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“Sounds gay, I’m in”
Fun little fact, at this point in our campaign, Razira considered herself to be straight, and Konsi considered herself to be “below anyone’s standards for dating” - so never really thought about it.
Sure she’s straight - so is a noodle until you get it wet.
She turns gay when she’s in the bath ??!??
Only one way to find out!
Unexpected Ranma reference
I’m gonna be honest that phrase is kinda ick
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Your comics are such a highlight for me can’t wait for the next one.
Seconded ❤️
I wonder who is the one that rolled persuasion, the orc or the goblin pretending to be scared to get a ride with her crush.
Awww, now that’s just cute.
I love Razira’s confused face
That’s all the time!
I might need some encouragement whispered into my ears from behind as well.
How do people handle this sort of thing in an IRL game? Do you roleplay romance with the DM? Is it weird?
Before you start a tabletop campaign, it can be helpful to talk with the players to establish a social contract - you should do this if you’re playing with a new group. It’s good to establish a number of things before you start playing - making sure everyone is on the same page, and has the same understanding of what game they’re playing is vital for ensuring everyone has a good time - and most acrimony at a tabletop game comes from a clash in those expectations.
Let’s say for example, one player thinks they’re playing an adventure that’s very PvE focused, all the characters will work together, and the players will take effort to make sure their characters get along. Another player thinks that each person is making their own characters with secret goals and motivations, and, during a critical encounter, backstabs the first player’s character, killing them off. - Instant fallout.
The DM should arrange and talk with players, to make sure everyone understands what style of game is to be played, which things are acceptable at the table, and which things are red lines. This goes for game mechanics, party dynamic, the type of story being told, and roleplay content. Here are some good things to establish.
- Is this a “play the game strictly to the rules” type of game, or is this a loosey-goosey “rule of cool” style of game? How much freeform is there going to be, and how much “make it up as you go along” is there going to be?
- Is this campaign going to be mostly a game-mechanics focused fighting monsters and dungeon crawling game, or is it going to be a roleplay bonanza?
- Is PvP allowed? How much are players expected to work out their differences peacefully, and how much are they expected to get along?
- How much table talk and rules discussion do you want? is this a “DM’s way or the highway” situation, or is it okay for players to argue rules and mechanics?
- What is the expectation of risk and losing characters in the campaign? Is it going to be a “lose a character every couple sessions” type of thing or a “death is rare but possible” kind of thing?
For roleplay content:
- ALWAYS establish if any players have any phobias or red lines. If a player is uncomfortable with graphic violence descriptions, gore, scenes of a sexual nature, descriptions of sexual abuse, torture, or other seriously distressing content, make sure all players know this is a hard “no”
- What level of flirting/romance is each player comfortable with. both between another player and themselves, and between two players not including them? Find the first threshold that someone would be uncomforable and “fade to black” before crossing that line. Different people may be fine with others roleplaying some things, but not want to engage in them themselves. Make sure all players are aware of this.
- Make sure all players know to speak up immediately if any roleplay or any scene is making them uncomfortable, and if it is, all players know to move the scene to something else rather than arguing that they get to continue.
For expectations for the campaign.
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Ask your players what they want to get out of the game, on an out-of-character level. Are they looking to practice improvisaion and roleplay? do they want to play the mechanical combat game? Do they want to be a big damn hero and win through encounters all the time, or do they want to experience failure and setbacks. Where do they want to be challenged etc.
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What kind of story do they want to tell with their character? is it a journey of discovery, to uncover some secret about the world? are they just looking to fit in? do they not care and just want to kill goblins with a big hammer. Do they enjoy being a murderhobo, or do they want to have challenging serious roleplay etc.
Sit down and discuss these things with each player, and also with the group as a whole - make sure everyone understands that they are playing the same game, and in general your chances of having a blowout are much reduced.
Wizards of the Coast have done a phenomenally bad job at communicating this stuff - this is the “session zero prep” that you do before you make characters. A player needs to know the expected tone of the table and campaign before making decisions on what character to build. You don’t want to spend a few weeks building a detailed nuanced character with a lot of backstory and hooks for a “dungeon crawl monster slaughter fest where characters die if they step on a trap” style of game. A few more recent modules have approached some parts of this (RotFM makes a point of instructing the DM to talk to the players about phobias, for example.) - but… in general the hobby is bad at providing new players and groups with these guidelines, and they’re fundamental to having a good time at your tables.
If you don’t establish these guidelines, then it’s just luck if you find a group that you mesh with.
To provide examples for this romance subplot with this group, to help illustrate a real-table example:
In the case of our group, we’d established “mild flirting is okay, fade to black for anything sexual” I believe that every player at my table has a different sexuality, which is impressive for a group of strangers playing together for the first time, but everyone was comfortable with this.
This subplot began about 1.5 years after we started playing together (yes, we played weekly for 18 months and went from level 1 to level 7 - we do a lot of rp.) I approached my DM and said “I’m interested in exploring a romance subplot for Konsi, what would you be comfortable in?” and we talked out what we’d like to see, what we wouldn’t like to see, and for the DM I game some ideas for the kinds of personality/person Konsi would be interested in, and some expectations of how she’d react and behave around such a person - but left it up to the DM whether to introduce such a character at all, when to do it, and who she’d be.
Razira is very different to the image I had in my head, which was an Elven paladin of one of the really “paragon of justice” type gods, like torm or tyr or something.
This is a bloody brilliant summary. Well done!
My friends and I have known each other for years and have been playing ttrpgs for almost as long. We’re also all very comfortable in our sexualities and have no issues roleplaying flirting with each other. Whenever it happens we usually just lean hard into cheesy over the top romance which both helps easily separate it from real life, and makes it extremely fucking funny. You’ve just gotta know what everyone in the play group is comfortable with.
That’s spot on. Over the top romance is just straight up funny and I love it.
It’s pretty similar to most other roleplay in an RPG in my experience: you remember that you’re all playing characters and you respect out-of-character boundaries (including fade to black for anything too explicit or indulgent). I’ve been worried about crossing boundaries before but I don’t think I’ve ever actually crossed a line over the course of quite a few campaigns, even with the couple of times I’ve had to fade to black. You just have to know your players and be explicit about boundaries; I’ve had players request that no romance be present in a game before and I’ve accommodated that as well as players who’ve explicitly stated that they want to play flirtatious characters (though not in the same game, obviously).
And of course just be cognizant of how much detail you’re going into; you don’t want to be describing the details of a makeout scene, but “Jessica presses in for a long kiss” does the job and doesn’t violate most people’s boundaries in my experiences as long as they’re okay with the general themes.
Never really had it go “weird”, and honestly, though I’ve ended up in an IRL relationship with a player in one of my games on two separate occasions, the in-game romance doesn’t seem to be related (neither of the people I ended up dating stood out in that regard).
They wont fuck on the horse I hope. But in general as a DM Id narrate something basic and let the player put in a few stuff until I dont feel comfortable to go any further. But its a game. As long as everyone at the table is comfortable its fine, and that changes with everyone.
They wont fuck on the horse I hope
“They wont fuck on the horse, I hope”, right?
We’re extremely far from anything here. Konsi’s got a lot of issues to get over before she can cope with romance.
Is there any difference to the meaning?
… maybe ?
The best part is how surprised the horse looks.
I think it’s the whites of his eyes - you rarely see much of the whites of a horse’s eyes, so giving them cartoon eyes like this is always gonna make him surprised.
Of course my DM would describe him as a glossy pure black stallion, so I have to put whites in for people to even find the eyes… :D
These are great.