Ok the I have a PC swashbuckler from the noble district fully trying to er.. romance.. Lavinia.
He's roleplaying it very well-- while the rest of the party is down at the arena betting 1000's of coppers on the bugbear vs. 4 wolves, he's at the Vanderboren manor, being supportive. He recommended his sword master to her, who she has now hired. (I saw she takes a level of SB in the Bullywug Gambit) The PC and her have spent days training together. His diplomacy checks are going well.
So at what point do you all think a DM should say "ok- she falls for you" It has been pointed out that she is in a vulnerable state...
BTW there is no LARPing allowed at my table, so no jokes! ;)
Your situation is a bit different than mine, since only one of your players is making an effort to woo her, and happens to be from the noble district. I'd say string him along until just before she's put in harm's way, have her profess her love for him, then get kidnapped, or whatever happens to her that requires the party to save her later in the AP. It'll be that much sweeter if that character has more of a vested interest in the rescue. Of course, holding off until after the rescue could be even more dramatic, if a bit cliche.
I've got two players (a swashbuckler/rogue gunning for legendary captain and a spellthief from Shadowshore) wooing her in my campaign, and the rivalry they've developed is simply brilliant. Personally, I've decided that she isn't going to fall for either of them, and have had loads of fun using her as a foil for their combined egos. So far, she's fleeced them both at 3 Dragon Ante, managed come-backs for all of their best lines, and has no problem putting them back in their place as the 'hired help'.
I may give the spellthief a chance with her down the road, but I'm currently working to get the player of the swashbuckler interested in Captain Javell. She's the perfect love interest for him for a number of reasons, including his backstory in which his father, a privateer in the employee of the Dawn council, disappeared at sea under mysterious circumstances. He's found his father's ship (refitted and re-mastheaded as The Sea Wyvern), so he's figured out the disappearance has something to do with the Crimson Fleet, but doesn't suspect the very sexy and capable woman he met in the cove had anything to do with it.
Let's see: It's something your player wants to do and it would give the player a vested interest in the plot. Of course you do it.
The only drawback would be that the player will want to be on the Blue Nixie with her. I'd have them engaged to be married but Lavinia wants to be "proper" - he has to be on the other boat until they are married. Or he's needed on the other boat because he's the only one she can trust.
Creative Director
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Actually, having one of the PCs become romantically involved with Lavinia is somewhat expected of the campaign. It certainly gives that PC (and by extension the other PCs) a stronger tie to the campaign, and makes the entire campaign feel more dynamic. In fact, NPC/PC romances are strongly encouraged throughout Savage Tide; developments like this are very much in line with the romantic/swashbuckly feel for the campaign.
In the Savage Tide campaign I'm running, the beguiler's courting Lavinia, the archer/rogue's courting Skald, the bard WAS courting Avner but cut him loose when his secret journal became public knowledge, and the monk/cleric's courting Amella. Only the barbarian/druid's keeping her hands to herself, and that's mostly because she's really kinda scary...
In any case, I say play up the romance angle in your game. When it comes time for the trip south, Lavinia asks the PCs (and her lover in particular) to take charge of the Sea Wyvern because she trusts them, and partially because she doesn't want to be TOO distracted on her journey south...
Actually, having one of the PCs become romantically involved with Lavinia is somewhat expected of the campaign. It certainly gives that PC (and by extension the other PCs) a stronger tie to the campaign, and makes the entire campaign feel more dynamic. In fact, NPC/PC romances are strongly encouraged throughout Savage Tide; developments like this are very much in line with the romantic/swashbuckly feel for the campaign.
In the Savage Tide campaign I'm running, the beguiler's courting Lavinia, the archer/rogue's courting Skald, the bard WAS courting Avner but cut him loose when his secret journal became public knowledge, and the monk/cleric's courting Amella. Only the barbarian/druid's keeping her hands to herself, and that's mostly because she's really kinda scary...
In any case, I say play up the romance angle in your game. When it comes time for the trip south, Lavinia asks the PCs (and her lover in particular) to take charge of the Sea Wyvern because she trusts them, and partially because she doesn't want to be TOO distracted on her journey south...
I think you have to 'reward' the players/ PCs a little in a romantic relationship to keep them interested. Other wise they focus on killing things and taking stuff.
Such a reward could be a item that might help in future episodes. Or perhaps a bit of rank/ title?
Actually, having one of the PCs become romantically involved with Lavinia is somewhat expected of the campaign.
Hmmm... not likely to happen. Most of the players in my campaign are women, so unless the game takes on a Brokeback Dungeon twist, Lavinia's not going to get much loving from my PCs.
Let's see... I may get some romance popping up in my campaign.
I've got:
Halcyon, male oriented Warforged Artificer... probably will make good friends with Urol... no romance likely.
Shade, male tiefling Sorceror... decent Charisma, maybe with one of the ladies, more likely Rowyn though, which could be interesting and maybe tragic.
Bhu, female changeling Bard (who passes as human all the time)... gets her way by seduction and deception usually, Avner seems like a likely choice, until he ruins it, I'm sure, but maybe Skald...
then there's the male Shifter Druid (no name yet) who I can't see getting into the romance game, but you never know...
It seems like it'll be a lot of fun to play up any romances or even just friendships/rivalries in this campaign. Makes for good fun!
Sean, I know you were joking about the Brokeback Dungeon thing, but I think you shouldn't dismiss it if it makes some sense. Characters can't help who they fall in love with. :)
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Creative Director
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Sean, I know you were joking about the Brokeback Dungeon thing, but I think you shouldn't dismiss it if it makes some sense. Characters can't help who they fall in love with. :)
Absolutely.
Alternately, it might be cool to switch Lavinia to a guy in such a case, although if the campaign's already going, that's not as easy a trick.And don't forget! The Jade Ravens also represent some possible romantic entanglements with PCs as well.
Halcyon, male oriented Warforged Artificer... probably will make good friends with Urol... no romance likely.
You know, this might make for some interesting character development. After all, warforged are fully sentient, and evidently are capable of expressing emotion, so it isn't beyond reason that a warforged could develop romantic feelings for a human. The physical side of the relationship could prove to be an obstacle, but then again, your warforged is an artificer, maybe he could rig up something to make himself "fully functional."
Sean, I know you were joking about the Brokeback Dungeon thing, but I think you shouldn't dismiss it if it makes some sense. Characters can't help who they fall in love with. :)Absolutely.
Alternately, it might be cool to switch Lavinia to a guy in such a case, although if the campaign's already going, that's not as easy a trick.And don't forget! The Jade Ravens also represent some possible romantic entanglements with PCs as well.
Damn, I wish I had thought of making Lavinia a man before the campaign started, that would have been pretty cool. With so many female players, I had originally thought of replacing Lavinia with one of the PCs and giving her a younger sister who gets held hostage by the bullywugs, but ended up going with the story as written.
I certainly wouldn't be opposed to a same-sex relationship, but I doubt any of the players will be interested in playing a lesbian. I do have one male character in the game; he is playing an emotionally detached monk who has suffered personal tragedy and has difficulty interacting socially with others - most of his dialogue is monosyllabic, so sweet-talk is not his forte. Any relationship would definitely have to be intitiated by Lavinia, but this might be an interesting way to pull him out of his shell and give him a new reason to embrace life.
Huh, the romance in my game is somewhat scary. The only pc who actually wants to get into Lavinia's knickers is the ex-pirate captain (trying to reform despite battling a 2-year old addiction to booze). The same character also has several aberrant feats (from Lords of Madness) so he has gangly limbs and two tentacles sticking out of his sides. Plus he smells like booze and the ocean at the same time. Not exactly romance material. At one point, Lavinia had to defend herself from the pc, who drunk at the point, was trying to latch onto her while crawling along the floor. So, yeah, not exactly what Lavinia wants.
On the other hand, the party's halfling rogue has taken upon himself to grope Kora whenever he and she are in the same room (the halfling aspires to be a pirate as well and seem to have the mannerisms down pat). Kora, of course, is flabergasted as she is an old woman and this young grasshopper is coping a feel on her. She rejects him every time and is wary of this rogue.
The party gnome doesn't care as she is busy trying to make sure no one realises she is not actually the person they think she is. Her biggest problem is that she is a compulsive liar and a poor gambler. Interesting roleplaying so far.
The party druid, a female aventi, is probably the closest one to being able to form a friendship with Lavinia since she is the most normal pc. I'm think the two of them could eventually become best friends, if the player plays his cards right.
Honestly, any romance, if any, with this sorry group is probably going to happen in the dark corners of a tavern or under the bedsheets in a brothel. Almost everyone wanted to play a dirty pirate, ;)
CB out.
Aaaah! I've got two dwarves with single-digit charismas!
Methinks I'll have to make the NPCs a bit more forceful in their advances...
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Great discussion so far lads, this has really opened up some ideas for me. I'm fortunate that our campaign hasn't even started yet, so in a sense, I appreciate all you chaps posting here to give me "guinea pig" material.
I did note that the pic of Lavinia in the first magazine is an attention getter. She ain't ugly. It will be interesting to see how character generation goes, and what they attempt to do in the romantic aspect of things, both with her and other NPC's.
Unfortunately, my whole group of players is of the masculine persuasion (wife is sitting this one out to watch the baby while I run the game in the basement), and of our gaming group, I'm the only guy that ever occasionally branches out to play female PC's. So any romance will (likely) be after female NPC's, altho I as well have no problem with our PC's chasing alternate lifestyles. I just don't foresee it.
I am sooo pumped about running this campaign. Every issue just makes the anticipation worse!
In our we have a NE bard who was chased out of Waterdeep for swindling rich, single women. Now he's in Tashluta, and has already gotten in good with Lavinia. She has appointed him her personal liason to her other hired employees (the other PC's), which really rankles most of them. Plus, he's trying to corrupt them all, and make out like a bandit in the process! Makes for some great role-playing!
I must confess it was this thread that got me thinking about roll playing a romance with Lavinia; Paladin (Zilchus). But as my character has grow although a bit fond of her, I began to think here I am a 16 year old kid looking at a fully developed woman who acts more like my mother. Nothing against my mother...But...I don't think so. If the DM develops it into something more I'll run with it. But as for my character creation he comes from a trade family whos dad and oldest sister had voyaged to the Isle of Dread and hasn't heard from them for a year thus far. So romance, again...we'll see. Great posts.
And don't forget! The Jade Ravens also represent some possible romantic entanglements with PCs as well.
Alas my character is more intent on challenging the half-elf rogue in the Jade Ravens to a duel if she can ever find him. She's a noble-born fighter from Callimshan and found his comment about her group as the 'B Team' insulting.
Well since most my group is a little strange (kobold, Minotaur, aquatic elf and shoal halfling) The normal romances are probably not possible. Now they did just find the Lotus Dragon's cook (the female kobold) who has offered to join the group and has taking a liking to the kobold spellthief in the group. He has a high charisma and bears traces of dragon heretige (Dragonwrought for the Complete Dragons). We'll have to see where this goes.
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Hi,
my PC's are not engaged in romance yet...
However, with my Wizard's background, I came up with a good RP idea.
He is a bastard born from two noble people, and raised by an old mentor (in noble district), not knowing who his parents were...
I decided that before marrying his wife, Lavinia's father had an affair with old Kellani : they had a boy (the wizard) and then, since he was no girl, she left him to his father, old Vanderboren.
The PCs found a letter in the vault (among other notes), never sent by old Vanderboren, telling old Kellani she was no good (but no name was written on this letter), that he would never see her again, and that he could see clearly through her after this. Then, he asked an old wiz friend to raise his boy (his first child, since my wiz is around 28-29), and he gave money every month to that old man for him to raise the boy.
He then married mother Vanderboren.
My wizard understood with this discovery that his father might be old Vanderboren, and that Lavinia and Vanthus were his 1/2-sister and 1/2-brother.
He doesn't know yet that Rowyn will be another 1/2-sister...
But I decided they looked a lot alike (nose, forehead, mouth, eyes and so on), almost siblings...
This will be fun !!
On the other side, one of my other player, speaking smoothly with Lavinia, did really bad diplomacy checks : she thought that he was trying to flirt, and after the story with the Jade Ravens'leader, she was not ready to have another man getting after her.
She barred him in front of the other PCs (lots of fun, since the dragon shaman was not flirting [yet]).
I am looking forward to see where all of this will come up with !!
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I also am confronted with the supreme irony that, at the time I am writing this post, the next post in the list was "They killed Lavinia". I guess we roleplayers are a very diverse lot, and from a base story, we can take it every conceivable direction. Kudos to the designers for having a great story that also appears to be pretty adaptable to crazy PC's from all across the spectrum.
Huh, the romance in my game is somewhat scary.
You have my sympathies.
So far, the only character in my online game to have disclosed his romantic attachment is the goblin wizard, who mentioned that he sleeps with his dire bat, and when questioned more closely on that point said, and I quote, "They are intimate, but there are no unnatural acts involved."
I'm glad I've been letting him dictate the dire bat's actions - that's one PC / NPC romance I'm not ready to tackle.
personally I think this in game romance ting is retarded.
Unfortunately I was unable to get any of my PCs to be interested in Lavinia... The party cleric/ranger is involved with Liamae of the Jade Ravens, though. It will be interesting when she dies... Actually, it will be the second time in our years of gaming together I will have killed off his character's romantic interest.
In the Savage Tide campaign I'm running, the beguiler's courting Lavinia, the archer/rogue's courting Skald, the bard WAS courting Avner but cut him loose when his secret journal became public knowledge, and the monk/cleric's courting Amella. Only the barbarian/druid's keeping her hands to herself, and that's mostly because she's really kinda scary...
In the one I'm running, the elf druid (male) is courting Liamae; while the female gnome rogue has really taken a liking to (of course) Urol Forol -- in fact, the party just hit 6th level and Urol was the first cohort of the campaign. Having already gone through this AP once as a player, I can't wait for HTBM and SoS because of the dangers and fates that await these particular paramours.
Our human half-Olman ranger, also a woman, hasn't gone with any of the possible options (and since that's Tolin, Zan, Avner, and Skald, can you really blame her?), but I suspect she'll go from zero to smitten in a heartbeat once she finally meets Jakara -- and if not then, I'm perfectly willing to consider Celeste a possible partner for her. I mean, they're CG Eladrin, for Pete's sake -- what'd you think the Witch Queen was referring to when she mentioned "unicorn giggles"? ;-)
Interestingly, everyone considers Lavinia 'hands-off' romantically but all of them have strong friendships with her -- especially the gnome, who bonded with her after Kora died. My player LOVED that particular NPC, and killing her off was the best thing I could have done as a DM. She'll follow Lavinia anywhere, I imagine, and will (of course) have to before the game is up.
Wow, over a year with no posts, then it comes back cause some one thinks its retarded. I love irony!
Anyhoo… After the last session when everyone was packing up I accidentally made an off hand remark about the possibility of romantic relationships in game, then, the LE Ninja in my group told me he was going to try to hook up with her and Liamae and Rowyn.
This should be interesting.
I'd kinda like it to happen, but my group doesn't seem to be headed that way. Unless you get things started before SWW, it's probably too late since in that adventure and HTBM the PCs will hardly spend any time with her.
And as for my crew, the human wizard's the only one with a) a decent charisma, b) of compatible species, and c) who did not sleaze onto her horrendously on their first meeting (natural 1 on Diplomacy check from the cleric...), and he got burnt by Rowyn and is now getting hustled briskly (somewhat to his alarm...) into a relationship with Lirith.
we had the romance (tri-)angle going for a while, with our bard/warblade (who had a irrepressible streak of chivalry ) romancing Lavinia, basically acting as her man-on-site in many situations and being unflappably in her camp, even when it was to the party's detriment (he being the only good character around throughtout the first installments ).
Very courtly, strong and supportive... "old school". And it provided strong motivation to stick to Lavinias side throughout the first two adventures, which wasn't a bad thing with our morally flexible group.
Things started to take-off slowly when they were invited to a ball Sasserine's Lord Mayor was having (prior to SWW'S embarkation ), but things never developed farther than hand-holding and a kiss or two, since the GM had the wizard cohort fall for him mightily, and witout much qualms.
Poor sod fell hard (she was an old flame of his from a decade ago, and obviously things reignited massively ), and Lavinia picked the short straw. There were a few fun social scenes at Tamoachan and Renkru Island, with the character trying to maintain a working relationship with Lavinia, while being madly in love (or lust at least) with the cohort....
After the group and cohorts arrived at Farshore in the aftermath o the shipwreck, things resolved themselves and have since calmed down
Lavinia has since turned into a bit of an ice-queen, even after the warblade retired from the campaign but a loyal friendship with the group persists (if not with the wizard cohort who also has a bit of a short fuse ) .
Overall it was a fun thing while it lasted, but having wrapped up ToD just last session, the future is bright and shiny ahead.
We had some minor "affairs", with the female Beguiler seducing ( no idea about the degre of success ) the Lord Mayor of Sasserine, and some onboard hormonally charged flings involving Lirith.
Oh, and our werebaboon ranger may possibly be in love with his Gorilla animal companion. Don't ask for details, since we don't either ....