Listen to this episode here.
I’m back! Alex and Sharang have done an amazing job talking love, sex, and romance over the past month but I have plenty to say on the subject myself. In particular, I wanted to approach the conversation Alex and Sharang started about the quantification of romance from the perspective of how I feel when I’m actually at the table playing these games. Because that quantification makes me feel kinda weird… but what do I want instead?
Because freeform romance is tough for me. Romance is scary! I want some help, some guidelines, some dare-I-say rules and mechanics for it. But if not quantification... then what? What else might help alleviate my fear and awkwardness? Or is that awkwardness part of the fun and charm of romance, and really we should leave it in?
Today, Tasha Robinson returns to the show to talk it all through with me.
Further Reading
Steal My Heart by Sam Dunnewold
The King Is Dead by Meguey and Vincent Baker
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Tasha on Bluesky
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Transcript
Sam: Hello and welcome back to another episode of Dice Exploder. Each week we take a tabletop mechanic
and make a breakfast in the morning. My name is Sam Dewald and this is episode five
of this Dice Exploder mini series on sex, love, and romance in RPGs.
And today I am back. Alex and Sha have done an amazing job breaking down romance at sex over the past month. But I also have plenty to say about the topic myself. I was especially inspired by their second episode, the one about rolling to seduce and the quantification of sex in so many games, I find that quantification, offputting in a bunch of ways they touched on, but talking about it also revealed a question for me. What do I want instead? Because freeform romance is tough for me. Romance is scary. in real life, and in games, I want some help, some guidelines, some dare I say rules and mechanics for it, but if not quantification, then what? What else might help alleviate my fear and awkwardness, or is that awkwardness part of the fun and charm of romance and really we should lean into it.
I wanted to talk through how all that feels at the table for me as a player in the heat of the moment, not just as a designer, and to do that with me. I am pleased to welcome back to the show, Tasha Robinson. Tasha is the entertainment editor at Polygon co-host of the Next Picture Show podcast, one of my favorite cultural critics at large and a long time role playing gamer.
This is an episode where we focus more on that question. What support do you want from a game when you do romance at the table? Than on any one answer or game mechanic.
We go pretty deep into the King is dead and it's perfectly written mini games. As well as how the dynamics of romance at the table change dramatically whether or not there's a GM present.
But central to our conversation here is my own game. Steal My Heart. A two player card based prompt game where one of you plays an international art thief, one of you plays the special agent trying to catch them, and both of you try not to fall in love. If you wanna follow along with Steal My Heart at home, you can find a demo of it up on my itch page.
Okay. It's a sprawling episode. Let's get into it. Here is Tasha Robinson with big chunky prompts for romance. Tasha Robinson, welcome back to Dice Exploder.
Tasha: Hello, and thank you for having me back. I guess I didn't screw up too badly last time.
Sam: No, you did great. It was such a pleasure having you. I'm, I'm so happy to have you back. And we today are interrupting Sharang and Alex's romance series to do some more romance talk. We just, last week I released an episode with Alex and Sharang talking about quantification of romance in game design. It's sort of this broad survey episode, and you also were kind of like interested in talking in that arena and maybe about some other sort of romance things that feel adjacent to the idea of quantification in role-playing games.
And so I wanted to kinda like start in reaction to that episode. I think it's a great episode and they really get into like. look from a design perspective, almost the like quantification of romance at the table.
But I wanted to like and maybe you were suggesting this even before we started, like get into how does it feel at the table when things are quantified in that way? Like as a player, when you are quantifying your romance, like what does that feel like to you?
Tasha: It's an interesting topic because their breakdown of all of the reasons behind quantification, I found fascinating in part because I recognize that, for instance, the mechanics of D&D and, and the idea of quantifying everything down to this is the bonus that I have for the, the score that I have for this particular thing that I do is not my favorite mode of roleplaying. And a lot of the attempts to mechanize romance in games via quantification of, I earn a certain number of romance points, you know, strings in Thirsty Sword Lesbians. Racking up points in Fog of Love, or even, I noticed they didn't mention Alex Roberts star crossed at all, but the process of getting far enough into the Jenga game to kind of earn your ending.
All of those to me do feel a little bit, you know, racking up love points in the dating sim in order to earn somebody's sexual favors ba basically, so the quantification of love, specifically by earning Benny's specifically by like notching up a certain number of, points with someone has always bothered me a little bit.
Sam: Yeah. You know, I found that to be a hundred percent true and I think Monster Hearts agrees with your assessment there that like, this is a fundamentally fucking weird way to approach this, but it's like premise is like, yeah, being teenage and horny, especially like teenage, horny, queer and repressed, all at once, you end up treating love and sexuality and romantic feelings like in this strange way, or at least you can, in the way that strings do.
Tasha: Yeah, it's always a strange mechanic when the mechanic of the game is mildly disapproving of the players. Is, is trying to kind of teach you something on a macro level, you the player about how approaching something in a certain way might be wrong. The conflict between the philosophy of the game and the experience of the characters is just it really interesting there I think.
Sam: Yeah. I will say, like for me, I fully agree with like, ah, love points is kind of an uncomfortable concept. In, you know, I've played mass effect and it's, it's weird that just everybody loves you and you can, just like march down that path. You know, I don't, it doesn't feel at all analogous to my experience of real life, right?
But I also I mean, it's so appealing, clearly, like it is used so often by so many people, and I think Alex and Sharon talk about this too, but it, I wanted to talk about how it's appealing to me that like I have always felt like someone where, like, flirting is really scary. You know?
It's like, I don't know how to do this. Like, I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing. And like the fantasy of a game mechanic that is like so clearly and explicitly laying out like what it is that you are supposed to be doing when you flirt with someone else. Like, ah, I just, that, that, that's like a, a greater power fantasy for me than whatever D&D has to offer.
Tasha: Well, I suppose there's also, you know, there's the mechanic that tells you this is how to do it, and then there's the mechanic that tells you, you did it correctly. Like here's, here's your
Sam: Yeah.
Here's a pat on the head. That's all I want.
Tasha: You know, here's, here's your hash mark. When you get to five hash marks, you are a successful flirteur basically.
I, I find that kind of hilarious, but maybe, maybe a little more understandable and applicable to, to real life than if you achieve a certain number of points you have sex, which I, I think they did a really great job of illustrating why just having a certain number of strings on somebody know, in real life, having a certain number of they approve of what you said in this circumstance doesn't necessarily lead to sex because sex is a lot more complicated.
And that's something that quantified games around romance, flirting, sexuality, relationships don't necessarily get it. Is just the degree to which every romance it's a negotiation. Every sexual act is to some degree a negotiation. Do you like this? Do you want this? Do I like this and want this? Are we on the same page? How are we compatible? How are we not compatible? How much are you willing to give up on your desires in order to fulfill mine? And vice versa. Where do we meet, where do we not be?
Like all of these things are negotiations. That for me, like the quantification systems tend to not be complex enough for.
Sam: Yeah. Well this is something you brought up before we were recording too, where like that is all extremely true of romance and it is also extremely true of like sitting down at a gaming table to play an RPG or really like any kind of game to some extent, I think.
And I, I would love to like get into that a little bit too. Like there's like, what is the like flip side of quantification for you? Like if you are coming to the table and like planning to do romance with other players what do you want that conversation to look like and what do you want from a game to support you in that conversation?
Tasha: so I guess one of the points that we could start from, which is the point where you and I put. Personally started from was a game that you've got in development currently called Steal My Heart, which is a, a two person create your own rom-com game. It's explicitly designed, so one of the participants is a dashing international art thief and the other is the dogged inspector who's pursuing them.
One of the things I really like about this game is you go into it with the understanding that it's gonna be a romance game. And you could say that of something like Fog of Love or Monster Hearts or, or Star crossed or a handful of other games.
When we first decided we were gonna have this conversation, I just started asking all of my gaming friends like, what romance games, like explicitly romance games have you played that you liked? And there was kind of a dearth of them. There are a handful of games like Power Couple I like, which is a game about two people in a romance, but it's not necessarily about the romance.
There are games like Dueling Fops of ve Deme which have, have built into them. The idea that you've got these passionate connections with other people, but doesn't necessarily explore the romance aspect of it.
What I liked so much about Steal My Heart is that there's a sense that just the buy-in, the basic buy-in for the game is you are creating a romance story and every card play every round of this game is a negotiation between the the players. How is this romance going to go? It operates via card prompts. You're flipping over cards. And well just grab one right here at random.
So here's one for the pursuer, the inspector.
Reading our criminologist evaluation of you makes me oddly uncomfortable. Does it feel like an invasion of your privacy or do I see too much of myself in its pages? It lays bare so much of your life, including what traumatic event? An unfortunate injury, A terrible betrayal from a trusted source, a tragic death in the family. With this new context, what's something you said before that finally clicks into place for me?
That is a complicated prompt, Sam. That is, that is not a, a very simple, what do I do next?
Sam: Funnily enough, that particular one was actually written by Sha rang from last week, Who I had read a couple prompts for the game, but yeah, yeah, it, they are chunky and specific prompts.
Tasha: So that particular prompt is effectively asking, say, I am playing this character. There are decisions built into that card that I'm making for you as my play partner. There are decisions that we're making together, where I'm asking you how do you feel about this? Or, I'm going to suggest this. There are things that are, are just sort of story based where we're like delineating them rather than playing them out. There's an invitation there to play something out if we want to.
And what I loved so much about the design of steal my heart is that every stage of it feels like that. It's all a negotiation where there's enough structure, I mean in that particular card, the structure is, we are examining your psychology, how I feel about it, how I feel about other people kind of inserting themselves professionally into this secretive connection that we're slowly making with each other as pursued and pursuer.
All of these things just really speak to what I love to see in a a GM list, role playing game that is, is developing a complicated story, whether it's romantic or not, whether it's between two people or or five people. I like complicated prompts that make you think about different ways this story could go, different ways, the characters could relate to each other.
But as a romance game specifically, I, I mean, in this particular case, we're not even talking about sex. Basically, we're not talking about dating, we're not talking about handholding on the beach. We're talking about, I'm sitting and studying at dossier about you and trying to decide how that iterates my feelings towards and about you. And taking it outside, like just the the very basic understanding that we all have of relationships, you know, how they, how they develop, how you spend time together, putting it into just such a, a higher level, like how do I think about you, my romance partner, my play partner outside of any kind of like personal activity that we're having together. I, I just think that that's kind of brilliant. If I can butter you up about your own game, on your own
Sam: I, Liz, I'll be butter me up all day. Cover me in butter. I love butter. Um, Yeah, first of all, I, yeah, all that's in there intentionally, and I'm glad that it's coming through, right? Like, I think that all of that is really important.
I'll add a thing about how those prompts works that I think is like really, really important is how when you're sitting down to play the game, it's clear that like I'm playing the art thief. You are playing the inspector. Like I sort of have dominion over the art thief. You have like dominion over the inspector, but like your cards are gonna be asking to define things about me and vice versa.
And it leads to, like it's kind of ambiguous who is supposed to be answering a lot of the questions. Like, it's like, oh, probably you're supposed to answer that, but like, should I be answering that? 'cause it's more about my character.
And that like ambiguity naturally opens up during play, like, we are going to negotiate this, right? Like, oh, this card, my answer to this is gonna define something about your character. Is that okay? Like, that's a thing that happens on almost every one of these prompts.
And I think it's like exactly what you want to be going on, right? Like in, in both like a romance game and like a romantic encounter and like any game, right? It's like, I wanna be able to pitch you my cool idea for what happens next, but I also wanna make sure that I'm like taking you into account and your needs as a person and your like preferences as a player as we go about negotiating that process.
Yeah. And so I'm, I'm really happy in my play test, like at least with like how that has gone with Steal My Heart.
Tasha: It's a difficult proposition. Yesterday my playgroup experimented with a game called 99 Chances that has been around for a while. That's a very, very freeform GM list game that could be a role playing game, could just be a mechanical game. But effectively a lot of the mechanics involve having cards in your hands that you play on other people to define them. And part of what you're defining is your relationship to them, but you're also just handing somebody a card and saying you're a very expansive person. This is now part of who you are.
Whenever you're telling somebody else what their character is, who their character is, that, you know, it, it can cross some lines. It always, again, has to be a negotiation. But that is certainly a way that games can simulate like romance and storytelling, that it's difficult to see the parallel in the real world.
I can tell you as a romantic partner that I want you to be more expansive. I want you to surprise me with gifts. I want you to take me out to places that I, I hadn't anticipated, but I can't control that. I, I can't just tell you from now on you're an expansive person. Here's your card.
Sam: Yeah.
Tasha: So the storytelling mechanic of, I'm going to change who you are because that'll change who this romance is feels pretty unique to games, but also kind of like an exciting way of challenging your, your play partner at the table.
You know, when you suddenly have to ingest like, okay, my robot character, this again, an example from the game we played yesterday. My robot character, who is in love with somebody else at this table, is now in denial about that relationship. That isn't something that I built into my understanding of the relationship, but somebody else has played this card on me, and now I have to think about how that iterates our romance, how that changes the story.
I, I'm not sure that that would work for every game, every romance, every group of players, but as a storytelling challenge, I that question that your experience of how do I flirt? Am I doing it right? Is it okay to declare this or that about a relationship in a game? Having an outside force, whether it's the other player you're in the romance with or another player at the table, change the story for you can be very freeing.
Sam: It also, it can be so vulnerable,
Tasha: Right, like.
Sam: right? Like once I've taken on at least first say in the inner workings of the art thief, it feels like that's me in some way, and like allowing someone else in to negotiate who that person is, is in some way it feels like allowing it feels like being vulnerable and allowing someone else in to negotiate who I am and how I feel.
And I, I think that that I, I don't know, that's like very scary at times. It, it's very difficult in the real world at times. And also like that's romance. Like, that's why I'm doing it, right? Like, that's one of the big things that I love about flirting and like being with someone else. Is that like finding out how I am seen by other people and like how I want to be seen by other people through practicing.
Tasha: At the same time, in a real world setting, you don't have the guardrails of we are definitely here for a romance and that's what a game like Steal My Heart or Star Cross can get you that it is just sort of a feeling of safety, of, of understanding that this is explicitly a romance story. That another game that is also a two person negotiation, like The Last Gasp which is a, a back and forth game of, of dueling drama that I really like, can be romantic, but it doesn't give you that same guardrail. It doesn't say explicitly, this is a romance game.
You can. You are very much invited to put that into the last gasp because the idea is that you're two people with some kind of very dramatic passion of some sort between you, but it could just as well be, you know, you're, you're the student who rebelled and killed our mutual master, or the last time we met in combat you defeated me and, and I have to have my revenge.
Sam: Right.
Tasha: Throwing romance into that is a very natural thing because you already have the high stakes and the drama and the, the emotional contention. But if you come into that game with the expectation that this should be about romance and the other player doesn't, then you just, you kind of have a mismatch of expectations.
Which again, kind of gets back to the real world question of is this person flirting with me? Do I wanna flirt with this person? Where's this going? Is it gonna be awkward if I flirt and they weren't flirting? A lot of that tension is, is part of the excitement of real world romance, the, the sense of maybe a little danger if you over commit and they weren't thinking that way at all about the situation or about you.
So, you know, the question of whether. It's, easier, but or better to go into a game that is explicitly romance based or not, whether there's more of a, a thrill, more of a titillation in something that isn't designed for that explicitly, but that you can bring that to the table. That's sort of an open question that's about people's personal preferences, I would think.
Yeah,
Sam: Yeah, that's really interesting. I'm thinking about at Big Bad Con a couple years ago I played a game of, I Have the High Ground with the designer Jess Levine. Which is a, a game with a very similar kind of premise, right? It's like two people are gonna be doing a fight because they have something that they both really care about in the middle.
And the game, very much invites put romance onto this, but, and that's what we did with it. But when I sort of proposed like, let's do John Wick lovers kind of situation and like you are working for my enemy, whatever kind of thing, Jess had like written into the rules, like here's a framework for the conversation that you should have about like whether this is gonna be romantic or not, like before you get into it.
And then also had on top of that, like she personally had thoughts and opinions about like, this is the only kind of romance that I am interested in doing. And I was like, oh yeah, great. Like, that works for me. But like had had like a lot of checking in before we got to that point and I found that really helpful and really socially helpful, obviously to make sure that we had a good play experience, but also really mechanically helpful to just like, put everyone on the same page before you get lost in the game. Right. Like I, I find it to be so helpful in games across the board, but especially romance and especially romance in real life, to just like clarify and be upfront with people.
Like what's the bullseye we're aiming for? You know, like, where are we headed here? Exactly. Yeah.
Tasha: And it's so fascinating because for me it kind of works against the spontaneity of romance that is part of the excitement of it, you know, the, the thrill of, of infatuation, the thrill of being not entirely certain where things are going or how far they're going is kind of a real life aspect of romance that has often cropped up in games for me.
Sam: Yeah.
Tasha: But at the same time, as with anything at the gaming table when it comes to sensitive topics, if you haven't negotiated beforehand where the limits are, you know, where the lines and veils are, then you can run up pretty hard against mismatched expectations.
Sam: Mm-hmm.
Tasha: And for me, at least, I've seen that happen more in, in sex than romance. There are definitely people who want to say upfront like, these are the things that I like. These are the things that I don't like. These are things I will do. These are things that I won't do, and to some degree that can take.
Sam: It's, it's, funny to me that I can't tell whether you're talking about in-game or in real life sexual negotiations incidentally, but
Tasha: I mean, yes, exactly, exactly that. I am specifically thinking of somebody that I encountered who effectively had a menu of, you know, for entering into sex. Just these are my interests, these are my non interests. These are the things that I will and will not do. And applying that to maybe more romance than sex in games because I have not really encountered a roleplaying game that wanted to be very explicit about sexual acts. You've got a great example of a game that's very explicit about acts of flirting and sort of the step by step of that.
Sam: Yeah.
Tasha: To close out that thought, it's just, you know, for some people going through the negotiation in advance is both a safety net and can just indicate what they're interested in.
Taking it back to games instead of real world sexual menus, if you're saying, you know, I want to have a, like a torrid flirtation that never quite gels that we, we we're never quite in the same place at the same time. Where neither one of us can really admit that passion to each other. If that's something that excites you and that you wanna see in a game, you gotta know that the other person is on board for it. Or you know, they're gonna kiss you after the first like exchange of flirtation and you're not gonna get.
And when people have very explicit things that they want in a romantic story, I'm kind of thinking here a little bit of the big trend towards cozy romance in fantasy these days.
Sam: Mm-hmm.
Tasha: When you pick up a romance book, you have a pretty good idea of what's gonna happen and knowing what the shape of that is gonna be is, you know, part of the reason people like these books. Part of the reason they're called cozy is because people don't necessarily know as a reader, like how it's going to play out or where the emotional beats are gonna land. But they're pretty sure that the people who are seeing each other from afar and and desiring each other are gonna end up together at the end.
And in a game, if you're not negotiating that upfront, maybe you'll get there and maybe it'll be perfect or maybe it won't. So the, the decision as to whether to talk about it all upfront or just negotiate with each other, kind of as Steal My Heart does on a step by step, turn by turn basis can be just a, a big question, I guess, for individual tastes.
Sam: Yeah.
Yeah. I think Steal My Heart has a, like the ending of that game in particular has an interesting, like way to speak on all of that, where like the end of the game is essentially you do a prisoner's dilemma of like, are we gonna end up together, right? You can both choose either kiss or betray. And if you both choose kiss, then you end up together. And if you both choose, betray that like you both ruin your lives. And if one of you chooses betrayed, that person gets sort of final say in how things come together and where everyone ends up.
And I've only ever seen one person across like seven games of this Choose betray. And it was me and only because we hadn't played the game long enough, right? Like just in some ways, like everyone who I have seen sit down to play this game has gotten on board with the premise of, yeah, I want these people to flirt and I wanna see them end up together.
But the like mechanic that allows you to threaten that not happening is like, keeps the tension really high in that last moment. Like everyone actually is uncertain, even though part of them really knows everyone's gonna be choosing kiss. You know. I find that really interesting.
Tasha: And I love the fact that card you choose to play at the end is sort of a referendum on how the game went, because I can easily see, you know, in, in my, the one play test of it that I've, I've managed to get in so far,
which as sort of a side note, figuring out who you can play romance games with is a very interesting question. I'm not super comfortable like playing this with close friends with people I know. Well I played it with someone who I know vaguely at, at a con, and it was kind of perfect, kind of the perfect mix of this isn't a total stranger to me, but it's also somebody that I'm not gonna see a bunch in future and I don't need to feel a little blushy about describing, you know, moments of, of passion with. And again, not specifically necessarily referring to sex, but just, you know, some of the, some of the flirtations and the power exchanges, particularly in this game, I think can get emotionally intense.
Sam: Yeah.
Tasha: But if those emotional intensity moments are mismatches, the coming down to the end and kind of having that moment of, I ended up feeling this way about your character, but I don't know yet whether there's, there's a reciprocity there, having a mechanic to let both sides have that referendum on, how much did we really connect in the end?
Do I actually know how much we connected, or is this one sided on my part feeling that this was a match or that this was a mismatch? Having that be like a, a secret card flip in the end, I, I think is just delicious.
Sam: Yeah. Thank you.
That's a nice intro into another sort of big mechanic that I wanted to like put on the table for this discussion, which is from the king is dead.
So the king is dead, or, firebrands has the same mechanic in it. These are two games by Meguey and Vincent Baker. The King is Dead, specifically, is basically doing Game of Thrones kind of stuff. And the way the game is set up, everyone is sort of the, heir apparent to a particular house. And those characters are all going to be fighting and flirting their way through a war that is breaking out.
And the way mechanically this works is you go around the table and there's a bunch of mini games in the book. You each have a little playbook that's like 40 pages long or something, and you go through and you pick one of the mini games and a person to play it with, and that's your turn.
So some of the mini games are like an animated disagreement, a dance, meeting sword to sword. Or stealing time together. And stealing time together is a really explicit. like mini game for having sex with each other and negotiating what that looks like on camera. Not just that, but negotiating physical contact within a liaison is how it puts it, right?
Like you, you do a little bit of setting up to set the scene, you conduct the liaison by exchanging overtures, and one overture is me choosing I touch your blank and there's a big list. I touch your hand, I touch your fingertips. I touch your cheek. May I? All of them end with may I? And then you get to respond with, you may, but first I want you to blank or you may, straight up. Or you may, but only for a moment, and so on and so forth.
And I, this is such an, a clear and explicit model of like, consent, right? And an interesting way to put together a conversation about how to do a sexual encounter or a liaison, whatever you wanna call it here.
But what I find really interesting is that like a dance and meeting sword to sword are structured exactly the same way with equally, if not more flirty prompts, right? Like in a dance, you have, my hair has fallen in front of my eyes. Do you touch my face? And you get the same kind of responses.
So I love this game and its writing for, its really explicit model of how to have one of these conversations like in the micro, like in the moment of play, while also maintaining a lot of the tension in these moments and in these negotiations that I think earlier in this conversation you were saying you really wanted to see, or like, like often is present in real life romance that may not be there in play, and that I, it, it, it can be hard to like keep that tension present when you're negotiating everything ahead of time. But this does it by like facilitating the negotiation at play and like keeping the uncertainty of your partner's answer in the air as you're asking the question.
Tasha: Yeah, these are beautiful mechanics. Well, I think one of the things I like most about them is that once again, each one of these mechanics, each one of these questions in these different scenarios is I declare something to be true, and then I ask you what happens next?
Sam: Yes.
Tasha: of them are more structured than others.
So I'm looking at, a dance, the dances figures separate us when they bring us back together again, do you blush? So I'm declaring a fact to be true and then I'm inviting you to Yes and within certain guidelines.
My face is close to yours. Do you turn subtly towards me or subtly away?
At this moment in the dance, you laugh at what?
So like the, the back and forth here, you know, it's not a lot of GM-less storytelling. Games are built around prompts around what happens when, or what do I think about, or, what do I declare to be true about myself or about the situation?
These two part questions that are this, and also what? I think is maybe the closest I've seen to like a, a real world, kind of like physical negotiation around flirting, around close proximity, around like romantic moments and around sex.
One of the things you didn't bring up about the, the stealing time together, the probably most sexual one is that some of the answers to overtures are no effectively. So I touch, I touch your thigh, may I? You may not. But instead I... and then the, the other person goes back to the overture list and also asks, may I.
So I touch your thigh, may I. You may not, but instead, I touch your cheek, may I, and then it goes back and forth.
But there's also, you may not, and I withdraw to a more comfortable distance, or you may not, and I break off and depart, or you may, but at this moment we're interrupted instead.
So there are ways to kind of like divert the romance. There are ways to like escalate or deescalate. There are ways to, to stop it and interrupt it for reasons that have nothing to do with the two of us and our desire. There just, there are a lot of options here and the combination of freedom to explore a, a variety of things with, with both people bringing something to the table with each prompt and the structure of, this has to be a back and forth so you can both feel comfortable with it, you know, so one person isn't running away with it, so you know upfront what is and is not possible. I, I think this is a really beautiful way to design things.
Sam: Yeah, the fact that the answers themselves are also like flirty, and exciting. Like there are answers on here that I want to give, right? You may, but only for a moment is enticing in and of itself, even though it is inherently limiting in a certain way.
And the other thing I love about some of the ones in a dance is like, as it's maintaining the uncertainty of like, what's going to happen and like, what is your answer going to be to my question, it also, if I'm answering, it's providing me a very limited, specific thing to answer so I don't feel like lost and overwhelmed. Right?
Like that's something else I feel like can often happen in negotiating romance or in negotiating play at the table, particularly in GM less games where some players aren't necessarily as comfortable like coming up with stuff off the top of their head. Like when you, as a designer, ask someone as a player to make a really specific choice, to fill in a very specific blank or or give them options as stealing time. together does , in the answers, even if some of them are a little bit broader, ,like that's just so helpful at like greasing the smoothness of play, right? Of, of like making sure that everyone feels comfortable and capable of participating, I think.
Tasha: Well, especially when there are outs as well. The structure of having an out. If you know, you, you start this flirting and you're touching my face and my, my hands and whatever, and I'm not into it, you know, there is, there's a clear way out here, which can sometimes be a little muddier in real life.
There can sometimes be anxiety about rejecting somebody. There can even be anxiety about the safety of rejecting somebody. But these mechanics give you a way to say, I'm not interested in this romance, or I'm not interested in you that are structured, that are polite, that are present.
You know, the, the assumption here is you may not want to be romanced by the scion of this kingdom. You may not want Geoffrey Baratheon making a move on you uh, no matter how artfully it's presented. So, you know, here are your outs in a way that both sides have already agreed that you're using this set of rules. When I say, no, no, and I pull away and I leave the room it doesn't feel like a a no, but it doesn't feel like refusing the, the, yes, and it's all within the structure and the confines and the rules of this particular scenario.
Sam: Well, and what this set of options also does is it puts that agency in the hands of the players very explicitly, rather than the characters necessarily. Like if we are playing a game, I think most people would not want to play out the scene where like Jeffrey Barat is like making a move on you. Right?
But if your table wants to do that, like you as players have all the agency in the world to shut that shit down in so many different ways. But also you can do that. And this gives you really clear framework for how to do that. And I think that that is that's also like the, the, the characters don't necessarily have to have all of the agency in order for the players to maintain that safety and agency with each other.
Tasha: So, I mean, that sort of brings up something that we had discussed whether we were gonna discuss, which is just the broad question of like a lot of these storytelling GM list games have mechanics for how to move forward with comfort, how how to answer specific prompts.
I'm also thinking of Alex Roberts, the Queen is dead, which again, is not explicitly about a romance with a, a character in this case, an NPC, the Queen, but the prompt for the game say upfront that the queen is taking you on a journey because she knows you love her. It doesn't have to be a romantic love, but you're certainly open to that. So. Yes, the, the, the prompts can be read however you wish to, to read them, but in that game, you have all of the agency to decide whether this NPC is somebody that you have been or currently are in a romantic relationship with.
With GMed games, the power dynamics become very different. And with GMed game where you're romancing or being romanced by an NPC versus where you're romancing or being romanced by another PC, like all of those cases, the power dynamics are very different. So I, I'm wondering sort of broadly what your, what your thoughts are about all of that. If you have specific preferences, if you've seen mechanics within a GMed game that you particularly like as far as, you know, creating or enabling romance.
Sam: Yeah, so. I think you're absolutely right. Like I think a lot of the stuff that we've talked about today, these mechanics, that prompt negotiation between players really don't exist in GMed games because so much of that negotiation is just kind of assumed that the GM is gonna have authority over how things go, and I don't know that that's how things play in practice I think like a lot of GMed tables that I play at and that I run as a gm, like you will see this process still going down. You'll see people negotiating. You'll see like other players jump in and be like, oh, do you think maybe like this NPC has like a crush on you because that would make sense for X, Y, Z, and like, oh yeah, cool. Maybe we're like doing that now and maybe we're, we're engaging in these same kinds of conversations about like, is it okay that I am going to apply this thing to be true about your character now? But again, I don't think that's baked into the rules in the same way.
I think like to stick with the bakkers. I like the Apocalypse World move seduce or manipulate someone. I think that that move is really interesting because first of all, it's, it's broad enough to cover seduction and just good old fashioned lying or both. But it's also it's got a form for PCs trying to seduce or manipulate other PCs and a form for PCs trying to manipulate NPCs.
And notably, it doesn't have, like, there's no structure in the game really mechanically for NPCs to influence PCs. You know, you might make a move as a GM in Apocalypse World. That's like, ah, my NPC is like coming onto you now. What do you do? Right?
I really like the way that that move. Takes some of the power that just traditionally held by the GM in, in this authority that maybe would make me feel uncomfortable about romance in a gm having a lot of power over players kind of way and puts it back in the hands of the players.
Tasha: One of the mechanics that I thought about when we were originally discussing this is in, in the game exalted there is, it's, it's sort of expected. I mean, obviously the, it's a way Wolf game, the, the world expanded immensely from, from where it started. But the, the most baseline idea is that the PC is a scion of the son a servant of of Sol the un conquered like a, a God representing the sun effectively.
There is as part of sort of the background story, the idea that you have been reincarnated into a, a new form, but you're probably like this ancient thing that, that keeps coming back to serve your God and that Luna, the moon is also a God and also has her exalted servants. And that each lunar has a solar mate. There's just the idea that the, the two of you, you and your mate have probably had romances together throughout these various reincarnations.
To reflect that both lunar and solar characters have. Effectively their magic abilities called to charms. They each have charms that can only affect their solar slash lunar mate.
So there's an expectation if you're dealing with this particular kind of romance in this game, that it comes fraught with this complicated history. None of that really like contains or dictates to either the GM or the player what kind of romance the two of you might have. For one thing, your, your PC can certainly have romances with people who aren't that kind of destined mate.
But if you bring the PC's mate into the story, there's an expectation that this is a fundamentally important relationship, something with consequences, something with a history, something with drama and passion. And also something where specific a small but specific handful of powers come into play.
So that kind of structure for a GM game I think can become very interesting because it introduces drama, it introduces the idea of a fraught and, and considerable history that can then be filled in any way you like, any way the GM likes, any way the player likes. And I tend to like that kind of structure, the structure that still gives everybody a lot of freedom to explore, to negotiate, to decide what this relationship should be, but also comes with enough backstory, enough mineable history and just enough detail about what both of these classes of people are and look like, and therefore how they would mesh and how they would clash that you're basically being given a, a huge set of story prompts that you can pick up or discard at will in order to create a meaningful romance in a game.
Sam: Mm-hmm. That's really interesting. I agree that that feels like a, a solid structure to build a gMed romance at the table around.
The thing that I find really interesting about that is knowing white wolf games and just hearing the premise, it sounds like that kind of romance is maybe the like strong B plot of how this game works rather than the A plots.
Tasha: Absolutely.
Sam: And I'm, I'm coming to this kind of like off the cuff, but it's really interesting to me how all of the romance games I like are like the romance is the thing that we are doing in this game, right? Like, my favorite examples of what we've been talking about here, like Steal My Heart, like The King Is Dead, and like Star Crossed are all games where it's like, we are gonna do romance in this game.
And in some ways I think the, like most important part of the like buy-in conversation to have for me is in that like negotiating the premise at the very beginning, right? I, it's really easy for me to imagine sitting down to play Exalted and feeling like, ah, yeah, I'm really excited and like hype to do all the things in this game except for the romance.
And you know, on the one hand, very easy to just then have a conversation with the GM and be like, ah, I'm not really interested in that part. And the GM to be like, copy, we won't do that part like this, not this lifetime. I guess. I'm like, we can move on and have a great time.
And on the other hand. Very easy to overlook having that conversation because the core premise doesn't necessarily have it in the same way. And I don't know exactly where I'm going with that, but that, that's interesting to me that I, I'm sort of coming to appreciate this is a romance game as huge part of the buy-in.
Tasha: It's certainly true that it, it seems to me that romance is a very unique thing in gaming in terms of the level of buy-in, the level of negotiation, the level of upfront expectation settings that it needs. And I've been, ever since we started kind of this conversation online and in email, I've been trying to figure out why that is.
Maybe 'cause it's so personal and, you know, your, your preferences are so personal and it's an aspect of. The real world that we don't always get to see very much of how other people do it. Unless you're going to certain kinds of sex clubs, you know, you're, you're probably not spending a whole lot of time like actually watching people that you know, well negotiate and engage in sex.
So, you know, you can talk about it with friends, you can you know, theorize about it, but it's not something that you see a lot of. Now you could say the same for, I, I don't see a lot of my friends going out to, you know kill a, an ogre that's been haunting a, a city and or, you know, to fight a dragon.
That's been,
Sam: You are not hanging out with the right people, Tasha.
Tasha: I really am not, if you know people that I can talk to about uh, stopping a dragon from predating on a city like, please by all means, let me know. But you know, you, you get to be privy to a certain amount of other people's early romances. You know, if you're. If you're in college and you're watching your friends like negotiate and then go hook up.
But once people start a relationship, you're only really seeing a very small percentage of that at any time, and it all becomes very personal. And then unless you're actually engaging in a relationship with or you know, in, in sex with somebody that you know, you don't necessarily know what their really nuanced preferences are. You might know from experience being around somebody that they like to flirt. You might know that they appreciate like small, small specific personal gifts and, you know, not like big dramatic gestures, but there's a lot about them you're never gonna know if you aren't, you know, part of a, a relationship with them.
And so these things come to feel very personal because there are aspects of them that we don't just typically show to, to people we know. So when you sit down at the table and say, I want this, I want this specific type of thing, that can feel very vulnerable. Even like a little too personal, a little too, like a little too much information about someone, you know.
So I mean, I feel like that's one of the reasons these games that are explicitly about romance feel safer because you're going in with, with set expectations.
Sam: Yeah.
Tasha: But it can also be a reason that having romance in, in any kind of game, like in your, in your D&D game, I'm looking at like actual play games, for instance, like, like Critical Role where the romance between characters is such a intrinsic part of the story and to some degree one of the big things that draws an audience. Whenever one of these new actual plays start up, you will see the fandom theorizing about who's going to end up together or who would make a good match for each other. It's something that people want to see, I think. Maybe not as much in games that they're playing in but in stories that they're experiencing.
And having the ability to get into these stories yourself seems exciting. You know, if you, if you love a fantasy series, you know, movies or books or games or whatever and you love a central romance, being able to experience that for yourself can seem really fundamental and exciting in the same way, you know, watching the Lord of the Rings movies and then getting to play a game where you go negotiate with a dragon or fight in a war or whatever can seem exciting.
It's just the process of getting out on the table what you want and what you're willing to accept and what you need becomes a lot more difficult, particularly if you're dealing with somebody who has authority over you and is negotiating how the world works with you. And who has different expectations than you do.
You know, if you're playing Thirsty Sword Lesbians, the expectation is that it's gonna be a certain kind of like dramatic romance. If you're playing D&D and your GM is trying to insert a romantic situation for you, that's a lot more open-ended in terms of what that might look like and what the GM's preferences are or expectations of what your preferences are might be very different from what they actually are.
Sam: yeah. I'm reminded this is gonna feel like such a wild seguey, but I, I promise to bring it back. I'm reminded of stories about Wizards of the Coast doing research on how to best teach people how to play Magic the gathering. Where they started putting out a video game where you could learn the rules and play against the computer, and they found this to be like the best possible way to teach people how to play Magic that had ever existed before.
And they ended up attributing this to the fact that you could do it in the privacy of your own home alone without another person there to judge you for it, right? You're just playing against the computer and if you like, make a misplay and fuck up, no one's gonna hold that against you.
And in the same way, I feel like part of the popularity of cozy romance and of rom-coms and of that kind of thing is the ability to effectively rehearse what these interactions look like without having to risk anything yourself.
And games are really interesting here in the way that they are also rehearsal kind of for the real thing, but they are decidedly a step more vulnerable. They are in front of other people. You are revealing yourself. It is not, quote unquote the real thing, but it is much closer than reading a book is and much more in front of other people.
And I That's interesting.
Tasha: All right. Everything you've just said now makes dating sims make a lot more sense to me.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah,
Tasha: But yeah, There's a, a video game that a friend of mine recently showed me called Date Everything. It's, it's phenomenal. You have a, a pair of magic uh, glasses and it turns everything in your household into a basically a hot person, but a hot person themed around whatever it is that they, they truly are.
So. If you're trying to date your clothes hangers you know, they, they like hanging around. they don't necessarily like want to go out places and do things. They, they just wanna like stay in one place and be cozy. But hey, you know, if you're, trying to negotiate a date with your washing machine it's gonna have very different expectations.
So, like, playing around with that idea of people are very different and want very different things is I think something that a good dating sim does and a bad dating sim does not.
Sam: Yeah.
Tasha: But it does sort of invite more concern about the fact that you might make the wrong move in a game where you're dealing with other people, particularly friends, you know, particularly it, it's just, there's always gonna be like lower stakes in a way for a pickup game at a con with strangers. It can be more embarrassing if you move in the direction of romance and they're not interested. But you're also not going to have to live with the fact that you spend a bunch of time like flirting with somebody that you're then gonna see at every gaming session subsequently.
Sam: We're going a little long here, so I don't wanna fully go down the, the road I'm about to lay out. But if other people are interested in it I wanna present it to the listeners.
I was getting into that framework of like rehearsal of romance in playing games and consuming other romantic art. And I think the next part of that is like experimentation, right? And that's kind of, I think what feels especially fun about the idea of Date Everything is like, what an invitation to just think about what you want in a relationship, right? What you want out of romance.
And I think games are a, a particularly good invitation to do that experimentation and investigation into yourself and your preferences. Right? So I, I don't know, like that's a whole other episode, but but I wanted to like, put it out there
Tasha: God, that is a really big topic, and especially since my immediate instinct is to counter with, well, is it though, or is it a way to explore a fantasy relationship that. You wouldn't actually want in real life? Much as the majority of characters in fiction I find are people that might be fascinating to watch and people that, that you really wanna see what happens to them next. But you wouldn't necessarily wanna be friends with them or even be in a room with them. I can just very easily see a lot of game-based romances being things that you wouldn't want in real life. And I, I don't know that I wanna spend three years like flirting with somebody as I go on adventures with them while never actually having the courage to tell them how I feel.
But that sounds like a really fun, ongoing mechanic for a game, especially if they decide that they're oblivious and it's, you know, a, a case of me like pining for them and, and being more and more obvious and then more and more missing the, the, the boat that seems like it would be just a really fun thing to do in a game and kind of excruciating to do in real life.
Well,
Sam: Well, what I would say is, I mean, not every experiment is a success, right? And also sometimes experimenting means like, oh, I'm interested in this thing. Ah, but it turns out just in fiction. And like that, that is its own kind of success to know that, right? That like that thing is really exciting to me, but I don't want it in my real life.
And the other thing that I was maybe too softly alluding to here is just the number of my friends who have been like oh, yeah I figured out I was queer in some capacity through playing role playing games and experimenting with my identity in that way. Right? Like, I, I think games at large, not just for romance, are great tools for experimenting with your own identity and trying
Tasha: sure. Yeah. Emily St. James has written some tremendous stuff. I would, I would look for a column called The Bleeding on the Table, about bringing your actual trauma into games and your actual desires into games. And you know, she, she experienced a lot of, like, not just realizing early on as she was looking back at her early gaming experiences that as a trans woman, she was experimenting with female identity before she understood that that was what she was doing.
But then later, kind of as a, a fully developed trans woman experimenting with her desire to be a mother before she understood that she had that desire. Like, yes, absolutely you can find yourself experimenting with identity in safe places.
But I think you could also experiment with, with drama and tragedy in safe places. Like I don't want to go through an experience where I, I love someone passionately and they die and, and I have to figure out who I am in a world without them. That sounds terrible. It sounds like a great story prompt. It sounds like something that you would want a character to go through, maybe not because you want to personally experiment with grief, but because of the drama, because of the, the strong emotion that something, something like a a romance where somebody cheats on you or leaves you or betrays you in some way and goes off and joins the villain, and then you not only have to fight the villain, you have to figure out how you feel about your former lover being their second in command.
All of this sounds like, you know, great dramatic tools for experiencing being emotions at the table, if that's your thing.
Sam: Yeah. Well, and I will say, like in that particular example, like, I don't want to go through that, but there's a 100% chance that I will go through that in my life. Right? Like, like
Tasha: Which one? The, your partner leaving and joining the villain?
Sam: oh, excuse me. No, no, no. Like, like uh, living past someone that I care about deeply. Yeah. Okay. we've been going for quite a while.
Obviously we could just like, keep fucking going here, but I
Tasha: such a big topic.
Sam: It's such a big topic and so Great. And we're gonna get two more Alex and Sharang episodes coming after this one. So th there's plenty of more conversation about all this coming. I wanted to give you the chance for like, final thoughts though, and wrapping up, like is there anything that we didn't get to that you wanna bring up or any kind of concluding thoughts that you have?
Tasha: I guess the most important point that we keep circling around is just about the importance of negotiation, the importance of making sure your play partners is comfortable of, of giving them the freedom to fully respond and decide what they want and contribute. Of them giving you the grace to decide what you want and contribute.
I, I hope that people listening to this conversation kind of like come out first with a, a desire to go play The King Is Dead, which is a marvelous game. But also just to, you know, give, give everybody else at the table maybe a, a little more grace and a little more freedom and expect that in return because so much of life is a negotiation, but so much of romance is a negotiation and it seems like really important to make sure that that happens at the table as well.
Sam: Yeah. I think one piece of practical advice that maybe I will leave people with is to underline something you said earlier in the episode that it can sometimes be easier to play these games with people you know, but don't know super well that that like new friend or that like acquaintance that you feel comfortable around can be like a great person to go to to see if they wanna play star crossed or one of these other games.
And I think the King is dead, in particular, is a great one because you can, you can end up in more of a group setting, which I think also helps diffuse some of the stakes anyway.
And so feel like I see all the time people who might be interested in playing romantic games but aren't sure how to make that happen at their own home tables. And so I just wanted to, to put that advice out there.
Tasha: I, it just makes me wish like my, my own husband is just not that interest in role playing, he's much more a gm. And it, it makes me sad because I would love to know what it's like to place some of these two person romantic games with an actual romantic partner. But failing that I'm right there with you.
To this date, the only time I've played fog of love with, with somebody that I wanted to get to know better possibly in a friendship way, possibly in a romantic way, and kind of used Fog of Love to figure that out. That sort of question of, I don't know where this game romance will go. I don't know whether this real romance will go, let's pair those up and see if they can work in parallel. Actually worked great. I recommend it.
Sam: Yeah. Absolutely. Well, I always like ending on practical advice, so we'll call it there. Tasha, thanks so much for coming back to Dice Exploiter. What a pleasure to have
Tasha: always a pleasure to be here. I this, these, these episodes just make me think so much more about what I'm doing at the table than I might otherwise.
Sam: Yeah, yeah, totally.
Thanks again to Tasha for being here. You can find her work on Polygon, where she's the entertainment editor, or as co-host of the Next Picture Show podcast. Thanks to everyone who supports Dice Exploder on Patreon. As always, you can find me on Blue Sky or on the Dice Exploder Discord, and you can find my gains at s dun dewald.itch.io.
Our logo is designed by sporgory. Our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Gray. And our ad music is Lily Pads by my boy Travis Tessmer. And thanks to you for listening. I will see you next time, baby.