The No-Romo Tavern: Aromantic D&D talk thread

[FaerySilverwings]

Greetings, Adventurers!

I realized when I was reading through the Aromantic Moments thread (and posting one of my stories) that this might be a nice thread to have, and I couldn't find one that already existed. There seem to be a good number of other people who play around here, and I'm interested in hearing how people's aromantic/aspec/etc identity affects their game and characters.

As for me, I'm aro and ace and I've realized recently that it definitely affects how I run the game, especially in the light of handling some of my players. I DM for a pretty allo party, and among the characters at my table I have a Swashbuckler that might as well be a stereotypical bard and a Barbarian who came with "lecherous" as one of her flaws (although thankfully that almost never gets activated, because the player doesn't bring it up and neither do I). I used to have a Sorcerer whose player had the stated goal of acquiring a girlfriend as part of his character arc, which was weird for a number of reasons but... irl stuff happened and I removed him from my game and brought Barbarian in from the group I used to play with instead.

When I'm a player, which isn't often, I never go for flirty/seductive characters... I mean, seriously, the first character I really got into playing was a Shardmind. And since then everything I make tends to turn into a tree/bird that just wants friends and adventures, regardless of the system.

[I'm starting to think I need to actually come out to my players, but since I'm running everything online now because... well, obvious reasons plus I moved and now live on the other side of an ocean from most of them... I haven't found a good moment or reason to do it.]

[Magni]

Oh yeah a mood, fortunately I've mainly DM'd for groups of aro people (I have an aro d&d server with varying levels of activity) and in other groups I've always been out, but yeah that can be challenging.  I once had a play-by-post game where then it ended up basically revolving around one player and their npc romantic partner roleplaying a lot so I ended up really disliking that game, and had conflict when there were vague plans for another pbp where I expressed concerns bc that kind of excessive focus on romantic stuff caused me a lot of romance repulsion and made me feel alienated from the game....and they completely disrespected my romance repulsion and made me feel unwelcome.  Apparently, some people feel they are entitled to roleplaying romance in their d&d.

 

You could also express discomfort with players about roleplaying romantic stuff without actually coming out? and like, possibly establish level of comfort (such as maybe saying yeah this happens vs. having to actually roleplay it out).

[FaerySilverwings]

2 hours ago, Magni said:

You could also express discomfort with players about roleplaying romantic stuff without actually coming out? and like, possibly establish level of comfort (such as maybe saying yeah this happens vs. having to actually roleplay it out).

Yeah, if it comes up again I may do that with them. The other piece of the story here is that I've been running this campaign for the same group of people for three years now, and most of the awkward romance-toned stuff happened a lot earlier on... and I've only been fully aware of the words for my identity for a month.  [but I do want them to know eventually because I want to be openly me to the world, if that makes sense?] 

I think one of my favorite parts of being DM is that I can set the standards for "this is a safe space for us to have fun, if something is pushing your real-life buttons, tell me and we'll adjust accordingly". Granted, I had a couple of... uncomfortable experiences? with the group I was with when I first started playing, so I'm probably a bit more sensitive about that than a lot of people?

And you're right, any time a game gets focused around one player's romance for an extended period of time, it's really alienating. I was a player in a different game with some of the same people for a while and I'm pretty sure my characters in that were the only ones who didn't have a love interest plot going on... and I never did understand why all of the other players were so keen on the romance aspect of it. (... yeah, that's definitely an "Aro sign", isn't it?)

[Holmbo]

I'm interested in trying D&D sometime, when my plate is not as full. I'm playing Expanse RPG at the moment and some of the players talk about their D&D experience which makes me curious to try it. It seems like a better game system than Expanse to be honest ?

[roboticanary]

4 hours ago, Holmbo said:

when my plate is not as full.

yeah, this is the problem I find with a lot of RPGs, long campains that tend to need a lot of time to prepare and multiple weeks to run. 

My way around it has been avoiding DnD style stuff and playing around with some far shorter, simpler RPG systems. For avoiding romance I do like laser kittens, the game uses a hand of cards for each player rather than rolling dice and whether you can perform an action lands on a simple bet between you and the person running the story, very easy to do as a one night run even if coming in no-one else had heard of the game.

I know some people really like the complexity that something like DnD offers with so many options and competing rolls but I find it often just leads to one round of combat taking a needlessly long time. Also before you even start you have character design which can be tonnes of work in itself.

5 hours ago, Holmbo said:

It seems like a better game system than Expanse to be honest

I have only played one expanse campaign and that as a player, but to be honest I would agree that DnD beats it if you want a serious, long running campaign. Expanse was good fun but I think suffered from being a fairly recent release. Not sure how it is now but when I played it I don't remember using expansions and some parts of the world, especially the ships, felt threadbare. DnD just has far more years of expanding and tinkering to make a more elegant set of rules. It also of course has far more material for a GM to design a campaign around.

[Autumn]

Ohh yes, I would certainly say my being aroace effects how I rp. when writing for novel projects, or other non-rp fiction, I can write allo characters and sometimes even minor romance, but I only really feel comfortable role-playing aro characters, and when I DM romance isn't part of the plot. I don't really like other characters flirting with me too much. I played 1 game with strangers for a while that didn't get romantic at all but had some innuendo that made me mildly uncomfortable in one or two very short instances, but it wasn't much of a problem. Otherwise, I've played with my friend group who all know I'm aro and care about respecting everyone's boundaries and stuff, so it's been only good times with them. I'm not currently in an active d&d game right now though. I'm playing Masks instead, which is for teen superheroes, and having a lot of fun with it.

[Mark]

I don't want the likes of romance, coupledom or marriage with my characters. Not even as a backstory and certainly not as any kind of plot requirement.
Nor would I be comfortable with a party who were mostly coupled.
Anything sexual I'm fine with.
 

[Holmbo]

@roboticanary do you have tips for other simpler RPGs? I might want to try playing with my friend sometime. She said she'd like to try RPG but I don't really want to have to set up some complicated story.

 

[roboticanary]

@Holmbo, honestly I am still fairly amature at running these simpler RPGs so dont have that much to advise you, and I have no idea what style of story you want. but here's a little ramble which might give you a few ideas.

If you want to avoid setting up a complicated story these are a few i have played or gm'd. as I mentioned, laser kittens is a good example of this. Also I have a soft spot for lasers and feelings, basically it has a game rules and setup that lasts 1 page, so can easily be prepared quick, however it has a tendency to become too romantic for my tastes, which will be obvious why if you have a quick look at those rules. quest has a couple of good one shot ideas and only using one dice keeps setup fast. one last one I recommend is goblin quest just because it is amusing to watch people die a lot. it is childishly simple compared to other rpgs but is good fun, also can be done without a gm which is quite cool.

the thing i have found with setting up stories is that plotting out the campaign is the short bit. the bit that takes time is to fit the encounters into the rules. I have ran 1 custom dnd campaign and the thing that kept taking time was that any character was needing a set of stats for combat in case my idiots tried to fight them. picking reasonable enemies, rewards, all that for just one encounter massively upped the prep time. I ran basically the same story with a different group doing fate accelerated ruleset and the prep was far faster. (didnt work great unfortunately, fate is built for a less combat focused idea than dnd so i wasnt too happy with that story). if you want something that lets you create a story similar to what  then either quest or a fate based system is a good option.

Now these are in a completely different league to a long running dnd campaign, but if your friend just wants to try an rpg then this could be a good way to just get her, you and a couple of other people together for one night and play something fun without having to expect you to do the complex setup (also importantly, she doesn't get frontloaded with hours of rule reading and character creation which often puts people off getting into rpgs).

Since you have played expanse before one other option is to use the modern age ruleset (what expanse is based on). this is a longer setup than what i have described above but since you have some familiarity with the rules that would speed up the campaign design.

(sidenote, i have found each rule book for what i have mentioned here for free in some way or another, although that may not always be true)

[roboticanary]

Wow I love my rpg group, I've heard a fair few stories here and on another thread of these games having romance forced into the story.

just a couple of days ago we were running through a story of politics in whatever generic fantasy kingdom we inhabit and were faced with a problem of getting our party in with the ruling faction, we needed help to defeat a necromancer nearby.

The story seemed to be set up with romance as a possibility, some characters we could seduce.

instead we went completely away from what our GM had in mind and started a revolution, he just rolled with it. I suspect this was meant to be a minor sidenote to the story but instead of a dull romance we have revolution and a good chance of dying before we even start what we were supposed to. I feel so lucky I am with a group of people who, although they are alloromantic, don't really want to go down the romantic route if there are other options around.

[ScarfOfSexualPreference]

Yea, in my party we don’t really talk abt that kind of stuff, but we’re pretty much all gay, so it’s a super welcoming environment! 
 

especially when writing, I feel like any romance flies under the radar. Like it doesn’t even occur to me that my characters would be interested in someone. 

[D0NN13_D1N0]

It's interesting to me how many of us are into D&D, i've noticed the same thing. I've also wanted to play it for years but none of my friends do so I've never really had a proper game:((

Edited November 4, 2020 by Alexrobinmc

[CharCharChar]

What a lovely thread!

I hadn't thought about how being aro affects my DMing. I don't think it does??? It's more the partial sex-repulsion that makes it a pain playing with certain players who

Spoiler

want to flirt and have sex with .... things they shouldnt. 

(mild references to inappropriate things). 

I was thinking of setting up a little collaboration project where a handful of aros and I write a collection of 100 aromantic NPC descriptions for campaigns. I'll push for it more after November (I expect many people who like to write may be focused on their own project for NaNoWriMo). But since I stumbled on this thread I thought I'd reach out. Feel free to tag or DM me if you'd like to join  (I'm imagining the finished project would be a free PDF we share around).

Ideally I'd like to include alloaros, romance-repulsed, romance-favorable, demi/grayros, alloplatonic, QPR-wanting (is there a better word??) in the collab so that NPCs can more genuinely/accurately represent different aro experiences - but if you happen to ID exactly the same as me I'm sure you'll still have unique and worthwhile ideas (I'm worried that sounds sarcastic; I'm not being sarcastic).

If you're not a writer but still want to be involved, there's other ways like sharing ideas for NPCs, being a sensitivity reader, making the PDF look pretty, figuring out places to share it. 

Inspired by high fantasy disability tables (name your price) and an aromantic DnD adventure (15$, free preview).

(I can't make the bold go away! Nooooooo!)

[CharCharChar]

Oh dear, now I'm having campaign plans for a quest to find an adorable runaway critter who could be with any of 100 aro NPCs ??????  ????  ??????  ????  ??????  ????  ??????  ????  ??????  ????  ??????  ????  ??????  ????  ??????  ????  ??????  ????  ??????  ???? 

[Mark]

On 11/5/2020 at 6:22 AM, CharCharChar said:

Ideally I'd like to include alloaros, romance-repulsed, romance-favorable, demi/grayros, alloplatonic, QPR-wanting (is there a better word??) in the collab so that NPCs can more genuinely/accurately represent different aro experiences - but if you happen to ID exactly the same as me I'm sure you'll still have unique and worthwhile ideas (I'm worried that sounds sarcastic; I'm not being sarcastic).

Possibly "QPR favourable", "QPR indifferent" and "QPR repulsed".
Also remember that in a D&D world there might be sexual orientations which do not exist in the real world.. Nor is there any reason such a world need be, universally, amantonormative.

[Guest ennisrook]

hey, i'm the author of high fantasy disability tables- i just want to say that i'm so excited about you being inspired by my work, and i hope your own project goes well! i'd love to link to something whenever it gets posted! :)

[LazyPilgrim]

I have a general rule of "sex only in the background" for my campaigns, although that's partly due to not wanting to hear my players' sexual RPing under ANY circumstances. I've never attempted to include romance, mainly because I have no idea how to write a believable story.

[roboticanary]

I found something quite nice recently. I play a bit of warhammer fantasy roleplay and was having a look at the rules. It offers ideas for custom psychology rules, including love. I was expecting to groan in frustration but it actually set it up with an example of familial love and pointed out strong friendship as an example the GM could use, as well as the usual romance.

It also seems quite clear from the way it set it up that it is not a definite bonus to be in love. You get some bonuses while defending your loved ones but you have to come to their aid, which could mess up your strategy.

I was quite happy with how it was done and that idea that if you want a character to be in love I get to force you to defend them might be something I look to put in when I next get in charge of a game.

[IdentityCrisis]

Every time I play DND I forget romance is even an option and like... some of my friends that roleplay in other DND groups talk about their characters falling in love and I'm like, "is that a thing? That happens?" XD anyway I should've know I was aromantic a LONG time ago. I only recently came out to myself even but it makes me feel SO much better about why dating people always seems so disappointing for me when I try it. I also feel more comfortable with aro people as well cuz they're just more relatable than alloromantics. again... BIG flashing signs and I didn't pay attention till I turned 18. I know that's young but it's 2021 let's be honest anyone aver 16 feels 10 years older by now XD

[Mark]

Its notable that there are RPG systems, such as 7th Sea, which specifically support aromantic characters.
For those unfamiliar the Game is set in a fictionalised version of 17th century Europe with page 89 of the Player's Guide stating "On the other side of the fence, the romantics sing about a new kind of love, a love between two people no other can experience, share or understand It is a fire that flares up without reason and burns forever." With one of the character creation questions being "Is your Hero in love? Is he married or betrothed?" (The guide does poorly when it comes to gender inclusive language.)

[Karst]

Currently, my main gaming group is an adventure that my brother is running.  Even if I weren't aro, having my character romance an NPC played by a family member would be incredibly weird.

[Erederyn]

Oof, one of my players wanted to romance the NPC and I felt so awkward as the DM ? Even though it wasn't directed at me as a person, I was not prepared for it hahah. And then the same player was trying to get another player, who is aroace and uncomfy with those sorts of situations, to flirt with an NPC lolol. I just forgot that players/characters might try to romance NPCs or each other, and I did not foresee this as a potential issue ahhh. 

[Mark]

On 6/14/2021 at 12:27 PM, Erederyn said:

Oof, one of my players wanted to romance the NPC and I felt so awkward as the DM ? Even though it wasn't directed at me as a person, I was not prepared for it hahah.

Just out of interest how did the PC ad NPC compare in terms of stats? Also was that a plot-critical NPC or one you could afford to lose in a combat encounter?

On 6/14/2021 at 12:27 PM, Erederyn said:

And then the same player was trying to get another player, who is aroace and uncomfy with those sorts of situations, to flirt with an NPC lolol.

This sounds like some troublesome PvP behaviour.

On 6/14/2021 at 12:27 PM, Erederyn said:

 just forgot that players/characters might try to romance NPCs or each other, and I did not foresee this as a potential issue ahhh. 

PCs can behave in all sorts of inappropriate ways towards NPCs. However NPCs can either run away or attack PCs as they see fit. It's also perfectly within the rules for a harmless appearing NPC to be a high level monk/sorcerer/druid/etc or a (polymorphed) dragon.

[Erederyn]

5 hours ago, Mark said:

Just out of interest how did the PC ad NPC compare in terms of stats? Also was that a plot-critical NPC or one you could afford to lose in a combat encounter?

This sounds like some troublesome PvP behaviour.

PCs can behave in all sorts of inappropriate ways towards NPCs. However NPCs can either run away or attack PCs as they see fit. It's also perfectly within the rules for a harmless appearing NPC to be a high level monk/sorcerer/druid/etc or a (polymorphed) dragon.

It was a non-important NPC in that situation, and I ended up deviating the roleplaying away from it. It just caught me off guard. I've played before with people who knew I'm aro so that was not an issue, but this is a new player in my group who doesn't know and it was just a wake-up call of "oh yeah people do this." But yeah, that is a good point that I can easily remove NPCs from such instances. Hopefully it's not something that'll happen more often and if so, it'll be something to discuss. 

[ScarfOfSexualPreference]

I really love arcs that involve romance in the podcasts I listen to, and a lot of my players like to be flirty or use innuendo, which I don’t mind. In fact, I enjoy scandalous jokes most of the time.

I usually ask what the party is comfy with before giving anyone a romantic interest or anything, but the hardest part for me is roleplaying that. Im fine with the ‘nice gal/guy’ flirting, but I’ve got no clue how to be the sexy kind of flirty. 

The other thing is probably a problem for allos and aros alike, but when doing inter-PC relationships, I really want to make sure I draw the line between in-game and real life. It may just be my paranoia of people *falling in love* with me, but I’m always really skeptical of that stuff, especially when it’s the resident Creepy Guy in our group. We just need to remove him already…