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One of the games I've recently replayed, because with the heat was hard to work (if not impossible) is Pillars Of Eternity.
What I particularly liked was the total freedom in the party. If you wanted to have six fighters, you could or six priests, etc.
Now in my games because of romance it's not really possible to do that. Even if I allowed full customization, then writing the character background, his behavior/ethics, etc would be impossible (everything should be kept "generic" to fit all classes and won't work).
So an idea I had is: I could make a RPG in which you can really create any party member (full character creation) and have as romances only external NPCs.
For example, a temple healer who needs your help about something. Would unlock a full questline and as you progress it, you would know him/her better, and in the end unlock the romance.

On the other hand, this would mean that all party members won't have any specific dialogues.

I could also let the player create only 5 party members and reserve the 6th to a specific NPC that joins for a series of quest. Like above, you could talk and romance only him/her.

What do you think about this idea? I didn't do a poll this time because I guess you can't really say "yes or no" but need to explain your reasons for being against or in favor

I always felt having a party based game without the party having a personality is very gritty with being immersed. But I admit a great appeal is befriending/romancing these people you fight with. I always felt systems that you can design your own characters and thus generic, are more like tactics games. Not that I dislike tactics games, but even my favorite tactics games give your "officers" some personality and story potential.

But more in line with the question, I totally don't mind romancing an NPC character. I kinda even like it better, if they acknowledge what you do as part of your work. It feels more romantic somehow when you don't have the same job.

I'd say, it's a neat idea and worth a shot. Something new is never a bad thing, and I fancy the idea of building my own personal team of comrades for an adventure. Next follows two points worth considering about the subject.

First; how would the romance with an eNPC roll out and finish? Say, if there was a CG at the end of the game portraiting the blooming relationship between eNPC and MC, what would it show? Is the CG taken from MCs eyes so that their character won't be shown? Or should there be totally no CGs so that we'd have a fully text-based romance?

Second; what might be the fate of the created party members? If the MC will live happily ever after with their love, then what's going to happen to the rest of the group? Or should the main character be the boss of the created party so that he won't be fighting?

Grodul wrote: First; how would the romance with an eNPC roll out and finish? Say, if there was a CG at the end of the game portraiting the blooming relationship between eNPC and MC, what would it show? Is the CG taken from MCs eyes so that their character won't be shown? Or should there be totally no CGs so that we'd have a fully text-based romance?

Yes I'd use the same system of Cursed Lands (since you can customize your MC a lot by race, gender, etc) and show everything from first person view

Grodul wrote: Second; what might be the fate of the created party members? If the MC will live happily ever after with their love, then what's going to happen to the rest of the group? Or should the main character be the boss of the created party so that he won't be fighting?

I could come up with some class-based endings for the other characters, or just randomize them a bit. Since everything would be user-created, I couldn't do like in the other games. Or maybe I could just have a final choice and let the player decide what they do, based on the game stats! Like if a character killed a lot of enemies could become a mercenary, or retire in a monastery, or something else.

Of course I know that the party interaction is a strong point of my kind of games, so this definitely would be an experiment that maybe I could do on a shorter game first, to test the waters
(and of course we're talking far in future since right now I'm not starting any new games! )

I don't have any issues romancing NPCs, but! I feel that much of the appeal of Winter Wolves games are the uniqueness and personalities of your party members. Total blank slate characters would put too much pressure on the rest of the game being really, really good.

You basically said that you don't believe this would work, but I think that an interesting option could be to design personality archetypes, which you could then assign to characters of your choice. So if you want the Halfling Barbarian to have the Psychotic personality archetype, you would assign it to her, and she'd get all the dialogue reserved for the Psycho. Something like this was done in Wizardry 8, where voices and unique dialogue was scripted, then assigned to characters by the player. Class was irrelevant here, in fact it was great fun to have the mage be a complete brute.

There are obviously degrees of doing this, the more details you put into past background, the harder it will be to make right, but I think it would be an interesting experiment and still keep some fun and interesting party banter.

Another factor that may reduce the blankness of characters could be possible small-time events during adventures, where a high enough attribute of a certain party member could be rewarded with loot or lesser enemies in fights. And maybe some cool comment from the character.

I feel that Lady Josephine Cherette Montilyet from Dragonage inquisition was a great example of a beautiful romance with someone that was not a part of the combat or party.

Yes

Lady Josephine Cherette Montilyet was a great example of a very hot babe as well
(one of my favorite character design in a RPG)

Ahem, but yes, that's how I would do it. They could even accompany the party of characters now that I think about it, just not fight! (DOH moment )

jack1974 wrote:Lady Josephine Cherette Montilyet was a great example of a very hot babe as well
(one of my favorite character design in a RPG)

Ahem, but yes, that's how I would do it. They could even accompany the party of characters now that I think about it, just not fight! (DOH moment )

Indeed! Bioware's Dragon age's inquisition's style of romancing your advisers is a pretty neat way of external romances, that still make you feel they are a part of your group, just not inside your fighting party.

While they don't need to take up slots and accompany your fighting party, I'd love it if your romance interest has scenes with you in different locations too. Like in Josephine's example, you begin by talking to her at your base, then as the romance grows you get to interact with her at other places like Val Royeaux (which has her personal quest), the Winter palace (major questline)..etc.. something like that.