Love and Harem (Patreon)

I was going to write this when [Harem] first came up, but better late than never, I suppose. Social Development options… well, to be honest, I just brought them over from a dozen RPGs that I knew. It worked for the Champions, but when I realised that I wanted the same system to work for the natives, I ran into some problems.

For some development options, it makes sense for the player to be able to choose for the character. It gets a little iffy when these are the same person. So some changes had to be made. Some options — race, family status, etc, you are born with. The System selects them for you based on your circumstances. There is an age… say about five years, where it stops doing that. So if your family dies before then, you get your points refunded for [Family] and you get the 0 point option [Orphan]. When the System spends your points, you can go into Development Point Debt.

All of this is just an introduction to [Married]. [Harem] works the same way, but [Married] is simpler.

In Latorra, there are three types of marriage. Civil marriage, where you go to the mayor, or the alderman or something, tell him you want to be married, and he notes it down in a book. You might want to do a ceremony, but it’s not required.

Some religions think there should be a ceremony, and manage marriage for whoever will listen to them. They also inform the alderman, so the marriage is recognised more generally.

And finally, there is [Married]. How it works is that you spend the points, and you’re married to someone. The downside is that you don’t get to choose who you get married to. And this marriage is guaranteed to last. Your wife or you might die, but you will never divorce.

How does the System guarantee that? Well, no one really knows. Perhaps it is its choice of partners, or perhaps it changes participants. Mmmm, creepy invasive system.

There is a story, told as a cautionary tale, of a traveller who came to a remote village just as they were starting a wedding feast. The climax of the feast was the moment that both the bride and the groom took [Married] at the same time. After all, that was the best way to ensure that you got what you wanted, wasn’t it?

According to the tale, when the traveller awoke the next morning, everyone remembered that there had been a double wedding that night. The bride from last night had married the rich mayor of the town— twice her age, but everyone agreed that he’d keep her happy with a life of luxury. The bridegroom had married another young girl, not as pretty as the first bride, but they seemed to be radiantly in love.

Everyone believed that the double wedding was the natural culmination of the events of the last few years. Only the traveller was immune, and as a stranger, of course, nobody believed him when he tried to tell them differently. It wasn’t long before he realised that the reason he was left untouched was because he couldn’t affect the outcome in any way.

The traveller left, to pass on his tale, and the people of Latorra have been left with an abiding mistrust of [Married]. People still take it, but it is an act of supreme confidence or ultimate desperation.

Knowing none of that, Kaito stepped firmly into [Married]x6 without hesitation.