Exchange of Realities

People will do amazing things for the ones they love; as a result, such love can be a motivator for story characters and game characters alike. So it’s often tempting to create a character specifically for the purpose of creating a romantic attachment: a Designated Love Interest, or DLI.

That’s when the trouble starts.

Image courtesy of mikelawrey from stock.xchng.

Limyaael has a lot to say about the Designated Love Interest in novel format, mostly having to do with the fact that said DLI isn’t really human, strains internal consistency by how her romances begin, and is generally cliché and undercharacterized. And yet, despite these flaws, a story with a bad DLI can reach its predetermined end; it just requires the writer to completely overwrite the characters. (The fact that this is bad fictional practice is another matter entirely.)

The GM, on the other hand, is in trouble. When your characters think for themselves, you can’t force them into relationships on the strength of “It was in the outline” alone. Love interests who lose their individuality will often lose the love of their PCs. Or never gain it in the first place. Or even drive the PCs away from them before anything can begin.

So what can go wrong? (Most of these can mess up a narrative as well.)

Lack of appeal. It’s not enough for a character to just be described as amazingly good-looking; it isn’t even guaranteed to help push an attachment in character, and out of character it might not even matter. For one thing, in most cases the players can’t even visualize the character in question—and while I form attachments to NPCs at the drop of a die, I’ve never formed on from appearance alone. It’s always been something else on top of that. You need a way to catch the interest of both the PC and the player, and you need to do so in a way that doesn’t scream out railroading.

Lack of compatibility. Sure, there might be physical attraction and a number of interests in common, but that’s not enough to keep a romance going if the personalities don’t work together. A laid-back character could annoy a highly emotional one, a duty-focused character might drive a dedicated individualist crazy, and don’t get me started on the friction between overly dependent characters and ones who have the entire world resting on their shoulders already.

Lack of interest. Some players just don’t feel like role-playing out romantic relationships, or have characters who either don’t lean the way you think they do or just plain aren’t interested. Make sure you know which ones they are before trying to attract them to characters. It will save you a lot of trouble.

Lack of challenge. Some of us happen to like to earn our romances; if we’re just given a random character and told that their love for us is plot/destiny/narrative necessity, we will quite rightly say “Not interested.” Anything people have to work for will be valued a lot more highly than what’s just given to them, and Designated Love Interests and work tend not to belong in the same sentence.

Loss of respect. Designated Love Interests are often created as plothooks, and that means they need to end up in situations they can’t get out of on their own. I don’t know about you, but I find “competence”, or at least “resourcefulness and/or determination” to be a highly attractive trait in an NPC. Any DLI who doesn’t have a good reason for perpetually getting in trouble, or skills that make up for the fact that he needs rescuing once a day and twice on Saturdays, or some way of demonstrating that he is if not my equal than at least close to it, isn’t going to stay a love interest for long. Unbalanced relationships just don’t work too well.

Lack of reciprocity. One thing nobody ever seems to ask is what the Designated Love Interest sees in the character for which she was created in the first place.

That’s it for the dangers. Tomorrow, I’ll show you how to avoid them.

More characterization tips and tricks here.