>i-it's not like i like you or anything, b-baka...
Can PC romance be done well, or is it inherently cringy? What's better: PC-NPC or PC-PC? How would you handle a player falling in love with your NPC? How about a GM introducing a character who falls in love with your PC? Finally, should romance beyond the main quest be an afterthought ("I send letters to my lover back home") or a plot point ("While adventuring, my home was attacked and my lover kidnapped")
It's totally fine as long as clear player/character distinction is kept. When character is used as a proxy for flirting it's really cringy.
Yup. Don't screw within your OOC group. Within your party is fine.
Otherwise drama is inevitable.
The point of character relationships (romantic or otherwise) is to help develop the character by showing them in a variety of situations. With this in mind, the question becomes; what does this relationship show us about the character that we didn't already know? So long as the relationship is adding depth to two characters who the players are interested in it will be interesting.
Any scenario involving two neckbeards writing love text at each other is 100 percent unsalvagable and cringey, no exceptions.
You're probably trolling to even ask this, since the answer is so obvious and indisputable.
Romance is fucking gay as hell. I hate it when my players want to role play their relationship with an npc. What am I? Your date simulation? The reason you are going to fap tonight? Your gay outlet? Dafuq outta here! Go to a bar next time instead of flirting with your dm you assburger.
I used to GM for four femanons, and you couldn't go one session without some sort of romance subplot popping up, either with an npc or each other.
One of the femanons always played male characters (and always androgynous bishie types) and was always romance bait for one of the others.
Often, when there were male npcs that became romance fodder, I would hand the character over to one of them to play. They would rp together between sessions, including writing full on romance novel style porn.
Bitches be crazy man
I think it's best done abstractly. When I end up in a scenario where the character would be getting all sappy with the NPC, I take a moment and look at the bearded guy behind the GM screen in the face, and I describe what my character would be doing without doing it myself. Keeps everyone moving and the GM doesn't have to make any subsequent fading seem abrupt. It's like a gradual fade out. One instance is that saying "my character asks her out to the royal ball", is a lot less awkward than whatever the characters actually going to say.
That said, other people do things different and are comfortable with different levels of immersion ranging from "don't fucking mention the idea of romance, sex, love, or close friendship at my fucking game" to "let's act out what you do with the bar wench in detail user, I'll play the wench".
Every NPC that falls in love with a PC at my table is inevitably the cultist/shapeshifter/demonic-possession victim. And if we "fade to black" we'll be finding that PC's corpse sometime tomorrow.
>Can PC romance be done well
Depends. Assuming you're not just playing a beer & pretzels game, you'd need a group of mature adults to start with but sure it can be done well.
The whole point of roleplaying is to explore different characters, different settings, different rules of the world. But the same things tie every rpg as they do every piece of fiction. Despite all their differences they all contain one thing that's the same, humans and human drama.
Ignoring large portions of the human experience and potential human drama like romance or sexuality is effectively sterilizing your game. I'm not suggesting ERP nor even to saturate your game with it, but to exclude it completely is silly. There's no reason romance can't be done well and make for a deeper and more memorable game.
Where participant = player
>how comfortable are the participants with each other?
>how mature are the participants?
>how much do the participants understand their own character, and how well do they roleplay them?
>how well do the participants understand love, relationships and romance?
I've had a good in game romance between my life wizard and an elven ranger in warhammer. I've also seen a bad romance between a player and a 'hot npc', which basically amounted to him telling the DM that he wanted to go and fuck the girl every time we made it back to the town. Eventually we managed to steer the group into faraway lands.
To elaborate on this, if one of the factors I greentexted is lacking, then the romance will probably be shit.
If they're uncomfortable with each other it is likely to be awkward.
If they're immature it will likely be silly, and annoying.
If they have no grasp of their characters, it will probably be pointless and annoying.
If they don't understand relationships it will probably be a very weird affair, or super superficial / pointless.
PC Romance cannot be done well.
I have never seen or heard of it done well from any reputable source. All that results is hellish cringe and vomiting behind the DM screen.
Any who attempt it as fallen and accursed, and banned from future campa
In fact I will go one further. PC emotions of any sort cannot be done well and should not be attempted. There are only the following exceptions:
>Battle fury
>Gratitude
>Regular fury
Anything else is max cringe and slows the game down.
This.
I hate it when my players try to role play in my games. Its a tactical combat game, your characters should be designed first and foremost for combat efficiency, and decisions should be made based on which give you the best tactical advantage.
I dont want to play with any emotions or characterization, just numbers and strategy.
I think PC-NPC is a lot better because PC-PC inherently creates too much of a time, drama, and attention sink. They are either roleplaying by themselves or the GM has to feed into it too, which just takes over more of the game. There's also really limited plot complications you can introduce when both are PCs.
Conversely, each NPC should be a fairly small part of the GM's attention. I don't think having an npc romance implies any more creepiness than the GM having a villain being a serial killer indicates he has bodies in his basement. They can also be made as relevant or not as would be appropriate to the game.
it is inherently cringy, though that shouldn't stop you
How do I write an NPC/NPC romance without having it be plainly obnoxious?
The context is an NPC and one of is allies, his on-again off-again girlfriend, who is becoming increasingly hellbent on convincing him to marry her because she's tired of hearing about his sexual conquests and flings from rumors.
>its an GM wants to ship my character with his cousin
>in the next session tells me that my character couldnt get hard so romance was impossible
??????
My Demon Hunting Inquisitor got married to my friends Useless Wizard.
>. I hate it when my players want to roleplay their relationship with an npc.
Same. I just say it happens off-screen. Just make them do a couple of Charisma rolls or something. If they absolutely insist on flirting with you magical realm them with some weird shit.
lol
>Ignoring large portions of the human experience and potential human drama like romance or sexuality is effectively sterilizing your game.
This.
My friend had his character fall in love with mine and I had no idea he was planning it. His character was a female elven mage, and the best friend of my human paladin since they started adventuring. I was cool with it since he played it in game exclusively and it wasn't awkward. They currently aren't in a position to actually be in a relationship but after their quest ends, they are settling down and becoming npcs together if they survive. It was very wholesome.
>If they absolutely insist on flirting with you magical realm them with some weird shit.
This is how we get traveling loli-brothels.
If you were a competent enough GM to run a character that someone will jack off to later, then you would be competent enough to convey that romance is not going to be a focus of the campaign.
That was a weeb with his loli folder open and too much alcohol in his system.
Magical realming someone works until they decide to play magical realm chicken to see who backs off first.
Yeah, I've been involved with an ongoing campaign world for quite some time, and we've had several sets of characters (not always in twos) go off like this. The key for us has been to let the character's emotions develop naturally, and (as many have said) make sure that they stay separate from player emotions.