Romance & Dragons: Relationships Forged through Gaming

By Ralsu

Author's note: All of the websites and videogames referenced below are the copyrighted material of their respected owners. Ten Ton Hammer (TTH) does not claim ownership of, endorse, or imply any affiliation with any websites mentioned here that do not belong to us.

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day, and despite the stereotype that all gamers are overweight males who live in their parents' basements, many Dungeons & Dragons Online (DDO) fans will need to think of the perfect gift* to give that special someone. The “holiday” has mutated in recent years with the advent of advanced technology: FTD will let you order flowers online, or you could send an e-card to your love. Cute. But technology—and massively-multiplayer online games (MMOGs)—also changes how we fall in love in the first place.

As an increasing number of people spend more and more of their time on the Internet, they create online “relationships.” Email, instant messaging, message boards like DDO @ TTH, text messaging on cellular phones, and time spent chatting in MMOGs have all conditioned us to develop bonds with other people without the benefit of talking to them face-to-face. But is it possible to find true love over the Internet?

Aranath and Syrah of EverQuest Live believe a romantic relationship built around gaming can be just as strong as any other. The couple made national news in December of 1998 when they became the first two people ever to enter into a real marriage through a ceremony in-game. Game Master Ozymandius presided over their wedding, and a little blurb can still be found over at IGN. I was unable to contact the lovebirds for comment.

Aranath and Syrah were the first, but they were not the only ones to find love in a land of pixels. Even I have some amount of gaming romance in my personal experience. My wife and I used to spend hours taking turns with Tecmo's Deception. We would laugh gleefully whenever we managed to capture a visitor to the mansion in one of our sinister traps. Sure, we didn't meet in a game, but a large part of our “courtship” revolved around gaming. When we were married in 2000, I wrote to Sony Computer Entertainment America for permission to have my groom's cake look just like a Playstation console. Six years later, my wife and I are going strong, but do other gaming relationships last?

Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) fan Gnellie is living proof of a strong union generated from gaming. "I'd never played D&D before,” she explains. “A bunch of the guys in my college house got a game going and, frankly, girls weren't invited. I was fascinated seeing them pouring over rulebooks and rolling dice.”

Gnellie finally got her chance to join in, and it eventually led to one of the most important moments in her life. “I rolled up a rogue, having been advised that it would probably be one of the easier classes to attempt for a first character. I sat down my first Saturday, met a half dozen people I'd never met before, and noticed the intense gaze of the ranger across the table from me,” she recalls.

“A few sessions later…our party fell into a bad situation, where I (a small slight female rogue) was the only party member not to fall stunned into the river,” Gnellie relates. “I chose the ranger to rescue and drag from certain destruction…I just rescued mister “Intense Gaze” for my own [non-roleplaying] reasons.”

Gnellie completes her story with a fairytale ending: “You know what? I married him 18 months later. Glad I didn't let him drown.” The couple has now been married for 10 years. They have a lovely daughter and continue to game together, mostly playing EverQuest: Online Adventures on the Playstation 2 console.

With the documented cases like Aranath and Syrah, and anecdotal evidence such as that provided by Gnellie, what will DDO bring? Turbine's implementation of voice chat will (hopefully) expose the men pretending to be women. It will also allow people to get together and simply chat. Much like Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) allows broadband users to conduct a telephone conversation over the Internet, DDO will permit two players to form a party and go sit in an instanced dungeon to chat in total privacy.

I predict that DDO will see its fair share of romances. D&D fans are a loyal bunch, and many instantly feel a kinship when they meet another fan. Many are also older, and (supposedly) more mature gamers who will possess the means to travel to meet a fellow gamer in real life. Moreover, the group-oriented nature of DDO forces players to spend almost all of their time in parties. People will form regular groups and share information about their lives. As similarities surface, infatuation will result. From there, the voice chat and the sunset over the waters near the Leaky Dinghy will do the rest.

So I say be ready for anything when DDO launches in two weeks. If you didn't have a significant other this Valentine's Day, you might just meet that magical someone in Stormreach. It's happened before!

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*For the perfect gift, this gamer recommends any or (preferably) all of the following:

• A pre-order of the DDO Limited Edition from EB Games
• A quality gaming headset
• A control pad with at least 10 buttons
• $15 EB Games gift cards (each one is worth a month of DDO!)
• The Player's Guide to Eberron from Wizards of the Coast
• A really nice set of Dungeon Master's dice