Playing as both DM and a player

[Sarellion]

My players don´t mind that there is a DMPC, too. In every group I played with, the DM had his own char, either because of low numbers, missing important position, switching DM duties or pure tradition.

 

[the Jester]

DMPCs make me very nervous- I don't think there's much of an easier way to mess up a good game than a poorly-played DMPC. On the other hand, done well, they can work out fine.

Careful, though.

 

[Darkness]

What jgbrowning said. I've had situations where I wanted to remove an NPC from the party and the PCs upped and (in-character) said that they were going to stick with the NPC, come what may.

Yeah. My players like to draft my NPCs into service. I'm okay with that - it gives me good plot hooks.

I don't like DMPCs, though. I already have the entire world - I don't need to have the only thing players have as well.
If the PCs need a certain ability but don't have anyone who has it, they can go and hire a mercenary or something.

 

[Harmon]

While I was GMing I would 99.99% of the time run a regular NPC. Whether it was a body guard for the Cleric, a hireling, or just an urchin that attached himself to the group, I have found that regular group NPCs can really help the flow of the campaign, forgotten clues- "hay, didn't that bar maid say she was with the Sheriff at sun down?" to a notation of Player stupity (walking blindly into an obvious ambush, guess who gets the first arrow?).

Should a Player want to GM my campaign and I agree that its okay- then I have a character that is already in the campaign.

Works well, and the Players seem pretty comfortable with it.

Special word though- avoid the know all NPC, they can really hurt the Players feelings, the Leader NPC- bad idea as well, and the all powerful Pheonix character- not good either.

 

[John Morrow]

DMPCs make me very nervous- I don't think there's much of an easier way to mess up a good game than a poorly-played DMPC. On the other hand, done well, they can work out fine.

Can you illustrate what you think makes a DMPC "poorly-played" or "done well" in your opinion? I tried to illustrate my group's take on it above (bearable so long as they are support characters) but I'm curious what works or doesn't work for other groups.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

As a player, I've never had a problem with DMPCs. Unfortunately, two things conspire to give some players a different outlook:

1. Every great once in a while, you run into a DM who runs a Mary Sue character. When this happens, though, the problem is invariably one of intense DM immaturity rather than the concept of a DMPC. I can't imagine such DMs enjoying the game without their Mary Sues, nor running an enjoyable game for the players.

2. The handful of bad apples have been repeated ad nauseum on the internet, to the point that any "savvy" gamer "knows" that DMPCs are bad news.

As a GM, I prefer not to run a DMPC, although I find them very useful in the ways Harmon stated. I'd rather not keep track of the character, though, especially with routinely having large groups.

 

[Darkness]

Can you illustrate what you think makes a DMPC "poorly-played" or "done well" in your opinion? I tried to illustrate my group's take on it above (bearable so long as they are support characters) but I'm curious what works or doesn't work for other groups.

Previous discussion of this:
http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?p=1972955#post1972955

 

[swrushing]

In my game, there is this thing called an NPC, and the world is full of them. The playe's characters interact with them often, sometimes for long periods of time, and from time to time they may even fight them. Additionally, they sometimes work with them.

its not infrequent for the PCs to hire NPCs as guides or for support or maybe not even hire but form an agreement to carry on together while their interests coincide.

If what you are describing is one of the NPCs working with the party, thats probably fine. I haven't had any issues with that.

if, however, you are describing in your eyes this guy not being an NPC but being "your player character", that would be a viewpoint i would be very leery of as a player.

See, as a GM, an NPC is not something i am attached to, have an emotional investment in, and can let rise or fall as the scenario and story and game needs dictate.

However, as a player who has a character, that character is more important, his success more crucial, and basically he is my eyes into thw world.

So, if a Gm had a world populated by NPCs, who we interacted with routinely, and sometimes they worked with us, that would be fine. our characters likely would seek assistance if we needed something we did not have. But as soon as the Gm started talking about an NPC as if it were his character and he were a player, i would grow very wary.

Honestly, if he said something like that before the game started, i would likely drop out then and there and not get into that quagmire in the first place.

Currently, my regular group only has three players (I'm the DM). However, many of the published adventures are designed for a party of four characters at a specific level.

Rather than scaling the down adventure (which I tend to dislike), what I do is run a forth member of the party myself so that in effect--I'm playing and DM'ing at the same time. This requires more preparation and special attention to be sure the character I'm playing gets no special insight or grabs the spotlight from the real players. This also allows me to fill in a gap to help balance out the party as far as classes.

My players seem to enjoy this approach. So I'm wondering...does anyone else to do this? If not, do you feel this approach is a poor remedy to balance things for an adventure?

 

[Ellie_the_Elf]

When I started my campaign, nobody wanted to play a cleric...or any class with healing ability for that matter. So what we did was to create a cleric PC as a group who the players took turns to run for a game at a time as well as their own PC. I occasionally roleplayed her during discussions too, but mostly she was fairly quiet and usually took a support role in battle, healing or entering melee if the others needed a hand. It worked pretty well.

The party currently has an NPC adventuring with them, more for story reasons than anything else, and although it's nice for me to have a voice within the party again (for the reasons mentioned by other posters) it's not something I'd want to do all the time- mostly due to the whole balancing act of making sure the NPC is useful without taking away from the abilities of the actual PCs.

Ellie.

 

[Sieobahn]

One DM I know likes to run an NPC with the group, however this character is more powerful than the rest of us. The DM tends to use him when he realises we are in danger of all getting killed off, so only then does he step in (usually stands around and watches). That is only a small group, with three players.
As a player I don't like that approach, as it takes the risk off the PC's, we know the NPC will step in and save us. And it is made worse because he is so much more powerful that the rest of the group.

Another DM normally includes an NPC or two, they are typically similar or lower powered than us. The problem there is they are usually forgotten about until halfway through the battle.
I joined halfway through that campaign, and didn't even know about these NPC's until the second session! They were just window dressing and didn't add any value to the game.

When I DM, I don't run characters. If I do, I tend to forget about them like the second DM above. In a recent campaign I did run a character, but I killed him off in the first session in a nasty accident. He was only there as the story hook, and I wanted the players to think for themselves. They didn't figure out I had done that on purpose until the end of the game and I had told them!

One option I have used is having a player create a secondary character. Often in a bodyguard or support role, maybe even as a cohort. Running two PC's is difficult, but if you design a character to be the quiet type, there is not much roleplaying needed, it can sit around in the background until its skills are needed. And if your primary character gets killed off, you have something to play!