PC -> NPC Romance, A world first! Options

[The Jake]

Hi all

I had to share this gem from my own campaign - and I'm curious to hear how this has been handled within other groups.

Recently, one of my PCs began a love affair with an NPC.

Now, I've been running games for over 20 years now (Christ! That long!) and this is a first for me. I've seen PCs go to brothels, pick up strangers, anything not intimate or expressing feeling. This love affair in my campaign has all the hall marks of a Romeo and Juliet -

He is a drake covert ops specialist mystic adept, involved in shadowrunning, arms dealing, drug trafficking with ties to Tamanous. Despite this, has a twinge of conscience and his own code to how he conducts his work.
She is an ork Lone Star Detective DPI investigator who is also a Hermetic Mage with a reputation as being hard as nails and career minded.

Their first 'date' was a lunch where they talked about some of random bits and pieces of trivia - mostly odd jobs where they've helped each other out and how its made the news.
Their second date (first real date) he said he was taking her out clubbing. Drawing upon his connections he gets an exclusive VIP pass to Dante's Inferno (7th level), rents a limo and gets drinks on the house.

In short, their night ends as expected but in the morning she was lamenting how on one hand, she's ignoring all her training and breaking the law by seeing him but at the same time admits she is drawn to him (hey, chicks are always drawn to the bad boys).

Mentally I am now thinking of how/where I can take this and where it might go and I'm just curious, does anyone have any similar such stories from their own campaigns? Any amazing PC/NPC romance subplots in your games? Where did they go? How did you handle them? I'm just looking for ideas and inspiration at this point (already got some of my own but wanting to hear more).

- J.

PS: I am really pleased/happy to see this eventuate. I think it demonstrates not just player maturity but also character growth/development.

[flext]

That is really awesome! I think it shows good GMing on your part, and good RP and maturity on the players part. It is a gem when something like that happens in a game.

I have never had that in SR, but in another popular fantasy game (you guessed it) I was playing in there was a long romantic plot that went on with an NPC. It was a slow start that grew into something larger. I ended up helping him (I was playing a female char) out of some dark times,and we adventured together for sometime. In the end, due to forces beyond our control, I killed him to save the rest of the party. It was one of those moments when the entire room just goes silent as it sinks in for everyone. We finished the adventure a short time later and my character ended up having his child. It was an interesting RP scenario and for character development.

Work with this and make it something memorable. I can see this almost progressing naturally through the ups and downs of a relationship. I can see the career thing causing some issue. Maybe pressure or distrust from the shadow community when people hear he is with a "cop". This could almost be a crazy Romeo and Juliet sort of thing. In any case a big congrats from me(for what it's worth) and keep up the good RP.

[Blade]

In the first SR campaign I've GMed, there was a character who had his ex-girlfriend as a contact. They both lived in the same building (not the same apartment though). He was the one who dumped her. She wanted him dead (or so she was saying) and he wanted to keep her as a contact.
A few weeks later, he lost his memories in a cranial bomb accident and fell in love with her again. It took a long time, but she finally believed in his story and they started to get together again, until he got his old memories back.

Then in my current campaign, there's the complicated relationship between one of the hacker's two personalities and his fixer, an AI that somehow "merged" with a technomancer. (and other less strange romances, but somehow they always tend to lead to trouble).

[Lok1 :)]

The backstory for my favorite character was actualy very similer to the plot you just described Jake, only he was the result of such a relationship. She ended up dumping the shadowrun when she became pregnate and several weeks after she gave birth he kidnaped his child and raised him with his team. (You can only guese how the kid turned out, ended up with a bit of a John Conner without the "save humanity" thing)

[Ayeohx]

Nice job J!

Great story so far. Very happy. But Shadowrun doesn't like "happy". Sounds like you need to build it up a bit more and then violently destroy it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/devil.gif)

• Maybe she starts warming up to him as a ploy and then betrays him in the worst way.
• Her covering for him gets her landed in jail. Then:
  
  • She can get murdered by people she put away.
  • He has to go save her and she either dies during the attempt or something "happy" happens (she lives, they run away together, blahblahblah).
• Someone spots them together and blackmails them (maybe even a "friend" in the shadows who doesn't like the fact that he's talking to the enemy).
• He murders someone in front of her driving a huge wedge in the relationship.
• She is forced to bust his friends or contacts (and didn't realize it).
• She is sent to stop a crime that he is commiting and one of his grenades takes her out or she is forced to choose between him or the law right there as he is being arrested.
• Or you can go all Romeo and Juliet with a twist: She disappears, he's told that she's dead and someone powerful is framed, he goes on a suicide mission of vengence, in a critical time before he dies she shows up and gets mortally wounded while trying to save him, he kills the bad guy, everyone cries (and possibly dies). Huh, not like Romeo and Juliet at all; more like Hamlet. Oh well.
  
  By the way, unfortunate endings to relationships are my specialty. One of my player's female contacts (a close friend) was brutally murdered in such a way that it turned him Catholic.

[Megu]

I've actually got two of these going in my game right now, although one of the PCs involved sold the team out to Ares and so is no longer a regular character (but he still makes guest appearances). That character, an elven face named Leo, who got into running because he was sick of working for Target and not getting promoted, is involved with an NPC runner, a tomboyishly handsome elf razorgirl with a UCAS military background, by the name of CC. They're now dealing with the drama of a long distance relationship, as he's hiding from his former comrades (the PCs) at his station at an Ares military base in Laos, while CC, who got out of town as well when shit went down, is on a UO merc contract in Azania.

The other is our gun bunny, an Ojibwe dwarf named Jukebox with a bit of a "natural outlaw" bent. She's dating another Amerind dwarf woman (player is a straight female, so this isn't some kind of fanboy thing), the mediocre hacker Zipper from the On the Run module. Their drama has been more from the strain a life of high octane gun violence puts on your partner's heart. But Jukebox is personally hunting down Leo in Laos now, while Zipper is spending the summer back home in Rapid City, so they're kind of on hold too.

it was pretty cool in that it was player-driven, in both instances. I mean, granted, I'm kind of a shoujo junkie, so I'm not having a hard time pulling drama out of my ass, but still, it's been really great to have going as an aside from all the run and gun.

[Joe Chummer]

My question is, did the other PCs come along on the dates? Or did the players wander into the kitchen during these scenes? What I have trouble getting a handle on is what to do with the other players when a PC has to do something solo, and it's especially hard if that PC is going off on his/her own to do something that isn't relevant to the current job. I mean, no one likes being a fifth wheel (or even a third wheel) on a date IRL, let alone in a fictional world.

[Murrdox]

One of my players started the game with a Fixer Contact whose backstory is that they were an on-again-off-again love affair.

I've had her inadvertently get pulled into the muck on one of their runs, and consequently, she gave him the cold shoulder for quite awhile. They "made up" though, and the player actually roleplayed it really well. He spent a lot of time sending her messages and such to make sure she knew he was "sorry I got you into that mess".

The other girlfriend he has is a hacker who works at the Cathode Glow. The team has used her to come up with rare electronics and do some very basic hacking, and the face of the group decided to date her. He's got an insane charisma score so I don't let him get away with EVERYTHING, and I've made it interesting for him. He gets 8 hits on his charisma roll to impress her... that's great... she goes out with him... but what is she going to tell all her hacker friends? What a turn off! So she's not SUPER enthused about another date. He studies up on some techno information to impress her, which turns her head back in his direction.

Honestly I'm not sure why he keeps up the relationship with the hacker girl. I already gave her as a Contact to the whole group. It makes for good roleplaying though.

[Megu]

My question is, did the other PCs come along on the dates? Or did the players wander into the kitchen during these scenes? What I have trouble getting a handle on is what to do with the other players when a PC has to do something solo, and it's especially hard if that PC is going off on his/her own to do something that isn't relevant to the current job. I mean, no one likes being a fifth wheel (or even a third wheel) on a date IRL, let alone in a fictional world.

Honestly, there's a bit of it in general play, but a lot of it gets followed up on via email. But I do a lot of that even outside of the romance things; as the GM I tend to send out a lot of in-character messages from contacts via email anyways, since everyone wants to keep their secrets from other players. It tends to only get touched on briefly during the actual runs, because as you say, not much for anybody else to do.

[3278]

Way back in SR1, I had a [male] character whose memory had been wiped [thanks, GM Paul!], whose team was at one point arrested. While in the holding tank, a [female] cop enters, stares at him with a mixture of hope and bemusement, and then finally calls him by an unfamiliar name, calls him a son of a bitch, slaps him, and walks out, to the astonishment of every character present. [Sample response, from our usually collected mercenary: "Umm."] She ended up being a route to recovering my memories, as well as my long-term live-in love interest [mother of my child, as well]; we dealt with the poisonous conflict between their careers, and she [and our son] always served as excellent levers for the GM to pull for drama, and even inspired entire runs on their own accord.

Romance is a part of everyday life - even for professional criminals, thanksmuch - and thus it should be a part of Shadowrun, as well, except for characters whose concept doesn't allow for such things. Many people enjoy emphasizing only the professional lives of the PCs, and there's nothing wrong with that, but we have found the most deeply satisfying roleplaying comes from the personal, emotional lives of the PCs.

[Joe Chummer]

Romance is a part of everyday life - even for professional criminals, thanksmuch - and thus it should be a part of Shadowrun, as well, except for characters whose concept doesn't allow for such things.

As soon as I read this line, I immediately conjured a mental image of someone trying to make out with a full-body-replacement cyborg/brain-in-a-box.

[Ayeohx]

As soon as I read this line, I immediately conjured a mental image of someone trying to make out with a full-body-replacement cyborg/brain-in-a-box.

Oh that's kinky.

[3278]

As soon as I read this line, I immediately conjured a mental image of someone trying to make out with a full-body-replacement cyborg/brain-in-a-box.

If that's not commonplace in the real world by 2070, I'll be pretty surprised.

That would make an interesting "social issue of the day," much as homosexuality or race relations has been during our lifetimes: the rights of non-[meta]human sentients, which has been discussed in SR4 setting information, and sexuality as it relates to the various forms of transhumanity, which to my knowledge has not.

[Joe Chummer]

If that's not commonplace in the real world by 2070, I'll be pretty surprised.

That would make an interesting "social issue of the day," much as homosexuality or race relations has been during our lifetimes: the rights of non-[meta]human sentients, which has been discussed in SR4 setting information, and sexuality as it relates to the various forms of transhumanity, which to my knowledge has not.

I dunno. I can't think of a single person who would be turned on by a disembodied brain floating in a vat of enzymes. If the cyborg had more of an anthroform or android/gynoid body, then yeah, but someone erotically licking a brain-jar has some serious personal/gender identity issues to work out.

[3278]

I dunno. I can't think of a single person who would be turned on by a disembodied brain floating in a vat of enzymes. If the cyborg had more of an anthroform or android/gynoid body, then yeah, but someone erotically licking a brain-jar has some serious personal/gender identity issues to work out.

Well, I was more talking about the "full-body-replacement cyborg" portion than the "brain-in-a-box" portion. That said, if you don't know people who'd be turned on by a human brain in a vat of enzymes, you should get out more. Or, you know, not. Depends on your own comfort level, as much as anything.

[The Jake]

My question is, did the other PCs come along on the dates? Or did the players wander into the kitchen during these scenes? What I have trouble getting a handle on is what to do with the other players when a PC has to do something solo, and it's especially hard if that PC is going off on his/her own to do something that isn't relevant to the current job. I mean, no one likes being a fifth wheel (or even a third wheel) on a date IRL, let alone in a fictional world.

This was during downtime inbetween adventures within Ghost Cartels.

One PC was too busy enchanting stuff to even know the other PC was gone. Another was dealing with his arm dealing business. The other players were absent that session. In short, the players are aware of the relationship, the PCs themselves are not.

I have a few subplot ideas:
- Someone reveals to her what the PC does for a living, revealing some ugly truths.
- Said NPC cop contracts a rare, mysterious illness that forces PC to conduct some runs to try and find a cure.
- Said NPC cop applies pressure on him to retire and go legit.

Anyway, more than a few ideas but I am wary of avoiding cliches.

Thanks for listening!

- J.

[Manunancy]

I dunno. I can't think of a single person who would be turned on by a disembodied brain floating in a vat of enzymes. If the cyborg had more of an anthroform or android/gynoid body, then yeah, but someone erotically licking a brain-jar has some serious personal/gender identity issues to work out.

It could also be a VR romance - without much concern about who's who 'in the flesh'. Or 'in the hardware'.

I greatly enjoyed an ambiance text from GURPs Transhuman space :
Some guy ona space station hangs around on VR forums and meets up with a hot chick. The pair ends up having a damn good time in the haystack of his virtual environment farm. Pleased with the event, our guys note her adress and sends some roses.

A few hours later, he gets a perplexed call from a warship commander wondering why the heck he sent roses to one of his ship's AI-driven combat drones...

[Platinum]

If that's not commonplace in the real world by 2070, I'll be pretty surprised.

That would make an interesting "social issue of the day," much as homosexuality or race relations has been during our lifetimes: the rights of non-[meta]human sentients, which has been discussed in SR4 setting information, and sexuality as it relates to the various forms of transhumanity, which to my knowledge has not.

This is a reoccurring theme in the series Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex. Cyberbrains are swapped in and out of bodies/drones regularly (usually a kink of government execs). I do wish that shadowrun had more of this mechanic in it (the cyberbrains not the body swapping).

I came across a comic a while ago, where a government agent was able to digitize convicts and transport them back to the office. Scientists would then edit out the criminal elements and use them as AI for different vessels/etc. http://merceneiress.com/. I thought the digitization for an AI was a plot gem to use one day, kind of like Dixie.

[Wesley Street]

Has anyone written an article or book on how to work the romantic angle in an RPG? With the popularity of dating sims in Japan and the usual love triangle story lines crammed into your console RPGs, one would think this would hold some interest for tabletop gaming.

[Draco18s]

Oh wow, I missed this thread back in october.

What's the drake's base metatype, human?

Still. Just wow. Drake/orc relationship.

[pbangarth]

Years ago, in that other game, my PC fell in love with, and eventually married, an NPC who was in many respects our 'fixer'. My guy was a dwarf fighter and charioteer, Billie Bourgeois, a deserter from Lord Thundar's Third Shock Cavalry. She was Brigita, priestess of Danu, the tri-form (Crone, Mother, Virgin) Goddess of the Earth.

It helped that the DM was my wife. Role playing had many interesting aspects, especially when the other players were not around.

[tete]

does anyone have any similar such stories from their own campaigns? \
Any amazing PC/NPC romance subplots in your games?
Where did they go?
How did you handle them?

Yes
Yes
Actually its fairly normal at some point for a PC to get attached to an NPC (sometimes even another PC, though that is rare). Usually it goes one of two ways kidnapping or backstabbing. Though I did have one commit suicide thinking the PC had died. I also had one be a shapechanger who was found out during a steamy night. The initial reaction was to attack from the PC but he held off when he figured out she really liked him and it just who she was. My favorite moment though I was just another PC (decker). The Face had been seeing this girl for awhile (even had a baby) well the girl gets killed by the BBEG and the child gets held for ransom. Well after a big fight the BBEG is flying away victorious with the child and the street sam decided to take it out with a rocket launcher. The Face without hesitation takes out his katana and beheads the street sam. The street sam player protests and the face says "You just killed my kid".

[ShadowPavement]

Weird Reverse Double post

check out my reply below

[Platinum]

It wasn't a romance but there was a funny scenario.

I was introducing my wife to shadowrun, and she was playing a "dog the bounty hunter" like character who was looking for someone. She goes down to the beach to gather some intel and meets two females who knew the target. My wife is very prudish, and reserved. I was confounded at her ability to act as a male playa, while manipulating the two women to get the information and coax them into flushing the target out. What I was more freaked out by was when she was discussing her strategy about how to manipulate women outloud.

[ShadowPavement]

Right now two of my three PC's are in relationships with NPC's.

The first is my wife's character, our male ork hacker, who is dating the team's street doc, a female human. This one happened by my wife just playing her character properly, the team ended up at this street doc's place to meet a Johnson and ended up going back a couple of times after that for some healing and the hacker eventually just asked her out, but then had to bail on the first date for a job, which she never let the hacker forget!

The second is the female elf weapon specialist in the group. On one run she used a fashion expert system to help her pick clothing for a meet with a Johnson. The program picked out a fitted t-shirt that said "Trolz Rule!" on it, which everyone had a laugh at. With that in mind later on I had them see a muscular troll walking down the street of the Ork Underground with an "Elvez Rule!" t-shirt on, which just caried the joke from earlier. On another run she needed some info in the underground so I decided that she'd come accross the same troll. They hit it off well and she ended up training at the same dojo that the troll was training for a Gladio audition at. Right now there is a little friction between them since the troll, Ben, just found out that the weapon spec is a Shadowrunner and is dealing with that fact. Good times!