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<blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 8015632" data-attributes="member: 29398">The problem there is not the mere existence of the DMPC (we just call these NPCs) but that the DM made that character more important and-or powerful than the PC party members.NPC adventurers who are just another member of the party are, in general, fine; as long as they have equal odds of dying or meeting other foul fates as do the PCs.&nbsp; Rare is the party in our crew that doesn't have at least one or two of these, usually recruited to fill a gap at some point and then kept around because they just became part of the team.Agreed.&nbsp; I'll often do some quiet dice-rolling if I'm not sure how an NPC would act or vote or proceed; sometimes the NPC does-says-suggests the right thing, other times not.I agree they should be used sparingly, as if you do it all the time it gets old pretty fast.But I'm not concerned about eroding trust.&nbsp; A truly wise player-as-PC doesn't trust much in the game world anyway (the game world is out to kill you, after all! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> ), even while trusting the DM to run an entertaining and engaging game.We just make a joke of this; when the party get to where the boxed descriptions start I'll say something like &quot;Ah!&nbsp; Boxed-description time at last!&quot; because they're immediately going to be able to tell the difference anyway even if only due to the fact I'm looking at a piece of paper rather than at them while speaking.A step further is to outright rename some common monsters while keeping their mechanics more or less intact.Orcs in my current game are called Grashi (Grash singular) for example, and when I started the campaign this made even some very long-term players sit up and take note: &quot;What's a Grash?&quot;, and I had to describe them in some detail.&nbsp; Had I called them Orcs it'd have been &quot;Oh, ho hum, we know all about those&quot;.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Lanefan, post: 8015632, member: 29398"] The problem there is not the mere existence of the DMPC (we just call these NPCs) but that the DM made that character more important and-or powerful than the PC party members. NPC adventurers who are just another member of the party are, in general, fine; as long as they have equal odds of dying or meeting other foul fates as do the PCs. Rare is the party in our crew that doesn't have at least one or two of these, usually recruited to fill a gap at some point and then kept around because they just became part of the team. Agreed. I'll often do some quiet dice-rolling if I'm not sure how an NPC would act or vote or proceed; sometimes the NPC does-says-suggests the right thing, other times not. I agree they should be used sparingly, as if you do it all the time it gets old pretty fast. But I'm not concerned about eroding trust. A truly wise player-as-PC doesn't trust much in the game world anyway (the game world is out to kill you, after all! :) ), even while trusting the DM to run an entertaining and engaging game. We just make a joke of this; when the party get to where the boxed descriptions start I'll say something like "Ah! Boxed-description time at last!" because they're immediately going to be able to tell the difference anyway even if only due to the fact I'm looking at a piece of paper rather than at them while speaking. A step further is to outright rename some common monsters while keeping their mechanics more or less intact. Orcs in my current game are called Grashi (Grash singular) for example, and when I started the campaign this made even some very long-term players sit up and take note: "What's a Grash?", and I had to describe them in some detail. Had I called them Orcs it'd have been "Oh, ho hum, we know all about those". [/QUOTE]

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