I Made Dating WORK in D&D

dating in DND where to start well humans are social creatures and shipping imaginary characters with each other has been a thing since the first cave drawings existed and who would want to pass up the chance to design a cute little character in The DND Fantasy Realm and give them more action than you get in the real world at the bare minimum if there's a sentient Society capable of love then someone in your world had a love life at some point that's always implied though so the next step up is when the DM starts incorporating NPCs into the game that are in relationships with each other again that's always expected and it's pretty easy for a DM to role play out a simple romance between two characters that they both control no the hard part is when the DM finally throws a bone for everyone's touch starved characters and drops a few NPCs into the game that they could actually find appealing that rarely happens though because there's a lot of setup for the DM to make love work in a DND setting that you wouldn't normally expect and can wind up being pretty awkward if you don't know the first thing about tabletop Romance the funniest thing is that I learned how to do this properly not by raising people up in real life or reading Rome romance novels or anything like that no I took the top down approach and studied a bunch of awful horror anime so I could learn exactly what not to do in a relationship then in the same year began writing a tabletop dating guidebook so trust me when I say I've locked down a bunch of crucial tips that DM should know if they're looking to run some cute NPCs doing cute things with cute people most of you also don't have a whole lot of experience playing in tabletop role-playing games so it's completely fine to feel uncomfortable about it I'd recommend you focus on learning how to role play basic D stuff first and you can start your shipping Arc later for everyone else you need to shake off the mentality that Romancing an NPC means you're Romancing the DM or vice versa you're playing a make-believe role-playing game and that couldn't be further from the truth but regardless when you feel that everyone at the table is comfortable with the game you can start building onto the system that includes stuff like designing Homebrew classes dismantling systemic oppression or more importantly building some cute dating partners as the DM you have the power to look at everyone's character sheets and browse their traits and backstories if players put any level of thought into their characters besides their class and race there should be more than enough detail to guess what kind of Partners they'd be interested in and at that point you can get right to shoveling character design into your metaphorical Build-A-Bear of a dateable NPC knowing the preferences of your actual players can also be useful because a lot of people attach their own attractions onto their characters whether they intend to or not it took me a while to realize how often people made DND characters that were just idealized versions of themselves and even caught myself doing it a few times attractions and all let's just say if I was playing Wizard and my DM dropped a cute Lich girl wearing glasses you'd immediately have my character's attention even if I didn't already have a type in mind for them also as the DM you'll be dropping in PCS into the story constantly anyways so if nobody's interested just keep fiddling around and dropping more in until someone starts making swooning remarks at the table you'll catch someone slacking eventually and trust me the seventh muscular orc you spawn into the game is gonna get them for sure anyway we can finally move on to step two the mere exposure effect but before that bad imagine d d if it was set in medieval fantasy Italy need I say more brand Colonia is an upcoming Kickstarter dropping with three massive books built around some of Italy's most iconic folklore history and pop culture the bestiary is way more enticing than D D's own monster manual through enticing readers with bounties of monster Lauren Lair details the gazetteer at 20 cities Villas and fortresses that pair perfectly with all the new character creation options those being 10 new backgrounds and three new species and the final book is an entire campaign that wraps everything together into a pre-written adventure perfect to jumpstart you through Brian Colonia everything's compatible with d d letting you Window Shop your favorite Parts together to use in Homebrew games plus early backers in the first 72 hours are also getting these massive Miniatures for free so don't wait and check out Bring Colonia in the description below but with that said let's get right back to the video the more someone's familiar with something the more they'll tend to like it if every time the party returns to town and acolyte finds them and happily gives them a healing potion for free the party's gonna like that NPC and be much more interested with them right off the bat want to know why people like cost so much from breath of the wild he plays music that puts you in a good mood and players keep bumping into him throughout their Journey linking romanceable NPCs with things like safety support Comfort or free stuff makes it really easy to like them and because of that a bunch of monster characters in that romance book of mine give out gifts to people they like to build bonds fast and effectively in a world that's constantly trying to kill your party the value of selfless actions can't be understated it's such a simple way to keep NPCs in your players thoughts and if you do it enough can easily form a relationship okay but on a step 3 the easiest way to make someone interested in a character is to give the party things they can relate with most players don't care about NPCs in any media because a lot of them just exist to spit nonsense at you and then give you a quest to kill five Rats the worst NPCs are never an event just a means to an end even don't want players dating your characters it's never cool to design boring NPCs this way you gotta drop them into the story in a way that honestly shares the mark they've had on the world preferably while in the middle of an activity that shows off their personality maybe that healing potion acolyte from before returns with a black and blue having been punished by her church for giving healing potions to impure Outsiders and I haven't even had the NPC say a single word yet but this immediately establishes the relationship they have with other people in the church and their devotion of the party's cause regardless of punishment I'm sure most of you right now are even readying your fireballs and great axes to burst down the church doors and make sure nobody lays a finger on them again and over the course of three sessions and maybe five minutes I could easily get every player in the party to love and want to protect this character in the story but let's say you want to get a little wild and make an NPC a more monstrous species lots of DMS struggle with making monsters attractive because they have this big juicy stop lock in front of them and feel obligated to beat their characters up with it and even though it's hard for the DM to control these violent urges players will jump to seduce any monster that doesn't immediately kill them on site I found that people are just attracted to the con concept of the monster rather than anything else which would normally be weird if we applied that to races in the real world but I guess they get a pass in Fantasyland but the one thing that stops players from pursuing this though is when the DM makes the monster threatening and the party members get ready for a fight and that's thanks to the monster manual because most enemy details just revolve around all the violent cruel things they can do to a person but never the more emotional side of them which pits the DM with the responsibility of figuring out how they'd react to human empathy most DMS will just have their monsters default to the classic I will kill you now I have a job to do lion and then just begin combat which kills any chance for Monster romance so taking a bit of time to figure out how a monster's origin may play into the types of personalities they'd have could not only make them more lovable but also more interesting to interact with across the board I did this exact thing for that monster romance book I'm totally not writing or anything where I studied up on every Monster's lore took a deep dive into the emotional side of things and how players could build on the struggles of each monster to support them and actually build a relationship as an example one of the NPCs is Astrid the owl bear well owl Beast for copyright reasons losing her family to a group of hunters led her to become a wild Troublemaker around a local hiking trail clawing trees and disturbing Wildlife she hates humanoids but has a soft spot for sweets you could also join in on the Carnage to win her favor if that's how you want to roll Astrid has an established backstory a reason for why she's aggressive who is directed towards and what steps people would have to take to help her it's also all contained in this nice little pocket here which is more than enough detail to get the ball rolling and with that you have a humanized monster with a relatable story that the party could fight for their head or their heart depending on how things go not all monsters have this luxury though because some are pretty animalistic and if you're not keen on letting them at least talk then you're gonna have some problems if you need me to explain why that's the case then I don't know what to say you might want to go back to the Pokemon tabletop RPG and hope your DM lets you romance a Vaporeon but hey let's assume that you now have a character or two that's in a relation ship what a Big Arc in the story finally resolves and the party needs some time to relax you can lighten up the next session and have everyone do something with absolutely no Stakes involved a session where the group and their potential Partners go on a little harmless Adventure would be fun to let them enjoy the pleasures of the world they're fighting to make a better place and with the people they care the most about and don't think this filler episode is going to be boring because there's tons of cool encounter ideas you can run that it challenge your entire party if done right I made a cool beach Zone in that dating book you can steal that has parties raving 24 7 a couple sand castle building competition chances to walk on the ocean floor akin to Moses parting the sea enchanting Sirens luring people away from their crushes and giant octopus attacks because why not set the scene and let the party go wild but if there's ever a break in the fun or players are quieting down dropping one of those encounters can immediately perk everyone back up to continue interacting with the game again and that's all it really needs to be just make sure you're not wasting the fact that you're playing d and d and ensure characters can still use their abilities at whatever location you choose you'll never hear me praise using a session that's only talking because you're playing d d a system designed for tactics and turn-based combat if you don't organically blend your social encounters into that players will just associate hanging with their dates to playing a way more version of DnD and nobody wants that I played in the indie games that were just talking simulators before and you're better off playing any other system for that experience and no I'm not saying to stop playing d d but to build on the system rather than gutting it entirely if my date starts drowning in the ocean I want to roll Athletics to swim out and grab them if a giant crab is causing a scene on the beach I want to cast animal friendship that's what I mean even if it's a fun little Side Story it should still have the same mechanical Focus as if you were 10 floors deep in a mega dungeon and with that you should have a few NPCs that have gone through the dating machine and come out as beloved characters in the story The Party cares about their well-being they may be dating a player character and they've had a session purely for having fun so for all my dungeon Masters seeing this NPC what do you think the next thing we should do is I'll give you a few seconds because it should be in incredibly obvious really I'd feel bad if you got this wrong alright time's up if you said kidnapping them then you'd be correct throw them in a prison cell on the big bad evil person's Tower dangling ever closer towards a pot of boiling lava some of the best motivators for when you have absolutely nothing better to grasp before in the story is endangering loved ones it's the easiest trick in the book and also the most commonly played out so maybe spice it up to avoid completely playing into the cliche you could reveal that the love interest is being hunted as a Chase ensues through a deadly forest or maybe a raid is burning down the NPC's town and they've yet to evacuate make the plot hook incredibly important to the fate of the NPC because when you do this once it's very hard to set up your campaign to let it happen again we're not playing Super Mario here nobody's gonna take the your princesses in another Castle shenanigan very well but regardless of what you do don't underestimate how driven your party will get when you take away their waifus hit them fast hit them hard and if the party is successful just let them be happy if you want to check out the culmination of my tabletop dating advice you can check out Silver's monster girl manual down below quite the contrary I've been blamed simple and I'll see you all in the next video foreign

Channel: Blaine Simple

Views: 145,944

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Id: c0k1CjnO2j4

Length: 11min 17sec (677 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 20 2023