Some interesting ideas here, but it does seem like your games involve a lot more romance / eroticism than my own have- in my experience, that's an area that a lot of players are conflicted about including or strongly referencing at the table. (Done badly, of course, it can be *very* uncomfortable for some!)
Yeah this is a good point. One thing that's worth mentioning about Mishkik is that none of the eroticism is really out in the open. The stuff about Graatz is passed off as a joke. The stuff about Samuel is as much about friendship as love. The Idris stuff is a minor subplot. Thus it ends up as not especially "erotic" in play.
As the player of Glee on the table, I can confirm that all the erotic and romantic content is generally held behind the curtains, so to speak.
In fact, a fair amount of this stuff was actually held in side-chats outside of the main table – broadly known to be happening to the rest of the table – and which culminated, I felt, in a pretty effective (series of) scene(s) which were in front of the table as a whole.
Plotting possible character arcs is really important! Thank you for writing this up somewhere I can send my tablemates to.
I love this method because it allows for some really interesting options over a longer campaign. For my own example, I'm currently playing a paladin from a monotheistic ethnoreligious group (think a cultish combination of Judaism and the Spanish Inquisition) who is just now venturing out into the wider world. The character arc I'm hoping she'll follow is that she realizes her deity is a third-rate asshole who started a holy war (with the setting's equivalent of the Roman Empire) for his own amusement, and that there is more than one god. However, around the table I've been very explicit that the other characters' influence on her will decide which path she goes down. There's always the potential for her to--like any member of a cult--double down on her beliefs (and start murdering people in the name of her god) if she gets pushed too far.
The options--multiple possible and probable endpoints--are the key to why this works so well. Finding out, one roll at a time, what the middle looks like is the fun part.
The most fun character I ever roleplayed (D&D 5e) was a minotaur barbarian with 5 INT called Sable. Since it was an Urban Campaign I went with the criminal background and made him a gang leader with a massive ego. He was willing to defer to his smarter teammates, which stopped him from being too annoying, but there were many comedic moments since 5 INT let me not worry too much about whether what he was doing was the smartest move, and there were some entertaining "small name, big ego" situations when he assumed that other people would know who he was. His pride ended up working really well in the climax, where he flat-out refused to bow before the Devil that was the campaign boss - making a deal with the devil would imply that Sable couldn't win with raw strength.
My current character's a wild magic sorcerer with a dip into bard, and while he's more calculating he also has a big ego, which feels fitting for someone with powers based on self-confidence. He definitely sees himself as the leader of the party, but he's the kind of person that's too charismatic to trust, and there've been some fun conflicts when his pragmatism conflicted with the more idealistic members of the party. (Fun trick - put haste on the party members that want to take the villain alive, then drop haste, stunning everyone that might object, then fire three point blank scorching rays into the unconscious villain to make sure he's dead and not going to cause future problems. In character they're still bitter, but out of character they all thought it was very clever.)
Some interesting ideas here, but it does seem like your games involve a lot more romance / eroticism than my own have- in my experience, that's an area that a lot of players are conflicted about including or strongly referencing at the table. (Done badly, of course, it can be *very* uncomfortable for some!)
Yeah this is a good point. One thing that's worth mentioning about Mishkik is that none of the eroticism is really out in the open. The stuff about Graatz is passed off as a joke. The stuff about Samuel is as much about friendship as love. The Idris stuff is a minor subplot. Thus it ends up as not especially "erotic" in play.
As the player of Glee on the table, I can confirm that all the erotic and romantic content is generally held behind the curtains, so to speak.
In fact, a fair amount of this stuff was actually held in side-chats outside of the main table – broadly known to be happening to the rest of the table – and which culminated, I felt, in a pretty effective (series of) scene(s) which were in front of the table as a whole.
Plotting possible character arcs is really important! Thank you for writing this up somewhere I can send my tablemates to.
I love this method because it allows for some really interesting options over a longer campaign. For my own example, I'm currently playing a paladin from a monotheistic ethnoreligious group (think a cultish combination of Judaism and the Spanish Inquisition) who is just now venturing out into the wider world. The character arc I'm hoping she'll follow is that she realizes her deity is a third-rate asshole who started a holy war (with the setting's equivalent of the Roman Empire) for his own amusement, and that there is more than one god. However, around the table I've been very explicit that the other characters' influence on her will decide which path she goes down. There's always the potential for her to--like any member of a cult--double down on her beliefs (and start murdering people in the name of her god) if she gets pushed too far.
The options--multiple possible and probable endpoints--are the key to why this works so well. Finding out, one roll at a time, what the middle looks like is the fun part.
The most fun character I ever roleplayed (D&D 5e) was a minotaur barbarian with 5 INT called Sable. Since it was an Urban Campaign I went with the criminal background and made him a gang leader with a massive ego. He was willing to defer to his smarter teammates, which stopped him from being too annoying, but there were many comedic moments since 5 INT let me not worry too much about whether what he was doing was the smartest move, and there were some entertaining "small name, big ego" situations when he assumed that other people would know who he was. His pride ended up working really well in the climax, where he flat-out refused to bow before the Devil that was the campaign boss - making a deal with the devil would imply that Sable couldn't win with raw strength.
My current character's a wild magic sorcerer with a dip into bard, and while he's more calculating he also has a big ego, which feels fitting for someone with powers based on self-confidence. He definitely sees himself as the leader of the party, but he's the kind of person that's too charismatic to trust, and there've been some fun conflicts when his pragmatism conflicted with the more idealistic members of the party. (Fun trick - put haste on the party members that want to take the villain alive, then drop haste, stunning everyone that might object, then fire three point blank scorching rays into the unconscious villain to make sure he's dead and not going to cause future problems. In character they're still bitter, but out of character they all thought it was very clever.)