing by say three to four points. In old skool AD&D make her Charisma 16 or higher. In Champions 4th Edition make her looks 18-25. In Vampire make sure she has at least four dots in an attractiveness attribute.
2. Make her memorable, but not totally outlandish. Lilandra had red hair, blue eyes, and skin like cream. Memorable means two things: Simple and attractive, but not outre’. You’ve got to be able to remember what she looks like, and you’ve got to want to remember, and you got to not suppress a wince every time you think of the three diamond pins poked through her tongue. Brrrr.
Other good ones include naturally white hair, or purple eyes, or one eye blue and the other green (they’re using that one on Bionic Woman this year). Green eyes, a pert nose, and a dusting of freckles across the nose always seems to be a popular description in a LOT of novels.
Show some class, your players will be grateful. Sure you can mention her ‘hourglass figure’ which is another oldie but goodie. Long, straight hair reaching down to her (insert polite compliment like ‘trim’ or even ‘curvy’) hips works too. But, if you go around describing her bra size…your players will not be impressed. And thats the male players. The female players will be looking to throw things at you. Be suave. Call her willowy, or slender for one type of body structure, and lithe, toned, muscled for another. The players can fill in the rest with their imagination–believe it or not, but a few of them may have noticed what shape girls are before.
Two points: One, there may be some reading this who think ‘three diamonds stuck through the tongue, how great is that!’ I’m happy for you. Really. I think you’re insane, but insanity and a good life are not mutually exclusive conditions.
Two: I’m focusing on how to describe ‘girls’ to the benefit of guy players. Well, I’ve done more of that in games than vice versa. And it seems to me that the girls might focus on the degree of muscles, the hair style, and the height….they are more interested in a witty personality for their invisible boyfriend. This article is more about how to present girls as non-player characters than the other way around. Although if you’re trying to do otherwise, you may find good tips in here.
3. The character needs to be the primary pursuer. This is my intuition. I think most characters would tend to flee the other way if pursued….except, you may want to have the NPC do the initial bit to get things started, because oftentimes PC’s are not even in the mode. That said, I could be all wet, and a garden-dwelling noblewoman could possibly try to charm a PC with frequent invites to parties and the like. It could work.
4. The Other needs to have interesting and valuable skills which the player does not already have. I discovered this with my Lilandra npc. I deliberately designed Lilandra so that she could hold her own in a fight, no, to be honest, so that she could clean the clock of whoever got in her way. She was a better swordfighter than her husband to be. He had a shotgun. He had more subtle thinking compared to her black and white thinking.
This raises a bunch of issues I’ll touch real quick and get back to later.
A. She had BIG skill.
B. He had other Big skills.
C. She had goals and ideas about how to do things–’Bad People need to feel my wrath’
D. She, in modern worlds especially, knew she wasn’t getting everything that was going on. She deferred to the verser to tell her when to kill someone. This kept the focus on teh verser who is after all the hero of the story, and gave her a goal, and gave them a minor conflict they could discuss and move on about. A girl that always agrees with you, and always supports you might be nice in the real world, but in games, its boring. But a girl you can’t win an arguement with is painful in the real world, and painful in the game world. I suspect in the game world, the PC should win most arguements with his Other.
E. This also sets up further conflict down the road when she is really, really wanting to kill someone for example, and he forbids it–”No, you can’t kill the dictator of a foreign country at the United Nations just because they’re an evil, mass-murdering thug. Its simply NOT Done!”
“But they’re wicked! Really, really wicked! Their presence offends my god!”
Conflict of varying degrees ranging from the mild to the serious is a good part of things.
MORE LATER……
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