Why do women have less problems with romances in rpgs than men...

That's not just RPG's, women have always been more into the romance genre in just about every medium.

Cause women can go "No I wasn't flirting with the GM, my character was flirting with an NPC!" cause of plausible deniability

(most) Guys don't want to flirt with dudes so usually what you get is shit played up for jokes and never anything serious

Because providing takes priority

tips

Because women are culturally encoded to be drawn towards romance as a genre, and men towards action.

>Why do women have less problems with romances in rpgs than men?
The same reason confirmed female pedophiles get less shit than ordinary male elementary school teachers.

Because women like to fantasise about emotions, as it is entertaining for them, the same way men like to fantasise about pretend combat or being a hero - both conform to the fundamental psychological archetypes of a man as a performer and doer and woman as an object of desire and focus for attention.

For most men, emotional engagement seems to be a matter of real investment, and violence or power as a causal everyday thing, whereas women treat emotions as everyday things and violence as a serious matter that upsets those emotions. Again, roots of this are evolutionary in psychology of humans, but they do not constitute a serious barrier to imagination and in a right setting, you can easily have female players do combat well or male players roleplay a romance with an NPC.

I love a good love story or romance. I do NOT enjoy flirting or pretending to have a relationship with a guy. I'm either a DM (and my players don't want that kind of thing) or in the VERY rare occasions I'm playing, my DM is a guy.

Sounds pretty gay bro

because believe it or not, but men and women are different.

Not necessarily. They could have the same number of problems but each of them is of lesser magnitude.

>Why do women have less problems with romances in rpgs than men?
Women aren't shamed or mocked for being interested in it. They're allowed to be open about their romantic/sexual desires and fantasies, whereas men who do the same thing are called "creepy".

it's pretty creepy m8, stop acting like a homo and get on with it.

Thanks for helping to prove my point.

>implying guys are gonna be without innuendos if there're women at the table

Go outside of your basement and play sometimes.

And don't even let me talk about that chick that destroyed our Vampir campaign by being an undead pornstar.

>tough I gotta admit that generally brothel tour isn't something you do if there women at the table

Because women are generally disinterested in the mechanics of the game and prefer to roleplay, I guess theyd like combat more if it was more romantic too instead of rolling dice and calculating stuff

>implying guys are gonna be without innuendos if there're women at the table
There's a difference between occasional innuendos and going into full romances and stuff.

>And don't even let me talk about that chick that destroyed our Vampir campaign by being an undead pornstar.
Doesn't that support the idea that women aren't shamed? There's a reason she felt like she could do that openly.

Simple. Because as a man, it's pathetic to roleplay a pretend relationship with an imagined woman. As a woman, it's just foolish or naive, or seen as romantic or whatever.

Also I'd rather not play out romantic and sexual scenarios with my fat bearded friend. That's uncomfortable for everyone involved.

Why is it automatically seen as being better to profusely talk about your emotions? Women do it all the time, and they're mostly miserable.

Which is weird because most of these romance producers are men.
Really makes you think about “who is more romantic” arguments

Because romance is about feeling, and women love feelings. They love talking about feelings. They love talking about how they feel about their feelings. Stories that appeal to women are generally about people discovering things about themselves; those that appeal to men are generally about people discovering things about others or the world around them.

>less

No, I'm telling that guys WILL try to bang the bar wench as well. Maybe a tiny bit less... obnoxiously, but still, that much for "not playing their fantasies".

I don't see where I implied women are shamed. Tough it's worth mentioning she didn't delve into her character's actual.. ahem, arts, so the veil is still there.

If men don't talk about their emotions how do you know they aren't miserable too? Look at suicide rates

Generally, because you can make it pretty far in life as a guy without learning how to be comfortable or social. Can't really do that as a woman. Pick up the skills or get out.

(Although I've never run into an awkward romance scenario in my games. Some romance, some awkwardness, but no disasters.)

When most women talk about romance, they define "romance" as "A man does a ton of shit for a woman."

Not that, I mean
>women are more romantic because they consume more romantic media
Vs
>men are more romantic because they produce more romantic media

Suicide rates are skewed because of method. Men commit more, but women attempt more. Men tend towards surefire methods like falling, shooting and hanging, while women tend towards methods allowing for rescue like poison and overdose

You could argue that they've bought into the "men do lots of shit for women" model in equal numbers. In this case, it's men actively doing something for women (producing "romantic" media) and women just passively accepting it.

I think he’s trying to say that just talking about how you feel does not logically lead to feeling better about it.

>Men tend towards surefire methods like falling, shooting and hanging, while women tend towards methods allowing for rescue like poison and overdose
Men have been conditioned to believe that not only will no one come to rescue them, but no one will consider them worthy of rescue in the first place.

Case in point: lots of women-only homeless shelters but 90% of those homeless are men.
The one time a guy tried to create a sexual assault/domestic violence shelter for male victims, he got sandbagged by women and feminists so hard he killed himself.

because lots of men who play rpgs are foreveralone khvs and pretend romance brings up all kinds of uncomfortable feelings
or maybe that's just me

>Oh Blackrose, I love you so much
>I love you too, Snorlokk Doomthunder
>Let us retire to the inn for the evening my love
>*Clapping*

Starring Jimmy Johnson as Veteran Dwarf Mercenary Snorlokk Doomthunder and Tyrone Jackson as Elvish Princess Blackrose

I can speak only from my own perspective, which is probably a little bit fucked.
When I was a young lad going through the hell of puberty I grabbed a few of my mothers swimsuit magazines that were going to be thrown out. I used them to trace the images of the women in them and design my own swimsuit/underwear. At the time, I didn’t understand my newfound fascination with the female form. I knew about sex as a method of producing more humans but not how it tied together with relationships. I also wrote a few short stories involving romances between a young man and a young woman. They weren’t really anything more than erotic fiction, taking showers with each other, kissing, heavy petting and such like. Just a dumb kid imitating the various romantic scenes he had read in all the novels his parents and family had given him.
Anyways my mother upturned my room one day and discovered my stash of salacious stuff that I had hidden away. While I didn’t know why I was doing what I was doing I figured it was probably polite to keep it out of the way. I came home to discover the stash cleaned out, my mother never mentioning it to me at all. Only her incessant nagging anytime she saw me reading afterwords, “You’re skipping over the sex-bits, right?” I remember bringing a copy of a comic book called “The Cartoon History of the World” which featured the evolution of sexual reproduction in a scientific manner and was pretty neat. Got the same treatment after my mother took it from my room one-day and made sure I was skipping over the sex bits. It got to the point where I stopped reading.
So here I am, after years of that I’m just doing what I was conditioned to do. I know I’m wrong and I should man the fuck up and sort my shit out but romance makes me feel sick to my stomach and panicky, which isn’t a fun time for others to deal with. If there is romance, I’ll just find a way for my characters to exit stage for a bit.

Even if it's pretend romance I'm not gonna romance my fat, bald, bearded DM and I'm not gonna romance that player who is my best friend and kinda okay looking but smells like rotten shit. Even less in front of other people that are staring at us. And I'm bi, so it's clearly a women vs men thing. I think women are more used to fake flirting "for fun" irl whereas most men will only flirt if they really want to put their dick somewhere.

It makes me uncomfortable because I have the "you are a dude so you must be an insurmountable wall of stoicism and stability for your lesser fellows" idea ingrained in my brain

To be fair, everyone should be an insurmountable wall of stoicism and stability, women too. Nothing wrong with that.

>What is actually interesting because of social restraint is that in our hobby we see characters more "emotionally repressed" than our sources of inspiration.
That's fair. Probably the answer is that the actual widespread sources of inspiration are pop-culture variants of the original sources. More people have seen the LotR movies than read the books. Most players today haven't read Howard or Moorcock or Lovecraft, since those come before their time. The new sources of inspiration are movies and TV shows, which tend to discourage male emotional outlets. This is part of the entire problem, it's a systemic thing with no clear and easy answer.

>Why is it automatically seen as being better to profusely talk about your emotions?
You can experience emotions without talking profusely about them. All I was saying is that engaging with them *at all* is extremely difficult for men to do due to societal pressures. The ideal situation, IMO, is to get to a place where men are encouraged to experience emotions in a healthy manner, rather than repressing and disregarding them as we are encouraged to do currently.

Not really. Everyone should be a stone wall, can weather most storms but when a hurricane comes along it's okay to crumble.
It's not fair that some people get to be wooden picket fences and others don't, though.

>engaging with them *at all* is extremely difficult for men to do due to societal pressures
Different user, but I agree. I remember years ago in college I wrote a paper on men's emotions being stifled within society. Class had to do peer review and, funny enough, the person who got my paper was a woman who proceeded to "correct" my paper. She ended up explaining that men didn't suffer any of this and it was degrading to women who are emotionally snubbed by society for me to pretend men had this problem.

I have not personally experienced this so I am led to believe you are being overly broad and simply unlucky. Not everyone is into romance/schmaltz, even when not roleplaying. I think it is more of a maturity thing, since my older players (some married) are more able and willing to roleplay relationship dynamics between each other, including platonic and romantic stuff.

>She ended up explaining that men didn't suffer any of this and it was degrading to women who are emotionally snubbed by society for me to pretend men had this problem.
God damn I hate that shit. Just because one group of people has been oppressed historically doesn't mean another group of people don't have issues. Fuck people who use their pain to minimize or dismiss the pain of others.

Yep, this. This one is accurate.

Because most male ttrpg autists are emotionally stunted

Fucking cunt. Her attitude toward men is insulting in the extreme, not to mention profoundly ignorant. Unfortunately, it's also not surprising or uncommon.

Men focus on things and naturally develop muscle at a much more efficient rate than women, which is why men generally favor jobs that either require physical strength or requires technical knowledge, such as engineering, mathematics, and science.

Women focus on people and naturally pick up on subtleties that go on during interpersonal communications, which is why women generally favor jobs that require good communication and customer service such as secretaries, social workers, and nurses.

Veeky Forums: SJW + antiSJW arguments & gender/sex studies.

I prefer complex problems, tense negotiations, and moral dilemmas to combat, and I’m male.

because everything romantic is one big test for men and if the girl isn't cringing the onlookers are.

Who would want to do publically do a pretend romance.

Yea I have issues.

Bitter or not, you're not entirely wrong, here.

Then it would be lesser problems, not less problems. This is a simple countable vs uncountable noun situation.

For men, romance and courtship means work.

Male fantasies often center on harems of easily available women, because our entire life is a darwinian gauntlet for pussy. Roleplaying that is less appealing than roleplaying an out of shape IT guy trying to convince his boss to give him a raise.

How many women want to roleplay vicious high school status games?

>changing trend right now to legitimize male emotional displays
I'd argue exactly the opposite. Male anger is pathologized more than ever, and any time men make a place where they can get together and stop performing, somebody comes along and smashes it for being discriminatory.

"legitimize male emotional displays" usually means "force men to act like women".

Fuck you, the fact that you got fucked in the ass by a stranger at knifepoint is less important than misgendered pronouns.

Because most women already know how to fake being in love. So roleplaying it is easy for them.

To me RPGs without deep and loyal love isn't interesting at all, and I'm a male.
By example, I wouldn't like LotR so much without Arwen.

They do? Men seem to sperg out just as much when it comes to romance routes in RPGs.

I was about to try to counter that with the whole "knight rescuing the princess" classic, but then I started thinking: maybe that's why it's always an emphasis on some sort of "princess."

In modern society, females marry up, and males marry down. However, the idea of the female being a princess is the opposite of that. The princess actually is higher than the knight, and thus the knight has to prove himself worthy. The princess is not easily available, but she's worth it. Rescuing her will raise the knight's status, not to mention marrying her. She's probably rich, since she's a princess. More than that, she's always pure and good. The cliche of the princess being pure and kind and all that jazz helps the knight feel safe from betrayal.

It takes a woman 9 months to contribute to the successful birth of a child.
It takes a man about 10 minutes.

...

So the knight has to go through trials and hardships to be worthy and accepted by the woman. The woman just has to stand there and benefit from the man's hard work.

The things you’ve listed may not be emotional necessarily. There are typesof drama that are usually considered ‘normal’ by mainstream society for men to be interested in. Political, drama with the threat of violence involved, philosophical debates and matters of what is just and what is not.

"legitimize male emotional displays" usually means "force men to act like women".

This is often the case. However I would like to add my own insight into that matter. Women do not understand men. The cliche is often that it is men that don’t understand women but this is not my experience at all. Women think the ‘cure’ for the problems of men is to act more like them because they do not understand that there is an alternative. They do not comprehend that we are happier without sperging about our emotions and engaging in casual competition. I didn’t really understand this until I realised that even my anti-feminist, fucksjwbullshit.jpg girlfriend tried to demand that I talk about why I was upset (I don’t really remember the circumstances) rather than do what I said and just leave me be. I just needed alone time to relax and relieve some emotional stress but she wouldn’t let me have it and made me explain my feelings and what she didn’t get was that made me feel worse.

Tldr: Men and women are different and women do not hold the answers to the emotional liberation of men.

Bad example tough. Or at least revealing:

Arwen is just backstory. They don't even "roleplay" it much in the Appendices.

That's not really "having romantic stories".

Because it's men you'll find who are the true romantics. Simple romantic things mean much more to a man than women who need disproportionate amounts of emphases placed on things to mean still considerably less. It's the same reason guys tend to be infatuated with and want to protect cute things. It literally means more. The pure maiden in distress is worth saving simply because she is a pure maiden.

I didn’t have the parental abuse, but I’ve wound up in a similar state. I feel you, user.

>there's an scientific reason I fap to loli I swear!
this man...

men and woman are different and the more women push to be integrated in mens groups the more they will realize that.

You should actually play with women now and then, user.

I just never really put much thought into/emphasis on my PC's love lives which is odd given I am a romantic at heart.

It feels a tad uncomfortable so I usually avoid it but recently I have been making attempts to flesh-out the love lives of my characters because neglecting such a significant facet of the human (or gnome, or elf, or dwarf, or bioroid, or monster, or etc...) condition is, I believe, antithetical to good RP and world building in general.

I have had to face this recently due to my PC, human barbarian, finding himself admired by a (probably) small time noblewoman. I am playing it that after so much death and destruction (we are currently fleeing a massive combined orc-goblinoid horde) my barbarian just needs some anchor to normality and she helps provide it though he is hesitant to pursue given the currently tumultuous times where any one of them could be slaughtered.

My experience is different, but my setup might be a bit particular. I'm the GM (a woman) and all of my players are male. They actually like romance as a way to expand their characters (and before you say it's because I'm a woman, two of them are gay, and the one hetero plays a woman). Though admiteddly they're usually not very romantic romances, given that the setting is a barbarian society where they're barbarians with more important stuff to do.
The thing is, I think things are only awkward if you treat them as if they're going to be awkward. Players aren't their characters. As long as you're not living vicariously through your character, their relationships (romantic or otherwise) with other characters are pretty important to how you define them.

So, the reason why I think men have problems with romances in game is not that they don't want them, it's that they feel people are going to judge *them* through their characters. Which is stupid because if nobody cares you're playing a genocidal edgy assassin, nobody will care if they're also obsessed with blondes, as long as neither aspect is too obnoxious.

Well yeah, but the point is the princess reciprocates by giving the man wealth and status enough to make her worth the trouble.

So what is a good strategy to make male players interested in romance, if anything?

Go for the usual mysterious waif route (cute but troubled and well, mysterious)?

Social conditioning that makes men fear intimacy. It's really unhealthy.

imagine being so pathetically insecure that you need to point this out and insult him as a means of feeling good about yourself

lol

>you gibbering baboon

I fixed you post, user. You don't need to nitpick on grammar in order to call out OP's faggotry.

you're trying to be smart by implying the relationship is based on gender when it's really based on socioeconomic status. When was the last time a king went on an epic quest to earn the hand of some lord's fifthborn daughter?

I don't care for ERP at all but I love romance in RPGs. So much that I stooped to the lowest lows with videogames. Yes I'm a Talimancer.

For an illustration: how conception works from ejaculation to zygote. Egg just kind of sits there and waits it’s turn, while sperm are dying by the thousands trying to navigate the hazardous maze that is the female reproductive system while not exhausting themselves to death or getting devoured by the immune system.

>Soy (male)

Because men actually feel love and desire for romance to be a part of their lives. The game is touching on a very real emotional need and it can be hard for them to enjoy treating it trivially in a game. Even harder to have fun doing that.

Women only really use relationships for self advancement and capturing resources. There never was any emotional investment or vulnerability. It's easy and satisfying for them to treat romance as a game because that's all it already was.

Reproductive competition usually IS based on gender - socioeconomics notwithstanding. In a male/female species with sexual dimorphism (like humans, most birds, etc.) it is usually the male that competes against other males for female attention.

This guy has the right idea. I'm stealing this speel for whenever I need to have this argument.

>Most men either avoid such situations or feel uncomfortable.

That's an accurate description of the love lives of many male tabletop RPG players. It's fiction reflecting reality.

Have you tried talking to girls after you've showered in the last 48 hours, user?

you seem to have responded to my post with a completely unrelated comment. I'd try to attack your position like we're having an argument but it's clear you're just waiting for me to post something so you can continue on with your bit.

Sounds like you just buried your stress until you could vent on an anonymous image board, user. Either that or you were afraid of providing your gf with knowledge of your inner self that she will obviously use to cuck you in the future.

>Anon1: The knight saving the princess has little or nothing to do with gender, it is socioeconomic status that matters. A king won't quest for a lowborn's hand.
>Anon2: Actually, gender matters a lot, with humans and nature in general.
>Anon1: You suck.

Que?

Usually, if one male player is willing to go out on a limb and commit to an in-character romance, the rest of the male players will feel less awkward about doing it, because they are aware they can do so without "making things weird."

As a DM, it's not your job to force them into those situations; it's your job to make it clear to the male player that you are able and willing to play along with an in-character romance if they so desire. Even if the player acts as if he's doing so ironically (genuinely or not), play along seriously. The fact that you're willing to take their romance seriously and integrate it in the plot will send the message that you, as DM aren't going to make their interest into a joke.

t. incel

>A load of bullshit
You shouldn’t try to engage with adults user.

women are used to leading men on from their daily lives. that is what they do all the time. it is a societal fault, i suppose.

men are straightforward and aggressive. they want to make things reach some sort of fruitation.

hence, play-pretend romance is more similar to women's RL perspective on romantic life.