Storyboard: Anyone else but you
Welcome back to another installment of Storyboard, and another week of discussing romantic relationships in roleplaying. If you missed last week's column, it's a helpful primer, talking both about why it's a terrible idea and why the odds are high that you're going to do it anyway. And I can't criticize on that front -- I eat at McDonald's even though I know it's bad for me, I buy new Transformers even though I know it's not the best use of my money, and I watch Persons Unknown even though I know it's only going to last one season.
Still, a bad idea is only as bad as you make it. To continue my above analogy, as long as I know the whole time that the show is only going to last one season, I can enjoy the heck out of that season. (It's not Lost, but it's pretty darn good.) And while you can't fix all of the fundamental problems with roleplaying relationships, you can do a lot to make sure that the course of love runs smoothly for the players, if not the characters.
Figure everything out ahead of time
I know there are some roleplayers who really hate to plan things out in advance, preferring instead to just let the story advance as it's going to without any interference. This approach can work wonderfully in many scenarios, but this isn't one of them. Even if all you're going to do is figure out the general plot of the arc, that needs to be done up front and without manipulation.
Yes, you're planning on having your character reveal his secret love child further on. That's great. Tell the other player about it now.
The reasons for this should be obvious. In a situation where it's really easy for people to get emotionally involved, it's really easy to misunderstand something. Even if your other player is a mature and reasonable person, it's very possible that the sudden revelation of said love child will make them wonder if you're uncomfortable with the in-game relationship. And rather than assuaging those fears later (assuming they're brought up in the first place), it's better to lay your cards on the table from the get-go.
Even if you truly hate planning things out in advance, at least do a little bit of pre-emptive planning. Even a general sense of where you want the romance to go can often be sufficient. At the very least, it establishes boundaries for the relationship and makes it clear what's motivating any and all changes. The slight lack of suspense is a more than fair trade.
And while we're on the subject of advance planning? Before you enter into a roleplaying relationship with someone, you should also make it clear to the other player what your chances are of winding up together. "Slim to none" is an optimal choice. "None" is usually even better. Really, unless you're already involved in a relationship with the other person, engaging in a real-life one via roleplaying isn't so much a terrible idea as it is compounding a bad idea with a worse one, along the same lines as going from "I'm cool to drive" to "I can fool this cop" to "that cop can't catch me."
Know the other person
Before engaging in a real relationship, one would hope that you know the other person fairly well. Before actors engage in an on-screen or on-stage romance, they usually take the time to get to know one another. And before you pretend to be in a relationship with someone, you'd be well-served by making sure that you know the person behind the screen reasonably well. You don't need to be able to recite all of their childhood pets, but you should have a pretty clear picture of who they are.
If you don't want a lot of real-life drama creeping in to the whole affair, watch out for warning signs of immaturity. Someone who throws a fit when a drop from a boss goes to someone else is most likely a poor choice. Someone who talks constantly out of character about their real-world relationship, either the kinky details or their lack of same, is also not an ideal choice. You want someone that displays an ability to separate real life and the game, even more so than with regular roleplaying.
At the same time, you want someone who's on board with what you want to develop for your character, and vice-versa. If your partner sees his character as never getting the girl and you want a happy romance, well, someone's going to have to give. Before starting in on compromising your plans for your character arc, however, ask yourself if it's not going to just cause more misery in the long run. Sometimes people just aren't right for one another in a fake in-game relationship.
Don't make it overbearing
Last and most certainly not least, for the love of any deity you care to name, please do not make the entire game The Adventure of Character X's Traveling Pants. I have seen people do this, and while both of them were on board and clearly knew what they were doing, it made interacting with either character absolutely nauseating. Picture every time that your friends were making out whilst you were single, multiply it by ten, and you will have some inkling of how insipid this gets.
There's nothing wrong with bringing up a relationship in the context of another event. But not only does constantly hearing about it get tiresome, it grates just a touch more because it isn't an actual relationship. It tramples over the boundaries of other people, some of whom might be kind of skeeved by the whole faux-relationship anyhow, and it forces far too much of the story to revolve around what is essentially a private affair.
Some people like romance in their stories, and some don't care about it. And while a love triangle is all well and good, if you keep shoving it down everyone's throats, eventually no one is going to care who Kate winds up with. (This is materially helped by the fact that everyone hates Kate.)
All of these are just guidelines, however. I stand by the biggest piece of advice I gave in the prior column, reprinted once again:
When in doubt, bow out.
Keeping all this in mind won't make the course of fictional love run smooth. But it will certainly minimize your headaches, and really, that's all you can hope for. If you insist on going down the path of romance, I wish you luck. Having said that, it's the end of the column for this week, and the end of this particular discussion for a while. As always, eliot@massively.com is the address for comments, complaints, or those who really did care about Kate's romantic relationships up to the end. Next week is a return to character creation, as we look at developing characters from abilities in more depth.
