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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Grumpy Celt" data-source="post: 3768128" data-attributes="member: 1019">This is an old gripe (or screed or possibly a rant) of mine. To put succinctly as I know how; the “good” NPCs are a like goads the DM can use to direct and punish the PCs (and by extension, the players) and the players have to take it, or leave the group. If an “evil” NPC treated the PCs badly – lies, abuse, cold use, manipulation, theft, destruction, killing, etc. – then the PCs (and by extension, the players) are fully within their rights to kill the b*st*rd. If a “good” NPC does the same thing, then the PCs (and again by extension, the players) are supposed to say, “Thank you sir, can I have another” – after all, the NPC in question is the “good” guy and thus anyone who disagree with them is “evil.” The “good” NPCs are there to allow the DM close to direct control over the party.With Khelben this was at its most transparent. His character was killed in the novel Blackstaff, but this merely replaced one troubling NPC with another and does nothing to address way and reason that kind of NPC is created.Drizzt I can take or leave – I am not a fan, but he does not offend me either. Elminster, in stories by Greenwood, can irritate me but not as deeply as some. Greenwood seems to kept him something of a mental case, which ameliorates him somewhat. I totally agree – when I run the city, it is a kind of gangster-infected would-be Imperial Rome.The only thing Khelben lacked in terms of becoming Big Brother, al la 1984, was shaving his beard, keeping the moustache and plastering posters of himself all of the city. Mesa thinkin’ that’s a good point.Well, that’s easy to say, but it’s like telling someone not to worry about the American Midwest if they don’t like farmers; they and it are all too much part of the cultural landscape and life to just ignore and still and a functionally complete setting.</blockquote>

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