DaisyNinjaGirl

Unrequited, Unconfessed Love. We had three characters who were written with some form of secret crush on another character, varying in strength from “You’re very loyal” to “You’re a bit psychotic about this.” Sadly, in all three planned instances, the objects of desire were entirely oblivious. In one case there was a marriage proposal and a suicide after the character was turned down – very much to the surprise of the person who was proposed to. Another character asked his object of desire for romantic advice as a prelude to dropping hints and was blithely advised to “find himself a woman.” I guess that roleplayed love is as subtle and hard to notice as the real thing. Advice to larp-writes: drop a hint to the object of desire that there might be a little bit more going on than is obvious.

Love at First Sight. OK, not love love, but roleplayed love, in which the player is handed a note when they first meet the other person telling them that they suddenly feel a strange desire. These had pluses and minuses. One player was reportedly quite appalled when he read his note and complained afterwards that he would have met the character previously and shouldn’t have been so thunderstruck. Another character took his ‘epiphany’ as a challenge and spent the rest of the game working hard to achieve marriage with the woman he’d ‘fallen in love’ with. In other cases, I don’t think that some of the planned pairings ever met up, or if they did, the new goal was subsumed underneath other material. From a larp-write point of view, these kinds of GM-mandated easter eggs seem to me to be a bit random – you might get a cool storyline, or it might never emerge out of the chaotic stew of the larp. I also think that the most successful character to roleplay being struck suddenly by Cupid’s arrow was one who had already been primed with a character sheet suggesting that marriage might be a good idea, hence putting the player in a receptive mood.

Same Gender Romance. These worked out rather well, if I do say so myself. The most spectacular of these storylines was full of confusions and ifs and maybes, in which the central figures were stumbling into each other, leaping to conclusions, quizzing people for (often misleading) information, recruiting friends for help and making meaningful looks at each other across the room. Often, the meaningful looks were also bouncing off an old flame of one of the principals for added melodrama. Most of this was subtle enough that I as a GM wandering about the room hadn’t realised it was going on until near the end of the larp when the two lovers got married, and most of it I heard about afterwards. The thing that made this storyline so successful was the degree to which the players leapt into their parts. One person commented afterwards that while he spent a little time managing his political goals, he was trying to get that done as quickly as possible so that he could spend more time worrying about his love life. In case it matters to anyone, the participants were a mix of straight and gay.  I didn’t hear of any problems with people roleplaying outside their regular orientation.  It was a question we had specifically asked people before casting them, and it made us a lot more comfortable with assigning characters.

Touch Me/Touch Me Not.  There was very little physical contact in this larp – I think the limit for people was holding hands. One guy that got ‘married’ said that he would have kissed his partner if someone else had set a precedent, but that was as close as anyone got. I’ve heard of a mechanic invented in Scandinavia called Ars Amandi that deals with a low contact way of simulating sex by touching people’s arms and hands, but it wasn’t relevant to our game which, after all, was focused on the falling-for-someone stage rather than the doing-something-about-it stage.

Crossing the Boundaries. How far is too far? That’s always the question.  People’s out-of-character relationships had a strong effect on how they roleplayed their in-character stuff. We had a player group of 62 people and some of them knew each other already and some didn’t. From the comments people made afterwards, I think that a previous acquaintance meant much more trust between the players and they were more comfortable pushing the envelopes of their parts. On the other hand, one pair was already dating each other in real life, and I don’t think I’ll knowingly cast that way again, because they said afterwards that there was a fair amount of confusion between what was real and what was in-character – quite important when you’re in the middle of a lover's tiff. I’ve previously played in a six player larp called Couples by Tony Shirley which had a very extensive preliminary phase to help people get into character and comfortable with each other, so I know that there are ways to shortcut the kind of trust you get by knowing someone well. I cannot stress how valuable that trust can be in a roleplaying environment.

You Can’t Write Me Love. Overall, I was very pleased with how the romance storylines went in Sanctuary. One thing I did notice was that you can’t compel people into roleplaying a romantic relationship, no matter what you write on their character sheets. You can plant plot hooks, you can dangle bait, you can drop hints, but if the people involved aren’t interested, nothing is going to happen. 

When they do happen, when people leap into the uncertainty, melodrama and glory of a love affair, you get something magic.

(1) There is an Afterlarp report on Sanctuary here for people who would like more background.

[This was originally posted on the Gametime LJ community: http://gametime.livejournal.com/44830.html]