#RPG Chin Scratcher Follow-Up: Why, You Lot Of Old Romantics...

Last Friday, I posed the topical question: have you ever held an "in-game" wedding?

And I was pleasantly surprised to learn that a lot of gamers have been involved in such a plot development.

While no-one actually commented via the blog, there was a flurry of Facebook discussion on the topic, courtesy of my own wall, Tenkar's Tavern, and the Villains & Vigilantes Facebook group, which was very gratifying.

Adam Dickstein, of Barking Alien, said:

"There have been weddings in my D&D-But-Not world of Aerth games, at least two in superhero games, and at least one in Star Trek."

He added: "It's a thing."

Frank Gregory chimed in, saying he'd experienced a wedding in a superhero campaign as well:

"In a Champions campaign. We had a player who was leaving the area (pre-internet, when that was still a problem), so to write his character out of the campaign and keep him around for guest shots, we had a wedding in his home country. Of course it ended in an attack by supervillains out for revenge. Good times had by all."

Players' circumstances also featured in Suleiman Allen's comment, and it turned out that that wasn't always for the best.

In his experience in-game marriages were usually:

"...either between players who were already married, or between players who were dating. For some reason, the latter is the knell of doom for that relationship. Like trying to pretend to be a functioning couple is the only way they can try to repair their already damaged relationship, and instead they start to roleplay their dysfunctions in front of everybody. ...Yeah, I'm glad I don't play with teenagers much any more."

More dramatically, but still driven by the player, Steve Miller had this anecdote from his superheroes campaign:

"...a player character ... had befriended and - turned to the side of good - a villain (who said PC actually rescued from death and plot-oblivion because, as far as I was concerned, her role in the story was over) married her after several months of game time. It was an idea that was developed almost entirely by the player.

"The game session was all about the wedding... and like any wedding in an action-adventure story, things almost went awry when bad guys show up. In this case, it was bounty hunters sent out to bring the bride back to the jurisdiction in which she had murdered her abusive father."

Another exciting wedding-themed plotline came from Timothy Joe Kirk who said:

"I've had the heroes have to stop villains from wedding-crashing for a friend. I've [also] had some [player-characters] date, we never quite got to them marrying."

While he hadn't been involved in a tabletop RPG wedding, Brandon Blackmoor admitted that:

"...my character was a maid of honour in a World Of Warcraft marriage once. It was really sweet."

Meanwhile, a couple of my long-time Canadian gaming friends were enthused by the prospect of wedding-themed scenarios.

Jim Fogarty said:

"Way back in AD&D I played a character that got married. I don't think we had an adventure planned around the wedding. That was a missed opportunity in retrospect."

And, Percy Hodge said:

"I run superhero campaigns and I would think it would be great to have an adventure where all the group wants to do is get their team mate to the church on time... but, of course, villainy rarely takes a holiday."

Has this inspired you to engineer a wedding in your campaign, or do you have the kind of proactive players that seek out life partners for their characters?