Thread: SEX!
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Old 05-16-2006, 12:15 AM   #129
BrettH
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Join Date: Jan 2006
Posts: 52
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I think the #1 thing is to keep priorities in mind. If you really care about story, I've learned you have to keep an absolute distance between what's happening in the game and what's happening out of the game. I never get involved with the players of my characters' love interests.

If your priority is to relax with a game online, but ultimately to meet people and maybe have a relationship, the story certainly can take second seat to all that. But it can be very risky.

Can't tell you how many times a 'perfect IC/OOC couple' breaks up and all hell breaks loose. Storylines go wonky, characters start committing suicide at the drop of a hat, harrassments in IMs, any projects/games the players are managing utterly die, and related friendships fragment.

I always make it clear to people through OOC chat that my character and I do not think alike, act alike, or make the same choices. I don't lie to players about what my character is doing (or whom), otherwise it seems like I'm worried about some sort of OOC 'cheating' and again, things get wonky.

I do not encourage a sense of ownership of my online time with players of characters my character is sleeping with. My time is my own, and sometimes I'm in the mood to play something else.

If the players react badly to these things, getting hurt or bent out of shape, I end the RP of an intimate relationship immediately. It would only get worse if I coddled people's inappropriate OOC feelings about a story and fictional characters.

Another thing that can get me to end it is if the other player insists that I must RP sexual scenes with the character regularly, that only actions specifically acted out are actually occuring and there is no implied 'regular life' happening when we aren't at the keyboards, and therefore any gap in such scenes is equivalent to my character losing interest and actually withholding sex.

Way too much emotional neediness there, too close to trying to turn the story into some actual marital duties that I can do without.

Anyway, I'm rambling. Those are just things that came to mind.

---Brett
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