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<blockquote data-quote="(Psi)SeveredHead" data-source="post: 3269025" data-attributes="member: 1165">I recently used GMPCs twice.First time was okay ... but the character was lower level, designed to be useful but incapable of overshadowing the PCs and I let the players control him. It was almost like creating a new &quot;shared and wimpier PC&quot;. As a result, they accidentally led him into a trap (that also caught one of the PCs). He got injured but didn't die. (He nearly got caught by a second trap. Sometimes I wonder...)If I were controlling him, I don't know if I would have made him avoid the trap, subconsciously or not.The second time, one GMPC was totally useless (had the same skill set as one of the PCs but was lower level), one stole the show too much (had support skills that turned out to be too important), one was deliberately a red shirt, and one was supposed to backstab the PCs. (He avoided detection and tried to attack at the critical moment, but failed due to a massive crit. Ouch.) Based on that experience, my 13 years* of gaming experience are not enough to run a proper GMPC.* Which probably really only counts as about five years, but whatever.GMPCs are so hard to do right that a lot of otherwise good GMs mess it up. The desire to do so confuses me, actually. The first case, the GMPC was originally a &quot;base camp&quot; NPC doctor. The heroes went to him for healing and advice. They requested him to go with them on a single quest, and since he had a non-adventuring life, of course they didn't stick around once the quest was complete.The second was an adventure that I ripped off from a novel - I reduced the cast of GMPCs from sixteen to four, but it still didn't feel right. It wasn't realistic that only the red shirt would get targeted by bad guys, for instance, but I didn't want to waste time controlling three or four additional characters or even put them on the map.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="(Psi)SeveredHead, post: 3269025, member: 1165"] I recently used GMPCs twice. First time was okay ... but the character was lower level, designed to be useful but incapable of overshadowing the PCs and I let the players control him. It was almost like creating a new "shared and wimpier PC". As a result, they accidentally led him into a trap (that also caught one of the PCs). He got injured but didn't die. (He nearly got caught by a second trap. Sometimes I wonder...) If I were controlling him, I don't know if I would have made him avoid the trap, subconsciously or not. The second time, one GMPC was totally useless (had the same skill set as one of the PCs but was lower level), one stole the show too much (had support skills that turned out to be too important), one was deliberately a red shirt, and one was supposed to backstab the PCs. (He avoided detection and tried to attack at the critical moment, but failed due to a massive crit. Ouch.) Based on that experience, my 13 years* of gaming experience are not enough to run a proper GMPC. * Which probably really only counts as about five years, but whatever. GMPCs are so hard to do right that a lot of otherwise good GMs mess it up. The desire to do so confuses me, actually. The first case, the GMPC was originally a "base camp" NPC doctor. The heroes went to him for healing and advice. They requested him to go with them on a [i]single[/i] quest, and since he had a non-adventuring life, of course they didn't stick around once the quest was complete. The second was an adventure that I ripped off from a novel - I reduced the cast of GMPCs from sixteen to four, but it still didn't feel right. It wasn't realistic that only the red shirt would get targeted by bad guys, for instance, but I didn't want to waste time controlling three or four additional characters or even put them on the map. [/QUOTE]

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