As has been mentioned in other threads, PCs in the STAP are encouraged to form romantical bonds with the important NPCs. I am having a heck of a time trying to figure out how to get any of my players interested in the NPCs and am curious as to how this has worked out for others plus any tips that anyone might have. My PCs and their rough personalities are:
CG Male Air Genasi Rogue/Swashbuckler: Very curious, greedy, angers easily, very reckless at times.
CN Male Sun Elf Warblade/Wizard: Very methodical, cautious, intelligent, self-interested.
CN Male Wood Elf Ranger: Very crazy and unpredictable, spontaneous, quick to act, did I mention crazy?
N Female Ice Para-Genasi Druid: Calm, independent, "something to prove" type attitude, often the peace-keeper.
I'm going to go with a suggestion I saw somewhere on here about making Amella into a man-captain so that the girl in our group has someone to possibily have something going on with and also so all of the girls with rapiers don't get too confusing. Thus far the PCs haven't been very charmed by Lavinia; they're currently mopping up the Lotus Dragon guildhall and are still somewhat split over wheather to give Lavinia the Vanderboren loot that was found... If they do decide to return her money, I'll probably have her reward them pretty handsomely with a personalized Ring of Protection +1 each so maybe that will warm them up to her. I'll probably also use the idea mentioned in another thread about having one of the Jade Ravens or someone else, I'm thinking of just using a crew member of the Wyvern, point out how Lavinia is loaded and anyone who marries her would have a ticket to Tashluta's (me run in FR) nobility. I have a feeling that our Rogue or possibly even our Wizard might be enticed by that. I might try to enamour the Lirith Veldarose dame from the Wyvern's crew to our Ranger and see if I can keep her alive through HTBM; the best path to that end is probably just to have them get drunk and engage in wacky hijinks and prank-pulling throughout the ship. I don't know if any of these strategies will work, but I can see some pretty fun times coming out of it if it does so here's hoping.
So tell about what kinds of romantical relationships your PCs have cooked up and if anyone has any further ideas of how to enamor my party to the NPCs, I'd be happy the hear them. Let the Savage Tide Dating Game Begin!
I've had an okay time getting the PCs to be interested in Lavinia and the others. That probably becuase I'm a girl and it's a lot easier to roleplay a damsel in distress and pull the heartstrings when your actually a girl.
Anyway, the most dashing of the party is the ranger. He defended Lavinia from the Iron Cobras valiantly, which she was most grateful for. When the Nixie, Wyvern, and the Purity's Prow (the pirate ship that the party captured from the scarlet brother hood.)stopped in the small Olman village for a few days, Lavinia and Waldengast went on a romantic walk in the woods. Waldengast's sidekick, the halfling Queequeg has a thing for the tough pirate Harliss. He's constantly asking if she's going to come back. xD
I've found the Tolin, from the Jade Ravens, is a good NPC for girl PC's to become enamoured with. He's dashing, heroic, and a bit of an ass. Great for roleplaying oppurtunities. Tolin has taken an interest in the rakish aventi priestess so much that he jumped into the sea in scale mail and with no ranks in swim in order to save her. Too bad for him, she wound up saving him. His ego did need to get knocked down a bit.
The Jade Ravens are a good place to look for romances becuase thay're around a lot.
A romance bloomed between Xao, the amnesiac Ice Troll Warblade of my group, and Limae. Back in the early adventures, she had made some rather baudy comments regarding speculation on his proportionate "size", as well as a play off of the old joke regarding "big ears, nose, hands, feet, hope he's well equipped, he's an ugly feller otherwise", due to Xao having a charisma of 7. I mean, he regenerated back from being keelhauled, anchor dragged, and crushed against dockings for 3 days. He looks like a frankenstein's monster version of a troll.
But Xao is a sweet fellow, thanks to his amnesia and his raising/re-education by the high Charisma sorceror. Even as she mocked him, he was nice, polite, and freindly back to her. When she had her accident on the way to Farshore and awoke a different woman, she decided that she owed him an apology. From that apology started a slow course of increasing freindship and affection that has not been consumated in any way beyond a kiss on the cheek here and there, but seems to have the strength and intensity to topple kingdoms.
Which is kind of what I'm hoping for, when they chase the Jade Ravens to Scuttlecove. I expect the Birdcage to be a smoking hole by the time the rest of the PCs catch up to Xao. Because you see, he made her a gift, after she made him a set of bracers of armor. He made a ring, from his own knucklebone, marinated in his own heart on the end of a red hot needle through a three week process, to craft her a ring equivalent to the Psychoactive Skin of the Troll item from the Magic Item Compendium. When he was done, the finger he had given burned away, only remaining as a phantom digit made of wispy smoke trailing from the stump. But he can feel her hand in his when she wears the ring, and she always wears the ring.
So guess what the harpies will do to a pretty sorceror who can regrow whatever they cut off? And what will he do when they decide to finally kill her and take off the ring?
Yeah, romances in game make for great stuff, if the player is willing to play ball and give up a bit of control. But thats what makes romance so fun in the real world too!
I changed my Jade Ravens around a bit so I could use the "generic npc" in all the illustrations for them. This means the dwarf druid is now a human. The biggest surprise stil lies in the future; I belatedly noticed that the ranger-ish person in the illustrations is a woman. Tolin the "handsome half-elf" is up for a very rude surprise. :)
Anyway, I find that having heroic illustrations for the Jade Ravens made them much more romance-worthy. Now if I could only get my swashbuckler interested in Lavinia...
As has been mentioned in other threads, PCs in the STAP are encouraged to form romantical bonds with the important NPCs. I am having a heck of a time trying to figure out how to get any of my players interested in the NPCs and am curious as to how this has worked out for others plus any tips that anyone might have. My PCs and their rough personalities are:
CG Male Air Genasi Rogue/Swashbuckler: Very curious, greedy, angers easily, very reckless at times.
CN Male Sun Elf Warblade/Wizard: Very methodical, cautious, intelligent, self-interested.
CN Male Wood Elf Ranger: Very crazy and unpredictable, spontaneous, quick to act, did I mention crazy?
N Female Ice Para-Genasi Druid: Calm, independent, "something to prove" type attitude, often the peace-keeper.I'm going to go with a suggestion I saw somewhere on here about making Amella into a man-captain so that the girl in our group has someone to possibily have something going on with and also so all of the girls with rapiers don't get too confusing. Thus far the PCs haven't been very charmed by Lavinia; they're currently mopping up the Lotus Dragon guildhall and are still somewhat split over wheather to give Lavinia the Vanderboren loot that was found... If they do decide to return her money, I'll probably have her reward them pretty handsomely with a personalized Ring of Protection +1 each so maybe that will warm them up to her. I'll probably also use the idea mentioned in another thread about having one of the Jade Ravens or someone else, I'm thinking of just using a crew member of the Wyvern, point out how Lavinia is loaded and anyone who marries her would have a ticket to Tashluta's (me run in FR) nobility. I have a feeling that our Rogue or possibly even our Wizard might be enticed by that. I might try to enamour the Lirith Veldarose dame from the Wyvern's crew to our Ranger and see if I can keep her alive through HTBM; the best path to that end is probably just to have them get drunk and engage in wacky hijinks and prank-pulling throughout the ship. I...
I will not have any romance, one of my players had a sorcerer who was interested in Lavinia, unfortunatly he did not roll too well on his "sense motive" checks and failed his save when Rowyn disguised herself as Lavinia. He died a horrible death:( in fact I had to take him aside and show him in the book, how everything worked out, (he is new to the game, and I new he would not have a problem dying in combat, but this was different).
One of my PC's, the paladin of freedom/bard and somewhat leader is romantically involved with Lavinia. I doubt that any of the other PC's will pursue romances with the other females of the campaign, but I will certainly put the possibility out there. Since we're all a bunch of dudes we let the romance stuff stay off screen, but it does add a new element to the games.
I'd like to see someone "fall in love" with Tyralandi, or even better Malcanthet, but I doubt that will happen. (sigh)
I'm leary of forcing romance into the storyline if it's going to look like "this character is here for you to romance". The opportunities will be there, but I won't count on them. The only exception is Lavinia. I'd love for one of my PCs to try a romance with her because she's such a reoccuring damsel in distress that I suspect my group would get tired of her if they didn't have any in-character reasons for wanting to keep her alive.
I plan on playing up her wealth and nobility and hope to draw a player in by having Tolin boast to the party about his intent. Hopefully the feeling of "prize + competition" will motivate one or more of my players.
personally I think that this whole in game romance thing is retarded.
In-game romance hasn't come up for me very often, but I like it when it does. Or, rather, I like it when the potential of romance comes up.
Conflict is conflict in storytelling, and unfulfilled romance can make for great gaming, the way it can make for great TV. But, like in most TV examples, actually fulfilling the promise takes the fun out of it.
I'm wary of trying to make things like that work, mostly because my group tends to either form attachments or not at their own whim. For example I'll introduce a cute peasant girl who wants to be rescued from an oppressive family and will give key information for it--and one of the players decides their character falls in love with the girl. On the other hand bring in a character like Lavinia and the pcs end up liking her eventually but no one falls for her. So in a way all you can do is present your npcs as interesting (as you doubtless would anyway) and see how they respond.
well, both versions have occured in camapigns I played in or GMed.
As mentioned in another thread, our warblade in STAP got severly interested in Lavinia due to her "damsel-in-distress" situation, which appealed to his sensibilities and noble attitude. Things were slow to develop, and suddenly got complicated when the GM dropped in an old "love interest" of the character as a cohort.
This really challenged the character, and ultimately one of the NPCs went into suggestive seduction mode, and the player character got forced to make "resistance" checks to maintain his calm - which he proceeded to fail gloriously with actual natural "1"s. A moment of weakness, if you like. Things might have ended there, but the player decided to have his character react thoroughly to the changed situation.
Roleplaying-wise things got more interesting that way, even though the actual impetus resulted from him being forced to roll a die. The player was cussing at times and really going through some difficult moments about the whole issue, but ultimately it added depth and texture to the PC and NPCs involved. It became one of the more memorable sub-plots of the AP.
And everyone else had some good-natured laughs at his expense....
So, was it forced and hence despicable ? Yes, but it was mature player, and the only thing "forced" on him was complication, not an entire facet of his mind. He took it forward from the initial scene, and in the end everyone profitted, much as in many, less "emotionally-complex" scenes and non-combat challenges to a character. And I find it inherently wrong and lazy on part of the GM to have all interaction and complications originate exclusively from the PCs
we had a funny time time in the very first session. our half-orc barbarian Rahegar get impressed by Lavinia. then, when she ask them to stay in the vanderboren's manor, he states "in my tribe, if a woman agrees to share her home, also agrees to share her bed".
First, i think he wants to rush on Lavinia's room and force her, but he only start walking around her door all nigth. Finally other player (an human swasbuckler born in sasserine), tryed explain him how the things work in civilised lands. They keep going about one hour!! we have lots of laughs!
now, the relationship Rahegar-lavinia it's some kind of savage seduction, much like King-kong with his girl, with the half orc doing lots of silly things to impress her (like eructing loudly in the dinner, or trying to drink a whole berrel of beer one shot).
finally, i'm not sure if Lavinia is going to get interested a lot....
finally, i'm not sure if Lavinia is going to get interested a lot....
That's not really required. In many cases, a role-playing romance is most interesting if its never consummated. You can't really role-play the bedroom, but endless quarrels, making-ups, and courtship can give spice to the game.
Like they say in Teenagers from Outer Space:
"Teenagers from Outer Space never get to do it!"
|
The players in my campaign have been motivated to pursue romance by:
1) Ambitions to join the nobility by marrying up
2) Rivalry with others who they see competing for someone's hand
3) Illustrations that both answer the eternal question 'Are they hot?' and signify to their meta-minds that this is a major character in the path, worth getting involved with
Not all these work all the time. Rowyn's claim to noble blood didn't entice like Lavinia's did (perhaps if they'd seen the splendors of the Kellani mansion before the dank and dripping-walled subterranean lair of Lady Lotus it'd be a different story). On the other hand, one PC is interested in Liamae without any illustration. And even before I could set up Tolin as a rival for Lavinia, one PC started wooing her to compete with another PC who'd started making advances on her.