Storyboard: I only have eyes for you

Welcome back to another edition of Storyboard, wherein I'm going to tackle an issue that is very near and dear to my heart. Matter of fact, it's near and dear to almost everyone's heart, and it's a topic that I'm sure I'm either going to revisit or avoid wholeheartedly in the future, because we're stepping into an emotional minefield. Today, we're going to be talking about romantic relationships in roleplaying.

Okay, now that some of the readers have run screaming from the room (which was kind of unnecessary, they could have just closed the browser), let's clarify that we are talking about romantic relationships, not anything else that could fall under the header of romance. That magical night you shared with a Mithra in Bastok Markets is an entirely different topic that I have no real interest in covering here. So we're at least into the realm of just plain emotional awkwardness, and that's for the best, as there's more than enough material there to cover for years.

Why romance in roleplaying is a terrible idea

I'm just going to put that out there right away. Romance in roleplaying leads to almost all of the drawbacks of a relationship with virtually none of the bonuses. More often than not, it means that you get to go through every single horrible break-up fight you've ever taken part in with the added benefit of a cold, lifeless computer screen relaying all of the words to you.

And the extra benefit that you're paying money for the privilege of having a relationship argument.

Ideally, yes, all of this is done completely in character. But unless you know a group of people who are supremely good at distancing themselves from the characters they play, you can't help but internalize what happens to your character. That, in turn, leads to you taking things personally, especially in matters of the heart. And thus begins a vicious cycle wherein two people keep raising the stakes on emotional blackmail for an activity that they used to find fun.

Should you be dating someone at the time, of course, you have to either explain to them why you're pretending to date someone on the Internet (which promises to be a fun conversation) or you can hide it from them (leading inevitably to an even more fun conversation, this time with bonus tears and screaming). On the flipside, if you're single, it's like dealing with your hunger by staring at a steak. Or drawing a picture of a steak and then staring at that.

Naturally, all of the above problems can be immediately solved by doing your romantic roleplaying with someone that you're already romantically involved with. But then we're venturing into the realm of silliness.

All of this is exacerbated by the fact that emotional boundaries with a roleplaying relationship can get uncomfortably fuzzy. If you play a character of a different gender than yourself, that just muddies the waters even further. I'm not saying that describing how deeply your fictional avatar cares about another fictional avatar is wrong -- I'm saying that if either person involved starts really thinking about it, there can be some uncomfortable questions that start getting asked.

Why we still go for it

There's a reason why romantic subplots are present in virtually every movie, television show, and video game you care to name. Human beings have an innate attraction to, well, attraction. The species continues as a result of this. And if you want your characters to seem three-dimensional, that means you almost need to venture into the realm of who they're attracted to, simply because it's such a natural progression for human thought.

Yes, you get caught up in the emotions, which often drags you through some terrible lows, but the whole reason you're roleplaying in the first place is in order to experience something outside of your usual sphere of existence. The payoff is all the greater in the end when you've actually been in someone's shoes as they loved and lost.

A relationship in a game can be what you want it to be. It can be set in motion to achieve the goals that you want it to achieve from the start. If you know you don't want the characters to end up together, that can be set in motion from the beginning. The trials and tribulations that everyone goes through after that point is something you can experience vicariously. No matter how solid your relationship might be in the real world, it can only ever be the one story... unlike your characters, who can have whatever sort of relationship you find most appropriate.

While it can cause static at times with your actual relationship status, more often than not it's not meant to replace a real relationship but allow you to step into a different one. Sometimes, framing a real problem in your relationship in the setting of a game can lead you to get past obstacles you wouldn't even be aware of otherwise. Sometimes it's just nice to have a little time off from the person you live with (or the absence of same). And if everyone involved knows what's going on, it's not really any different from playing through Dragon Age: Origins and having your character hook up with Alistair.

So where do we go from here?

Clearly, roleplaying romantic relationships isn't the brightest idea you can have. But that doesn't mean it's a terrible idea either (despite earlier tongue-in-cheek hyperbole) and it can lead to some excellent story options. Hopefully, being aware of the problems alone can help you avoid them -- but it's a big topic that I intend to revisit soon. (Next week is soon.)

But if you need some advice right up front, I have once excellent piece that also keeps the conclusion constructive. It's so simple and yet important that it gets its own paragraph, and it is:

When in doubt, bow out.

Roleplaying romance is one of the trickiest areas to navigate. There's so much potential for hurting the feelings of so many people that the best rule to operate by is that any questions you have should be immediately answered with either a pause or a full stop. Caution is the best byword here.

Next week, we're going to go into more depth about how to ensure that no one winds up having a screaming fight in or out-of-game that wasn't intended from the word go. Until then, comments and marriage proposals can be left in the comments, or sent to Eliot@massively.com. Although I'll be understandably leery of the latter.