SweeneyTodd
First Post
As a DM, I totally support your actions. GMPCs like that are heinous.
So I led a mutiny...
- Thread starter Tsyr
- Start date
DarkMaster
First Post
Funny how some DM get attached to their NPC. I have been a DM for years and I never attached to any of my NPC. My favorite NPC are usually the villain, because I want my PC to be the story's hero. Allied NPC are usually not significantly powerfull compared to the PC. Very often I saw a favorite villain get killed with a lucky roll or by a PC's power I forgot about. I never got pissed off, I am usually happy to see how the PC were able to quickly get rid of it. Often when such a situation occurs I will add to the description to make their victory trully memorable. If I want to play a PC, I will not DM the campaing.
Also sometimes, NPC/monster that where just put there without too much thinking becomes memorable. Last week I had that 15HD dire Ape steal the show, with his hirsute hair and funny attitude (he still dealt 53 DMG in one round to the Barbarian/Ranger).
Ask my player they will all remember him and probably not the lizard man cleric which I spent much more time crafting.
I don't know if you did right, but I don't think your DM has acquired enough maturity to DM your group. The DM should have fun when the player have fun.
I strongly recommand you change the DM and let the current DM play her elf ranger PC with a summoning monster rod until she can't stand her anymore.
Also sometimes, NPC/monster that where just put there without too much thinking becomes memorable. Last week I had that 15HD dire Ape steal the show, with his hirsute hair and funny attitude (he still dealt 53 DMG in one round to the Barbarian/Ranger).
Ask my player they will all remember him and probably not the lizard man cleric which I spent much more time crafting.
I don't know if you did right, but I don't think your DM has acquired enough maturity to DM your group. The DM should have fun when the player have fun.
I strongly recommand you change the DM and let the current DM play her elf ranger PC with a summoning monster rod until she can't stand her anymore.
Tsyr, I think you did all right. You tried other, more "peaceful" solutions, and they didn't work. It looks like it was time to "crank it up a notch."
By the way, just out of curiosity, what's the genesis of the term "Mary Sue" in fan-fiction? Can anybody explain it to me?
Johnathan
By the way, just out of curiosity, what's the genesis of the term "Mary Sue" in fan-fiction? Can anybody explain it to me?
Johnathan
You shouldn't feel badly. There are a couple of problems at work here. First, your DM is trying to also play. That is why she had her pet-NPC in the game. I've done it as a DM; thankfully in the far past. It came up recently in another game I'm in. I let the DM know my displeasure by renaming the campaign after the NPC. That NPC is much more subdued now. So, you did what you had to do. The DM should not run allies with the party.
The second problem I see is that the DM's game doesn't match the players' game. The DM wants to run a game of good guys saving the town from bad orcs. The players want to play a game of neutral & evil opportunistic mercenaries. Neither style is bad per se, but they conflict. I find that most people DM as they prefer to play. So, maybe you could meet in the middle. Or, the DM can set the tone for the game by saying she doesn't want to DM a bunch of morally ambiguous characters. It really seems to me that the DM must have the greatest control over the tone of the game since the bulk of the time & effort (and often money) spent on the game is by the DM.
By the way, I don't recall ever leading the kind of mutiny you've described as a player. But I have experienced a much worse sort of mutiny as a DM. For a particular game I was running, only 1 of 6 players showed up one week (only 3 of the 6 had shown the prior two weeks). Needless to say, I haven't run that game again, and I never will. Nor have I run a game for that group for about a year (I ran something just afterward that was already committed that had about 50% attendance for a month), and I don't plan to do anytime soon. Fortunately, we're all friends; but THAT was BAD (which makes it more unfortunate in a way).
The second problem I see is that the DM's game doesn't match the players' game. The DM wants to run a game of good guys saving the town from bad orcs. The players want to play a game of neutral & evil opportunistic mercenaries. Neither style is bad per se, but they conflict. I find that most people DM as they prefer to play. So, maybe you could meet in the middle. Or, the DM can set the tone for the game by saying she doesn't want to DM a bunch of morally ambiguous characters. It really seems to me that the DM must have the greatest control over the tone of the game since the bulk of the time & effort (and often money) spent on the game is by the DM.
By the way, I don't recall ever leading the kind of mutiny you've described as a player. But I have experienced a much worse sort of mutiny as a DM. For a particular game I was running, only 1 of 6 players showed up one week (only 3 of the 6 had shown the prior two weeks). Needless to say, I haven't run that game again, and I never will. Nor have I run a game for that group for about a year (I ran something just afterward that was already committed that had about 50% attendance for a month), and I don't plan to do anytime soon. Fortunately, we're all friends; but THAT was BAD (which makes it more unfortunate in a way).
billd91
Not your screen monkey (he/him) 🇺🇦🇵🇸🏳️⚧️
Torm said:Reminds me of something I pulled playing Starfleet Battles, once - a game that if I have my way, I'll never play again, and, thanks to what I did, I doubt I'll be asked to by anybody I've gamed with before:
<snip>
When they returned, we moved a bit closer in again, and then ALL of us opened fire on the son's ship, and crippled it. I then told the guy what had happened, and offered the chance to surrender to save his crew. He made us destroy him, instead. The truce held, the freighter was helped, while being "helped" with their cargo, and the game ended.
And, that, as they say, was that.![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
Yes, I can see why you wouldn't be invited to play SFB after that. I can see being a bit upset at being blindsided with another game, but things happen and you should try to make the best of it. SFB isn't designed to be anything more than a starship combat game. Real role-playing doesn't fit.
SFB isn't exactly the best game to be playing for a newbie though either. It's pretty complex. You probably all would have been better off a little more flexible - them being willing to play something easy to teach quickly, you being willing to play something other than an RPG. It's for nights like this that we have games like Munchkin, Chez Geek, Settlers of Catan, and Formula DE around for.
Darklone
Registered User
I do understand you soooooooo much. One of our DMs in the "DMs only" group always plays male drows. Because women are stupid. Yeah yeah. She says so, not me. When she DMs, we ALWAYS have a male drow fighter with us. With some custom made magic items. Yeahyeah. And he's soooooo nice and good. Argh.
Guess I'll send her this thread
Guess I'll send her this thread
Torm
Explorer
billd91 said:
No, I got that and was cool with it. I probably still would not have wanted to play again afterwards (too much work for too little fun, and that goes for the PC version that I tried later, too, AFAIC), but I wouldn't have upset the applecart if my "teammate" hadn't been such a (censored).
StalkingBlue
First Post
Still tearful with laughter:
What a story!
I, too, agree - and I am a female DM!
You want to apologise? Why? You Americans are, um. interesting. As other posters have pointed out, it sounds as if leaving her game was the only other way open to you, whether by openly leaving the group or by having your PCs decline missions that involve NPCs accompanying the group.
In fact as far as I can see, her campaign is dead anyway. She's sent The Law after you. I'll take any bet that she won't be able to adjust to the new course the PCs' career is taking, such as by offering them an outlaw existence with outlaw missions and (o horror!) outlaw NPCs - so the only course open to her is to hunt your PCs down and kill them.
Unless of course you let yourselves taken captive and submitted to more powerful NPC goodness in the future, in which case you're probably a group of victims born and deserve to play in that kind of game.
What a story!
Calico_Jack73 said:<<<wipes tears from his eyes>>>
Okay, now that I've stopped laughing I can comment.
I honestly think you did the right thing... and I am a DM!
I, too, agree - and I am a female DM!
You want to apologise? Why? You Americans are, um. interesting.
As other posters have pointed out, it sounds as if leaving her game was the only other way open to you, whether by openly leaving the group or by having your PCs decline missions that involve NPCs accompanying the group. In fact as far as I can see, her campaign is dead anyway. She's sent The Law after you. I'll take any bet that she won't be able to adjust to the new course the PCs' career is taking, such as by offering them an outlaw existence with outlaw missions and (o horror!) outlaw NPCs - so the only course open to her is to hunt your PCs down and kill them.
Unless of course you let yourselves taken captive and submitted to more powerful NPC goodness in the future, in which case you're probably a group of victims born and deserve to play in that kind of game.
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Doctor_Skull
First Post
I led a much lower-stakes, lower-impact mutiny once. We were Vikings who had gone on several raids, and then when we were on a mission inland for our chief, we heard rumors that a terrible dragon lay ahead.
We, being 4th level or so, decided that we wanted no part of a dragon. We went back home, got our ship and NPC's together and went oversees to attack the same town we had attacked two game-years (1 real month) before.
So our poor GM had to shove his adventure aside and re-set up the target village, which was named "Smirkenburg". He's a good egg and wasn't upset. Partially it was his fault. He mentioned "dragon" just to scare us, there was no real dragon. His scare tactics worked too well, we didn't have enough reason to stay, so off we went.
To this day whenever the adventure isn't going as we like, whatever game we're playing, we say "How about we just skip it and attack Smirkenburg instead."
We, being 4th level or so, decided that we wanted no part of a dragon. We went back home, got our ship and NPC's together and went oversees to attack the same town we had attacked two game-years (1 real month) before.
So our poor GM had to shove his adventure aside and re-set up the target village, which was named "Smirkenburg". He's a good egg and wasn't upset. Partially it was his fault. He mentioned "dragon" just to scare us, there was no real dragon. His scare tactics worked too well, we didn't have enough reason to stay, so off we went.
To this day whenever the adventure isn't going as we like, whatever game we're playing, we say "How about we just skip it and attack Smirkenburg instead."
Particle_Man
Explorer
Richards said:
IIRC, there was a writer on the net with the moniker Mary Sue. She wrote something called "Slash Fiction", which takes popular characters from tv shows, books, movies and musical groups and puts them in erotic (usually male homoerotic) scenarios. Often women wrote/write male homoerotic scenarios -- maybe its the female equivalent of hetero men drooling over pictures of "lesbians". But anyhow Mary Sue effectively "wrote herself into the script" and had "herself" have a romantic heterosexual fling with some media personality in her story. This caused howls of derisive laughter and to this day, anyone that writes themselves into their own script for ego-stroking purposes (or to stroke something else) is called "Mary Sue". I imagine that this could apply to a DM with a "Pet NPC", even in a non-erotic context.
Hope that helps.
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