Alright, my players want to play a campaign centered around meeting/romancing NPCs AND dungeon delving.
How do I structure this shit?
Do I add NPCs to their party? They find adventurers in the dungeon? Are they NPCs that provide services at town?
And most importantly, how do I make the romancing not-creepy? I worry that my players will be bringing their magical realm to the campaign sooner or later.
Persona.
No, really.
Social links at day, dungeons at night.
Maybe a social link walks into a dungeon.
Maybe a dungeon falls out of a social link.
They're exploring a dungeon and the reward is NPCs. What's in the chest? NPCs. What's in this room? NPCs. What's the dragon sleeping on? A horde of NPCs.
>that winking Kabron
>That cougar bottom right
>qt gnome girls bottom left
>cute elves
>cute humans
>cute dwarves
>Senshi looks like he gonna cut you
why is this artist so good.
oh my god Marcielle really DOES have fat ears compared to other elves
This. Bonus if social links offer benefits of some kind
Do you think that now laius is the only one sticking up for her, marcille will finally get it together and make a run for the laiusbowl?
Also structure it on an every other session basis, with dungeoneering focus one week and dating/social the next. Keep track of the NPCs likes/dislikes and how previous interactions went.
We can only hope, senpai
Since you're focusing on romance and dungeon crawling, you might want to consider donwplaying everything else to make room for those pretty dense subjects. Cutting things like travel, politics, and keeping everything centered around romance and politics is probably the best way to actually make progress in both fields.
Have a huge, sprawling dungeon where it's not uncommon to meet other adventurers, like Undermountain in Faerun. Also, be sure to dangle a lot of NPC options, since it's often surprising which NPCs a player will get attached to.
mimics are malignant narcissists NPCs
So there's a system called Dramasystem, used for a game called Hillfolk. Could look into that.
The main thing you need to decide is, are you going to use some sort of structured 'romance points' system or are you going to play it by ear and have things develop more naturally. Will every npc be a romance option? Will there be deliberately placed obvious romance options? Will you make it clear to the players which ones are 'available' or will they just be people and the players' actions prompt the romance on your side?
You could run it as a story-based campaign with dungeon delving. Every npc should have a few things decided in advance. Gender and sexuality- these need to be varied enough to give players options and to make the world feel lived in. Availability is another. Is the npc married, for example. You need to know the answer to this. They may still be willing to cheat, too. Make note of this when relevant. Age, appearance, and personality are all more important than ever. If the character is 'available' you can note whether or not they are pursuing love or sex, or if they are simply open to it. These available characters are 'romance options.' Keep info on them carefully logged. A few preferences. Any important info like do they have kids? past relationships? important goals or problems? Have them give the players jobs to do- maybe even make the players work to figure out what they need.
Have the players *invest* in these npcs themselves. Really it's a bit more sandbox than I think you'd expect. You just put the pieces in place and when the players seem interested let them show it. Not necessarily by flirting in character.. just notice who they bring up etc. If they want romance they'll go after it one way or another. But you should definitely have some characters more open to romance than others.
continued..
You should consider including drama in the game more than usual. A romantic betrayal (ie a bad guy pretending to like a PC) might be interesting if the players seem down. Don't do this totally ooc tho... have it be planned. And have a backup romance for that person for him/her to fall back on after their heart is broken.
Just try to think of some cheesy romance stuff. Maybe there's a lady being forced into a marriage she doesn't want? Or a guy who is rescued from bandits and travels back to town, getting to know the partymembers.
You need to allow conversations to take place so the relationships can build. Maybe have people take turns keeping watch, you could literally ask them to make the schedule- 2 at a time through the night- and then play out a quick convo between each pair. Or randomly say "while travelling, bill and bob have some time to talk! What do you guys talk about?" It doesn't have to be romance. Just prompt roleplaying so that the romance parts don't stand out!
FINAL NOTE-
Give them something tangible. Write an actual love letter at some point. They'll think that's hella cute. Try to make sure gifts are given in general.. something to write on their character sheets. A handkerchief, etc. Maybe a lock of hair. that sort of thing. Make the setting more detailed by talking about how marriage and courting works so they can say, 'while we travel thru the woods i wanna grab a white flower since i know that's how you tell a girl you like her' etc. Don't breeze past stuff when a player talks about grand gestures like that. When someone says they're planning a date with the farmer's daughter don't say 'ok ok you plan it' actually say, 'so what kind of thing are you actually planning?' and let them explain their dumb idea. Then play it out like you would any other important scene. Not every detail.
Good stuff, man.
Saved for future generations.
Like, get it together girl, even the orc got to first base.
>Social links at day, dungeons at night.
I'm a fan of the concept of "down time" or "free time". Basically periods of time that your party has between dungeons to do things like interact with NPCs, make money, buy things, research, etc... Basically PCs doing their own thing in their time off. We used this in our own Persona inspired campaign even, and a Final Fantasy one.
Each PC gets a number of "units", representing their available time, and each activity took one unit. We usually went with two or three, with conversing with NPCs not necessarily taking a unit unless big things happened. You don't have to stick too strictly to "dungeons at night, social stuff during the day", but rather maybe your PC has a certain amount of days off between dungeons to do their own thing, and each unit represents a day.
We also usually did these things with one person at a time (though sometimes other people wanted to do things together) between our actual session days, but this won't work for all groups. It worked for us since we're a fairly close group, and we do it on roll20, so meeting up for a couple of hours to hash it out wasn't a problem. For groups that have to physically meet or have busy schedules, it's probably not a good fit.
Some systems have rules for it, like Pathfinder or 5e, but we never really stuck too strictly to them.
This is a good idea
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>OP pic: "I wanted to make them all look different"
Well, you failed.
A few tips if you're planning on doing it, from my group's experience.
1. It's a good idea to have a list of suggestions of what to do. Maybe write down some quests, or things certain characters have going on. Things like "A local restaurant is looking for a part-time worker" or " seems down about something. Maybe you should ask her what's up."
You can also have these things be related to the next session to maybe change up things that will happen in it.
2. Don't give /too/ many units. In my group's experience, our players just kind of ran out of ideas after three, and struggled to think of what they want to do. Generally, I only had one pressing matter I wanted to do with my downtime, and used the other units to either make money or take care of the items on the suggestion note.
3. Don't drag out something if it's relatively mundane. A PC shouldn't /have/ to roleplay out every step of cooking for their part-time job (unless they want to, but that goes without saying). Just abstract it, make it a skill check, and keep the result as simple as possible. Something like "Your work performance was amazing, and the head chief notices your talent and gives you a small bonus to your check" on a good roll.
Roleplaying out big events are fine (and even encouraged, we roleplayed out a political debate in our Final Fantasy campaign), but as for the mundane stuff like making money or buying things, it's best to keep it short. One exception I'd make is haggling, since that is often fun to roleplay.
Roll
Is op even here
...
>Talks about women being attractive
>Doesn't mention Laius
What are you some kind of faggot?
Rollin for romance.