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Whilst reading the Mary Sue and Have you been overshadowed by some gm contrivance threads, it occurred to me that people do tend to have stories about that one gmpc that irritated the crap out of them.
So, thus the question I ask for fun!
What is the backstory/justification given to you by your gm that is WHY said person is 'just better than you'?
Descended from or is a god/goddess? Ancient king/queen? Or true heir to great power? Super artifact? Something else?
I can't remember his name, but in what I consider the WORST CAMPAIGN EVER, the DM had a Mary Sue that just ticked me off (though, to be truthful, the entire session was the worst game of D&D I've ever played and caused the break-up of my original group, so complaining about one guy isn't much).
He was a quickling/god of sorts that interrupted our combats and defeated enemies, took all of our weapons when we, as players, were about to fight eachother, could traverse any distance or location instantly, even passing through traps that we couldn't.. The irritating part was he was played with this squeaky voice and there was never a backstory on the guy (at least in that session).
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But the worst one. The one that takes the taco has to be Aloyicious. He was a "merchant" of questionable morals in a campaign back in 3e. He funded all our adventures and was quite antagonistic towards us. Nothing we did could harm or irritate him, and we were forced to just do whatever the DM made us do, through him.
No matter where we went (including a massive travel across the continents) he was always there. Around level 6 we were fighting off some drow or something when an ancient wyrm black dragon appeared to destroy us for plot-points we couldn't understand. Before he could attack, Aloyicious showed up said, "no" and "wished him out of existence"..I don't get it, either. Turns out, Aloyicious was a pit fiend in disguise using us to do his bidding. He was angry at having to "save us" and thus killed my character and the party barbarian out of spite.
He was some sort of "character" from a previous planescape game the DM played in with his older group. The character was trying to win the blood war and we were his pawns. Nevermind that nothing we ever actually did served to forward that goal, they were just odd little things that meant nothing. And, the fact that he killed half the party when irritated...
It was a stupid campaign that pretty much ended after that; it lasted 2-3 more sessions before we dumped it in favor of playing anything else.
__________________ "..Death greets me warm; Now I will just say goodbye.."
I used to call these PNPCs (Player Non-Player Characters).
While I can't compete with that last one, I had a Shadowrun GM who had to have her pet character from a prior campaign tag along constantly. She came along constantly because she had some skill we didn't have.
With that in mind, I was determined to get a rank in every single skill (save for the magic skills). After I did, the GM pulled that one again. I told her that there was no need 'cause I had a rank in every skill in the book. She informed me that this was a special homebrew skill that wasn't in the book. Needless to say, I wasn't a happy camper.
With that in mind, I was determined to get a rank in every single skill (save for the magic skills).
The whole DM v. player dynamic makes no sense to me -- aren't you all just friends?
I get that people seem to a union rule or an allergy against the DM having a character, but I don't get the passive-aggressive stuff between DM and players, in either direction.
This thread just sparked a memory I had thought long forgotten but it had to do with a neophyte Storyteller (it was for a Vampire game) and her attempt at a 'realistic' vampire story. We, as players, played ourselves (I knew this going in and figured it would be a change) and we were quickly ambushed and turned into vampires.
I was having great fun playing myself as a Nosferatu who suddenly found he could talk to his housecat but then she has herself appear in game - of course she is beautiful, intelligent and seems to know exactly what has happened to us . She is stronger than us, more connected to the local vamp community and just generally better than all of us and managed to play out some passive aggressive revenge scenarios on the male portion of the group (of which I was one) except her current boyfriend (not me thank gawd) who became...blood bonded? Something like that anyways so that became this awkward sex/violence thing that quickly devolved from there.
And that was the first, and last, time I played Vampire:tM.
__________________ "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel." - Samuel Johnson 18th century English author.
My gaming group had fallen apart and I knew an old freind of mine had a game going so I ask him if I could sit in for a while.
He told me that they were nearing into a battle so I'd have to start right in the middle of combat. I said ok and rolled up a quick druid,
We were fighting some sort of black knight, 5 of us hammering away on this guy who every few rounds quaffed a potion of full heal as a free action, this went on from about 9pm, to about 6am when the black knight shapeshifted into a dragon and flew away.
He then congratulated us on a such a good job, and we all went home.... I realized that just becuase we're freinds doesn't mean we can all game together.
The whole DM v. player dynamic makes no sense to me -- aren't you all just friends?
I get that people seem to a union rule or an allergy against the DM having a character, but I don't get the passive-aggressive stuff between DM and players, in either direction.
I think you might be misinterpreting the situation a bit. We were all good friends and had a great time. I was a lot younger then (by about 16 years!), so maybe it irked me more than it would have these days.
Thing is, the player characters should be the stars. NPCs shouldn't overshadow the player characters. I have no issue with the DM having a character tag along, as that's their "voice" in the game. I do it all the time. However, the DM's character should be there to give the players a boost, not to take center stage.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DarwinofMind
He then congratulated us on a such a good job, and we all went home.... I realized that just becuase we're freinds doesn't mean we can all game together.
There's a certain truth to this. I have a group of friends who I used to game with. They tend to play more mecenary games. I tend to play heroic games. Good friends, but our gaming styles just don't mesh.
Mine was randomly rolled. We were assigned backstories commensurate with "special abilities" by dice. Rolled by the co-DMs. Then, if our "special abilities" mattered, the co-DMs (boyfriend and girlfriend) went into the other room for a "DM Conference" and came back (mussed) and nerfed your power.
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We were fighting some sort of black knight, 5 of us hammering away on this guy who every few rounds quaffed a potion of full heal as a free action, this went on from about 9pm, to about 6am when the black knight shapeshifted into a dragon and flew away.
Dude... I would've walked out after an hour so of that crap. I can't believe you stayed for seven.
I have had this happen more then once, but two stories stand out;
1st) 3.5 I had just drawn up my ninja (Comp Adv) and the DM said "Since no one is a rogue I will draw up an NPC rogue...after many attempts to explain I might as well be one I droped it. we were 3rd level, but he wanted an extra feat so he made his 6th level...great start. He always called dips on items, and always had way more skills, damage everyhting then me...
2nd) back in 2e we had Mr Fluffy... ....his back story was he was a paliden (epic level) that fell in love with the daughter of the evil necromancer...she was good, until the day her father killed Sr whatever in front of her and she snapped, killing the necromancer and going com pletly batty. His love animated him as a Death Knight now they live togher in this town where she thinks of him as just a servant, not realizing she has no real 'control'...she was a 35th level necromancer with no touch of reality...he was a 2osomething paliden/death knight...and the DM always had a reason for him to tag along...
__________________
Quote:
Originally Posted by Remathilis
Planescape
It should be given special award to Die Vecna, Die: a module that manages to trash no less than THREE different settings (Greyhawk, Ravenloft, Planescape) in the course of one module.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Remathilis
Those of you who fretted that monsters have too many hp and fights take too long: meet the barbarian. The ULTIMATE "Lets speed this combat up, I need to whiz" class!
Well, I don't think I've had this in a tabletop game, but I'm in a pbem where the GM always insists on having her female "PCs" tag along with my male PCs, no matter how hard I try to get rid of them. They're usually escaped slaves who've been horribly abused.
Before I start, I should say that my DM had the excuse of being young and relatively inexperienced compared to his current self (we have been gaming together since we were 13). He has the good grace to acknowledge the cheese he pulled .
Okay, back in our glorious high school days, our DM was running a campaign that featured a Super Race. I won't say the actual name (I still quiver with impotent rage when I hear it), so I will call them the Betterthanyou. The Betterthanyou lived up to their name; no matter what our characters were up to, be it exploring a dark and dangerous forest or battling hordes of evil undead, the Betterthanyou would show up, sometimes in great numbers, other times just a few, and make us look like chumps. If we were fighting a dragon, and it was winning, sooner or later a Betterthanyou would show up to heal us, beat the crap out of the dragon, and lecture us about being careful before vanishing back to Betterthanyou Land. It was irksome.
I am happy to say that other than that, the campaign was awesome, and our DM did, eventually, get the hint and downplay the Betterthanyou.
__________________ Enemies are the price of Honor. ~Zeddicus Zu'l Zorander, Wizard of the First Order
Fear. Fear attracts the fearful. The strong. The weak. The innocent. The corrupt. Fear. Fear is my ally. ~Darth Maul
No. Try not. Do... or do not. There is no try. ~Yoda
I don't want the Tyranny of Fun to become one of PF RPG's design principles. That's 4e's province, and I'd happily leave it that way.
Last edited by EroGaki; 3rd July 2009 at 01:31 PM..
Reason: Corrected spelling
What I think is funny is how many different DMs I've played with that use THE SAME DMPC's, but the actual DMs have never met one another, and also share little in common besides being D&D DMs.
-The Demon--uber-powerful demon (or devil) with annoying voice (because what are you going to do about it?) who never appears in his natural form, and always shows up to bother you in-character for like 15 straight minutes, while nobody at the table wants him there, or even cares about what he's saying.
-The Princess--a human, elf, or half-elf woman. She is always a spellcaster, almost always a healer of some sort, and she always needs everyone's help to do something way more interesting than you are allowed to do. She also never casts spells to help you (or enters combat, for that matter), unless it's Deus Ex Machina healing.
-The Fizban--the useless old man who apparently does nothing at all except annoy the crap out of you until he unleashes Total Arcane Hell via Deus Ex Machina and takes out a major BBEG for you. He usually turns out to be an Archmage or a Deity, and is vastly more powerful than any of your characters will ever be, defeating the purpose of the entire campaign.
-The Mentor--this guy is usually pretty cool, except for the fact that midway through the campaign he turns into The Fizban or The Demon.
__________________ Every time I see the word Pavlov, I salivate. =(
Some people see their chance to DM as their time in the Sun and their chance to show everyone that they are as smart as they think they are.
Unfortunately it's a cult of personality and they are no way near as intelligent or creative as they think they are.
Using a past Pc with out that other Dm's inhibiting rules is one of their ways of trying to prove it.
Once in early 3e, one of my players decided to run a game. He was one of those types who liked the play, but had barely read the rules. Wanting a break from dming, I readily agreed. BIG mistake. We were fighting a dragon that we weren't supposed to be able to kill. After the dragon swallowed my monk whole, I pursuaded him that logically, the dragon had no scales on the inside, so the ac should be way less than on the outside. He agreed, and I quickly made mincework out of the dragon. That's when the dragon's mate appeared. Apparrently, we weren't supposed to beat the dragon. We were getting fried until some guy we'd never heard of flew in on a gold dragon and saved the day. So, we set there and watched for 30 minutes while the dm rolled dice for his two pet dragons. This is the same guy who later had my finger with the ring oif invisibility on it bitten off by his vorpal bunny which turned out to be an illusion. While I was invisible. Never did get my ring back. Or my finger.
Whilst reading the Mary Sue and Have you been overshadowed by some gm contrivance threads, it occurred to me that people do tend to have stories about that one gmpc that irritated the crap out of them.
So, thus the question I ask for fun!
What is the backstory/justification given to you by your gm that is WHY said person is 'just better than you'?
Descended from or is a god/goddess? Ancient king/queen? Or true heir to great power? Super artifact? Something else?
Okay, here's my Mary Sue/DMPC horror story. . .
The setting is a homebrew setting very loosely inspired by the Pern novels. The idea being that thousands of years ago several Spelljamming ships crashed on some distant world, and the settlers had no way home. On this world, Divine Magic is all but unknown (a tiny order of Elven druids that has next to no contact with humans is pretty much the only divine magic, and the humans know of them only in legend), Arcane magic is rare and secretive, and Psionics is the main supernatural power.
The DMPC is a little girl, she's supposed to be like 12 or 13. She is supposed to be incredibly, inhumanly intelligent, wise and charismatic (INT, WIS and CHA of 18 in 2e terms, this was a 2e campaign), with truly prodigious psionic power (psionic powers as if she was somewhere in the mid-teens levels at least, essentially she had pretty much whatever power the DM wanted her to have, which always worked even under the old 2e system where you had to roll to activate powers).
Why was she like this? Well, apparently the ancient ancestors turned to magical genetic engineering to enhance psionic potential in the humans of the world (the only humanoid races were native elves, humans descended from the crashed spelljammers, and some Orcs and Drow off in the woods, of which Elves and Humans were the only ones eligible for PC's). This meant that many humans had some kind of psionic talent (a substantial bonus to the roll for psionic wild talent), however she was some kind of genetic manifestation of everything they were working for, the inherent full manifestation of the human mind to its potential.
This meant that the DM could have her teleport us around at will, blow up monsters, and generally do whatever he wanted, and whenever we got upset the DM would try to act like a cute little 12 year old girl and whine and be flighty, and all the NPCs were utterly enthralled with how cute and adorable and wise and brilliant and talented she was.
The DM used this DMPC to lead us around by the nose, keep us from going "off the tracks" or jumping ahead in the plot if we figured out what was happening to early, and let the DM enjoy acting like a pre-teen girl for most of the game session (it was a little creepy).
Then at the end of the campaign we find a huge crystalline artifact which shuts out all non-druidic divine magic from the entire world (the campaign plot featured the arrival of Clerics bringing their deities via planewalking and the societal/political/cultural strain this brought, bringing religion and divine magic to an atheistic psionic world.) Despite most of the PC's converting to these new religions, the little Mary Sue activates the relic to seal out all gods forever and strip all clerics and paladins of their powers because no matter how much the PC's thought it was a Bad Idea, this was the way the DM wanted the campaign to go (and none of the PC's with psionic powers who could activate the artifact would, in fact one tried to outright destroy it).
..... that featured a Super Race. I won't say the actual name (I still quiver with impotent rage when I hear it), so I will call them the Betterthanyou.
I'm sorry I just like halflings.
My first DMPC:
A human monk reincarnated as a halfling. Stayed LG but started taking levels of Thief. He had 3 rings of elemental command, and was always looking for the fourth. He thought it wearing all 4 would make him a demi-god.
He rarely attacked physically, mostly using the rings. He adventured with the party and was the same level, he had no special powers outside 3 RINGS of ELEMENTAL COMMAND! & lvl 7 monk abilities. Much of his time was spent breaking up intra-party fights. After that game ended he went on to Spelljammer, and was eventually enslaved/eaten by a ship of 25 mind flayers.
Uncle Sly: (human!) my worst DMPC.
He was the wizard of a legendary party of heroes that adventured exactly 100 years before the PCs. He was trying to use PCs as catspaws in a fight against a lich. His modus operndi was to show up drop hints, hand out magic items and leave. He rode around in a flying chariot pulled by winged panthers (as seen in WORMY comics in Dragon)
Uncle AL
A halfling Psion whose many legends the PCs heard about long before meeting him. By the time they met him, his body had been killed and he was trapped in the body of a rat. He needed alot of help, and had less scruples than the PCs, although they had caught up to him in level. The campaign ended 1-2 sessions after he showed up.
the last (I hope)
An undead halfling (psionic) who was cursed for eating the bodies of his companions to survive (eventually still starving to death). Served as a henchman for 2 sessions before dying tragically to save a PC. He teleported the PC out of an explosion the PC caused, which turned the dungeon into a 100' deep perfect, half-sphere crater. (gotta love a good crater) At one point he confessed he thought he might be the halfling messiah, but he wasn't sure. To be fair the PC who actually was the halfling messiah was never sure either, despite the large cult that followed him.
Several hundred years later, halflings are still arguing about the PC, while the DMPC is completely forgotten.
Aside from the first DMPC, they never fought very well, and only the second had DM fiat-based powers. Hopefully I am getting better.
__________________ Game Quote:
"Shut up! a giant blue smurf eats your character...zzzz"
(sometimes its important to stop gaming and sleep)
"You all are the worst emissaries, ever!" the silver dragon declares, shaking with rage.
"Its a game, a game, I'm only playing. " E. Wiggen My PbP games , Roll Dice
Last edited by Evilhalfling; 5th July 2009 at 08:57 AM..
now they live togher in this town where she thinks of him as just a servant, not realizing she has no real 'control'...she was a 35th level necromancer with no touch of reality...he was a 2osomething paliden/death knight...and the DM always had a reason for him to tag along...
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