Love is a Battlefield: Romance in D&D

Welcome, dear Companions, to 20-Sided Tardis, where our opinions are bigger on the Inside!

First off, we're back! And talking about all things geeky that strike our fancy. From Sci-Fi, to Comic Books. Video Games to Tabletop RPGs and beyond. It's an adventure in blog form. So very exciting.

And today's topic: PC Romance in D&D.



Now, I wanna get this out of the way: I am a hopeless, die hard romantic. I'm one of those True Love kinda suckers that tear up at weddings and thinks that "The Princess Bride" is the greatest story ever told.

Now, the concept of romance is a cornerstone of the fantasy genre that D&D places itself into. Whether its of the "Come with me if you wanna live" variety of rescuing a damsel in distress or more of a "Ah, but you see. You don't just protect me, we protect each other." flavor of comrades in arms. Love goes hand in hand in fantasy stories.

And it can be awesome.

And sometimes, it can be annoying.

You know what I'm talking about. The two PCs (usually the Actors of the party) will have their characters hook up in game. It makes sense, they're the only two characters of same race, or they share a deity, or they're at least compatible enough that it'd be easy to ship the couple. And before you even realize it, the whole quest to the defeat the evil dark lord Kiva from using the 10 Haesae Keys to summon the dread demon Dekaedo has taken a backseat to lovers quarrels and mushy romance.




How do you stop these things, while still enjoying the benefits to the narrative that the romance provides? Well, we at the Tardis are here to help:

1) Make sure that the romance doesn't dominate the plot. This should be an almost no brainer, but when there's 6 players at the table, no matter how invested everyone is in each others characters, having 2 players hogging the spotlight sucks. Make sure that everyone gets an equal share, and keep the plot running. Kiva is not going to wait for the heroes to get through their first couple fight before unleashing his darkness over the land.

2) Make sure that the romance isn't going to split the party uncomfortably. I'm currently neck-deep in PC on PC romance in a D&D Campaign and due to the way that all the characters are, we have the potential to split the party right down the middle. My character, his romantic partner and brother in arms vs. the party's wizard (and resident jerkass), the party's fractured sorcerer , and the centaur who is constantly searching for approval. The fact that my character's love interest is the party's de facto leader doesn't help matters. There may be a split coming, and part of it may stem from the disparate party make-up and the fact that they can't seem to get along. Either way, party cohesion is a big challenge facing DMs, and romance is something that can complicate that if not handled properly.

3) Challenging the Romance is Okay. Occasionally. Throwing in NPCs to act as love interests to a couple in their proto-phase is okay. Having bad guys capturing one of the two halves of a couple is awesome (especially for the resulting rescue). Introducing a dilemma that you KNOW the couple is divided on is stupidly cool as it gives the players a chance to role-play their characters as individuals instead of them becoming defined as "one half of the Paladin/Cleric combo."

However, if you do nothing but continually challenge you fall into the trap of making the relationship become more important to the plot, and you end up frustrating the two players. Moderation is a good thing.

4)Make sure everyone is okay with the idea of a romance sub-plot. Now, while the Actors of the party are going to be cool with it (and depending on the gaming group's make-up may end up with people pairing off), make sure that everyone is okay with it. After all, some people play D&D for monster fighting and kingdom saving. Watching the Fighter and the Ranger make googly eyes at each other between combat encounters might not be their idea of a good time. Plus, it's always a good thing to check with your players for feedback from time to time.

In closing, romance is awesome, and adds alot to a D&D campaign. However, it has some dangerous pit-falls too. The key to avoiding them is communicating with your players. We'll see you back here in 7 for more D&D related thoughts.

Game Thesis Step 1: Theme, Tone and Setting

Welcome dear companions back to Game Thesis, where we're gonna try to develop a Co-operative Super-Hero Adventure Board Game.



I suppose that we need to look at Super-Heroes themselves before we start this bad-boy. What follows is blatantly jacked from Wikipedia's article on the subject:

"A superhero (sometimes rendered super-hero or super hero) is a type of stock character possessing "extraordinary or superhuman powers" and dedicated to protecting the public. Since the debut of the prototypical superhero Superman in 1938, stories of superheroes—ranging from brief episodic adventures to continuing years-long sagas—have dominated American comic books and crossed over into other media. The word itself dates to at least 1917.[1] A female superhero is sometimes called a superheroine (also rendered super-heroine or super heroine). "Super-heroes" is a trademark co-owned by DC Comics and Marvel Comics.[2] Superheroes are authentically American, spawning from The Great Depression era.

By most definitions, characters do not strictly require actual superhuman powers to be deemed superheroes,[3] although terms such as costumed crime fighters are sometimes used to refer to those such as Batman and Green Arrow without such powers who share other common superhero traits. Such characters were generally referred to as "mystery men" in the so-called Golden Age of Comic Books to distinguish them from characters with super-powers.

Normally, superheroes use their powers to police day-to-day crime while also combating threats against humanity by supervillains, who as their name implies are criminals of "unprecedented powers" in the same way that superheroes are crime fighters with "unprecedented powers," though just as with superheroes they do not necessarily need genuine superpowers. Generally, at least one of these supervillains will be the superhero's archenemy, though several popular and long-running series, such as Batman, Superman, and Spider-Man, each have a rogues gallery of archenemies. Superheroes sometimes will combat irregular threats that also match their powers, such as aliens, magical entities, godlike or demonlike creatures, and so forth."


Okay, so we know what super-heroes are, and we plan to try to utilize a variety of aspects in the game to make it feel like a super-hero game.

One of the discussions we've had here in the Tardis is one of tone. There's a variety of tones that the game could take (and some of them may be future expansions): Silver Age, Golden Age, Street Level Heroes, IN SPAAAAAAAACE, The 90s, Teen Heroes, Team Super-heroes, etc.

And what we've settled on is an attempt to make the system open-ended enough to accomodate a variety of styles. In the base set, I'm going to focus primarily on the Teen Super-Heroes from the shared comic book universe I and some of my college buddies were working on (a remnant of my CCG). Even within this frame work, adding a few characters from the other styles adds some diversity and gives a hint that this'll be covered at a later date.

The first player characters bring some themes (both in game tone and what kind of character they are)with them:

Alex "Shifter" Kinkaid/Justice: Street Level Hero, Teen Hero, Detective Work, Gadgets

Chloe Franklin/Ultra Girl: College Age, High Powered, Team

Courtney Taylor/Tiger Knight: Alien, Teen Hero, Romance, Coming of Age, Legacy, Team

Gwen MacDermont/Firefly: Teen Hero, Party Girl, Ranged Combat, Team

Jordan Jones/Knock: College Age, Street Level Hero, Gadgets, Romance, Team

Karmala (No Secret Identity): Fish Out of Water, Adult, Warrior Woman, High Powered, Mystic

Matthew Cole/Photon: Loner, Ranged Combat, Detective Work, Always on the Move, Hunted

Natalie Hart/Saffire: Teen Hero, Legacy, Ranged Combat, Mystic

Tom Turner/Claymore: Teen Hero, Team, Leader, Legacy

Z'Tryn Nar/Star Knight: Alien, High Powered, Space Cop, Ranged Combat, Fish out of Water

Now, overall the tone of the game will be four color heroics, but not skewed in the heroes favor. The villain will be played by a seperate player, and they need as much a chance to win as the team of heroes.

Looking at this, since the majority of the characters are from a teenaged team of heroes calling themselves the Peacemakers, some of the major themes of the base game will be of Teamwork, Legacy, and the Trials of Being a Teen-aged Superhero.

Join me in seven days as we go into how the game will work, and a discussion on the villains.