Playing as both DM and a player

[Dracomeander]

In the two games I run, one has two (originally one) NPCs that are part of the adventuring party as well as the normally encountered NPCs that advance the story while the other group has just PCs in the adventuring group. The reason for the difference. The game with the NPC adventurers is run at our local game store. The NPCs are available as demo characters for those who stop in to see how a game works. However, the game continues with our regular players even when there aren't people auditing the game so the NPCs are then relegated back to my control. So far the regulars have been ok with this, but combat has been tricky since the regulars' characters are far from combat oriented - two spryte mage blades and a verrick akashic with a str penalty in an Arcana Unearthed campaign.

 

[S'mon]

It's fine to have an NPC with the party whose abilities fill in for a lacking PC role (Cleric in the no-PC-Cleric party). It is NOT ok to have a "DM PC" in the party with whom you identify as your 'own' player character. "GMing your own PC" is a form of masturbation and is not pretty for the other players to watch.

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

I had a similar problem with no-one wanting to play a cleric, so I created an NPC healing battery. Gave her to the players to use as they saw fit, they tended to take turns playing her in combat and ignoring her out of combat

One nice upside was if someones character died/got incapacitated in combat they could play the cleric instead of sitting out.


Next time we got into the same situation we just agreed on a rules fudge. Mostly influenced by someone elses Star Wars game. Basically, HP recovered fully from an hours rest. Made sure to put plenty of healing items in the treasure. This seemed to cover the healing side of the cleric. With a druid, psion and wizard among the party they wern't short of wibbly casting effects. Didn't seem to make the sky fall so we stuck with it


I've seen some really badly played DMPCs before.

The one that sticks with me was a character with 'charge up attacks'. He'd sit around during a major fight, stepping in at the end to 'kill steal' the big bad guys. Not satisfying at all. In the end we spoke to the GM and he stopped this.

Another one had script immunity from monsters. Very bad!

 

[S'mon]

Personally I try to avoid running anything like a DMPC usually if NPC's are with the party when combat comes up I'll get a player to run the character, but I'll try to keep up with NPC outside combat when there is a greater need to express the NPCs personality.

Yes, this is how I do it. I rem in our last session I said I regretted not having an NPC with the party, because all the players had come up with such cool PCs and I'd have liked the chance to interact with them more. But running players'-side NPCs in combat is a pain, I'd much rather a player did it for me.

 

[azmodean]

A DM I know once used a pair of floating clubs to balance out the party if a player didn't show up, the clubs would just show up and beat on enemies. It was a silly game, obviously. We had fun with it.

 

[takyris]

Really? WOW!!!

I guess i should have said "i" and "my" instead of "everyone", "everyone", "everyone" repeatedly to have made it clear i wasn't saying or thinking everyone did that.

otherwise, people might get confused.

Okay, were you just bringing that up for anecdotal purposes, or were you bringing up what you do and what would cause you to leave a game as an attempt to argue that having a DMPC is wrong? If you were just bringing it up for fun, then I apologize for inferring otherwise, but perhaps you could bring up "SWRushing's personal gaming style, totally unrelated to the argument over DMPCs" in another thread. If you were doing it for the purpose of arguing that DMPCs are wrong, then I believe that noting that your gaming style may not be the gaming style of all players is fair.

It is how i feel about every PLAYER character i played, yes. For the non-player characters i played, see the second paragraph in the quote you made. one is "my extension" into the world, the other is a tool for my story and plots, whose primary purpose is to facilitate the role of the player characters getting their stories in play. The former, i have emotional investment in, the latter, is only valuable in how enjoyable he makes the run.

Interesting. My personal viewpoint is different from yours. I can see how yours would get in the way of you using a DMPC. Mine doesn't get in the way of me doing so. That's not a slam on you -- but it does mean that if you're DMing, you probably want to avoid using DMPCs.

My viewpoint is that when I'm playing a PC, that PC is both an extension into the world and a tool for the story and plot. I'm emotionally invested in the DMPC, more so than I am in an ordinary NPC, of course, but I'm also emotionally vested in the other PCs. That doesn't mean I won't kill them. It just means that when I do, it's a bit more emotional, a bit more personal. And that usually makes it better.

Maybe this is a writer thing. I'm just as annoyed at having to kill PCs in some stupid meaningless random encounter as I would be at having to kill my DMPC in one, and while playing a game, I'd be just as willing to sacrifice my own character for some cool, well-played big-bad end fight as I'd be to kill off a DMPC in one of the same. If it's got good drama, I'm cool with that.

So, its not that i shouldn't run my own PC as a GM, its that i don't. my roles as Gm vs player are very different roles, different job descriptions.

That statement, while true, doesn't really give me much to work with as far as understanding your position. Yeah, the player is on the other side of the screen. He doesn't roll for the monsters. I get that. Is this a back-end run at the "DMs shouldn't have DMPCs because they can't be impartial?" Between not playing genius-level DMPCs and occasionally asking, "Okay, gang, based on what you know of the situation and of Lelenia the paladin, what do you think she'd do here?" when I've lost track of exactly what the PCs know and don't want to play her as knowing too much, things usually work out just fine.

If i am GMing, and i need a supporting NPC, i have one. if i am playing and want to play a supporting PC, i do so. there is however a world of difference in the two. I like to keep them straight.

So, in your mind, what's the difference?

A PC is the star or protagonist of a story. An NPC is not. The player of the PC should expect his share of spotlight, screentime and plot. the GM of an NPC should be focused on giving that to the PCs not to his own "PC".

I don't know if you watched Buffy, but I'd be curious as to which characters you felt would be PCs if that were a campaign.

And since you've neatly divided the world up into PC and NPC and refused to admit that DMPCs exist in this paragraph, there's no room for a third area, like, "Character who is with the party and will not be simply dismissed like a henchman, who is not tied to another character like a cohort, who is allowed to voice opinions but does not do so in such a way as to force the group down a specific path, and who is essentially played like a PC by the DM, with the understanding that the DM will not abuse this."

To be honest, in how you play them, how you limit their role and your willingness to have them go away if they are an issue or step outside their box, you are describing NPCs to me.

That's probably fair. For me, the difference is that I still control her in combat, and she gets a share of the experience, like anyone else. Because I'm also the DM, I try to be as undemanding a player as possible, so I'm not demanding about treasure or spotlight time. The advantage I have, of course, is that I can come up with whatever background story I want for her and not worrying about the DM not approving of the story. And I can have as much spotlight or solo time as I want -- it just happens purely in my head.

or it could be a bigger loss if i dove into something that I know is a problem more than not. better to find a game i expect to be good than for some reason pursue one i expect to be bad, right?

Except that we haven't gotten "a problem more than not" from this thread. We've gotten multiple people saying "Can be good, can be bad," some people saying, "I've had bad experiences," some people saying, "I've had good experiences," and a few smart folks saying, "Probably like anything else, a few notoriously lousy cases have made everyone leery of the idea, but it's not actually a problem most of hte time."

Ok some questions...

1. Do your DMPCs get stories of their own which they pursue and take the lead in solving, like PCs do?
2. Do your DMPCs take the lead and play out scenes where they are the guys doing the talking, driving the scenes and basically have as frequently as the other "PCs" scenes where they are driving the action and the players are all watching the show?
3. Do they get their equal share of screen time and solution relevence?

if the answer to all these is "nah, that would be silly, thats what the PCs are for." then what you are describing are NPCs, right?

So I'm describing an NPC who gets an equal share of the treasure and XP, won't get dismissed at the end of the adventure like a hired henchman, isn't tied to one character like a cohort, and is treated by all the PCs exactly like one of their own.

What is the difference, the defining traits that set DMPCs apart from NPCs in your games?

Realistically, the last line. It's how the other PCs treated her that made the difference. They weren't thinking "Bob's cohort" or "Our hired henchman". They were thinking of the DMPC as a member of the team, as much so as any of the PCs.

We may be having an extended argument over semantics, here.

 

[pennywiz]

I don't know if you watched Buffy, but I'd be curious as to which characters you felt would be PCs if that were a campaign.

There are no PCs in Buffy. They are all NPCs. The characters do not react freely to a world as it is revealed (or the story as it develops), they act as a means to get to a pre-determined, finished goal.

And since you've neatly divided the world up into PC and NPC and refused to admit that DMPCs exist in this paragraph, there's no room for a third area, like, "Character who is with the party and will not be simply dismissed like a henchman, who is not tied to another character like a cohort, who is allowed to voice opinions but does not do so in such a way as to force the group down a specific path, and who is essentially played like a PC by the DM, with the understanding that the DM will not abuse this."

A DM cannot help but abuse it, whether he is aware of it or not. Once the DM breaks the plane of objectivity by trying to be on the other side of the screen, he can no longer objectively reveal the world as the PCs explore, nor can he be one of the explorers in a world he already knows. A DM who thinks otherwise is kidding himself.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Actually, there should be no problem with a party of only three. You might want to give them a little more power than usual (a couple of extra points for point buy, a little more wealth), though try it out as is first, and adjust when needed.

3 players is a border case: Slightly too few for a "normal" game (but, as I said, it can work just fine) and slightly too many for Gestalt charakters (though this might still work, but then the party would be quite powerful I think).

In fact, our first 3e gaming group persisted of 3 players and the DM. It was probably the best campaign I played in.

 

[S'mon]

takyris - you sound like a frustrated writer. I think your approach might suit some Narrativist games, and is not uncommon in PBEM "Sims", but as a player I'd hate to see this from any GM in a D&D game I played.

 

[takyris]

Well, S'mon, with two stories currently in print at pro-level markets and a job beginning on Monday as a writer for a video game company, I'm not feeling terribly frustrated at the moment. But your snarkiness is certainly appreciated.

You have no information about my "approach". You have no information about the structure of my games. All you know is that when we had few enough players that it wasn't intrusive, I had a character that, according to SWRushing's definition, is an NPC, not a DMPC, hang out with the party. And when more players showed up, because the game was popular enough that other people wanted to join, I dropped the NPC to make room for more players in the party. I'm terribly impressed that that information is enough for you to determine what kind of GM I am and what kind of games I run. Thanks so much.

Pennywiz: Good loophole on the Buffy note. As for DMs not being able to help doing it, that might just possibly say a bit more about you than it says about all DMs everywhere in the whole world. Any DM who doesn't leave the room when his players talk in character about how to attack the big bad guy has to practice information comparmentalization, drawing a line between what he the DM knows and what the big bad guy knows. A DM who can't draw the line between what a tag-along NPC knows and what he the DM knows is going to have problems all across the board. That's no different from a player failing to separate his knowledge from his character's knowledge.

Although you're right -- I did give my DMPC special treatment, now that I think about it. I treated her specially by not taking time for any solo missions with her, not making magical items tailored specifically to her character as I did with all the other PCs, and not spending as much time looking for rules loopholes to keep her alive as I did for the other PCs when a freak critical hit took her down. Yeah, I abused the heck out of that wall of information. My bad.

But I'm sure that the flat "It can't be done" statements carry more weight than the people here who have said, "I do it, and my players don't mind," or "I do it, and my players are happy with it and actually like it." I'm sure everyone here who said that they've done it and not had a problem is deluding themselves.