thread: 2005-03-11 : Love, Friendship, Romance, Sex
On 2005-03-14, xenopulse wrote:
Well...
Both Charles and Ben have a point (or more). The medium matters here. Lisa can play relationship issues successfully and in depth because:
a) As Charles said, the online interface makes it easier to write things than saying them face to face;
b) In her environment, she can often play one-on-one for a couple of hours whereas in tabletop that would bore the rest of the group to death; and
c) I as her husband am very easy-going and can separate IC and OOC quite successfully.
Typing enables a certain separation between the players, but that's also something that allows them to share things more, because the risk is lower. I can much more easily write about a character's emotions and romantic/sensual actions (and subtleties) than I could spell them out to a group. It just feels different.
I have found that a typed-out scene with just one other player that you can spend some time on can be very detailed. Think about it—relationships build over time, through small things. In most games, there's just no room for that. My tabletop game group meets once a month for 6 hours. That's just not enough time to roleplay those kinds of things. But when you have a couple of hours and you can describe the little things, the tension building up, small temptations, etc., it makes a big difference.
And yes, as I said, Ben has a point as well. Lisa and I certainly explored our attraction to one another through characters in the beginning; that's how we met, and how I ended up on this continent. And nowadays she's playing deeply romantic and sometimes sexual scenes with other people. Some people would have a really hard time with that. I don't.
Of course, that's all mostly about love and sex. There's also friendship and loyalty, which is overall a little easier to play, I think. Though maybe not, when it gets really deep.
So, given the constraints of a face-to-face game, I think Tony is on the right track when he talks about "support[ing] a pattern of behavior through the rules." We can't focus on the creation and details of the relationship; there's just little time and no good forum for that face-to-face. So the next best thing is to get to the expression of the relationships. I am still toying with the idea of players awarding each other for different types of in-character behavior. I think PTA's fanmail can show us a great way to implement this.
Think about it—instead of having hard rules on relationships in place, the players in the group can simply decide that a character's behavior adds drama to the game, or romantic intensity, or whatnot, and award accordingly. Sure, it'll be up to the individual group how exactly that pans out, but that doesn't mean it won't work.
- Christian
