Sex, love & romance; how do you handle it?

By Morffe, in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay

Posted at

Sunatet said:

I try not to mess with sex and romance too much on my sessions.

I learned on my own skin how some people, even those that you know for a very long time can react (sometimes very emotionally) to such situations.

I was a player back then, and we were playing an independent system made by my friends.

I was playing an orc, and one of the female players (current wife of the player that reacted so rapidly) way playing an elf.

In the named system elf females had period very rarely, but when they had.. well, you had to chain them to the walls (any of You have a female cat? then you know how it goes).

Problem was we were in the middle of the sea on a small ship, when she got her period..

Everything was good, we closed her in a small cabin. I was the one that was ment to bring her food (since as an orc I was the most ugly one).

I won't get into the details, but lets say, there was a very interesting situation, and tension rised quickly (the friend that played elf roleplayed it fantastically).

Unfortunately just as we were supposed to go further (in game of course) her boyfriend freaked out. We had to break the session.

GM was so mad, that he wanted to exclude the player from our group at first (we were playing for years together).

Anyway session was ruined, and we stopped messing with sex and romance in our scenarios too much.

Huh. That reminds me of another session where the girlfriend of my said friend was invited to try out the game. She was playing a female rogue character of some sort with the 'charm' skill, and her boyfriend (my friend) was playing an amber wizard. Then I have this one flirterous NPC interact with the rogue and so the rogue is trying to get some information and probably money out of him via charm and is roleplaying it quite well actually.

My friend started using that lessor spell to make the NPC start dropping things and make the NPC make a fool of himself basically.

Let me clarify this to you who missed it. An amber wizard who was tought how dangerous using trivial magic is, start 'spamming' spells so that he can embarass an NPC who is flirting with a rogue who he just met and grouped with, while the rogue is trying to charm money and information out of him.

His excuse was that he was annoyed with the NPC, but I think it's a whole different reason.

Good thing I didn't dwelve into sex like you did. That would've been ugly.

And by the way, I was half hoping during the session that he miscast and summon a lesser daemon in the middle of a bar. That'll make things interesting. :D

Posted at

The psycological trauma and the like in a game is actually hit on in games that use insanity. Sure they generaly go for the more abstract side of things but for me that is more a cue because realistically most RPGs are designed to be available to a teen audience. Once you start getting into the gritty substances of the 'human' psyche it definatly tends to take the game on a more mature path line.

Also it tends to fall into that area of 'is it fun', and often dealing with or playing on the mental instabilities of a character isnt that fun for most.

Posted at

Loswaith said:

Also it tends to fall into that area of 'is it fun', and often dealing with or playing on the mental instabilities of a character isnt that fun for most.

Well, playing a "comical crazy person" isn't very fun for me at all. Bu trying to portray someone who is really suffering from a mental disorder as realistically as possible sure is.

It's acting basically, and sometimes actors has to portray people that are less than perfect. We can't all be morally upstanding and uncomplicated heroes of the world if we're trying to play human beings. Some will be drug addicts, some will be schizofrenics, some will be psychopaths. Some of them will be overly confident (or "courageous"), and some will be abject cowards, some will be altruistic, some will be self-serving bastards.

Some will be all of these things combined.

The reason? Well, it's human to be flawed. And even if some flaws are more accepted socially than others, it doesn't change the fact that it's still human. Good, evil, sane, insane these are just abstracts based on perceptions really. They don't really exist but within our own minds.

The fun part of it all is trying to give an accurate portrayal of someone that isn't you, rather than always trying to portray a more skilled, able-bodied and heroic version of yourself.

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It would be cool if my players were a bit more like you, Varnias.

They tend to start character creation explaining the grim and traumatized nature of their character and by the time we're playing they're almost always jovial, fun-loving adventurers who tend to be unusually polite to every NPC they meet, as well. Very odd :) But they're great guys and I enjoy our sessions.