NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="SPoD" data-source="post: 4189764" data-attributes="member: 51268">Actually, I'm going to say that I think the OP is really on to something here. Let me paint a picture:It's 1979 in Middle America, and Ted the DM is planning his first AD&D campaign with the brand new core rulebooks. Having played OD&D with his group as essentially a glorified wargame, he's decided he really wants to explore the idea of a story with the new Advanced rules. So he sits down and begins plotting out the story he wants the PCs to follow.Fairly early on, however, he finds he needs a way to get backstory information into the hands of the PCs. Being a die-hard Tolkien fan, he thinks to himself, "How does Tolkien do it?" Well, by having Gandalf say things. So Ted creates Randolph the Wizard. And because Randolph needs to be wise and powerful to know what he knows, Ted looks at the rules and makes him the highest level in the game. And then, as he's reading all the cool spells that Randolph can cast, he thinks, "Oh, man, this would be so cool. Well, my PCs are only 1st level, they won't be able to cast Prismatic Sphere for years...I'll just set up a fight where Randolph can use all his cool spells like that." And if, for a moment, he wonders whether or not that is really fair to the PCs, his doubts are immediately quelled by remembering that Gandalf fought the Balrog without assistance from the hobbits. Since Tolkien is the best fantasy writer EVER to Ted, he concludes that such as scene is good drama. He schedules in a fight against a blue dragon for the first adventure.When the first adventure happens, Ted finds he enjoys playing Randolph as a stereotypical wizard (i.e. exactly like Gandalf) and decides to have him stay with the party. After all, the other players get a character to roleplay, why shouldn't he? And soon enough, we're in classic DMPC territory. Further, because this is early in the game's history, his friends don't think there's anything wrong with it at first. The behavior spreads, mutates, and for many years, we suffer through DMs who think they can put their pet NPCs ahead of the party, because it's "good for the story."So, is Tolkien to blame? Not at all. Gandalf works fine in the story. But is Gandalf the inspiration for all the Randolph/Elminster wizards who overshadow PCs? Hell, yes. And although he had no way of knowing it (or reason to care), Tolkien's text specifically encourages them to do so.Therefore, to answer the thread question, Gandalf is like the guy who gets on the plane from some small third world country carrying the obscure disease. He didn't actually do anything wrong, because there was no epidemic when he did it. He had no way of knowing. But he is the cause of the epidemic nonetheless.</blockquote>

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