It should be the players’ responsibility to have some kind of motivation to be with the group. If they lose that and wander off, that’s fine – they’re off camera until they come back with the same or a new character. Nothing is more lazy that players who try to make it someone else’s job to get them into the adventure.

Beyond that, manipulative players try to get the GM into the intra-character roleplay. Not his business. “That’s how Drake is acting, what does Shayla do?” That’s it.

In short, all of this is drama queens trying to generate conflict and bring you into it. Stay neutral and stay out of it, and make it clear what their role is. You’re just playing into the manipulation.

First, I’ve known people who call themselves soulmates. They argue, drift in and out of each others lives, and so on. It happens. Maybe the players should be rolling with the flow.

I’m kinda anti- “Player A says Player B is bad because Player B is not giving in to Player A’s demands.” That pretty much puts me in the pro-Dan realm. I understand that it starts to alienate Sarah’s character, but there should be some way to link Shayla into the group after five games. By now, she should be accepted and have relationships of her own.

Of course, Dan also entered into this IC relationship with his eyes open, I’m betting. He knew Sarah was a 3rd Person player. You don’t establish a IC relationship like that with player like that and expect different results. If this was intended to be a teaching relationship, then you make the “soulmates” thing a goal for the characters to strive for, not a pre-existing situation.

Walt noted that much of his game is about the social dynamics between the PCs. It made me think of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Oz the werewolf is really only connected to the gang because of his relationship with Willow. He jokes around with Xander a bit and is comfortable with Buffy, Giles, and Angel, and tolerates Cordelia, but he’s really only in it for Willow. IE, “As Willow goes, so goes my nation.”

Once that relationship breaks, Oz is out. It’s not because he had a problem with the rest of the gang. In fact, he might have been well advised to stick around for help with his werewolf issues. But he didn’t have Willow as his anchor, so nothing really kept him around.

Similar thing here, I imagine.

Ultimately that’s the base reason why these people should be sticking together in a party; they’re combat veterans, comrades in arms. What kind of cold bastard splits off because of ‘moral’ and ‘political’ differences when the fact is THAT GUY was shooting/slinging fire/swording someone else so you would live?

I certainly don’t know many people IRL (who aren’t policemen,soldiers,etc) who would kill an animal, much less a person, for me.
I would say that person is a friend, unless he obviously had some other motive. While certain things would intervene in that consideration in extreme cases (Powermad dictator, serial killer, etc.)

Sure, once someone gets tired of fighting and decides to return to life and sell carpets or something, those differences might factor in more, but to be sure, small stuff like personal differences and drama can’t really overcome the fact that these guys have probably saved your life time and time again.

The reason why I’d side with Sarah is simple, because the premise is what keeps a game from devolving into an utter mess… everyone makes premises before they start a game, the most basic of which is simply what game will the group play…

However, I’m more sympathetic with Sarah’s position. If Sarah refuses to cooperate and Dan has to live with portraying a relationship that isn’t being RPed as well as he’d like, Drake still participates in the rest of the game. If Dan refuses to cooperate and terminates the relationship between Drake and Shyla, Shyla’s effectively out of the party because Drake is her only link.

In other words, Sarah’s enjoyment is at greater risk than Dan’s (unless Dan’s only enjoyment can be in portraying a relationship of passionate love with someone who also roleplays in first-person).

I wouldn’t put this issue on either player. There’s no blame, just as with real life – sometimes the relationships we want just don’t work out. It doesn’t mean either party is wrong.

Instead, this is where the GM as manager steps in. Imagine if you were the runner for a TV show and two actors disagreed about method and weren’t getting along, and it was starting to show on screen. Do you reprimand one of them for being a bad actor or for not having “read the script?” Do you write one character out of the show? Or do you work around the disagreement?

What I’d do is work to come up with a metagame fix as Lady2Beetle suggests – just start working on another reason for Shyla to stay with the group. Sarah gets to keep playing without dumping her character, Dan doesn’t have to partner up with someone he believes doesn’t have enough of a dramatic soul, and the game can go on in basically the same direction.

Here’s the crux of the issue: Dan and Sarah decided that it would be fun to play characters that were in love with each other. Now it’s not working out because Dan’s not “feeling” Sarah’s attempts at Roleplay.

This isn’t Sarah’s fault. She’s simply not up to the RP task at hand. Maybe she should be encouraged to push her limits a bit more, but ultimately, we’re not master thespians. We can’t all play all rolls.

This isn’t Dan’s fault. He’s living up to his end of the bargain and delivering good role-play.

There IS something Dan can do to fix the situation easily however. Dan’s not roleplaying his character’s reactions to her character’s actions very well. That is to say, just because Sarah’s version of a passionate moment is “Shayla loves Drake.” in a monotone, doesn’t mean that beneath it’s poor delivery isn’t just what Drake wants to hear. Dan should be acting as if everything Sarah says is Shayla delivering a perfect love sonet. Alternately, he could be ad-libbing off camera details like crazy. “What do you mean she’s cold? That’s just because she’s doesn’t want to look weak in front of everyone else. When we’re alone… well, let’s just say passionate is her middle name!” or even shifting the paradigm of their relationship so it makes more sense. “Are you kidding? LOOK at her man! I’ll never get another woman like that. So what if she’s a bit distant. I’ve got her and I’m keeping her!” or even “Sure she hurts me a lot, but she’s all I have. All I’ll ever have, and I need her, so BACK OFF! It’s none of your damn business anyway!”

This kind of things just happen after all. When you are roleplaying, you don’t know the end of the history. Sarah’s character should have had another reason to go aventuring with them.

That’s the reason why I usually ask my players to have connection with at least two other members of the party.

Great content, by the way. Congatulations.

@Sarlax – I think that’s a pretty fair description.

@Scotto – It was a mix of both, unfortunately.

In this case, I don’t think that there’s any point in pointing fingers at one person or the other. Instead, as a GM, you can work ahead by sitting down with the players and discussing the premise. If it needs to be altered, fine – great! But alter it together. It might be that an “act of the GM” will justify the actions of one character or the other and turn what was a friction of roleplaying styles into an entertaining conflict of the characters – so long as both players agree to the plan. Meanwhile, I would suggest finding another hook to connect Sarah’s character to the party. It might very well be that she can interact more comfortably with Dan’s character if that “relationship” isn’t the sole IC reason for her to be there.

Just my $.02.

If you’re not playing a narrative style game that can help make compromises within the framework of the rules, then there has to be some kind of understanding that as a group, the players will try to keep things running as smoothly as possible. I absolutely hate it when somebody derails an entire game based on the idea that “my character wouldn’t do that.” A good roleplayer can build in a plausible reason to make things work without costing everybody else their fun at the table.

I think perhaps you, as the GM, should counsel the two players that it’d be nice to keep the team together, and it’s ok for one, or the other, to find some ‘out of game’ reason to stick to plan. Either one. If the love interest dies out then, perhaps the character who might be cut out, has formed some other relationship to the group.

I had a player who joined my game as a mercenary bodyguard for another player (a noble’s son). That player left our group and I had to have some way to keep the mercenary there. I left an “IOU” from the noble for a year’s pay and eventually the characters decided to “upgrade” his status from hired hand, to full party member.

In real life would any of this happen? Probably not, some people work and some don’t but in the interest in creating a cooperative, and fun game play experience I would urge both players to try and work something out to keep the game rolling, even if it requires the dreaded meta-gaming feat.