I’m getting married today (I wrote this earlier in the week, in case you’re wondering!), and having marriage on the brain got me to thinking about in-game marriages.
Have you ever had married PCs, or PCs married to NPCs, in one of your games?
Early on in my GMing career, I had a player who married an NPC in one of my D&D campaigns. It was an easy hook for me as the GM, since I could count on the player being motivated to rescue his spouse (etc.).
Years later, I think I could put an in-game relationship like this to very good use as a GM — it opens up so many opportunities for deviousness, as well as for potentially intense roleplaying.
What do you think?
One of my players married an NPC in a campaign. It wasn’t a big event, unfortunatly. There was some planning, but in the end it was “You had a great day, surrounded by friends and family. You are now a husband; congrats.” It was towards the end of that campaign, however, so there wasn’t too much time to play around with the relationship.
I’m such an oblivious fool, I forgot the obvious – Congratulations to you! My wedding was a little over a year ago, and it was the happiest day of my live – no joke.
Maybe it’s just the group I hang with, but we frequently have relationships and marriages between characters and characters and NPCs. They’re made as big or little a deal of as is appropriate for the setting.
I find it a sign that the players are deeply enough into the characters and the game that they want their characters to have lives and experiences outside of their “adventures”.
Oh, and feliciations! I’m off today to the wedding of two of the gamers in our group, in fact. Their characters never hooked up, but they did!
Congratulations! I hope you have a wonderful wedding and a long lifetime of shared love for one another!
I know how excited you must be. Tonight my fiancee and I are celebrating our engagement and her birthday, which is also today, with some friends, a few of whom are also players in my campaign. I promised her we wouldn’t talk about D&D. 😉
of all the players i’ve gamed with, only one regularly got his PCs married. often to tieflings, and usually to hilarious ends. oddly enough, he got married a few years ago and has since stopped gaming. sigh.
the only other marriage i recall was betwixt a wild mage (2nd ed AD&D) and a red dragon who fell madly in love with her due to a wild surge. it worked out well between those crazy kids.
A number of years ago in an AD&D game my character and another PC got married.
Then a few years later we got married in real life.
Close, but not quite. It’s driving my game’s gnome-illusionst crazy knowing that he has a pending arranged marriage to female gnome he’s not yet seen.
His uncle, an NPC that lives in town, keeps him on his toes by dropping cryptic “hints” about his future bride’s “attributes.”
OOH Troy that’s a wonderfully wicked idea… I may just steal that one… (big toothy grin)
Congrats! 😀
Yes, marriage and other relationships happen often in my campaigns. (In most of mine, elves don’t practice marriage as we understand it, being an inherintly chaotic species.) I had one PC marry Vekna, one marry a princess of faireyland in another game, and a PC is currently being courted by a sorcerer who was her rival at the beginning of our campaign. It’s a fun way to add some excitement to the game that’s not based around saving the world, so it takes the pressure off everyone, for at least a short while.
– Brian
Congratulations!
I don’t think we’ve done an in game marriage recently, but we have had some characters who started off married. It does add some texture– a character’s interaction with his wife can be a huge contrast to the rest of their interactions, revealing depth that suprises.
Just wanted to swing by and let everyone know that Martin’s wedding was beautiful and went off without a hitch! The happy couple are now kicking up the sand in sunny Maui.
Strange seeing Martin in clothes with buttons….
Good to hear it went well. Congratulations and best wishes!
Can’t say I’ve had much experience with married PCs, either to other PCs or to NPCs. Of course, I’m only relatively recently out of college, and my usual group is fairly close in age, so marriage simply hasn’t come up. I think it could absolutely provide a unique roleplaying experience. At the same time, though, I think it takes a certain maturity level and a certain level of roleplaying skill. By way of example:
In one game I ran, a friend who was new to roleplaying (and the girlfriend of one of our other players) joined in, because gaming was one of our important group activities. She, unfortunately, had difficulty drawing the mental line between her character and herself. We sat down and talked about this, and she (apparently) either threw herself into the character 100% (resulting in a few in-character shocks affecting her out of character) or 0% (resulting in a completely wooden portrayal). Attempting to roleplay some sort of marriage with this player, PC/PC or PC/NPC, would not only not have worked, it could have been absolutely disastrous.
I think using marriage as a game tool is something that should be weighed very carefully, to be sure the party (or at least the player in question) is ready for it. There’s a reason the Book of Vile Darkness and, I believe, the Book of Exalted Deeds came with “Mature Audiences Only” stickers. In-game marriage is as much a mature topic as torture, though for different reasons of course.
I just went to a wedding on Saturday for one of my wife’s ex-coworkers, and the couple is honeymooning in Maui. Martin, did you have a mariachi band playing at your wedding? 🙂
Congratumacations!
in Pendragon it was a central character decvelopment and major plot point to get married and have kids.
I keep intending to start hanging around here more often, so it’s only right that my first comment here is… congratulations!! That’s awesome!
I have had my own PC get married in a D&D game once. As a Storyteller of a long-running Mage game I did have a relationship develop into what would have been marriage, except the PC and NPC were both males. However, they did move in together and eventually had a daughter.
Thank you all for the congrats! 😀
Our wedding was a lot of fun, and we had a great time in Maui. (No mariachi band, though, longcoat000. ;)) There will be pictures of me in a tux at some point, and Abulia’s right: I do tend to avoid buttons whenever possible.
Back to the post, Pendragon really should have crossed my mind — if memory serves, it’s got a whole season pretty much devoted to nookie (winter, right?).
It’s fun to hear how everyone handles in-game marriages. Troy’s story about the arranged marriage reminds me of Piratecat’s lonng-running story hour on EN World, in which one of the PCs was engaged to what turned out to be a pit fiend. Good times. 😉