We know that many of you play D&D as part of a couple and, also, that many of you do not! This post is more for the former group, though hopefully there are crossovers to the other as well!
We’re working on an adventure similar to Cupid’s Sparrow* that will have 3-4 short one-shot dates for characters in Waterdeep.
But, while developing that, I thought it might be fun to propose a D&D date for your game!
And, if you’re interested, we talk more about romance in D&D here!
What is a D&D Date?
First, I want to clarify what I mean by a D&D Date.
One of the things we love about playing together in a duet is that we have built-in dates every week that we can look forward to and talk about!
They’re also really affordable because we’re spending that time together at home which, as I’m sure you’re all aware, tends to be a lot cheaper than spending that time out and about!
But for this post, I don’t just mean the time spent together between the two of you. Instead, this is for a date inside a D&D game, between characters.
To return briefly to the adventure we mentioned above, we have a really fun one-shot on DMsGuild with lots of randomizing tables that will guide your characters through a date with plenty of hijinks and adventure.*
But let’s say you’ve already played that, or you want something a little bit different.
Make it Personal
What makes these in-game dates between characters so fun and romantic are the same things that make dates particularly wonderful and memorable in real life: the level of thoughtfulness toward the other person with a touch of the element of surprise.
So, if your character has been ponderously pining after your partner’s character for some time and finally gets the go-ahead to squire them around town, leave no holds barred because, unlike in our real lives, all the money in D&D is pretend! So you can have a date of unlimited fanciness and/or unlimited fun and almost no cost to you!
Roll the dice
Of course, this is still a game, so on some level, you’ll want to be rolling dice and leaning into the fun and random aspects of d20s.
Perhaps the characters go to a festival and decide to participate in a carnival game or two! Instead of throwing knives at thieves, they throw pies at painted figures and win caramel apples!
You can even bring in card and board games in real life for your characters to play. We’ve tried this with chess and Dungeon Mayhem, and Dungeon Mayhem turned out to be a lot more fun, but that could just be because I don’t pay very close attention while I’m playing chess.
Back to Romance
But returning to the more romantic topic at hand, what makes dates in D&D especially sweet and meaningful is the double layering of thoughtfulness going into the remove it takes to come up with the date in the first place. You’re not just thinking about what your partner would like, but what someone who they care about, their character, would like.
We all want to be seen, and this helps them to be doubly-seen!
A few quick questions
- So what would Evangeline, or whoever the character is, find particularly wooing?
- What’s something they’ve always wanted to do that they haven’t been able to do before?
- What do they enjoy, or what attracts them so much to your character?
Persephonie, my PC for our Waterdeep game, desperately wants to go to an exclusive park in the city that she can’t visit because she’s not a noble. So being let in—or sneaking in—would be a perfect date for her!
Dates in D&D can also be a really great way to trade up who’s DMing and let the DMPC get some time to shine!
In a future post, we’ll share with you a few of the dates we’ve tried out for our characters, but we’d love to hear from you! Have you tried out dates in your D&D games? If so, what did you do?!
Let us know in the comments below!
Cover photo by Jonathan J. Castellon on Unsplash
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