(written for a competition on another site)
We gawked at the villagers, all in their best clothes, marching towards the field to the slow cadences of drum and pipes. Dray rubbed the side of his head, looking as if he’d swallowed a bead of Dreamdrowse. “Gwythar,” he muttered, “Am I still drunk, or did that old geezer really say they were all marching to ‘Judgment Day?’”
Me, I wheeled my mount around. I’d heard it too, and if “Judgment Day” was in that bloody field, I was going to be galloping in the other direction fast as I could!
1) Strewing Day
Every year, on the festival of Barley Harvest (in the late spring), the village of Athelren holds a “hay-strewing” to fulfill the terms of a strange bequest. Legend has it that a local woman left the field upon which the village’s temple to Ratri -- Goddess of the Shadows -- was built, so long as the villagers provided enough hay to cover the sanctuary floor on Barley Harvest, and did so within the span of an hour. The reason for this odd condition is unknown, except for the jocular rumor that the woman was troubled by the squeaking of the congregants’ Darkday-best boots -- worn on the holiday -- on the basalt stones of the sanctuary! An antique hourglass, fashioned of black walnut, is used to time the ceremony, and has a place of pride year-round in a niche behind the altar.
2) Judgment Day
Taking place a week before every solstice and equinox, the manors around the north Aldrya Valley hold local court. Traditionally rotating around four of the central manors (Diamondblade in the spring, Redwave in the summer, Willowlight in harvest time and Moonfire in midwinter), this is far more ceremonial than a true criminal court, although locals lose little chance to daunt outsiders and travelers. The people of each manor march to the host manor, led by two sergeants-at-arms bearing polished weapons and by two players with pipes and drum; behind them are two long garlands carried by the village youth -- flowers in season and greenery otherwise. The stewards of the manors act as a collective court, ruling on disputes between residents of differing manors, as well as handling minor matters of hooliganism and vandalism. After the court, a festive fair is held.
3) Chase Day
An old tradition in the village of Ambleside holds that the rich fields around the community used to consist of wastelands, scorched and ruled by a terrible dragon. The mighty hero Princess Verella Waflo Elyanwe, bearing the great battlesword Meldil, is said to have driven the dragon away in a ferocious combat lasting hours, redeeming the land for the ancestors of the villagers. In the second week of winter, the local church’s bell is rung continually for the three hours the battle was said to take -- to “keep the dragon away” -- and mock combats and tourneys of skill are held amidst the clamor. One custom for Chase Day is for village maidens to dye their hair to ape the blonde Princess’ flowing tresses. The festival is commemorated further in slang; someone who makes a great deal of noise in Ambleside is said to be “keeping the dragon away,” and any young woman who practices arms with the village militia is called a “Lightdancer” after the pseudonym Princess Verella is said to have used in her errantry career.
4) The Feast of Wine
Many villages in the uplands of the Mithlantra wine growing districts practice similar customs during the Feast of Wine, which happens in the fall when last year’s vintages are first broached. Traditional line dances are performed, generally by competing teams wearing colorfully embroidered uniforms (aping the realm’s military dress of four centuries agone) that are passed down from parent to child. Each team leader -- the team’s “Captain” -- wears a close-fitting cap, each fashioned from the fur of a different animal, after which his or her team is named. Part of the festival involves the Captains having a dance contest of their own, using long poles with which they mimic the fighting style of a duelist in stylized, improvised battles. The losing Captains must pay a forfeit of half a gallon of wine to the winner, and the losing team members traditionally each give a silver penny to be shared by the orphans of any dancers deceased in the last year.
5) Blessing of the River
Every spring, on the first Waterday after the ice breaks up on the Aldrya, the manors of the northern Aldrya Valley have this traditional ceremony. Legend has it that a man fell into one of the creeks of the watershed and was set upon by leeches. Fearing death, he prayed aloud to Wavedancer, spirit of the waters, who swept the bloodsuckers away with a wave of her hand. As an offering, he is said to have broken a rich cake in his hands and scattered the crumbs on the water. Each cottage provides a small cake or loaf of bread for Wavedancer on this day, which the head of the household breaks into one of the local streams; tradition holds that the stream into which a household offers a loaf will draw fish ninefold from it during the year.
6) Packet Race
Some of the finest tea in the world grows in the mountain country of Arsiriand. The “first flush” -- the first picking in the growing season of the topmost inch or two of the tea leaves, both the sparsest take and the most highly prized of the season -- is picked in mid-spring, and the day this is packed sees this traditional race to the lowland trading stations. Samples of the new tea is packed into quart-sized stoneware bottles, each handed to a fleet footed youth; depending on how high the village is up the mountainside, the race can be anywhere from three to ten miles long. The first one to make it to the trading station with the bottle intact wins a coin of gold (generously provided by the tea trading compagnia) and is looked upon with great favor in his or her home village, especially as a marriage prospect. It is considered very bad luck to interfere with a runner (or for them to interfere with one another). One bottle is always set aside, and kept displayed in the village’s tavern with those of previous years as part of the historical record of tea cultivation.
7) Binding Festival
This curious custom, now dying out except in a handful of villages in the Linaldan backcountry, is observed in the late spring. Its ostensible reason, as far as historians believe, was to raise alms for charitable purposes. The women of the village, on Lightday, will seize an unsuspecting (unmarried) man, blind him with a thick woolen cloth, and demand a forfeit of a coin to set him free; it is considered very poor sport to attempt to break free when surrounded. The men, on the following day, practice the same bindings on unmarried women. Those who lack coins -- or who do not wish to pay -- can pay a forfeit of a kiss to one of his or her captors, chosen blind and at random. It is considered very unsporting for the kiss to last less than the time it takes to recite a brief prayer (30 seconds, about)! The fun lasts until the village reeve blows an ancient horn, reserved for the purpose in the village tavern, at which time the village gathers for a feast and the collected coins are distributed to those who most have need of them.
8) Toasting the Trees
According to tradition in rural sections of the Aldrya Valley, the third Darkday of the new year is the coldest day on the calendar. In order to preserve the fruit trees that are the agricultural mainstays of the district, toasts are drunk to their health on this day. Villagers carrying lanterns and a jug of hard cider (generally provided by the orchard owners or local taverns) make the round of the manors’ orchards after dark. The children -- who always find it a great treat to be allowed to stay up after dark -- run around screeching out traditional warding cries to fend off evil spirits. At a designated tree in each orchard, a villager drinks a toast to the tree (often there is a traditional cup, saved for the purpose), wishing it good health and fresh life in the spring. “Horn fill, horn pull / Give us two score bushels full!” is an example of the toast used, which varies from village to village. Some villages are said to practice fertility rites after the toast, involving two young volunteers by the bole of the tree after the children have moved on to the next orchard.
9) Kandrice’s Day
“Two in front and two behind,
Wavering in storm and sea,
Lovers wish yourselves to be,
Sealed with tokens sure to find.”
This cryptic charge from the famed seer Sana Kandrice Ravenswing has been long remembered in her home village of Alfirin on the Warwik seacoast, provoking a custom even in her lifetime held around her birthday in late winter, which has spread up and down the coast within the province of Vindelka. The young unmarried men of the village will spend weeks carving or scrimshawing elegant tokens out of shark’s teeth or bone, and the day before the festival cook them into fruit tarts or pastries. These are all put on display at the church (or the common room of the village tavern) in groups of two rows of two. The local maidens are encouraged to use traditional divination methods to discern which tart holds the token of the young man she most favors; these include the throwing of bones or polished rods, the dropping of candle wax drippings into cold water, casting aromatic herbs into flames and watching the smoke, and myriad other methods. On the day itself, the young ladies each pick a tart, and it is said that the fates look kindly upon her marrying the young man whose token is within the tart she picks ... although a great deal of trading surreptitiously often takes place. In any event, each group of eight -- the four young men baking the pastries in each double row, and the four ladies picking them -- are considered bound by the choices, almost as if they are kin, and can ask one another for aid or favors in the next year.
10) The Fire Dance
Held on the day before midsummer on the north Warwik coast, this fair is a joyous festival, marked with feasting, agricultural trading and gift-giving. The cap of the festival is a traditional dance by the village’s seven best dancers. Each one, a half hour after full dark, appear in a customary costume wrought of gull feathers, dyed in riotous hues and with a feather cape. The dancers bear torches to the coastline (preferably on a cliff or other promontory, if available) and perform a stylized dance, all in a line, weaving between one another interchangeably while waving the torches around. It is a dangerous dance, and part of the prowess of the performers is displayed by seeing how close they can come with their torches to one another without actually setting one another on fire. The origin of the Fire Dance is believed to stem from the old suppressed custom of “wrecking,” where coast dwellers lured merchantmen into the rocks with false signals so that they might turn scavenger on the shipwrecked cargoes, but folklorists do well not to mention this to the villagers, who take strong offense at the suggestion.
11) Graveyard Day
North Point is a veritable wasteland, thrust out into the sea and scoured by winds; it is a bleak and unlovely place, with only firs and spruces for foliage. The only protected dell in the village is the local graveyard by the Manannan temple. Every spring, on a day colloquially known as “Graveyard Day,” villagers come to plant flowers around the graves, and it has become something of a local competition amongst the schoolchildren, who “adopt” graves and turn them into veritable gardens. A great deal of the children’s spare time is taken up with weeding and grooming the grave plots, a task not appreciated by a certain minority of the village folk, who believe the practice impious.
"Realism" is one of the dirtiest words in RPG Internet discussions. Has been for years. D&D fanboys are especially touchy where it's concerned (understandably so, given D&D), as well as the various pedants huffily proclaiming that "fantasy" CAN'T be "realistic," and that we ought to be using "verisimilitude" or "emulation" instead.
(Whatever. "Realism" is the word in common use. When I addressed a condolence card to a friend who lives in the state southeast of mine, I didn't address it to "The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations." I mailed it to Rhode Island. If you can't work with terms in popular circulation, the heck with it.)
So by this point I have a sticky response to the issue, which originates from a RPGnet discussion several years ago. To wit:
Forum D00D: I think the real question here is, "why do you consider the mechanics nonsense"? We're talking an imaginary dwarf, with 100 imaginary hit points, falling off an imaginary cliff, taking damage that is, also, imaginary. If the designer finds it desirable that a character could fall off a cliff and survive, it will be so. If not, for whatever reason, it will not be. (The first mention of "but it's not REALISTIC!" gets you kicked. This is all *imaginary*, remember?)
If I had a dime for every time I've heard this over the last couple decades, I could pay all the bills this month.
Well, yes, it's all imaginary. So why use cliffs, or indeed any recognizable terrain at all? Why not adventure in big fluffy masses of amorphia? Or just teleport to anywhere we want to go, and imagine it to be anything convenient to us?
Why should we use perfectly recognizable medieval weaponry? It's imaginary, isn't it? Don't limit yourself, hit the enemy with your kerfluffmezoz or your wheezimithuzit!
And since it doesn't have to make sense, we don't need to have these pesky movement rules, besides which we all want to be Matrixy and John Woo-esque, don't we? Tell your DM that you're running through the air and phasing right through every intervening tree and foe to hit the Big Bad with your wheezimithuzit, and better yet you're doing it before he cut down your friend, because since it's all imaginary we don't have to use linear time either.
No, I don't care that I rolled a "miss." Skill progression is one of those boring "realism" things, and I don't believe in it. Let's just imagine that I hit the Big Bad whenever I need to, and for twenty-five hundred d8 of damage, too. Encumbrance is boringly realistic too, so I’m ignoring it, and I’d rather imagine that my snazzy quilted vest protected me like the glacis armor on a T-72, please.
Alright, show of hands. Why don’t we play our RPGs that way?
It’s called suspension of disbelief. We put our games into recognizable settings that mimic real life. We use swords in fantasy games because we have the expectation that such milieus use swords, and those swords do the relative damage of a sword instead of the damage of a 155mm mortar shell because that is our expectation too. Our fantasy characters wear tunics and cloaks, live in walled cities or sacred groves, and scale ramparts where the force of gravity pulls us downward, not pushes us up. We have an expectation of how fast we can walk, how far we can ride, and how long we can sail. All these expectations are founded in -- wait for it -- reality.
To the degree we ignore these things, just because, we lose touch with suspension of disbelief. If the ten-foot-tall Big Bad hits a peon with his greatsword, we expect the peon to be in a world of hurt; we don’t expect the sword to bounce off. If the party wizard shoots a fireball at the orcs’ wooden stockade, we expect that it might catch fire; we don’t expect the wall to grow flowers instead.
And if an armored dwarf takes a gainer off of a hundred foot sheer drop, we expect to find a soggy mass at the base of the cliff. We sure as hell don't expect a dwarf boinging around like a rubber ball, happily warbling, "Bumbles bounce!"
That there are a great many gamers who want their rule systems to reflect reality, rather than ignore it -- so that we find ourselves constantly sidetracked as to issues of WHY suchandsuch doesn't make sense, or because the GM has to explain how come the dwarf isn't a soggy mass -- ought be a surprise to no one.
Why is it such a surprise to you?
My job, as a GM, isn't to preserve the life of the bad guy. It's to provide the players a fun gaming experience.
Take one of the classic plot elements: the party has run down a den of Evil Henchmen, destroying the operation and killing or otherwise neutralizing all of said henchmen. Huzzah, they take the clues and info they've gotten from the scene and have dashed off.
Flip that around: you're a PC. You've got some manner of base: either it's your home base, or it's some operation you have going, or it's the manor you were given when the Queen knighted you, or it's the business you bought with the proceeds from two adventures ago, hoping that it'd make some cash for you. And you drop in to check on it, and the place has been tossed and trashed. The staff you hired are all dead or vanished. The guards you hired are decaying piles of gore.
So what do you do? Shrug, murmur "That's life," and go on your merry way?
That's exactly what most PCs expect the Big Bad to do, in any event.
Hell with that. If I'm a PC, and my satellite operation was trashed and everyone killed, and I have no idea who did it, that's going to change real frigging fast. I'm going to hire a wizard to do divination magic/check security footage. I'm going to spread some coin around the neighborhood to see if anyone saw or heard anything. I'm going to do my level best to find out if there were any survivors, and I'm going to be very interested in speaking to any. I'm going to increase security on anything else I have going to the limit of my capability. I'm going to get some investigators on the pawnshops (or going through Craigslist ...) to see who might be selling my stolen valuables.
And I'm going to set the best ambush I can for those bastards, so that I can put their severed heads on the graves of my people, and prove to the survivors that no one screws with me or them with impunity. There won't be frontal assaults ... I have no problem with a crossbow/rifle in the back of the head at 50 yards as one of the bastards is walking down the street, or a spear coming up through the privy hole.
If I don't have the juice to do those things? Then I haul out my exit strategy. I hear Linalda's Pool is peaceful this time of year.
I like reaction rolls for a particular reason, and it's exacerbated by my combat LARP experience.
Sitting in the GM's chair, in a comfy position, with a mug of steaming tea at my hand, I'm far removed from actually being in a stress situation. I know everything that's going on, I know everything that's offstage, I have unparalleled knowledge of the situation in a fashion we couldn't possibly have in real life.
But the world doesn't work like that. The fog of war is real. People don't always see what's going on, people don't always know what's going on, and people often guess wrong even if they have all the information.
In that LARP, I was one of the chief national leaders, and my character was the most powerful wizard in the game. I had to make a lot of decisions:
* Based on information that people told me, colored by their own prejudices or flawed insights.
* Based on the fact that I hadn't gotten any sleep the night before.
* Based on the fact that I hadn't gotten any sleep because the bastard, in my face and telling me I had to do something, was partying all night long two tents down the row.
* Based that I'd reinjured my chronically bad knee two hours before and it was hurting, a lot.
* Based on whether I trusted people or not, based on what I thought I could get away with politically or not.
* Based on my own prejudices, flawed insights, or whether or not I hated Soandso’s guts.
* Based on me just not knowing what I needed to know, and being forced to make a WAG.
Sometimes I got it right. Sometimes I got it wrong. Sometimes I played the odds exactly as I should have, and the odds just fell the wrong way.
Those are all variables impossible to calculate for each and every NPC. I just figure that no matter how smart someone is (or isn't), how capable someone is (or isn't), how well informed someone is (or not) ... sometimes they have bad days. Or very good days.
Heck, the last run I GMed was heavily colored by a NPC making a terrible reaction roll and thus reacting badly to the situation, no matter how much my wife's character was trying to talk sweet reason into him. Sometimes it happens. Random rolls are a good way to emulate that.
Yeah, but what if the NPC’s interacted with the party a number of times before. So what? Surely many NPCs have good days and bad ones. Heck, I'm very much a good day-bad day person. Catch me on a good day, and I'll be all accommodating about your request or inquiry. Catch me on a pain-filled day after a night of short sleep? I'm likely to be snarky, and sometimes stubbornly so.
Come to that, my first wife was even more capricious, and in all too many of our fights, I'd pull up short, incredulous that we were fighting as hard as all of that over such a petty thing, and ask "Alright, what is this really about?" Invariably, she'd pull up short, and reveal the subject which was really preying on her mind, something usually having nothing to do with me but about which I could be supportive and help defuse things.
I've kept this in mind when having a NPC snark-out, and a few times the more empathetic PCs have asked, by way of being supportive of their friend and helping to defuse things, "Hey, Nath, you seem like something's got you well off your feed. Anything it'd do you good to get off your chest?" Nice hook for a sideplot ...
I ran a Firefly campaign for a bit – and would love to run one again. The campaign was based out of Twilight Station, in the middle of the Black, floating above a pastoral planet of religious fanatics. It was something of an interstellar truck stop, with a bunch of businesses, and run by unregenerate Browncoats who were seeking to jump start the Lost Cause.
The group was stranded there, but won a decommissioned war surplus gunboat in a poker game, which became their new ship – Nightwind. Unfortunately, Nightwind came with an extra: a fellow who claimed to be the ship’s medic. They tried to run him off, but he waved what he said was an ironclad contract for him to be ship’s crew for three years or until he got tired of it, with a guaranteed rate of pay. Not much they could do about it, so onboard he stayed.
Ruy Sanchez Koriskevich O’Higgins is a bit of a whack job. He’s swarthy, with piercing black eyes, and long post-Civil War era hair and mustache ... the hair which he dyes mauve. Go figure. He’s keeps a shortsword scabbarded to his side, heaven knows why. Don’t get between him or anyone he feels like beating down, either, because he fights like a wounded weasel and doesn’t really know when to stop.
He’s also a bit of a pain in the ass aboard ship. He’s a devotee of Feng Shui (whatever the heck that is) and has a habit of rearranging the wardroom furniture and cargo pallets to suit notions of “positioning” ... and if you ask him to explain, the answer is so laden with jargon you never understand. He also claims to be seeking “satori” (whatever the heck that is), and frequently is doing yoga routines, which he insists on following through no matter the emergency.
Still, he’s a good doc, nothing much ever fazes him, he’s a middling shot, he’s fast as hell, and he’ll always throw in to whatever scheme the crew proposes ... including smuggling, which he’s altogether good at doing ...
One thing not readily apparent (and which he’ll conceal from the crew) is that he took permanent damage from chemical agents in the War. As a result, he doesn’t eat much (and will throw up if he tries), he’s unusually susceptible to toxins, his senses are dulled, he can easily tolerate very cold temperatures, and he’s just not as physically capable about a third of the time.
ST: 11 DX: 14 IQ: 13 HT: 11 Per: 10 Will: 14 Speed: 6
Advantages: Cultural Familiarity/Black, Reduced Consumption / 2/3rds food, Temperature Tolerance+1, Unfazeable
Disadvantages: Berserk (12); Compulsive Behavior / Wanderlust; Disciplines of Faith / "Satori;" Odious Personal Habit / “Feng Shui;” Susceptibility to Poison; Sense of Duty / Crew; War Wounds / -2 everything, on a 9- or less, for two hours
Skills: Area Knowledge/Black-13; Boxing-14; Calligraphy-12; Crew/Spacer-13; Diagnosis-13; Fast-Draw/sword-14; First Aid-16; Free Fall-13; Gardening-13; Guns/pistol-14; Housekeeping-13; Meditation-13; Philosophy-11; Physician-14; Pressure Points-14; Shortsword-15; Smuggling-13; Surgery-14
Quirks: Bombastic around women; Constantly snacking (but only nibbles); Eats tapioca pearls in drink; Twirls his mustache compulsively
Cultural Familiarity is knowing the customs and suchlike of an area to which you're not native. Odious Personal Habit, in GURPS terms, is a reaction roll penalty for something about you which is obnoxious enough to bug people.
For further explanation of system numbers, check this link.
I've participated in a number of collaborative gaming lists on various sites. The Small Town Horror post I put up a while back was one. This is another. As part and parcel of any rational setting, you're going to have couples as NPCs. Sometimes those romances are more out there and turbulent than others; here are my parts of a collaboration for lovers. I don't give stats or details -- for a change, plug them in where you'd want them!
The punch line is that, in every case, these are from prominent characters from my own campaign ... or that I've played one side myself as a PC in either tabletop, a MMORPG or a LARP.
My Chemical Romance: Whether business partners, next door neighbors, rivals, forced allies or arranged spouses, this couple can’t stand each other. They agree on practically nothing, always trying to score points off of one another, and lose few opportunities to backbite (or even backstab) the other. Periodically the hostility breaks into a vicious fight ... which inevitably ends in screaming, clawing, prolonged sex, until the parties are sore and exhausted. He hotly denies they’re actual lovers, she coolly denies it, and they show no signs of any rapport whatsoever the moment the clothes go back on.
Class Ringwearers: Gosh, they’re so in love! Why they just celebrated their three-month “anniversary” and his class ring hangs around her neck! By the standards of their culture, they’re underage and/or immature. The grownups around them are patronizingly dismissive of their “crushes,” and they’re about ready to scream the next time anyone uses the term “puppy love” around them. Increasingly angry, they’re on the verge of doing something their culture would consider drastic: having sex, getting pregnant, running off to get married, publicly disavowing any arranged future marriage ... whatever it takes to get people to take their love seriously and recognize that it’s for real and forever!
Pre-Raphaelites: She’s a celebrated artist. He’s her model. His face and body have been immortalized in a half-dozen well-known compositions, and his own poetry -- though somewhat amateurish -- shows the illumination of her soul. But to touch one another would mar the artistic purity of their collaboration (and age, class and possibly marital barriers intrude) ... so for years now they’ve suffered in silence, unable to consummate their relationship, unwilling to part and so lose each other’s muse.
Bennifer: They were Yesterday’s Supercouple ... rich, celebrated, the hit of their social circle and so totally wrapped up in one another. But that was then, and events have pulled them apart. Their lives are going in different directions (well, in truth, they always did) and the spark is gone, however much they’re not particularly willing to admit it. ‘Tis a pity that everyone still expects to see them together, harmonious and dazzling as ever, and the act is wearing thin.
Mutt & Jeff: They don’t have a thing in common ... everyone knows it, they freely admit it. He’s neat and she’s sloppy, she’s athletic and he’s intellectual, he’s dynamic and she’s live-and-let-live, she’s a gourmet and he’s steak-and-potatoes. Yet when their orbits intersect, they live and love in tender harmony. No one knows how they do it, and well-meaning people keep trying to pry them apart in favor of “more compatible” partners ... to no avail.
Bonnie & Clyde: Yep, they’re in love, since the moment they met. She loves the exciting times he shows her, and he loves the ebullience and intensity of her spirit. They’re also complete sociopaths, perfectly eager to rape, kill, pillage and torture their way around the landscape. The wind’s at their backs, their luck is in, and their hands are dripping red. If they’re doomed to a bad end, they don’t know it (and might not even care): their focus is only on the next jaunt, the next meal, the next kill.
Putting On The Ritz: See them on the dance floor (or on the concert stage, or performing as a duo at the local Ren Faire, or the ice dancing Nationals ...) and they’re silken smooth. They’re just arresting to watch, and the aura about them is tangible – their eyes follow one another like magnets. But this activity and their athleticism are all that really links them, and they’re awkward and uneasy with one another away from the spotlight. You could scarcely recognize them, with that vast luminosity of theirs shuttered, and two plain, ordinary people left behind.
Hunk-A-Hunk-A-Burnin-Love: They can’t keep their hands off of one another. Ever. At every conceivable opportunity they’re stealing off for sex of any sort, and in a night camp they don’t bother much with sleep. Whether wild and clawing, or completely vanilla, they’re screaming with passion at all manner of inconvenient times. They’re constantly sore and exhausted, but they not only don’t give a damn, they always have those obnoxiously smug, creamy smiles on their faces after.
Double Blind: She’s the city’s -- and maybe the realm's -- most powerful wizard, and a gifted enchanter and scholar. He’s an elven prince of a dynasty older than Time, and one of the world’s great swordmakers. But they both wanted to live simple lives (and find someone who loved them for themselves, not their fame), and both have been slumming with the gypsies: he works as a blacksmith, and she keeps a very discreet magical watch over the encampment. She’s now pregnant and happily keeping his wagon for him, and neither of them have any idea of one another’s true identity, a difficulty which preys on them both.
Á la lanterne!: He’s a key player in the revolutionary government. She’s an actress devoted to smuggling out of the city the “traitorous class” the newly-ensconced rebels are seeking to execute, for their “crimes.” Honestly, she was only pretending to seduce him just to get him out of the way for a few hours while the rest of the party did the mission ... and things got far, far out of hand. He knows who she is, now, and neither of them are comfortable with how far they’re compromising their genuine beliefs with one another. If his comrades knew, he’d be executed; her comrades do know, and while they take advantage of the access, they don’t care for the relationship. Nonetheless, the lovers are devoted to one another and can’t bear to separate.
Miss me?: He was rich, powerful, handsome, brilliant. She was sixteen years old and a fresh, unplucked flower. He moved on, with his cronies, as he always had ... until six years later, when she returned with his only known heir. He won’t marry her and she wouldn’t have him, and they’re both at the opposite ends of a vast gulf of class, wealth and bitterness, but they’re forced into cooperation for the sake of the child. And she remains beautiful and incandescent, and he remains handsome and debonair, and they both hate themselves for the simmering desire for one another they still find they feel.
Ever After: The duke’s daughter and the princess’ son were content enough to marry; they were of the right age, betrothed as children, and had no objections to one another. A pair of unique wedding bands were wrought, out of living crystal, by the King’s Enchantress ... and, in a spirit of fun, the duke’s daughter put on hers two days before the wedding, while the young prince’s best friend put the matching band on his finger. They turned gazes towards one another ... and were enraptured. Now they’re fleeing for the border, with household troops in hot pursuit, completely unaware that the rings were enchanted to cause love between the wearers, as a kindness by the wizard towards an arranged couple.
Soulmates: They finish one another’s sentences. They seem to read one another’s thoughts. They absolutely anticipate one another’s needs. They apparently have the same skill set. They’re always together (and seem badly out of sorts and dissonant if forced to be apart for too terribly long), and seem to savor the same activities and hobbies. They were even raised in the same small neighborhood/estate/village, and share the same background and memories. (Alright, it's a pity that they're brother and sister, and even in their tolerant culture going that last step is out of bounds, even if they weren't high nobility and destined for arranged marriages.)
Days of Wine and Roses: She’s all of sixteen years old, and one of her agemates raised by the Wise and Patient Teacher – plucked from the deeps of Time itself to be their tutor – to be one of the prophesied group who would stand against the Darkness. She’s diligently learned all his martial arts skills, and already is a formidable fighter. But now, coming to the Big City, they’ve realized that the time and place from which “Teacher” was plucked are here and now. They've met him, and he's decades younger, at the height of his powers. She realizes she’s a woman after all, and she wants to be his ... and be damned to the risk to the timestream.
There’ve been a couple recent forum threads – and many others over the years – where some posters not only stated that their games don’t involve romance, relationships or any manner of sexuality, not only stated that they’re disinterested in such elements, but went on to express their incredulity that anyone else was and their dismay that any references to the same appeared in published adventure scenarios.
I don't understand this. For my part, I've been involved in romantic plotlines from the beginning; my very first character, back in 1978, wound up in a politically advantageous marriage with the daughter of a high government official. I've had four PCs married to the characters of other players. (We won't mention the number of marriages and relationships I've had in LARPs and MMORPGs. I can't count that high.)
From the other side of the dice, a great deal of plot has stemmed from romantic entanglements. In my most recent groups, the only PC in one who wasn't romantically involved was a priest of a faith that preaches rigid monogamy. In the second, two PC aristocrats married each other to preempt their families from dynastic shenanigans. A key element in my wife's one-on-one sessions is the need to keep her young daughter relatively free of the risk of assassination.
A “distraction to the plot,” as many of the antis claim? Heck, any kind of roleplaying is. Characterization involves ties, bonds, limitations, phobias ... all that can get in the way of a mission. Why, people might be moved by a NPC's pleadings and act other than coldly or logically!
Damn, that leaves out likes, dislikes and character quirks, too. That moron who always insists on wearing red screws up the pattern-disruptive outfit. The fellow who likes cheap tobacco always smells of it, and that can tip off guard dogs. So you want to fight "honorably," blah blah blah ... screw that, just go and do the guy from behind, less risky that way. Every last little quirk is someone demanding some distracting center-stage time – even if it's but moments – to light up her pipe, recite a prayer over the bodies of the fallen, scritch his cat, grab her favorite pizza or read a few pages from a trashy novel during a lull on the stakeout. Ego stroking drama queens, the lot of them. Right?
In gaming groups mature enough to handle the subject (which I agree many aren't), romance is another aspect of the human condition, just as valid for PCs to explore and roleplay as any other. Strange though this might seem to some, not all campaigns are about nothing but the tactical resolution of problems set before the team.
You might ask, "What's the point of having a PC belong to a guild, if it'll only result in trouble - they want help, your status is imperiled, the chapterhouse burns down and they want money from you?" Why bother with the PC having a family, when family members only drag you down in like fashion? Why belong to a church, which only restricts your actions and movements, except in so far as your setting requires it to get clerical aid? Why be a military veteran, because the only time your ex-mates will ever show up is when they're in trouble? Why have neighborhood ties, because getting to know the kindly old priestess at St. Taria's or the tomato seller on the corner just means you're getting sucked into their problems?
And why is it that these questions generally aren't asked, not with one tenth the frequency of angry questions about "Why bother with SOs?" Why is it that ties and plothooks involving PCs are so much more tolerated when the dreaded "R" word isn't a factor?
Simple.
We have a hobby with deeply misogynistic roots: one that stretched back to a day where rooms full of men and boys played wargames with lead miniatures. The games that stemmed from those were overwhelmingly based around tactical, statistical combat and nothing but. The problems set before the group to solve were dungeons, involving nothing beyond problem solving, tactical acumen, outguessing the Dungeon Master and dice luck. Players who could tell you in great detail that they "were" 8th level Lawful Good clerics with Wisdom 17, 36 hit points, Bracers of Wondrous Awesomeness and +3 Maces of Big Bad Smiting gave you blank looks when asked to name their hometowns, describe the clothing they wore or to expound on the doctrine of their deities ... when they'd bothered to name their deities at all, not always the case. The notion that roleplaying = acting wasn't common; third person "My character tells the NPC to back off" modes of speech were.
Quite aside from women not being welcome in that world – what stereotype of female players dominated the first decade of the hobby as heavily as the GM's Girlfriend, generally bored, mocked as incompetent and always marginalized? – romance and sexuality weren't either. Oh, sure, a lot of groups regularly patronized the local brothel ... along with locker room grunts and grins, and the dropping of a requisite few gold pieces. All suitably off-stage, with the (inevitably Frazettaesque-female) courtesans never seen or described, let alone named, extant only as part of some peculiar backslapping ritual affirming its participants as Manly Men.
And to a bunch of 14-year-old boys sitting around the table, clutching their dice, each concerned that they've never been laid and worried that they never will be, I'm willing to give a pass. But for everyone else?
Leaving aside those for whom gaming isn't roleplaying, and is solely about tactics, is there any more reason for sniggering than with any other type of plot, if you have a group not comprised of adolescent boys? Alright, let's get the 800 lb elephant out in the open and admit the secret fear lurking in the hearts of many gamers: that the (invariably male) PC having a serious relationship with the NPC (run by the invariably male GM) will carry a whiff of homosexuality.
(I'm quite serene with my stereotyping, because the number of these complaints coming from female players, with the exception of the I'm Freaking Tired Of His PC/NPC Trying To Get Into My Bodice riff, is about 1/100th those from male players.)
How to get past this, that's a question for which I don't have answers beyond an admittedly pompous and patronizing hope that more gamers just plain grow up.
