Other Creating Emotion in a Roleplay

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I've always looked upon romance RPs in a very strange light. We see people make characters that have the sole purpose of romancing another character. The characters then just sorta blush at eachother for five pages and then get married. I've seen the occasional RP where characters enter a romance without it being the explicit goal of the RP, but usually it's just on the whim of the RP'ers with the logic "they'd be cute together" or "they're meant for eachother".

I've never seen two characters grow as people, and feel emotion towards other characters naturally. The only exception I can think of is a D&D campaign where two of the PC's wound up having an amazing rapport, despite arguing with eachother constantly. Eventually, when one of the characters died, it was actually emotional enough to make the other player tear up, and that was only four or five sessions in, with two strangers on the internet playing.

However, I feel like that is maybe a bit hollow. It was in large part because of the scene that I set up for them and the way that I drove the characters together. Their actions were their own actions, but I wrote the entire campaign with the assumption that they would be friends after seeing them interact in the first mission. I intentionally drove them together and in that scene I intentionally made it an emotional sacrifice.

Back on the point at hand, I think that with younger RPers and with intentional romance RP, it's less a case of emotional rapport, but just wanting to ship together two dream characters. Their relationships don't have flaws, they don't disagree, they just simply "get marry and have lots kids". Sometimes there's an interesting dynamic at play, but it's always forced. It's always strict and unnatural. Character A is submissive and character B is dominant. Character A is reluctant and character B is devoted. These tropes are so simplistic and unrealistic that the characters don't matter, they can be replaced with the names Character A and B and it's still the same. I feel like too often the characters exist solely to be in a relationship with another character. The relationship isn't built.

Any exceptions you can think of? Have you ever had two characters actually grow emotionally off of eachother, maybe even into a romance? Is that actually possible?

 

[Zer0]

Yeah, had two in this RP. One was this bully guy whose friends made the girl's friends uncomfortable in the mess hall and she thought they were teasing to insult instead of harmless play and so she flares up her wings and intentionally blows their food away and spills them on the bully guy's friend's. After that guy is after payback because they don't know what just happened. To them, the girl was just rude all of a sudden. And so the bullying starts. They end up dueling, it was a funny duel too, like they ended up getting glued because of sticky bombs and the girl wins by shoving a knock-out lollipop into the guy's mouth while they're wrestling.

Fast forward into the future. Stuff happens in the RP, King got assassinated, bomb went off, and the main characters and bully guy are escaping together with the princess from the castle. Then they get into this adventure where they bring the princess to a safe place. Meanwhile, war is brewing.

All throughout their adventure, this bully guy just doesn't like the girl or her friends. Then one day something happens to him. They get into this fight against a main enemy NPC and bully guy is captured. They had to leave him because they were just too weak to fight back and so they escape.

A siege happens in the city they are staying at. They become heroes, that main enemy NPC is defeated and they find the guy kind of "Cursed" and in a comma. And since the girl was the best healer in the group and somehow throughout their time travelling they kind of developed a pity for the bully guy, she helps him out.

She's the one who takes care of him the most, being the healer. She talked to him while he was in a coma. And when he woke up he said that he was trapped in a nightmare and it was only her voice that helped him not succumb to it, because it was familiar. He had been in that comma for two weeks I think. And after that, he stopped bullying her. Even thanked her. He was still a snooty bully, but not to her anymore.

And then there was that dance. In return for her healing him, he had asked if there was anything he could do to repay her and she asked him to teach her how to dance since he's good at dancing. Those times spent dancing together got them close.

Until finally during this ball, she had her first dance in front of a lot of people with him. She is a tomboy, but during that ball she was in a dress. And after that dance he realized she was a girl after all and then asked her out.

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[MechanicalHeart]

This thread gives me a déja vu.

 

[Whisker]

Do I think creating emotion naturally in roleplay is possible? Yes. It requires the condition that the roleplay last long enough for emotions and feelings of attachment to another character develop naturally. Very few roleplays (and roleplayers, for that matter) are unfortunately at the stage of maturity where that could occur. It is really why I don't like jumping in to romance roleplays where romance is expected. What if there is no chemistry between the characters? What if I can't stand my partner's character or what if they can't stand mine? I think doing the old "blush" standby is a cop-out because it gives immediate gratification instead of taking the chance of investing in the storytelling aspect of the roleplay, which should always be given priority.

 

[rae2nerdy]

I think that in the case of romance specifically the best way I've seen this worked out is where you start with a pre-established relationship and sort of build from there. It's more or less what 99% of all romance writer's are after anyway - the actual relationship itself not really the build up.

I had a very successful romance-esque roleplay where I played a wife who was tired of being marginalized by her chauvinist husband and planned to pay a handy man to off him.

It actually ended up being a very realistic relationship on all points because we kind of started off knowing exactly where our characters were in terms of their relationship and thus we got to explore how they got to that point and how they navigated the plot.

Well I mean I say realistic in the sense that no one was forcing their character to act a certain way to meet some romance quota or the plot. No we both build characters that fit the situation at hand and then just kind of explored how/why they got there.

 

[Terrabreak]

I think an important point is knowing how much "emotion" put into it. As far as I have seen when people turn the death of a character (Lets use this example since its the most common) into a soap opera it turns from sad to either cheesy or just not interesting.

 

[Idea]

The problem with emotion in RP is the overstatement of RP as a hobby. RPing is a hobby, I am not denying that, but being a hobby is not the end all be all of RP. Playing card games is a hobby, and it involves owning and knowing the rules of playing the cards. Fishing involves preparing the hook and the fishing rod and sometimes even travel and wait. Doing sports involves getting up, getting out and getting that ass moving (unless you're playing chess I guess). And just like those, RP involves writing and cooperation and getting into a character's mindset. But be it the rules of a cardgame, the laws on fishing, the diet plan, or the fundamentals of writing, every hobby has written and unwritten rules. The latter, in RP, are usually forgotten.

Writing well is not easy. And it's defintely not always fun. Getting people to cooperate can be a huge hassle too. Yet everyone in RP seems to expect it to be a breeze you can just improvise through. And they want to reap their sow without sowing. But the only way to do that is to go next door and reap your neighboor's sow until nobody has any sow.

The point is, everything that's great about writing comes from one thing: Your investment. And a nice chunk of RP is around writing. So naturally, your investment in the RP and the investment of others is a fundamental for having it work. The problem then lies that you can't invest without looking ahead. Much like people won't invest in a company or a job if it doesn't earn them something in the long run, how can you invest in something without earning someting that investment will pay off? You can't. And so you don't get that reward unless you're building it up from the beggining.

Getting emotions out of a roleplay starts with committing to it and building towards the pay-offs instead of expecting them at face-value.

 

[Literary Revenant]

Whenever I have seen romances, be in in a story/novel, a TV show, an Anime (I know its a show but its different for me!), or even a graphic novel I will agree that I do find many shallow or blah relationships.

There was one story that I found interesting though. However if I were to say it, I feel like I would be going off topic. Specific Romance Roleplays are very blah for me, mainly because as you said people will make characters to suit eachother perfectly so there is minimal effort involved with the actual players. With easy peasy lemon squeazy romances, people who like romance go "Blaaaaaah........ they didn't try hard enough." and find it forced. I believe it takes real life emotional attachment to a character or person to really inspire the creation of good romance. Simply falling in love because they were compatible on Eharmony is dumb. Falling in love because they shared experience, negative and positive, etc is a great thing. That means that there is potential reasoning for a romance to form, rather than you like pie and I like pie so lets marry.

One example I can think of is this Manga I read where a girl bumps into another girl accidentally and makes a mess. The girl who bumped into the other apologizes and offers up anything to try and repay the other girl. Lets call this one Sara.) The girl who was bumped into has an interesting request. She asks Sara to become her girlfriend. Quick note, these 2 have NOTHING in common. Sara is a tall athletic pretty and popular young lady while Jenny is short, bright, pretty, but also very average. (Lets call that one Jenny.) Jenny asks because she wants to be noticed with this tall pretty popular lady, and hopes that boys will try and ask her out. Sara accepts the offer and becomes Jenny's sorta fake girlfriend. To keep this short, good and bad things happen, and Jenny falls in love with Sara vice versa. (I can't type the whole story, Id be here for 2 hours typing.) Now even though Jenny asks Sara to go out with her originally so she could become popular with boys, she grows emotionally attached to Sara and finally ends up truly falling in love. They didn't fall in love because of physical attraction, nor did they fall in love because of being fake girlfriends, they fell in love because they had many experiences and ultimately became inseparable.

Granted thats a Manga, and a Yuri manga at that, but it does show that there is more to romance than just "I love you 'smooch smooch'" I'm not going to hope for any changes in people or more complex romances. Why? It would be unrealistic of me. If people enjoy those types of romance stories let them enjoy them. For those of us who enjoy relationships with emotion, perhaps we can make our own darn RP and see if we can make characters that fall in love the hard way.

I hope what I said helps somewhat.

 

[Bacon is fluffy]

I've always looked upon romance RPs in a very strange light. We see people make characters that have the sole purpose of romancing another character. The characters then just sorta blush at eachother for five pages and then get married. I've seen the occasional RP where characters enter a romance without it being the explicit goal of the RP, but usually it's just on the whim of the RP'ers with the logic "they'd be cute together" or "they're meant for eachother".

I've never seen two characters grow as people, and feel emotion towards other characters naturally. The only exception I can think of is a D&D campaign where two of the PC's wound up having an amazing rapport, despite arguing with eachother constantly. Eventually, when one of the characters died, it was actually emotional enough to make the other player tear up, and that was only four or five sessions in, with two strangers on the internet playing.

However, I feel like that is maybe a bit hollow. It was in large part because of the scene that I set up for them and the way that I drove the characters together. Their actions were their own actions, but I wrote the entire campaign with the assumption that they would be friends after seeing them interact in the first mission. I intentionally drove them together and in that scene I intentionally made it an emotional sacrifice.

Back on the point at hand, I think that with younger RPers and with intentional romance RP, it's less a case of emotional rapport, but just wanting to ship together two dream characters. Their relationships don't have flaws, they don't disagree, they just simply "get marry and have lots kids". Sometimes there's an interesting dynamic at play, but it's always forced. It's always strict and unnatural. Character A is submissive and character B is dominant. Character A is reluctant and character B is devoted. These tropes are so simplistic and unrealistic that the characters don't matter, they can be replaced with the names Character A and B and it's still the same. I feel like too often the characters exist solely to be in a relationship with another character. The relationship isn't built.

Any exceptions you can think of? Have you ever had two characters actually grow emotionally off of eachother, maybe even into a romance? Is that actually possible?

Romantic: of, characterized by, or suggestive of an idealized view of reality.

Romance is partially idealism, which is why you see tropes all the time. Because those tropes are the ideal fantasies and scenarios people have either come to adopt or picture, when they think of romance. I'm not big on romance and won't pretend to understand how to write or convey it even in real life though. I've seen things myself that I personally believe are romance,but won't advocate them as such.

 

[Sir. Wizard]

Very interesting Topic.
I cant say that I am paticularly knowledgeable in this matter,(In Fact I am quite sure the opposite is the case.) but I will add my thoughts to the Topic anyway.

Personally, I dislike any Romance-themed Books, Movies, Anime and of Course RP. But that is not because I am a Robot without hearth(Wait ? Is it ?).
Either Way, I think those bad Romances in which the Characters just fall in love because... because are sort of similar to an Issue like Mary-Sue, except that I think more people do it. And similarly to good old Mary this seems to be a thing mostly young Roleplayers do. I have seen often enough how some characters just start romancing each other because of... well most often I think its just the first 2 characters who look at each other who it happens to in these kind of Rps. (Kind of like in Pokemon. "Once 2 Trainers Eyes meet, they must ROMANCE !") But it happens for no Reasons whatsoever. But I think it can be done. Atleast in Games where Romance is not the Main-Focus and has time to develop naturally.

Here is one experience I have with a Romance that seemed good. Basically there were 2 Characters in a Party. One Guy (Lets call him... Wizard) was a constantly doing dumb stuff or making... interesting decisions which keeped putting the Party in Danger. Then there was that one Women (Lets call her... Witch) which always had to save the Partys Asses and mostly the Wizards Ass. These 2 Characters spend pretty much most of their Time arguing under themselves, and on specially heated occasions would almost have tried to fight under each other(Maybe to Death). They were clearly not in Love.(Atleast I dont think any of them were at that Point.) Anyway, a few adventures over different Continents later... The Witch had obviously saved the Wizard countless of Times. Its quite possible that she did kind of care for the foolish dumbass. But the Wizard has showed on a few occasions as well that he cared atleast enough to also risk his life to save hers. While they stilled disagreed on many topics a sort of Respect grew. On one of these Occasions in which the Wizard tried to save the Witch, risking his life wasnt quite enough. He had to sacrifice something. It was actually a bit more complicated but for the sake of simplicity I will say that he sacrificed most of his Life-force. In the end it made them bond and when the Wizards End had come... The Witch had cried quite a bit and would later on some occasions at the mention of his name. Mind you they had never really kissed, or had any intimacies, yet this seemed like the strongest Romance I had seen in a While. (Yeah, Wizard died a Virgin.) The Rp I was talking about isnt completely finished and there has been talk of the Witch planning on going to hell, to drag him out of there. But I am unsure how that will go.

I just think this kind of stuff cant happen on Command. There has to be harmony(or discord like in my story) to be between characters to make it strong. It needs to grow naturally and overtime.

Anyway, I hope the View of an old Wizard, helped somewhat. (Tough it probably didnt.)

 

[Windsock]

how does necroposting keep on happening

 

[Bacon is fluffy]

how does necroposting keep on happening

8 days is considering necroposting?

 

[Sir. Wizard]

... What is going on ? Did I do something wrong ?

 

[Windsock]

Thought it was september.

 

[Tove]

... What is going on ? Did I do something wrong ?

No you didn't, don't worry.

 

[The Chronicler]

I think a huge issue in developing emotion in a roleplay is because of how fast everything goes.

Spoiler: I guess I wrote more, don't hate me.

Not everybody is prepared or even willing to due rather long term roleplaying, things go fast and the amount of time spent on something will be made faster by one or more person who wants it to end. 1x1 could be an exception but if the two people can't reason outside of IC, then real issues will arise developing a real connection.

Another problem could be that, it's not real. People won't develop a real emotional connection between two fake characters or more, the characters are fictional and their emotional attachments should be fictional and fake as well. Something else to mention should be that detailing in a casual roleplay isn't something a lot of people would do, you'd end up writing more and as mentioned above, people sort of want things to go fast and end quickly.

 

[QuirkyAngel]

I had a character who was in a very...unique...relationship. I'd label it as dark romance. The obsessive kind. The character had his entire village annihilated by a villain npc--an enemy queen, so to say. My character became depressed. He got out of depression by focusing on revenge. Not by killing the queen. Oh no. He was going to take away what was important to her just she did him. Namely her adopted daughter (another player). He traveled all the way to where she was trying to make peace to assassinate her...only to see the object of his revenge killed by her own mother..and other stuff...but that was the most important thing. Having once again lost his purpose, he falls back to depression, wanders around a bit, meets some new people, then, lo and behold, he runs into her again, brought back to 'life' via ninja magic (which I won't get in to). They fought. He lost. They become friends...of sorts. My character became determined to beat hers. Lots of other stuff happened. His hatred for her people lessened somewhat. Love probably blossomed somewhere...they kissed(lots)...both felt strongly about one another, but both characters still had a lot of issues. In the end, the other player character went mental and sided with the enemy queen who is family. They went their separate ways.

In the afterstory, they got back together again and my character became the king of darkness^^

I also had another character in the same rp who was in a much more normal relationship. Our characters started out as friends. His character crushed on my character first. Mine was oblivious. They fought through a ninja war together. She was like his best friend. She eventually confessed. He accepted. Romance grew from there...into children for the afterstory =)

Unless players actually love each other irl, I think all relationships, including romance in rps are contrived in some way. What is natural romance? At some point, a player is going to have to decide they want to give their character 'feelings' for another character if they want any sort of romance at all. It's just a matter of when. How. 'Love' at first sight does exist. Romance with conflict is certainly more entertaining to watch, as with all conflicts, but if both characters are the peaceful types then...*shrug* Why create unnecessary trouble? Love is a feeling. Everyone wants it. It can be spawned with something as 'oh, he looks cute' or 'OMG! He likes me? I never had someone like me before...' Teens will be teens. And if you're rping a teenage character that's pretty normal. Sure it's not a great story, but most relationships in real life aren't a great stories. Some don't even have love as a factor. Some characters don't have high standards. Or perhaps some characters are simply lost in their fantasy 'love' without having built a foundation--the idealistic types. Whichever the case, not all emotional attachments make sense, therefore they don't feel realistic, but those types do exist irl...

 

[Hachi Machi]

I've always looked upon romance RPs in a very strange light. We see people make characters that have the sole purpose of romancing another character. The characters then just sorta blush at eachother for five pages and then get married. I've seen the occasional RP where characters enter a romance without it being the explicit goal of the RP, but usually it's just on the whim of the RP'ers with the logic "they'd be cute together" or "they're meant for eachother".

I've never seen two characters grow as people, and feel emotion towards other characters naturally. The only exception I can think of is a D&D campaign where two of the PC's wound up having an amazing rapport, despite arguing with eachother constantly. Eventually, when one of the characters died, it was actually emotional enough to make the other player tear up, and that was only four or five sessions in, with two strangers on the internet playing.

However, I feel like that is maybe a bit hollow. It was in large part because of the scene that I set up for them and the way that I drove the characters together. Their actions were their own actions, but I wrote the entire campaign with the assumption that they would be friends after seeing them interact in the first mission. I intentionally drove them together and in that scene I intentionally made it an emotional sacrifice.

Back on the point at hand, I think that with younger RPers and with intentional romance RP, it's less a case of emotional rapport, but just wanting to ship together two dream characters. Their relationships don't have flaws, they don't disagree, they just simply "get marry and have lots kids". Sometimes there's an interesting dynamic at play, but it's always forced. It's always strict and unnatural. Character A is submissive and character B is dominant. Character A is reluctant and character B is devoted. These tropes are so simplistic and unrealistic that the characters don't matter, they can be replaced with the names Character A and B and it's still the same. I feel like too often the characters exist solely to be in a relationship with another character. The relationship isn't built.

Any exceptions you can think of? Have you ever had two characters actually grow emotionally off of eachother, maybe even into a romance? Is that actually possible?

Whenever I do emotional stuff, I use crying, smiles, and dreams/nightmares mainly. I've never actually roleplayed a romance, or seen someone roleplay a romance before, so I can't really answer that question. I'm more of state the facts and ask questions in my character's head for most of my posts. I usually use gestures and actions to convey emotions as well as dialogue, but I don't really go into detail.

I still think it's possible to create emotion, and I certainly do feel empathy, or is it sympathy for the character's in the roleplays I'm in sometimes. The hardest part is subtle emotion, since I've difficulty with that, but not so much hard emotion, such as crying/gestures/actions. I actually don't know what constitutes as subtle emotion. I guess something light, like a quick smile?

Also, I base emotions according to what I've felt in my life as well as media. My problem with romance is that I've never actually loved another person (been in a romantic relationship), so I lack the ability to write about it efficiently, other than using clichés from media. Only stuff I'm experienced with is platonic and familial and a little rivalry.

I do enjoy shipping characters that's for certain. Hopefully, I answered your questions accurately.

 

[CastoffCaptain]

Maybe you're not reading the right RPs? I've only ever successfully entered an RP romance once-- and it's the one I'm in right now. And I hesitate to use the word "romance" because it makes me think of soda-shop dates and toes scuffing the pavement and neither of our characters are even remotely doing that/are the type.

I'm curious, though-- do you want to be in a romance RP and are frustrated by what you've found, or are you just... eh... examining other people's RPs?

 

[MonsterGlacier]

My thing with romance RPs is that it moves really fast and these characters fall instantly in love. Which...isn't necessarily a bad thing, but after the honeymoon phase wears off there is bound to be problems, usually a lot in a fast moving romance. RPers don't really ever want to deal with that. That just want sweet, sappy love and no drama. If the characters don't click or have chemistry, then the RP gets dropped.

I've had 3 successful romances grow over RPing through my 12 years of doing so. The first was characters that just wanted to bang all the time, they both caught feelings but didn't want to admit it. Eventually, they did and happily ever after, you know. The second was a very fast moving romance. Dropped I love you within a couple days, got engaged within a few months, then... ended up having a lot of problems after the infatuation wore off. Instead of quitting they decided to work through their issues and ended up even stronger than before (which is the most natural to me because that's what happened with my fiance and me). The last I had was a character dating the brother of another character. My character and the brother didn't click. It was all just sexual based attraction (they were teenagers haha), and my character didn't get along with the other character. Eventually, though, they realized they had a lot in common and became friends, then eventually lovers. The brother didn't get cheated on lol They broke up before that.

All my other romance RPs have just been kind of...blah. I have the same few sets of characters I use that I won't change the personality of just for the sake of an RP. I feel like a lot of people do that with their characters and it's depressing. I've stopped, for the most part, getting into pure romantic RPs. I like romance, only if it grows naturally.