 Howdy how's it going, my name's Davy Chappy and for the first time ever you get to see what I really look like besides you know all of those pictures that you see at the beginning of every video but nobody knows what I look like anyway so whatever. But today on this Davy vlog, I'm not calling them that, we're going to be talking about handling romantic relationships in game and this is a touchy topic for a lot of reasons. Romance is a strange concept that a lot of people just don't understand anyway so pretending to understand it is very weird and icky and gross especially considering you are doing not erotic roleplay but definitely like weird love roleplay with your friends for whom you probably have a very platonic relationship with and probably do not share a romantic attraction with their gender. So I myself do my best to stay away from romance in my own games and that is because I personally get very weirded out by it. It's not creepy to me to have characters in games but it is just off-putting for me to think about how I have created a character that is still representative of me because I am the one who is voicing and acting it and then having another player go in and like flirt with and make interesting moves around with ahhh. But that's not to say I haven't done it. There are a few times where for the plot it has made sense for one of my NPCs to have a romantic relationship with another character and doing that takes a level of finesse because you have to respect that it is a game and not a real life scenario which is the biggest issue in the world. There are so many creepy people who try to get with a person because they play the role playing game and then they try to romance all of that person's characters so that they can romance the person and blech. I'm gonna be making a lot of noises on this. The biggest thing you have to establish is boundaries. Boundaries matter a lot especially with romance or especially in any romantic relationship real or fake boundaries are the biggest issue. We do not need another Far Verona. If there is going to be romance at all or if your players are acting as if they want to have romance in their games then you need to establish either right then in there or right at the end of the game hey this is gonna be all in game and or you can just say no I do not want to have romance in my games we can like have it be its own off the page like out off the screen type deal like you can give control of that npc completely to the characters just say hey take this they're not in the story anymore this is yours decide how you want that to play out because I do not want to be that person that you are doing this thing with and that's fine that's a perfectly reasonable thing to do you as the dm and more importantly as a person get to decide what your boundaries are and what lines you are not going to cross this is the same for your players if you want to have romantic relationships in your games then your players have to be cool with it you can't just have a character show up and be all like yes I am here for the sex and then have your players be all like that's okay thanks goodbye that's not okay and even when you are role playing romance it's not a one to a hundred thing it's not an on off switch it's not a thing where you say okay we're going to have romance and now everything goes fair game for everything no you can establish exactly how much you want to have in there it can be a full blown love story if that's what you want and what your players want or it can be as simple as yeah they like each other and they're going to keep hanging out together and that's going to be its thing and they're not going to really be showy about it because they're just not that kind of relationship and that is also perfectly fine it all comes down to talking with your players pretty much every time I have a video like this talking about like how to deal with interpersonal relationships it always comes down to tell your players how you feel and listen to how they feel and then find that common ground and you are good to give some examples for me I currently have like two different romantic relationships that are me and a player for one of those relationships it was very much will they won't they thing because the player was being all like mating dance and the NPC was all like I'm not sure if I'm ready for a relationship right now and it was like a nerdy awkward thing and we all enjoyed it because we all acknowledged that it was completely in game and it was just happening for the sake of the story and it turned into a really really big plot point that character that NPC ended up leaving the group and disappearing for a while and then they got kidnapped so that it could be the damsel in distress and now they are a driving force for that player and I'm fine with that because hey it's an NPC that's just how these stories go as for the other romantic relationship literally the only reason why this began is because all of the players the is an ASMR and tiefling pairing and if you're like oh that's perfect that is the exact reason why this exists all the other players were like I ship it and then it just started to become a thing the two of them the player in the NPC started hanging out more they started going on their own little expeditions on their own to do things and for them it was very much a thing of neither of them really like neither of them really were going to say or act like they had any romantic pairing whatsoever in any way literally to this point right now they can't even really be called a romantic pairing because they didn't like they're not doing anything romantic but it's such a unspoken bond that they have that I would constitute it as a potential romance just because who knows what's going to happen and as long as the romance fuels the story and everybody is cool with it then DM to player romances are perfectly fine now then we have to deal with player to player romances and that is its own very tricky business I currently have two of those in my games hilariously it is the exact same different groups that had the DM to player romances but it's different people doing different things so for one of them it is they are actually dating in real life and so they are having a romantic relationship between their characters in game that is a recipe for disaster if they ever decide in real life that they don't like each other anymore personally how it is for me it's like okay they're dating in real life them dating as characters perfectly fine who cares if they break up as characters that's fine even if they're not dating in game then if they break up in real life that's gonna explode anyway and them dating it as characters is not going to matter at all it's like it's not gonna change the world one way or another in any way that's just not how it's going to be so when they're just playing characters like that then it's perfectly fine and I mean their relationship is fine so man that's life as for the other group they are not dating in real life it is just their characters that have a romantic relationship and it is very much an off-screen thing they don't bring it out to the rest of the table and be all like yes love which is respectable to all the other players that just might not want to have to deal with that kind of story and once again it's perfectly reasonable thing they decided that they wanted to do it and then they did it and it doesn't affect all of the other people that are playing the game so nobody is upset everybody finds it to be like if they even if they don't care about it they don't find it to be a detriment to the game so it's fine now the issue is when players are having problems out of game that are bleeding into the game uh because of romantic tension and to that I say that is not your job if my players are having their own romantic issues then I'm going to say hey friends please work this out and then come back to the table unless of course it is very obvious that one of those people is being a very bad person to the other one uh in which case I mean viewer discretion you decide if you are going to insert yourself into somebody's romantic drama uh I would not advise it unless it is very obvious that it is a bad relationship and one of them is having a really hard time dealing with it on their own uh but even then it's like you have to be very very touchy with those the best option a lot of the time is just not to involve yourself it's very very unfortunate when something like that happens because relationships are messy and a lot of the time it's either neither of their faults or more likely it is both of their faults because they like did some one of them did some antagonistic thing and so another person retaliated but then it's their fault because they started it and then it spirals out of control and explodes and it's a messy situation all around nobody likes that and when that happens you have to disconnect the game from real life because at the end of the day you are probably playing with a bunch of people that you know if you're not playing with people that you know and this is just a bunch of strangers then you are free to just disconnect them for a little while and say hey please sort this out as best as you can and then let us know what the results are and then click them back in afterwards but if they are your friends which is more likely then i mean dnd unfortunately doesn't take precedence and we all sort of i'm sure internalize that and acknowledge that as soon as a breakup happens the game is probably over and it's awful but that's the rub like you can't keep playing a game like that it is just a game and your real life friends matter a lot more so you should be worried about them in real life as friends and hopefully even if they don't decide to continue being friends with each other you can continue to have relationships not romantic with them so that you can keep playing dnd and hopefully have more relationships not romantic in the games but yeah i don't really think there's much else that i can talk about i've rambled on for as long as i could i hope you enjoyed this video let me know if you want to see more of these personal like face-to-face conversations i really enjoy talking more to people about topics like this about more social issues that we can tackle together uh and if there's something that you want me to talk about please feel free to mention it in the comics i would love to have a bigger library of things that i can make videos on because honestly i think i just like hearing myself talk but i hope you have a wonderful evening please check out all of my social media in the description below but yeah to have you out