Love Makes You Do The Wacky

It's Valentine's Day. As chocolate-related holidays go, it's an also-ran behind Christmas, Hallowe'en and even Easter, although Easter has worse tie-in movies. It's also naturally grumpy singles day, triple time at restaurants which may qualify as danger money, and a bunch of other weird things to do with a universal emotion being packaged.

Love is of course one of the great driving forces of story, but less so at the average gaming table due to the demographics involved and the "four people watching as two people play a romantic scene" issue. Still, there are games where it's central, or at least can be a major feature if played up, and a bit of heartache and angst can add a lot to a game if the players are so inclined.

I knew The Watch House might be more than a fun little MOTW game when Milli's player suggested she develop an unrequited crush on Jake and his player said that was cool and started a relationship with Milli's NPC friend Emma...

If the players aren't so keen to hit their PCs with such hammers, it can still happen at one remove. The lovers could be NPCs whose relationship spurs on the plot.

Let's say a young couple who need the heroes' help to escape to a new life away from their feuding noble families in Verona...

Or the King and Queen of the Fair Folk are having a spat, and the King drops a love spell that proves to have an area effect...

Or an ancient deathless being seeks the unwitting reincarnation of a lost love...

Or the king of a great land finds his wife in the arms of his knightly champion...

That second example also demonstrates that love can be a short-term plot as well as a defining one. There are plenty of settings where a love spell (or love potion or love psionic effect or love alien psychotropic pollen) could have the PCs of willing players act wildly out of character for a session or so. The resulting chaos may or may not have long-lasting effects on character dynamics.

Does True Love exist in your game? Does it come along maybe once a century, or does everybody get a shot at it? Does it provide rare blessings with in-game effects? Something as simple as a bonus to Willpower type rolls could really change how a character in love acts.

And will there be a happy ending? Well, that depends...