Storyboard: Talk about the passion

Two of the earliest columns I did for Storyboard were all about romance in roleplaying. If you've forgotten them, they can be found here and here, but if you don't feel like reading a couple thousand words just to continue with this column, the gist was pretty simple. In short -- don't. But since you're going to anyway, take the usual steps to avoid any sort of spilling drama.

Actually, I should just make a column of usual tips to avoid spilling drama in roleplaying and save myself a lot of time.

It's been more than a year since those were written, and to my great joy they're still relevant and useful. But at the same time, there's more to be said on the topic, albeit in bits and pieces. So (possibly against my better judgment) I'm diving face-first into the sea of love once again to talk about a couple of points that I either didn't discuss the first time around or only briefly touched on.

The Unattainable

One of the things that I really didn't cover in my last column might seem pretty obvious in retrospect, especially as it's something that I've brought up in play before. Sometimes a character romance is a very one-sided affair. Your character is in love with another character, but said other character is oblivious or uninterested or taken or any number of other things. So you get all of the passion and the drama without an actual relationship! Courtly love is awesome!

Well, until that other player decides that this relationship is actually a lot more interesting than what he or she had initially planned.

I'm all for using a romance that's doomed straight from the starting gate. Hell, I'd even encourage it. But the problem comes when you assume, without any OOC communication, that this relationship is unattainable. Sometimes it might be closer to happening than you had thought... and then not only are you mired in a relationship you didn't expect to happen, but you're also derailing your existing plans for a character. All of that pathos and unhappiness you had been planning to mine out of the unattainable man (or woman, or robot, or marmot) has just been replaced with arguments over who remembered to buy milk last week.

At this point, I'm obligated to point out that if you have not at least once argued over who remembered to buy milk, toilet paper, or cat food, you are still legally single. Enjoy it while it lasts because there's nothing like a screaming debate centering around cat food.

Of course, the only thing worse for an unattainable relationship is if said unattainable relationship is actually just never going to happen. If you have a friend who mopes around after someone for more than two years, you probably have an idea of what that's like to watch. It's some combination of aggressively not getting the hint and willfully misunderstanding friendly gestures as romantic, and it's the sort of thing that can cross the border into tedium very quickly.

Unattainable romances are great, and they make for a wonderful bit of predestined character failure. But give them a lifespan of about two months before you move on, tops. Otherwise it's going to start getting tedious.

(Incidentally, an unattainable romance that would actually be a horrible relationship if it ever happened -- now there's material.)

The fade to black

In lieu of marriage, love goes together with something else like a horse and carriage. You can guess what I'm talking about here. It's not really the fault of the players, since there's not always a whole lot of space for marriage in an ongoing story or the general swoop of an MMO. So you skip all of the parts where people fill out a few hundred forms to get joined and skip right to the...

OK, I don't have a clever euphemism there.

Now, I've just written on some of the many reasons ERP is such a prickly issue that it's difficult to look at it directly without getting splinters. I'm not going to advocate that roleplaying romance has to go that far. But at the same time, unless you're pantomiming the Disney style of relationship where a hug indicates affection and anything more is a wedding, you're going to have to at least touch upon it at some point.

So you fade to black. You and the other player just have to agree at a certain point that the whole process stops once you reach point X. What X will be depends on each player, but the important point is to reach a consensus and then stick with it. If you don't want to veer into ERP territory, that's the best and most mature way to handle things. Let anyone else fill in the blanks if he has to.

My biggest piece of advice here would be to discuss that point ahead of time with the other person, and whatever you do, keep in mind that an MMO is basically on par with a prime-time drama. If you wouldn't feel comfortable seeing it in a show on network television, that's probably veering too far into details that are best left to the imagination. And it only really matters if there needs to be an audience. Having two characters walk out of a room after a kiss, with the right dialogue, is more than enough to fill in all the blanks. You can stop there, fade to black, and let things go.

Or, you know, you could go the other route if both of you like that. Just please, for all that's good, don't tell me about it.

As always, feedback on this column and the issues addressed herein can be sent to eliot@massively.com or left in the comments. Next week, as I mentioned in the comments of the column before this one, I'm going to take a look at balancing your character's failures against successes at just the right point.

Every Friday, Eliot Lefebvre fills a column up with excellent advice on investing money, writing award-winning novels, and being elected to public office. Then he removes all of that, and you're left with Storyboard, which focuses on roleplaying in MMOs. It won't help you get elected, but it will help you pretend you did.