Fade to Black
In honor of Valentine’s, it’s time for an RPG romance story. And as palate cleansing contrast to the comic, this one’s actually got a happy ending.
Here’s the setup. We were in an Exalted 2e game, and two of my players decided to go for a shared backstory. One of their PCs, a gruff old bear type, gave up the love of his life for arcane power. His lover sold her soul in despair. So she comes back out of the underworld to find him, spends the whole campaign adventuring beside him, and finally gets him to fall back in love, sacrificing his power in turn.
So it’s grand finale time, and the last scene of the last session comes around. Evil is defeated, the forces of Hell held at bay, etc. He goes in for the kiss, and the whole table is ready for Gone With the Wind: iconic tableau, lower curtain, roll credits. But she puts a hand up to stop him.
“I’ve been chasing you too long. Now it’s your turn.”
She walks off into the sunset, he swears to follow after. Lower curtain. Roll credits. End of campaign.
Given the awkwardness that intraparty romance can inflict on a table, I had prepared myself to endure a cringe-fest of a melodrama. Much to my surprise and delight, it turned out to be some of the finest role playing I’ve ever seen. Lots of drama, simmering resentment, and zero awkwardness. Player maturity eff tee dub.
How about you kids? Ever have a successful romance in an RPG?
ARE YOU THE KIND OF DRAGON THAT HOARDS ART? Then you’ll want to check out the “Epic Hero” reward level on our Handbook of Heroes Patreon. Like the proper fire-breathing tyrant you are, you’ll get to demand a monthly offerings suited to your tastes! Submit a request, and you’ll have a personalized original art card to add to your hoard. Trust us. This is the sort of one-of-a-kind treasure suitable to a wyrm of your magnificence.
I had a 3.5 character get their grand send off by having them marry one of the other PCs and setting up an interplanar trade hub (because seriously, Sigil is a nightmare to navigate and maybe people would appreciate an alternative). This was mostly necessary because she’d attained divine rank 0 (in true beguiler style by convincing or conning everyone in the party that they were fine with her having it).
We had been doing the romance sub-plot the whole game though. Mostly we did it in private though because there was no reason to subject the rest of the party to the majority of it.
It was an amazingly grand send-off involving me GMing a solo session for each of the players to help explain their new status or prestige classes (it was pretty conveniently timed) and each one actually was secretly related and had something to do with events that lead to the founding of the trade hub (and thus brought them conveniently around in time for the wedding).
So what attacked the wedding? If superhero comics have taught me anything, something always attacks the wedding.
Oddly enough… another party member who was upset with the whole arrangement for personal reasons (IC of course). Of course it was more of a formal duel than an attack. Not that I was given an option to refuse it. Also not that there was any reason to… As stated above, my character was at this point too strong to remain in the party.
When I was in middle school, I ran a game for my little brother and dad. My brother kept hitting on girls, and I didn’t know what to do until my dad pointed out that he was doing it to get to me. So at his advice, I let him succeed at his next seduction.
He clearly hadn’t planned for that and defaulted to standard adventurer behavior. That is to say, he got up early the next morning and robbed her.
Fun fact: Since my brother was playing a rogue, I started the adventure with him in jail, and he complained about it. #NotAllRogues, in modern memery. (This was more than a decade ago, so obviously those weren’t his exact words.) But then, he proceeded to get arrested in every town the characters visited, except the one time Dad’s character helped him get away first.
Ah, youth. That’s the campaign where the players spared most of the first dungeon’s inhabitants and turned it into an unusually flooded castle. What weird ideas I had.
Have you ever seen the CallMeKevin video where AI Dungeon keeps getting fresh with him?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTM5cYw64D8
How could he still ride a unicorn after this? Looks like he does not know the deed is to be done. He doing the ride check is the problem.