Love is not an uncommon or hidden thing in role-playing. There is no way it could be, this is so strong, it cannot be hidden. So sometimes the DM decides to give a player character a girlfriend (if only to shut him up). But this never lasts for very long. Also the players in an RPG rarely seem to have girlfriends. The reason for this is quite obvious (except that role-players are often treated like a virus).
The characters are adventurers, the players are that also, that's why they rpg. They both need the same adventure in their life. They like to walk on the wild side. They like to push a doorbell and run away, you know what I mean. While other youngsters go in bars, drink many gallons of alcoholic fluids and put many peanuts down their noses, others need to have adventures, and they rpg. When rpg is played while consuming all that alcohol, danger exits that the serious game also results in putting peantuts down noses.
But I'm getting way of track here, my point was that adventurers (both players and characters are) need adventure. They are always on some sort of mission, never on one place for all that long. That's why the loves of their lifes cannot get a good grip on them, they will always go away again, they are way to free. That is not stupid, that is just part of who they are. And the one's who love them know it. They know they love them for it and that that's why they have to let them free and adventurous.
But this doesn't stop them from loving them. Brave fighters are to be loved. They are big, strong and handsome. And for the ones with real weird taste there are also gnomes in a party. But the love will always be from a distance. The loving people are doomed to stare from a distance to her partner walking away to dangerous situations, hoping he once will come back. It's very hard, if you love someones smile, smell, clothes, way of walking, way of talking, way of thinking, way of being, just everything makes you so very weak from the inside because of infinitive happiness and that gives you such a strong feeling after only one smile that you want to eat grass, jump upside-down and evertything, but nothing helps against it. One person brings and takes all that is good. It's hard if that person walks away on a adventure, but you must let him go. Otherwise you will ruin who he is.
But as it is with real love, the other person feels the same way. Why can't there we total happines then? Well, as most people who know about life know, total happiness never occurs. Maybe for a moment, but there will always be something. People will always make problems, they are a bit self-destructive. So the adventurers will stubbornly keep on adventuring, even if they feel this same way. They have to choose. But what about adventure is so big that they will keep on going to it and leave their partner then?
Well, it's cheating a bit, I guess, because I believe there is another love. It's the party. The annoying group of people (and other creatures) that walks along with you for some kind of own benefit. The quarrels, bigger fights, jokes and discussions, the real adventurer loves it. Of course marrying a party existing of all kinds of people, races and allignments is very much forbidden (I don't know about Texas), but when you call it your job you still can be close to them. And that love can so important you will keep adventuring. But also for adventrure itself. And also for XP and treasures, of course.
Well, there has to be made a choice, I must conclude. Your true love for always with you or an adventure-life or a very difficult combination. I haven't got a solution for it. Why I wrote this column then? Well, just to look interesting, I guess.
Still, I have once met a hopefull couple. I won't use their names, but a boy and a girl in a relationship rpg-ed. They both had adventure-characters in one party. It seemed to work. What also might work is having a decent relationship all week and one night a week live all your need for adventure out. That also might work, as long as you make up excuses (like seeing someone else) and hide your dice very carefully.
Your very own Alcarin.com-columnist wishes you all the luck and recommands the ALCARIN.COM-COLUMNIST-T-SHIRTS to you all.
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