[jaguar]

So, in our last session, one of my players decided to ask out an NPC (Eliza Bloom, if you're familiar with her). This completely stumped me, as I have no idea how to handle it. On a pure Social Skill level, she has him absolutely thrashed; something like 3-12, can't remember off the top of my head. But he's being persistent by sending her flowers.

Any thoughts on how I should proceed? I have no problem with a relationship developing, but I want to proceed in a fair and reasonable way.

[Top Dog]

It's always a... complicated issue to handle properly.

But consider, asking someone out isn't an opposed skill test. She's not actively opposing being asked out, after all. If you're making him do a test, it'd be more-or-less an unopposed treshold to see how well an impression he made, combined with how well he matches up with her type (which is very, very much non-rule territory).

The social skills might come in in the sense that she has the pick of the litter, so she might be more picky. So, if you want to make this a thing, give him some rivals to compete with, see how he handles that, and take it from there.

[firebug]

You could also just try and do it pure roleplaying wise, essentially acting out a budding relationship.  Try to think of course if the NPC would even be interested, since a lot of Shadowrun contacts would be easily too busy for anything resembling a personal life, while others would laugh at the idea of doing something so vulnerable.  Of course, my suggestion only works if you're all comfortable roleplaying that and won't consider it awkward.

Honestly?  Talk to the player and ask him like "Is it fine if we have this be a thing 'off screen'?" since it's not the sort of thing that should be coming up in a session too much since it takes time away from the game without involving the other players at all.

...Unless you make it into a run, with them going to a restaurant where the decker hacks cameras, with the face sitting at another table with a micro-transceiver telling the guy what to say.

[Zilfer]

*Snip*

...Unless you make it into a run, with them going to a restaurant where the decker hacks cameras, with the face sitting at another table with a micro-transceiver telling the guy what to say.

Lol, I can totally see that being an episode on a Shadowrun show. xD Just conjures up the perfect image.

[psycho835]

going to a restaurant where the decker hacks cameras, with the face sitting at another table with a micro-transceiver telling the guy what to say.

Cyber!Cyrano? Oh, Ghost, YES!!!

But, yeah, I'm pretty much with firebug on this - in-game romances (normally) shouldn't be dice-reliant. Otherwise you might end up with a monstrosity resembling Jade Regent's system from Pathfinder. Gahh!

[TheWayfinder]

So, in our last session, one of my players decided to ask out an NPC (Eliza Bloom, if you're familiar with her). This completely stumped me, as I have no idea how to handle it. On a pure Social Skill level, she has him absolutely thrashed; something like 3-12, can't remember off the top of my head. But he's being persistent by sending her flowers.

Any thoughts on how I should proceed? I have no problem with a relationship developing, but I want to proceed in a fair and reasonable way.

Before we go into how I deal with romance, ask yourself if you even want this to happen at all.  Because romances can be problematic, and they can even undermine your adventure if you're not careful.  If you say no, it doesn't matter how well he rolls on Negotiation or Con or whatever, he fails.  Period.  If an NPC is powerful enough that being seduced by the PC can give him extraordinary powers, just don't allow it. 

Generally speaking, if an NPC isn't particularly important, I just reduce things to a die roll or two.  I don't get too far involved.  Many of my players will pick up someone at a club and take her home and forget about her in a week.  Of course, I get to roll to see how well protection worked and if they get something nasty, or she comes down pregnant.   

Edit:  However, if you decide to go through with this, and the aforementioned NPC has the PC blown away in the socials department, you have a number of options: 

1.  Is she out of his league? 

By League, I mean,  does she have more money than he does?  It might also refer to how much class she has, and if she does, if she associates with certain high level people in the area, then she may not be able to afford even being seen with the PC, no matter how classy he may be.  If he can't afford to keep her in a Lifestyle she's accustomed to living in, she may treat him like a boy-toy and nothing more.  The odds that any real genuine romantic feelings may develop in her for the PC is astronomical. 

2.  If she's in his league, or lower, she may still not like him.

I never let Con or Negotiation rolls dictate if a person is in love with anyone.  All the skill rolls do is help to validate those emotions.  However, if, as you say, she will thrash him in the social department, she may be a manipulative bitch who will play him like a fiddle.  Women see men, first and foremost, as a means of money; sorry, but it's true.  Sure, a lot of women are nice and won't try to waste our money with frivolity and can't be bought into having sex, but a lot of women are, and Emily has an option of milking the PC for every spare nuyen if she really wants.  Play this very carefully; just have her toy with him, egging him on to buy her gifts and other things, and over time, she'll have him paying rent.  The key, though, is make him earn any affections from her at any given moment.  That's if you want Emily to be a real bad girl. 

3.  She falls in love with him.

Maybe Cupid rigs the game, and she falls in love with the PC.  Now you have the option of the PC benefiting from this relationship. 

You don't really have to go into any details.  You can keep everything topical, just saying "You and Emily have a nice evening on the town and spend the night with each other."  And that's it.  That can all be code for "They had sex."  If your PC deliberately says he's not having sex, at least not until marriage, okay, but if he doesn't, assume that he does. 

Relationships can be clutter for your campaign, so be sparing about them.  You shouldn't let them interfere too much in your sessions.  They are complicated, even if they're storybook relationships where strangely nothing bad ever happens, and it's paradise for both her and him. 

When I used to run D&D 3.5, I had a PC fall in love with an NPC who was a noblewoman.  And I had made the mistake of dwelling too much on this, because the PC wanted to become a knight of the realm in order to be able to wed her.  Well, that took up a good portion of every session, even when the PCs were off adventuring to some forsaken dungeon, and the others got real tired of it, fast.  It almost ended my campaign abruptly.  So I had to keep things short and topical, even to the point that they didn't interfere with the session. 

[jaguar]

I do want to give this a chance because I think it could be fun. I just don't want to push it ahead unrealistically or cut it off blankly.
She will be a contact for the characters, so I guess her loyalty may end up changing as a result.

Keep in mind, these players prepared for a meet by renting 3 adjacent rooms (one beside and one under the middle), and bashing holes in the walls as an escape route. Left-field is their speciality.

Talk to the player and ask him like "Is it fine if we have this be a thing 'off screen'?" since it's not the sort of thing that should be coming up in a session too much since it takes time away from the game without involving the other players at all.

If I ever have something that only affects a certain character, I do a lone session. I did this for training runs for each player and I'll do it for the mage's initiation if need be.

But consider, asking someone out isn't an opposed skill test. She's not actively opposing being asked out, after all. If you're making him do a test, it'd be more-or-less an unopposed threshold to see how well an impression he made, combined with how well he matches up with her type (which is very, very much non-rule territory).

Interesting way to do it. Hadn't thought of that. I think that can apply to many a social encounter.

Try to think of course if the NPC would even be interested

1.  Is she out of his league? 

Well, the NPC, Eliza, is an Aboriginal Dwarf Shaman who ran against the current Premier of Victoria in his seat and got thrashed. She also heads up Project Freedom pushing for recognition of the Ork Underground. The PC is a Tír na nÓg Elf Rigger who seems to have an unusual relationship with one of his drones; or at least that's the in-joke. Sounds like a bit of an odd pairing.

...Unless you make it into a run, with them going to a restaurant where the decker hacks cameras, with the face sitting at another table with a micro-transceiver telling the guy what to say.

I do love this idea. If it ends up working out, I may do this. Sounds fun.

[TheWayfinder]

Well, the NPC, Eliza, is an Aboriginal Dwarf Shaman who ran against the current Premier of Victoria in his seat and got thrashed. She also heads up Project Freedom pushing for recognition of the Ork Underground. The PC is a Tír na nÓg Elf Rigger who seems to have an unusual relationship with one of his drones; or at least that's the in-joke. Sounds like a bit of an odd pairing.

Then romance is out of the question, unless somehow she becomes brainwashed.  She's so far out of his league she might as well be an alien from another planet.  She may not be a snob, but she has to think of her image, and she's not going to risk that with some fling with an Elven shadowrunner. 

[Kiirnodel]

Well, the NPC, Eliza, is an Aboriginal Dwarf Shaman who ran against the current Premier of Victoria in his seat and got thrashed. She also heads up Project Freedom pushing for recognition of the Ork Underground. The PC is a Tír na nÓg Elf Rigger who seems to have an unusual relationship with one of his drones; or at least that's the in-joke. Sounds like a bit of an odd pairing.

Then romance is out of the question, unless somehow she becomes brainwashed.  She's so far out of his league she might as well be an alien from another planet.  She may not be a snob, but she has to think of her image, and she's not going to risk that with some fling with an Elven shadowrunner.

I would agree that the romance is pretty unlikely. I wouldn't put it quite so harshly as Wayfinder, but Eliza Bloom is a professional and basically acting as a Ms. Johnson to the runners (if I'm guessing right at the mission you're running). She probably wouldn't risk the whole "fraternizing with the help" situation. In the situation you listed in your OP, I would have had the player roll an Etiquette test to make sure he didn't make a complete fool of himself trying to ask her out, then had Ms. Bloom politely decline his advances.

The player would be free to keep trying, but with a dice pool of 3 (I'm guessing defaulting on a Charisma of 4?), the chances of glitching or even crit-glitching get pretty high with more tries. With a glitch he likely says something stupid, and she would probably laugh at him (note, at, and not in a nice way). If he ever failed a roll (no hits), she would probably be less polite in her declining of his advance, and continued tries would result in her becoming less and less patient with him.

Just my thoughts.

[TheWayfinder]

I wouldn't put it quite so harshly as Wayfinder

The reason why I kept it blunt like that was to be pithy.  A GM has to determine what to allow and not allow, and romances, even if they're minor, can be problematic if the GM isn't ready for it, and doesn't have an idea how it should affect the game.  I'm not talking about describing the intimate details; I'm sure players themselves can imagine that better than I could.  But a romantic relationship has the potential to become overblown to the point where it takes the adventure in a direction it was never meant to go. 

My own example was minor compared to where I've seen it go when I was a fellow player.  It got to the point where the other players were not interested in doing anything for the love-interest of the romantic player, because it just wasn't realistic.  Why should my mage risk her life for the fighter's main squeeze?  Why am I bothering to go on a quest that has no bearing on anything important?  Sure, if I'm playing a superhero, it might be different, but in games like Shadowrun and Dungeons and Dragons and whatever, it can be something of a sore point for the other players, because everyone, generally speaking, doesn't want to play second fiddle to someone else's story all the time. 

One time, it got so bad that another player murdered the other player's lover in secret, with the full support from the rest of the group.  That was a long, long time ago (in a galaxy far, far away, no less), and we did it, gained Dark Side points for it, but it was worth it, because that romance was killing our sessions. 

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

Romance is fine, even if it's a situation where the NPC is 'out of their league' of the PC.  The issues you're going to run into (and which, as the GM, you need to think about), is 'how is the discovery of this going to affect the life of the love interest'?  If the love interest is ...

... a simsense star - great!!  Entertainers hang out with criminals all the time, and vice-versa; it's the ol' Sinatra/Mafia thing.  And for an entertainer to be seen associating frequently with unnamed John Doe #16, well, the paparazzi love that sort of thing.

... a corporator - maybe great, maybe not.  If the NPC can turn the PC into an asset, their Corporate Overlord will allow it, even encourage it; there ain't nothing like getting a company man for free.  If the PC is going to be a weight around the (presumably useful) NPC's neck, then the corporation isn't going to allow it, and there may be Severe Consequences in the future.  (Not a bad thing, necessarily, just something you as GM need to be aware of.)

... a political animal - Not Gonna Happen.  Politicians, of every stripe, are concerned with How It's Gonna Play, and though they may have their fun with Mr. Wanted Criminal for a night or a week or a month, it's gonna get broken off sooner rather than later - because in SR's day and age, this sort of thing is meat for the hay-making beast, and the NPC's opponents are gonna get a hold of the information, and use it to marginalize or bury the NPC.

I, generally, am amused by and encourage such romances.  Unless you're strictly a mission-by-mission, Screw Your Life Outside The Run sort of gaming group, it's stuff like this that makes it fun.

[Jayde Moon]

You want a system?  Here's an arbitrary one that might make sense to some people.

Charisma + Etiquette

Threshold: 1 + Difference Between Charisma + Levels of Difference Between Apparent Lifestyle + 'Victim's' Edge Roll (for a bit of randomness)

So If the PC is Charisma 2 and Low Lifestyle and trying to ask out a Charisma 5 High Lifestyle, then your base threshold is 6, then add the Edge Roll.

As I said, it's arbitrary, and some people may come up with better ones or whatever.  If I were to use this, I would probably take into account good RP.  but ultimately, Dice can be used to represent skills the players don't have (acting or wooing skills) so taking it to a system is as legitimate a way to do it as any.

[witchdoctor]

Personally I'd be wary if the NPC in question is a group contact as allowing the romance to go through would give one player a leg up over the rest that the rest of the group can't really cash in on. In universe it might make sense but the rest of the group might feel gypped as one member has a higher level contact than the rest of them as an rp award by means that aren't available to them, or you could let it go through so long as he can pay the karma for the increased loyalty score.

[jaguar]

Thanks all. This is all useful information. I've decided that his advances will be rejected for now, but who knows what could happen in the future.

I'll be saving this thread to my hard drive for future reference.