So I led a mutiny...

[Ogrork the Mighty]

My DMPCs used to be bad like some of the examples listed above. But now they just lurk in the background and do the stuff no one else wants to do (like heal, or be the first one to charge the monster and use up its AoO!).

 

[Elf Witch]

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.

Only one problem with this explantation is that Mary Sue's have been around since the 1970s which was way before the net.


It was used to describe Ensign Mary Sue ( from Trek Fanfiction) you know the perfect character who all the men were in love with and who had dainty ankles that turned so prettily that she had to be carried by one of the strong men. And BTW she always saved the ship. It was basically a thin disguised fantasy of the writer.

As for the connection with slash fiction that came way later. And most female slash writers a straight and I think they write slash fiction as a way of exploring the hero's softer side with out being accused of writing a Mary Sue because the slash romance is always beyween two male characters from the show like Kirk/Spock or Picard/Riker.

 

[Elf Witch]

This sounds like a DM I know. She was running a game for myself and her husband. Since there were only two of us she added NPCs at first this was okay the gnome cleric she added was great he was helpful and he was funny and he didn't steal the show or overshadow us at all.

Then came Glleeb her ranger/rogue home made race he was humanoid who had wings and could fly 60 feet and his race got the sorcerer spell list as a race benefit and could cast silent spells with no cost.

If that was not bad enough she added a huge plot of secret groups run by the thieves guild and oh guess what I was playing a wizard and her husband was playing a class they had created called a beastmaster ( basically ranger skills with the ability to communicate on a very basic level with animals no magic involved really) we had no way of getting infomation from this group or infiltrating it so we had to depend on Glleeb who would withhold information on what he found.

It got to the point that when were attacked we would not help Glleeb even if he went down funny how he always managed to stablize and how Thatch the gnome always got to him and healed him with any one interfering.

It got so bad we both started making excuses to not play and thankfully the game died a natural death.

Some DMs can't help it they get to attached to their NPCs and just can't seem to seperate the NPC from their role as a DM.