(07-23-2017, 09:29 AM)AishaHeartfield Wrote:

For me personally, so much character development occurs through the complex interactions between my character and those written by other people. To skip all the experiences and interactions that may lead to an organic connection between them is to deny my character what I feel to be genuine development and progression within the world. A large part of the creative appeal of roleplay for me, as opposed to writing on my own, is to watch my character develop through unpredictable situations and engagements with others.

I feel that a prior arranged romantic roleplay would rob that creative process of its organic value and in turn, result in a character that feels forced or unnatural. It would affect my immersion.

While I certainly don't judge others for pre-arranging romances, or seeking out that kind of writing specifically; I feel that the relationships my character forms with others is part of the greater whole of who she is. Romance is never the central theme to the story of any of my characters, only a supporting plot that may or may not enhance her story and development.

From my experiences, I find that the more forceful someone appears OOCly  for their character to be involved with my own, the less receptive I become to the idea even if it may have been a natural step my character could have taken. I distinctly recall, my character becoming involved with another (a different game) and when I in a friendly way said I 'missed them' meaning the writing during a very busy period of my life the person's response was, "You don't miss them. You miss me."

Needless to say, I did not continue to roleplay with that person because they had begun to blur the lines and since have grown cautious of roleplay with too heavy a romantic component.

(07-23-2017, 09:46 AM)SicketySix Wrote: I've done both types of RP, and honestly I've both had success/failure for both. Pre-planned skips the whole "Does the character like mine?" or "Is the player themselves even interested in romance RP." However to me it takes most of the fun out of it.

Either way, success or failure comes down to the individuals behind the characters, and not whether it was pre-planned or not.

(07-23-2017, 09:29 AM)AishaHeartfield Wrote:

For me personally, so much character development occurs through the complex interactions between my character and those written by other people. To skip all the experiences and interactions that may lead to an organic connection between them is to deny my character what I feel to be genuine development and progression within the world. A large part of the creative appeal of roleplay for me, as opposed to writing on my own, is to watch my character develop through unpredictable situations and engagements with others.

I feel that a prior arranged romantic roleplay would rob that creative process of its organic value and in turn, result in a character that feels forced or unnatural. It would affect my immersion.

While I certainly don't judge others for pre-arranging romances, or seeking out that kind of writing specifically; I feel that the relationships my character forms with others is part of the greater whole of who she is. Romance is never the central theme to the story of any of my characters, only a supporting plot that may or may not enhance her story and development.

From my experiences, I find that the more forceful someone appears OOCly  for their character to be involved with my own, the less receptive I become to the idea even if it may have been a natural step my character could have taken. I distinctly recall, my character becoming involved with another (a different game) and when I in a friendly way said I 'missed them' meaning the writing during a very busy period of my life the person's response was, "You don't miss them. You miss me."

Needless to say, I did not continue to roleplay with that person because they had begun to blur the lines and since have grown cautious of roleplay with too heavy a romantic component.

(07-23-2017, 09:55 AM)Erah Wrote: About the only pre-arranged romatic RP I've done was with my OOC SO with one exception and that was still a RL friend.  We designed characters that worked well together, and worked romantically, but never really made that the focus of their RP.  Romance was just something that kind of was implied / expected most of the time..  

It freed us up from dealing with others focused on relationship based RP because our characters were already committed. It also gave a brilliant excuse to duck out of scenes.

It also helped when that we were both the type to look at our characters and going "What can we do to these poor sods now!" and then when said atrocity was surmounted, we had that close partnership between them to play out the coping and resolution.

Now, allow me to turn towards a more 'beardy' discussion on this for a moment.  (It's a technical term)

In the end we all play for a more or less similar reasons.  To change the way we feel, either through accomplishment, to avoid something, to indulge ourselves in something.  Maybe to make sense of things on a small scale when we can't do that with the rest of the world.  

We achieve this in so many ways it's beyond counting.  Each of us through different things.  We all change how we feel in different ways.  Some by climbing an infuriating tower; by punching things in savage raids; perhaps by weaving an intriguing storyline or getting that perfect screenshot.  Maybe even something as simple as derailing Kugane shout into puns about tea.
Maybe even in exploring romance in a virtual setting.

How we all change how we feel based on what desires and needs.  I'm not going to go into analyzing what might be the case with these posts.  It may be something as simple as not wanting to deal with that sort of situation coming up on the fly in their RP and dealing with anxiety and drama there?  Maybe the satisfaction of coming home, logging in and knowing that they have someone there to RP with?  There are as many causes and answers as there are grains of sand.

In the end it's no more or less valid then shaping a character to fit a particular concept or FC nor then logging in to grind a craft skill to 70 or what have you.

(07-23-2017, 11:08 AM)Rosekitten Wrote: Personally in my experience it's easier to set up the idea that the characters may get together without stepping on toes because my word.. some people are hurt by the smallest of things. In the past some of my more entertaining character relations were with a friend who would brainstorm with me as to what hells to run the pair through after the previous plot was finished.. While fun I have had amazing interactions in the past with random relationships. Pretty few and far between but it did happen.

Now a days I only have relationship rps with my husband and his characters. Granted they are all prearranged .. or I guess you could say they are. We still go about the bases of actually making a story and not just writing that characters are married just because. I'm happy with how our characters and stories turn out so I see nothing wrong with setting up ideas for a story.

Also seeing as it was mentioned.. I've run into some of those who use rp as a dating service... More then a few times. Even when saying I was married it didn't seem to deter them in the least. (yay for blacklist)

(07-23-2017, 12:18 PM)Lydia Lightfoot Wrote: Yay, my topic got a lot of replies while I slept!

I think a lot of the uncertainty element, at least as a player, can be mitigated by communication. Whenever a character I've played over the years has seemed to be potentially making a romance-possible connection with someone's character, I like to chat with the player of the other character and make sure I'm not misreading their OOC intention. Sometimes a player will just want their character to be flirty or something but not actually have it go anywhere, so a discussion like that assures me that it wasn't, like... the player ended up not liking my writing, or something like that. 

If it is something they player is interested in, then the OOC discussion ends up shifting to pragmatic topics. Are our schedules reasonably compatible as players? If the characters did get romantically involved they needn't be attached at the hip, of course, but if we'd only be likely to even get to RP once a week, that may make it difficult for them to have enough face time to actually form that connection. Do we have similarities in our ideals as players? Some players tend to be collaborative with storytelling while others prefer to be very independent; some play a lot of alts and others mostly focus on a main character only or maybe one lone alt; some have an active schedule of activities their character is involved in and so the potential romance interest might have to chase them around a bit, whereas others may be hoping said romantic interest will lead the way to RP events; some may have a stronger separation between IC and OOC than others (and as others have mentioned they may even be hoping their RP will lead to an OOC interest, which is a good thing to be informed about up front, to avoid hurt feelings on their part later when the other person is like "wait what?"); and of course the "adult stuff talk" - do they prefer FTB or not, and if not, to what extent to they prefer it be a focal point of their romantic RP.

I've had plenty of situations where after having the OOC chat, the other player and I realize that our interests as players just don't line up enough that this promising thing our characters have led themselves to is just probably not going to be a happy time for us as players - and that's okay to realize that. It's the same in any hobby. You can run a D&D group and enjoy the company of this person from the game store who's just a real hoot, but, the guy just has a hectic and oddball schedule and it's impossible to get him around a table on a consistent basis, so he's not a good fit for your D&D group even if he's a cool dude. 

Sometimes, that result means I don't ever really see that player's character around again, and other times I do, but the characters have a fairly organic evolution of their original "hmm, maybe?" thoughts into "mm, friends is good" instead. Or, sometimes other fun results happen, wherein one of the characters ends up harboring a crush or something like that, and as happens in real life, it just doesn't lead anywhere. 

I've often thought to myself - is this OOC chat technically a form of pre-arrangement? I don't really feel like it is, because we're not deciding the characters will become involved, we're just determining whether or not if they became involved it would actually be a workable situation for us as players.