The infamous romance roleplay problem ...

[Calcoran]

Paul said in a previous thread:

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Nnoooo...you answer these questions in spite of the Vulcan. The Romulan will already have her own feelings on all of those questions... all that remains to be seen is how the Vulcan will react...
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Well ... of course. Right. Sure enough.

...

Errrrrm mind if I ask you (anyone here, not just Paul of course) how you break it to your player? I mean, you cannot just say to the player "Obviously this Romulan woman has a crush on you". I guess you've got to roleplay (to some extent) the attempt of the Romulan to hit on him or something.
Similarly, how do your players react to "romance subplots"?

I must say that this is something we usually skip in our gaming group, but I'd really like to try and play a variation of AslanC's "Temporal Romeo and Juliett" ... so any hint would be welcome.

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Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms)

[erhershman]

I tried a romantic subplot ONCE and I regretted it. I played all the signs that the Romulan commander was in love with the PC, and the PC just shrugged her off and stood by while the girl got vaporized by a Cardassian. My PCs just don't react to romantic subplots, but maybe yours are different...

I tend to avoid any sort of romance in my episodes.

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"Please rush me my portable walrus polishing kit, eight super brushes guaranteed to clean even the stickiest seabound mammals. Yes I am over 18, even though my IQ isn't."

[ether]

Well any time any female NPC shows any concern for them my players are convinced the NPC is in love with them (" Oh, see wants me").
Considering the ships chief medical officer is a woman they are conviced she's in love with all of them.
Anytime a NPC really is in love with them they get very nervous.

[Lancer]

We had two romance sub-plots recently. The first one was carefully planned, while the second one was rather spontaneous:

No. 1: A while before the actual game the Narrator had a little chat where we decided to introduce some sub-plots based on our characters background.
Then I wrote down this little episode from my characters past when she had a relationship with an engineer, but their duties separated them after a few weeks and gave it to the Narrator.
When the game started with our ship assigned to test some new warp-core modifications, guess who came aboard to supervise those tests - my old lover the theoretical engineer.

It went really well and was a lot of fun to play, since the narrator knew in advance what sparked this romance in the first place and how it developed in the past. That gave us a lot to build on.

No. 2: We all knew that our Chief Engineer (PC) had a crush on our CMO (NPC) but she allways acted as if she didn't notice regardless of who of us was the Narrator - we all just saw here that way.
But then came that evening when our Counselor and the CE got a little drunk and when the CMO came around to sober them up our Engineer just opened his heart to her, ie. kneeled before her, cried like a baby and between sobs managed to pledge his undying love to her.
(We other players were totaly stunned at the moment.)

When he went to her quarters the next day to apologize for his behaviour she listend to him calmly, smiled, locked the door and... (the rest I leave to your imagination)

I don't know how deep his feelings for her really are, but I just decided to find out:

Two lovers in mortal danger ... only one can survive ... will Lt. Amaya be willing to give his life to save Dr. Sinclair ?
Stay tuned we will be back with some shocking revelations right after this short sponsor message...


In the end I guess you should only try to work romance sub-plots into your game if you are sure the player in question ins willing to take up the challenge.

When in doubt I would suggest to just talk with the player in advance. You don't have to give anything away, just try to find out what your players are interested in and you can have a lot of Fun With Romance (TM).

Fun With Romance is a registered trademark of INTERGALACTICFLOWERPOWER Ltd.

[spyone]

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Calcoran:
mind if I ask you (anyone here, not just Paul of course) how you break it to your player? I mean, you cannot just say to the player "Obviously this Romulan woman has a crush on you". I guess you've got to roleplay (to some extent) the attempt of the Romulan to hit on him or something.
</font>

I find, for myself, that the only think less comfortable than roleplaying an attraction to someone I'm not attracted to is roleplaying an attraction to someone I am attracted to. Seems cheesy: My character is in love with my girlfriends character. Seems like it would be more fun to pretend you hate her.
That said, I did once enjoy playing the lovesick guy being manipulated by a beautiful woman who was played by my sister-in-law.

How do I break it? Well, first I want to know if the person is exibiting species-appropriate mating behavior. I mean, a Cardassian woman who was after a guy would act all hostile to him, and if he isn't Cardassian he might misinterpret that.
Next question: does the PC know enough about the other's social customs to recognise mating behavior?
This leads to other questions. Did Spock realize that Nurse Chapel made him soup because she was attracted to him? Did she make him soup because she was attracted to him?

In the end, decide which plays better in your campaign:
The serious struggle of two very different people seeking a relationship.
The interplay between two people, one of whom has expressed a desire for no romantic relationship but the other one still harboring feelings.
The comedy of the man brazenly pursued and yet oblivious.
The comedy of a man brazenly pursued and desperate to escape without causing insult. (Lwauxanna and Odo, or Picard for that matter.)

Perhaps best yet: the comedy of finding what you thought you wanted isn't what you wanted at all. As Pepe LePew said, "Why is it that when a man catches a girl, all he wants to do is get away?"

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You're a Starfleet Officer. "Weird" is part of the job.

[CmdrBluejeans]

IMC, we've got one short-term romantic subplot, one medium-term, and one long-term.

Short-term: Our troupe-style play has allowed the secondary PCs to do romantic plots. One of these involves the 'reformed' Cardassian smuggler currently serving as an official advisor to the ship's command staff on frontier criminal organizations, and the ship's Deputy Chief Science Officer, both secondary PCs. The Cardassian is strongly attracted to the Betazoid warrant officer, to the point where he has allowed his ship, a Runabout-sized craft carried in the cargo hold of the larger Starfleet vessel, to be used for away missions she's on, just so he can go. He's risked being shot by Orion smugglers just to help her rescue some rare Betazoid endangered animals from them. He does all this noble crap, and then blows it with a bad and deliberately obvious pickup line. It's ... amusing as all hell.

Medium-Term: Our Vulcan CMO entered play with a plot hook to the area -- his betrothed, an award-winning xenolinguist and sociologist, is serving as the 'Minister of State' for a small, hyperconservative, isolationist Vulcan colony on the frontier. They have a few humans in the colony who are either 'adopted' Vulcans or otherwise feel strongly about the common idea of opposing Vulcan-Romulan reunification. Dr. Teslok, on the other hand, is a political moderate, and a figure of both fear and loathing to some citizens of that colony -- he has held the Katra of a Mindlord, disguised himself as a Romulan to infiltrate a few Romulan-backed pirate bands on the frontier, and done similar things that simply make him a figure of distrust to many Vulcans. About *now* is when his bride-to-be starts yanking on his chain a little.

Long-Term: Our PC CO has avoided all romantic subplots since he entered play, 38 episodes ago. However, he did make it clear as to why -- he's still Not Quite Over his first love, a fellow cadet from his academy days who drifted in and out of his life after they parted to find separate careers, and with whom he hasn't had contact in 4 years, since her marriage to a diplomat started to fall apart. In an episode I plan to run some time next month, he'll receive long overdue word from her that she's in the Kellinan Reach, just 40 or so light years from him, and started thinking about him again when the CO of another ship in the Reach mentioned being saved by him blah blah blah. This will lead to a renewed correspondence, I hope. About six months from now, I plan to start a 10-episode story arc involving renewed hostilities between the UFP and the Klingons, a war over some archaeological ruins that contain interstellar transport devices, and the return of the race that built the devices to begin with. In this arc, it will be revealed that the parasites who attempted to take over the Federation *15 years earlier* (in early TNG time, where my campaign is set in late 2370s) are that race's main enemy, and they will give the UFP the hieroglyphic keys necessary to decipher the controls of their abandoned gadgets if the UFP will assist them in their war against the Bombyx. Of course, Captain Ibanez's First Love's ship will be 'assimilated' by the parasites. Will she be one of the victims, or an innocent bystander? Will the Captain be willing to destroy that ship with all hands aboard? Will he turn his guns on his own allies to prevent it?

In short, I have let the players lead every romantic subplot, either through their background information submitted to me, or by their actions in play. I find my campaign to be ever so much the better for it.


BJ

[Captain Zymmer]

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Calcoran:
I must say that this is something we usually skip in our gaming group, but I'd really like to try and play a variation of AslanC's "Temporal Romeo and Juliett" ... so any hint would be welcome.</font>

I am not sure which one are you referring to when you say "Temporal Romeo & Juliette"...but any help I can give you is my pleasure



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Captain Zymmer
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[dimeboy99]

We've had several romantic sub-plots in our game and have had no problems at all. Of course our group has 4 men and 3 women, most of us in our 30's, so maybe maturity has something to do with our success.

[Julius]

Myself I always include romance sub-plots. In my last major Star Trek game there were several.

Our ship's Ranger (a template published in Unfinished Treks or Lost Episodes) fell in love with an Orion slave woman, whom he'd rescued from a band of pirates along with her two 'sisters'(not related but grew up togeather) the problem was, it was part of her plan to control him through this relationship because she feared he would be like the Orions and abuse her in the future. In the end it resulted in him leaving Starfleet, as the Rangers couldn't rely on him being able to take the assignments that would take him from the Orion girls. So he was passed over for promotion, and no other department seemed to attract him. The sad part was the Orion woman still didn't truely love him.

The other one was our Chief of security fell for our counsellor, unfortunately she was very different from him and really wasn't intrested (infact she was still greiving over the loss of her first lover, who died in the Dominion War) but he obsessed over her and got himself in some trouble because of it. In the end she was killed in a Romulan ambush, but about six months later, they met an alternate dimention's version of their ship, a dimention where the Dominion war still raged, his character at the end of it decided to stay on to 'try again' so to speak.

I often use Romance as plot driver, in many cases it's alot of fun, though I due tend towards doomed or unfufilled romance. Also a note, for those who are very keen on romance subplots feel free to throw them some snags, for those who aren't and most specificly those who lack the knowledge of what to do as a player with these situations, allow some presence rolls to put that cheesy pick up line in a better light.

[Paul]

In my experience, both as a player and a GM, the concept of romance between PCs, or between PCs and NPCs, tends to make players rather uncomfortable. Players are more than happy to explore romance in their own, real, private lives, but are less willing to explore the same in the confines of a game setting, with other players (or the GM).

I have in my group a husband and wife who had the opportunity to pursue romance between their characters, but they romance was shot down by the wife - it was done nicely, in character, and is now the subject of a running gag between the PCs and also the players.

Romance involving the PCs/players needs to be handled carefully and discreetly - you can't be too subtle in this area. If you go too hard, the player is quite likely to back away and retreat from his/her character altogether.

This is only MHO, of course.

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