DM PCs

[Fenris-77]

I've been using them a lot lately, but that's very much a feature of our current FtF gaming reality. I run games for my kids, and right now that's often just two of them. I kind of need a DMPC at that point, plus I run a lot of story lines where team ups and guest stars happen, specifically to bump PC numbers. I prefer no to run one, but they are a pretty useful addition to a rookie game or when you're short actual PCs.

 

[aco175]

Why not simply tone down the combat challenge so the DMPC is not necessary?

I find the times I use printed modules I am lazy and do not want to adjust them. I also post adventures on DMsGuild after I run them with my home game and having them set to a 'standard' party is better than adjusting them later.

 

[uzirath]

That's fair. For me, they are a tool that can help bring the world to life and make things more exciting for the PCs. If they weren't, I'd not use them, I expect.

This matches my experience. Especially in long campaigns, sometimes it just makes sense for an NPC to stick around with the party for a while. Usually, this is unplanned but the story just unfolds that way. I don't think of them as "DMPCs" in the sense of being "my character." They are truly NPCs, but the party gets to know them well and they get more roleplaying time than most NPCs. Often enough, aside from any secrets, the players will run the characters in normal battles and social interactions, especially once they get a good sense of their personalities and capabilities. I make sure they don't take up too much of the spotlight.

In my current campaign, for example, to my great surprise, the party decided to help an overprotective lord's daughter run away from him. She is a competent warrior, but young and brash. That tiny plot thread has snowballed into the core of the evolving campaign as the dad hunts them down and they continue fleeing to new places with her. It links into foreign diplomacy, the squabbles of the nobility, an ancient fae curse, and a variety of other threads. There's even a possible romantic element. She doesn't take center stage, but it wouldn't make sense for them to drop her in the next town. At this point, it seems like she's fully in the group. In my perfect world, she would become a proper PC with a player to fully inhabit her. I'll offer that if anyone dies or a new player joins. Barring that, though, I'll keep rolling with what makes narrative sense.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I've had an unusual experience with this one. I've only run two campaigns, one very short-lived, the other ongoing with at least 16 months of weekly sessions (and that's excluding various breaks we had to take!) In that second game, technically see in the same setting as the first but a couple years later and with a whole different crew, I included two NPCs as useful allies: Hafsa el-Alam, an up-and-coming artificer and Waziri mage, and Tenryu Shen, a mysterious Dragonborn priest summoned by the local Safiqi priesthood to deal with some problem or other. The latter was in part inspired by a character I played in a 13th Age PBP game, and thus theoretically qualifies as a DMPC, even though he doesn't normally adventure with the party.

I was hesitant to make use of these characters at first, especially Shen, because they could be seen as manipulative or controlling the narrative or the like. Shen warrants particular note because he is in truth a gold dragon, hunting a black dragon that fled their homeland and which is trying to turn the main city, Al-Rakkah, into its "hoard."

My fears ended up being off base...but not for the reason you'd expect. The party LOVES Shen and Hafsa (who happen to be engaged to be married). Finding out he was actually a gold dragon masquerading as "just" a dragonborn made them like him even more, in fact. But this meant the party, very rationally, asked if they could call on his aid. I found my players almost wanting a DMPC in the game! So we had a sit-down and I laid out my reasons for not wanting to fully grant their request, but also not wanting to fully dismiss it either. We worked out a compromise that made sense in the fiction and was satisfactory to the players without making it "we call up our gold dragon buddy to solve the problem."

 

[doctorbadwolf]

This matches my experience. Especially in long campaigns, sometimes it just makes sense for an NPC to stick around with the party for a while. Usually, this is unplanned but the story just unfolds that way. I don't think of them as "DMPCs" in the sense of being "my character." They are truly NPCs, but the party gets to know them well and they get more roleplaying time than most NPCs. Often enough, aside from any secrets, the players will run the characters in normal battles and social interactions, especially once they get a good sense of their personalities and capabilities. I make sure they don't take up too much of the spotlight.

In my current campaign, for example, to my great surprise, the party decided to help an overprotective lord's daughter run away from him. She is a competent warrior, but young and brash. That tiny plot thread has snowballed into the core of the evolving campaign as the dad hunts them down and they continue fleeing to new places with her. It links into foreign diplomacy, the squabbles of the nobility, an ancient fae curse, and a variety of other threads. There's even a possible romantic element. She doesn't take center stage, but it wouldn't make sense for them to drop her in the next town. At this point, it seems like she's fully in the group. In my perfect world, she would become a proper PC with a player to fully inhabit her. I'll offer that if anyone dies or a new player joins. Barring that, though, I'll keep rolling with what makes narrative sense.

We've had charactgers like that, too. In a Star Wars campaign, we became deeply entangled in the lives and fates of some traveler folk, and the campaign pretty much became about that.

In my friend's current dnd campaign set in his homebrew world, we just started the process of putting together a War Council that will basically redirect NPCs we recruit, because it just makes sense for our characters to recruit allies whenever possible. This way, rather than a growing roster of constant NPC companions, we have a couple NPC companions and a growing army of allies spread out defending ancient seals and forming an info and comms network to keep communities safe and warn of demonic/necromantic troubles.

 

[AngryTiger]

I only have 1 player, so i've used multiple DMPC's on literally every single campaign i've run, and i have had only positive experiences with using them. My player loves interacting with the characters. While i could tailor encounters for single character instead, i prefer having a full adventuring party, the DMPC's exist more for interaction with the player than just combat hencmen. I couldn't imagine running games without DMPC's, my player would riot if i stopped using them.

 

[Blue]

I've had plenty of good experiences with NPCs who travel for a time with the party. And by NPC I mean:

• Has goals set by the DM as appropriate for the NPC, not as the DM proxy.
• No "PC t-shirt" - the party can take them with them or not, they can leave or stay at any time, and it's not an implied bond like the PCs.

On the other hand, I've had uniformly bad experiences with GMPC. The GM having a proxy on the table for their will is an inherent conflict of interest. I've had GMs do bad things to their GMPC in an effort to show "oh look, I'm not favoring my PC" - and right there you have things that wouldn't happen in game to an NPC.

I one campaign I ran back in 3.0 I had a halfling bard NPC that was several levels behind that was caught up with the PCs. Became a mascot, just buffed the party. It still ended up causing contention as when they died with some players wanting to raise him like a PC (which would involved pulling his dead body in a sled across the tundra for a few weeks), and other players not. I feel this was my fault - he was with them for so long, and during the frequent intra-party RP debates he spoke up occasionally, and some players put him in them GMPC category.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I've had plenty of good experiences with NPCs who travel for a time with the party. And by NPC I mean:

• Has goals set by the DM as appropriate for the NPC, not as the DM proxy.
• No "PC t-shirt" - the party can take them with them or not, they can leave or stay at any time, and it's not an implied bond like the PCs.

On the other hand, I've had uniformly bad experiences with GMPC. The GM having a proxy on the table for their will is an inherent conflict of interest. I've had GMs do bad things to their GMPC in an effort to show "oh look, I'm not favoring my PC" - and right there you have things that wouldn't happen in game to an NPC.

I one campaign I ran back in 3.0 I had a halfling bard NPC that was several levels behind that was caught up with the PCs. Became a mascot, just buffed the party. It still ended up causing contention as when they died with some players wanting to raise him like a PC (which would involved pulling his dead body in a sled across the tundra for a few weeks), and other players not. I feel this was my fault - he was with them for so long, and during the frequent intra-party RP debates he spoke up occasionally, and some players put him in them GMPC category.

I can’t imagine, as a player, choosing not to rez someone my character holds dear, because of the meta knowledge that they aren’t a PC.
I suppose if resources are guarded as PC only in a game, a DMPC is gonna be potentially problematic.

 

[Wasteland Knight]

My experience is spot on with their opinion, to the extent I will not play in a campaign if the GM is going to have a "GMPC".

 

[Blue]

I can’t imagine, as a player, choosing not to rez someone my character holds dear, because of the meta knowledge that they aren’t a PC.
I suppose if resources are guarded as PC only in a game, a DMPC is gonna be potentially problematic.

Completely understandable, but it was sort of the other way - they were thinking of raising him because they saw him as a PC, were ignoring another NPC death from the same combat, and it would have wiped out the party's liquid wealth such that they wouldn't be able to raise anyone else. It was someone they held dear though, as you said.

Sorry, my fault if I didn't convey the rest of the context that this was rather unusual for them.