So I led a mutiny...

[the Jester]

Hmmm... I've actually been wondering lately if the npc fighter (Thrush) in the epic party imc is a dmpc... and I'm the dm!

He started off as the main henchmen of a bunch of badguys in a virtually-inescapable dungeon the party went through around 12th-18th levels... but they suborned him. He'd been trapped in there for years, and one of the pcs was a slutty female fighter who seduced him and is now engaged to him, having had twins by him. (There were some mighty high diplomacy checks rolled there, even before the circumstance bonus I gave for Sybele's seduction of him.)

Since I originally designed him to be a challenge for the whole party, he's still one of the toughest of them. So when a fight breaks out, he's lethal. Also, he's really fast, so there are times when combat breaks out and he kills it and it's over.

Still, he's definitely not the center of attention; I don't give him any special protection (and in fact he's died I think twice and had his soul sucked into a terrible monster for a while since he joined up with the group). He also doesn't have any connections or anything.

Still, he outshines the new player's fighter, since he's higher level. He is in fact the self-declared "foremost swordsman of his day" (and he might be right; there are only a very limited number of epic-level characters, pc or npc, imc).

Meh... he even wants to retire to raise the kids. But he's trying to get Sybele to retire with him, and she's insisting on some other adventures first. It's an interesting dynamic.... I guess that's my out, if I decide that he's becoming too much, but none of the players really seem to mind him...

Meh. :\

 

[Gundark]

well my sister in law wanted to DM once.....she is a writer and while I am sure that there are some writers that are great DMs, my sister in law fell into the trap of thinking that DMing is like writing a story. In short she railroaded us where ever we went. She also loved elves.....so it was elves this elves that...we had to even play elves (she said she would kill any dwarven PCs). Even the Vampires we fought were elves. Anyhow her NPCs were always way uber, and whenever we tried to fight one when she wasn't wanting us to it was always "you miss" or "the spell fails", until it was her time for us to do something. Eventually I just stopped playing....it died quick after that. We've talked since then about what went wrong with the game.

 

[ironmani]

I hear your pain man. We had a DM who did they exact same thing to us. Except he was guy. Same "teen girl" game. He got so mad at us once because we refused to settle an "internal kingdom" dispute (The princess had fled with her lover or some such and her brother, the royal prince, who we were stuck with as our party NPC, wanted us to after her.) and when to go explode this dungeon we found a map to, he wiped us out to the man with a troll, that apperently was the stealthiest god damn troll ever. It snuck, that right snuck up on my dwarf fighter and knocked him down to below half hit points in one round. Now I could have fought, but I decided to do the old, "Ooo half hit point, that massive damage I get to make a systems shock...ooooo I fail. I go down and am out of the fight." Which he wasnt ready for. He just wanted us to get a good ass whipping and then have to crawl back to the prince for healing. After we wrapped up, one of the PCs came over to me and said, "Dude THANK GOD you got us out of that game!" Oh but wait it gets better......next week we find our selves all resurected by his PC/NPC Priestess of Isis. DOH!!!! AND she puts us on the quest to get the Princess back as payment for saving us. The pain...oh god the pain.

 

[clark411]

As a last resort I think it was okay to do. If nothing else, it was memorable and I got a chuckle out of it. All is forgiven, walk on without guilt! ^_^

As a sidenote- be glad that your DMPC was available to beat upon. Many of us players face DMPCs or pet NPCS that we can never see to face, or whom we can never encounter upon our own terms. While it stinks to be led around by the nose by some do-gooder with omnipotent friends, I'd hate even more to again face the stereotypical all knowing, invincible "one step and three devious traps or pet templated monsters ahead of you" pet characters. At least you can all gang up on the DMPC =)

 

[Tsyr]

As a last resort I think it was okay to do. If nothing else, it was memorable and I got a chuckle out of it. All is forgiven, walk on without guilt! ^_^

As a sidenote- be glad that your DMPC was available to beat upon. Many of us players face DMPCs or pet NPCS that we can never see to face, or whom we can never encounter upon our own terms. While it stinks to be led around by the nose by some do-gooder with omnipotent friends, I'd hate even more to again face the stereotypical all knowing, invincible "one step and three devious traps or pet templated monsters ahead of you" pet characters. At least you can all gang up on the DMPC =)

Oh, I too well know the horror of DMPCs that are either untouchable or unbeatable.

Theres a DM I refuse to game under anymore who was particularly bad about this. It's a shame, because otherwise I *loved* his games... He was good at playing multiple NPCs at once, could generaly get good stories going, and was fairly cohesive.

But every character he had ever played would be found SOMEWHERE as a high-level NPC. Mostly villans, but a few good guys. Theoreticly.

Like our 'benefactor'... He would always save the party from something, then would act as if we had an eternal life-debt to him, and order us to do all these things, and the DM didn't even bother making in very subtle that if we refused there would be consequences. And he would always show up when we least wanted him, with new important tasks... But he himself was apparently always too busy to do these urgent tasks, despite being more than a match (obsensiby, we sadly never tested the theory) for the entire party.

Then there was the infamous Night of Tears.. Any of the players in that game will remember it on until the end of times. It was the last time most of us gamed under him.

We were exploring a dungeon, and what should pop out of the woodwork but one of his NPCs he has a bajillion stories about. An evil cleric, just loaded with magic items. We weren't supposed to kill him, we were supposed to get our ass handed to us then run.

We killed him in two rounds thanks to some accumulated expendable magic items the DM had forgot we had.

We go to loot the body, since the DM had made some pretty big hints about the amoung of stuff this guy was wearing, and he at first tried to say we found nothing of interest (He was mad by this point). We called foul on that, and he read off a list of stuff we found. Some pretty potent stuff, except for some crown thing that our party wizard detected was so evil any of us would die if we touched it. *rolleyes*

So we're exploring the dungeon some more and, lo and behold, the same NPC pops up. Apparently we killed a clone of him the first time or something. First round of combat he uses a crown he's wearing to drop someone to 1D4 hitpoints.

My initiative comes. I'm playing a monk. I make a called shot (DM had house rules on these) to the crown, knocking it off his head. Of course I die in the process, But the rest of the party manages to finish him. They get me rezed.

So we're walking through town later, having decided the DM didn't want us in that dungeon for some reason, and what should we encounter but a strange hulking monster that screamed every round, and with each scream we had to roll an impossibly high saving throw on each magic item we had, or it shattered. Including the magical weapons, which we needed to hit it. And with each physical hit, we had to roll a high save or else loose a level.

Our party died in short order, because the monster had a movement so high we couldn't get away, and reach.

I, uh, never went back to that DM.

 

[Elephant]

Basically, the DMPC is another party member-- not a scene-stealer. There is a distinct advantage to this, also: it makes it so that another member of the group can take a turn as GM. Suppose the party has finished a module I was running. After that, another player says, "hey, I just finished writing a mod, that I would really like to try out." Fine, he gets to take a shift as GM for a while, using his old PC as a DMPC!

I believe that DMPCs should never be used. In games where the DM changes between modules, the DM's PC should be "away visiting Aunt Martha on her farm" or something similar. In my experience, DMPCs invariably turn into a railroading device.

 

[Len]

I guess you could say there's a difference between a DMPC and an NPC. We've had NPCs with our party (the DM sent them along because we're low on spellcasters) but most of them didn't stay around long. The DM didn't treat them like full party members - they usually stayed in the background and did what we told them. (Except for the cleric who sometimes refused to heal us. We fired him. ) The last such NPC became a cohort so now he's run by a player.

These characters never told us what to do, they weren't more powerful than the other party members, and they weren't elf girls with celestial bunnies.

It seems like some DMs shouldn't be allowed to play characters in the party, but for us it's worked out fine.

 

[orchid blossom]

Hmmm... I've actually been wondering lately if the npc fighter (Thrush) in the epic party imc is a dmpc... and I'm the dm!

I wouldn't worry about it Jester. They picked him up, rather than you thrusting him on them, and it seems pretty clear that you're willing to let him go. If you really wonder, ask your group. "Hey guys, does Thrush being around bug you?" And if it doesn't don't worry. Have them let you know if he gets irksome, and let them know that all they have to do is say and you'll find some way for him to wander off.

As for Tsyr's situation, I wouldn't feel too badly. Talk to her and let her know why it happened, and then let her know that your party will no longer accept any missions that require you to take an NPC along. Hopefully your very pointed object lesson got your point across. There was probably a better way to handle it, but what's done is done, so you might as well try and make some good come of it.

 

[talinthas]

(responding to the initial post)

Heh. having been that DM before, i can totally understand your plight. Hell, having my pet npc die was just the kind of kick i needed to stop being such a railroader. i was kinda sad, but as DM, my place is not to play in my game, but to run it for the PC. i think what brought it on was DM burn out. i've been running for far too long, and not playing enough, so the super chump NPC comes out and starts leading the party around. It also stemmed from the fact that the party wasnt going where i wanted them to go, or doing what i wanted them to do. This, of course, is a big problem on my part, because that means that i'm treating the PCs like a video game, and not as independant players.

I think you did the right thing.

 

[Chimera]

MARY SUE (n.): 1. A variety of story, first identified in the fan fiction community, but quickly recognized as occurring elsewhere, in which normal story values are grossly subordinated to inadequately transformed personal wish-fulfillment fantasies, often involving heroic or romantic interactions with the cast of characters of some popular entertainment. 2. A distinctive type of character appearing in these stories who represents an idealized version of the author.

See: Leo Frankowski's The Cross-time Engineer for an entire series of books written in this vein.


On the OP. You're darned right you need to apologize! Thrice!

I'm sorry we had to do that to you.
I'm sorry you didn't listen to us the first couple of times.
I'm sorry, but if you do it again, we'll do the same thing.