How do you feel about DM PCs?

[hong]

I'm just about ready to replace my DM PC. It's nearly 3 years old, one of the fans has stopped working, and the hard disk is filling up with, um, stuff. I'm wondering if I should go all the way and get a DM Mac to replace it.


Hong "after all, everything runs Windows these days" Ooi

 

[librarius_arcana]

I saw DM PCs listed as an annoyance in the "DM Schticks That Grind Your Gears" thread. As a DM who has occasionally run a character that adventures alongside the party, I'm curious as to why this is annoying to some. Is it the overall concept, or is it a case where the DM is too nice to his own character?

I personally tend to do support types of characters to bolster the party who can fade into the background, like a bard or the like.

I don't tend to like this mostly because it can steal the lime light from the player, or ends up being a 5th wheel any time outside of combat,

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

A couple of my experiences with dmpc's has led me to believe:
* The dming workload is lightened without them
* The desire to play them diminishes after time spent as a player
* They do fulfil a minimum fun role for the constant jaded dm

Party NPCs otoh are excellent if temporary additions. On the roleplay side they tend to lend themselves as better material because the motivation to include them springs from story considerations.

 

[The_Gneech]

Generally speaking, I end up with inadvertant party NPCs, from the players picking up somebody along the way and then insisting that they come along. (One NPC in my old Star Wars campaign, whose whole story reason for existing was to beef up the party long enough for them to escape the prison they were in and then get killed off, they moved Heaven and Earth to keep alive because they liked him so much. So I had him join the group and he eventually married one of the PCs.)

When I include an NPC with the intention of having them be "my character," they are always support types -- a monk/cleric in my current game, for instance, whose job is to heal the characters in emergencies, and grapple enemy spellcasters the rest of the time. A GM character in the game I play in was a lumbering meatshield in plate mail who wasn't real bright, but was very loyal; he was another great instance.

On the flipside, I have encountered the Mary Sue -- it's very annoying. Femme barbarian of the chainmail bikini variety with multiple attacks per round (when the rest of us are 3rd level), who "rescued" the rest of the party from a band of brigands that we weren't really having any trouble with and therefore expected us to fall over ourselves with gratitude .... it wasn't pretty.

However, it was at a convention with some guy I'd never met before and don't expect to meet again -- so I'd hardly think of it as typical.

-The Gneech

 

[Crothian]

I don't mind them. They can be well done and work. They can also be done wrong. So, it just dpeends on who is DMing and how the DMPC is being used.

 

[Mercule]

I love long-term NPCs. These are characters that serve to add depth to the world and foils for the PCs.

I hate DMPCs. If a DM ever says, "my character", I will leave the game. Period. It's one of those unambiguous signs of someone who should not be allowed behind the screen.

 

[Thunderfoot]

A DM PC is just a bad idea - if you want to be a player, then play, if want to be a DM, then run the game. I find that there is a difference between NPCs and DM PCs as well, a line that has been increasingly obscurred as this thread continues. The reason most DM PCs grind the players gears is because they become the center of the game, seen it done on more than one occsaion. A supporting person in the party that has no say in what happens, no real purpose than to be a a quick band-aid fix to a deficiant area of the party and doesn't automatically know everything is an NPC.

Currently, I run a campaign with another DM (both of us DM at the same time) so if an NPC needs to tag along for whatever reason, one of us can "play" the NPC until its departure time, keeping the "temp player" out of the know of things like combat (making it equally dangerous for the NPC and eliminating "kill steals"), allows skills to be used and failed in plain sight of the characters (no "hidden agenda" theory here) and though the overall direction of the campaign is known by both of us, allows each of us to control a little corner of the universe during game time if needed so that the Deus Ex Machina thing is kept to a bare minimum. It still isn't a perfect solution, but it works.

The idea of a "round robin" DM system lends to the DM PC and CAN work if everyone involved is willing to make it work, otherwise it ends up as a modified "Monty Hall" with each DM rewarding the party for trivial matters and the stroyline so shared that it is basically a bunch of folks sitting around writing a story that the outcome is assured of to buff up their characters (ie the "feel-good camapaing"). Most of these folks have a lot of trouble at conventions due to the "unfairness of treasure distribution versus risk factor" due to their skewed take in their own games.

Personally, stay away from DM PCs, use NPCs wisely and let the characters have fun. IF you chose to DM, your fun should come from the thrill of the chase, not the kill, ie the planning of problems for the characters to solve, not solving your own riddles.

 

[Kid Socrates]

I run two games of two players, in my Final Fantasy game. Each game has a DMPC (I suppose that's what he is); one has a dual-wielding swordsman named Aidan Denun, and the other has an athletic dragoon named Champ Justice. Aidan rounds out the swordsman/mage group as a hybrid character, able to join the swordsman in acrobatic feats of derring-do, or toss out Cura spells when things get rough. In the battle summoner/gunner group, Champ is the melee fighter who keeps big enemies from smacking the ranged fighters across the globe. Both of them exist primarily to fill holes in the party.

I don't give them any preferential treatment. Honestly, they get it a lot rougher. I take care of their gear last, I don't plan encounters that really show off what they can do in the same way that I plan encounters for the PCs, and they tend to be the guinea pigs for a cool villain (like the T-Rexaur biting Aidan and flinging him through a tree, or Champ getting blasted out of the sky by a four-armed gun-wielding villain). Neither party feels anything other than love for the character, too, both in-and-out of character. One group is installing Aidan as a governor to get the public on their side, and the other group detoured off the main plot willingly (and despite my actual protests) to defend Champ's father from an assassin.

In my next game, I don't plan on having DMPCs, though, mostly because it's yet another sheet to track in combat. That gets time-consuming, especially with multiple villains. Too much time goes between the PCs' actions.

 

[Giorgio]

As a GM, I have used NPCs to provide temporary assistance to my group of PCs in a limited role, usually to provide advice, as part of a plot device, and to shore up a weakness in the party. I try to have these NPCs be of the supportive type and not play a dominant role, they are useful to the PCs, but not indispensable. If I need to get rid of these NPCs for any reason, I will do so.

In my current Dragonlance 3.5 campaign, the current party composition is of 4 PCs (a male minotaur fighter, a male qualinesti war wizard, a male human bard, and a female avariel wizard/bard/rogue) and 2 PNPCs (Party NPCs; a female human warmage/tantrist and a male lupin ranger/mystic). These two PNPCs provide the group with extra arcane firepower and a skilled tracker/healer, and they have proven to be a good addition to the group without taking away the spot light from the PCs.

I originally had plans to retire them at the end of the current mission, but I am not to sure about that anymore. The group has taken a liking to them, and there is a lot of interesting group dynamics between the PCs and PNPCs (not surprising considering all they have gone threw together). The avariel is romantically and sexually involved with the lupin and the female human (the latter two who are best friends), the elf and the female human get along great (both being military spellcasters), the lupin (LG) and the minotaur (CG) cant stand each other and are constant “cold war” level of tension (as both are basically good people and grudgingly recognize the value and importance of the other), and the lupin and the elf are forming a friendship. These PNPCs have been accepted as full party members by the players, and I don’t think they will take too kindly to me having them leave the group without a good reason.

Yet, since they are NPCs after all (and I have taken a liking to them) and I want to avoid having them become DMPCs, I am going to ask my players at the end of the mission what I should do with them. If they want these PNPCs to stay or leave I will leave up to my players to decide and I will abide by their choice. I think that is only fair for me as a GM and for them as players.

 

[Mark CMG]

How do you feel about DM PCs?

NPCs = Good, DMPCs = Bad, IMO