Does Romance Give you the Squick?

Well, it does for me.

Oh, not in real life. IRL, I'm a softie who enjoys romance. Not necessarily Romance novels, mind you,* but I meant the concept itself. Yes, yes, I know, somebody alert my wife.**

I also don't mind having romance in video games, because for me that's a personal choice. If you want to romance an NPC, go ahead. If you don't, you don't.

What I meant was romance in pencil-and-paper RPGs, although to a lesser extent romance between two players in an MMO as well.*** 

This was sparked by a video that popped up the other day concerning D&D and romance:

Yes, I follow Ginny Di's YouTube videos. No, I didn't get into her videos from Critical Role, but rather I stumbled on her channel when she progressed to other RPG topics. The algorithm looked at my viewing history and thought "You know, there's this woman who dyes her hair that you might find insightful..." and here I am. She does have some great and insightful comments on a variety of RPG topics, and between her, Pointy Hat, Stephanie Plays Games, Kelsey Dionne, Bob World Builder, and several other 20s and 30s content creators, I feel that our TTRPG hobby is in good hands for the future.****

***

I guess the reason why I watched Ginny's video was due to my own "experience" with romance in a D&D game.

If you've been around this blog for a while, you might recall I was part of a long-running D&D 3.0 campaign. As in a 20+ year old campaign. When our DM got together with us to hash out what the campaign would be about, there were a few ground rules we decided upon: low to mid level magic, use the Greek and Egyptian Pantheons for the campaign and world building, some roleplaying in character but not pure amateur thespian hour, and absolutely no romance. That last one was a hard no from us players, as we were all dating and/or married*****, and we really just wanted to focus on a campaign with no romantic escapades involved. We've had romantic subplots in our campaign back in college, and when it's involving people who are actually dating IRL who then break up, it gets really ugly really fast. Therefore, just keeping things platonic would make it easier for everybody.

We players figured that with the ground rules set, we were ready to play.

Things worked out okay for a while, and outside of us using IM to play (this was 2001-2 after all) things seemed to progress decently well. After a couple of years, however, our DM began trying to slip in romantic subplots. And the occasional Conan-esque nudity into the game. We all knew our DM, who was a bit of a horndog back in college, so we just figured it was him being him and we didn't take the rather obvious bait. 

We kind of kept things at bay until a new player joined the group for a few years. He was a coworker of the DM, and he wanted to play a Bard. 

You can see where this is going, right? 

Yeah, they both went there. The Bard started wanting to screw every woman he met, and this began to wear on us. This isn't what we wanted, and we definitely didn't ask for it, and it kept diverting us from the actual campaign. Then the DM started having NPCs hit on my character, and I began having to be more forceful in my nipping of those subplots in the bud. 

The rest of us began talking among ourselves about whether we need to take a stand with the DM, and then the problem solved itself: the new player had to stop playing, and just like that the division mostly evaporated.

Mostly.

The DM still would try to sneak in some opportunities for romance here and there, but we ignored them and kept the game focused on the campaign. In the last few months of our campaign before it ended, however, the DM began to ratchet up the opportunities and the PG-13 nature of those "encounters". I won't lie and say otherwise, but after 20 years we players had had enough. There were several other things that contributed to our decision to want to end the campaign, but one of the top complaints on our list was that the DM kept pushing the romance and sexual angles on us. 

I think it needs to be said that we're all adults, and we can handle adult themes.****** However, people have to buy into the concept of romance and shenanigans or you're risking a lot by trying to push it on people when they don't want it. I personally would have to be in the right frame of mind to accommodate an RPG campaign with romance, and I'll also freely admit that I am not an actor in that I would have issues separating the character(s) from the player(s). I probably could do it if I were in, say, a play or musical or something, but in a TTRPG? That'd be harder.

***

Okay, that's tabletop RPGs, but MMOs? 

Hoo boy. That's an entirely different kettle of fish.

If Asmongold's your dad, Nixxiom,

I'm a Jelly Doughnut.

Outside of occasionally being hit on by some oversexed player, I've never been in a romantic situation with another MMO player before. And you can't not realize that there's another player on the other end, which separates it from NPC romances, such as the companion romances in SWTOR. MMO RP romances are going to be with another character, and the specter of ERP (and Goldshire's Lion's Pride Inn) hovers over everything. 

There's this too. And yes, I've kept this from
an old Meme Monday just because.

 

Some people can make it work, but I'm almost completely certain that I can't. 

But if you (not me, for certain) want more detail about doing Romance RP in MMOs (yes, it's WoW but applicable in all of them), there's this:

I guess knowing my limitations is a good thing, and that I'm not planning on putting myself into a situation where they would get tested. If you can handle it, more power to you. I think I'll just go do my own thing instead and leave the romance in MMOs to y'all. 

Oh, and because I couldn't resist, here:

Now you'll never hear that old Sonny

and Cher song the same way.

*Although I have made some attempts to check out the genre, because the only way to know if you'll like it is to try it.

**Ironically enough, I think that between the two of us I'm the romantic one. That doesn't mean that I'm not as clueless as the next guy in trying to figure out if someone is hitting on me; actually my son --nicknamed "Mr. Oblivious" or "Captain Oblivious" due to his cluelessness about such things-- is a chip off the old block.

***Spouses and significant others who are playing the other toon you're romancing kind of get a pass on this, since you're obviously thinking of the other person who you're already romantically involved with.

****They don't need me to tell them that, but consider it just an observation that I'm happy the next generation has taken the reins from us older folks and run with it, in the same way that I'm proud my kids have engaged with the hobby over the years. For all of the "get offa my lawn!" sort of behavior from the old guard (who are as old or older than me), I just wanted to get it out there that I'm happy they're showing their love for the hobby and contributing to its overall success. And maybe this year I'll get a chance to run into one of them at Gen Con.

It also goes without saying that some of the Old Guard have opened their arms to the new generation of content creators. People like Matt Colville, Professor DM, and Baron de Ropp could have circled their collective wagons and been assholes toward the new blood, but they haven't. And our hobby is all the better for it.

*****The DM was married to one of the players, in fact.

******If you're NOT an adult, it goes without saying that parental guidance is strongly suggested. My oldest once attended an RPG game session in high school with some acquaintances, and ALL of the guys there tried to hit on her character (and by extension, her). She got really creeped out, and that was the end of THAT.