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My curiosity about this thread is the trend of some number of players who seem to be uncommunicative gits...
Hey, I resent that! I am a very communicative git.
;-)
Because the GM is talking whenever his GMPC is talking.The hell you say. The character is talking, not the GM. I even do my best to have a funny voice for them so the players can HEAR the difference.
It doesn't matter. Who's the GM? You. Who has inside knowledge of every event that takes place in the world? You. Funny voices doesn't change any of that.
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It doesn't matter. Who's the GM? You. Who has inside knowledge of every event that takes place in the world? You. Funny voices doesn't change any of that.
My players being smarter than to give my voice any more weight than I say it does certainly changes something.
Any GMPC I have acts on HIS knowledge, which can be and often is very wrong.
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It doesn't matter. Who's the GM? You. Who has inside knowledge of every event that takes place in the world? You. Funny voices doesn't change any of that.My players being smarter than to give my voice any more weight than I say it does certainly changes something.
Any GMPC I have acts on HIS knowledge, which can be and often is very wrong.
This is sounding less like a GMPC problem and more about trust and the GM. If the GM is going to mess with you, they don't need a character in the party to do it. And if you cannot trust the GM to play fair, then IMO you need a different GM or game.
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It doesn't matter. Who's the GM? You. Who has inside knowledge of every event that takes place in the world? You. Funny voices doesn't change any of that.Because the GM is talking whenever his GMPC is talking.The hell you say. The character is talking, not the GM. I even do my best to have a funny voice for them so the players can HEAR the difference.
Yeah, this is very clearly a weakness in the player's ability to differentiate rather than the GM's.
Two things:
1) this doesn't make them bad players: though it means they lack what many other groups would consider a critical skill, if they have fun, then, tautologically enough, they have fun (in other words, it works for their group and table)
2) this may or may not have to do with the GM's own skill; however, whether or not the GM has the skill is irrelevant to the point that it is, as-presented, exclusively a player-failure to differentiate
- - 2a) if the GM also has a failure in differentiation, this falls under earlier suggested failures in a general GM'ing skill as applied to a GMPC
- - 2b) the "origin" of the failure to differentiate may well be circular (ex: the GM doesn't differentiate because the players expect him not to, and the players expect him not to because he doesn't differentiate...)*
To be clear, I'm not calling anyone as a bad gamer**, but instead am pointing out that a failure for a GMPC to thrive due to that expectations in that specific environment is endemic only specific to that environment, not to the nature of a GMPC itself.
I could see how such a situation could be annoying if you felt rail-roaded.
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This is sounding less like a GMPC problem and more about trust and the GM. If the GM is going to mess with you, they don't need a character in the party to do it. And if you cannot trust the GM to play fair, then IMO you need a different GM or game.Well and truly said.Exactly what I said. The other fun part will be when he posts a new thread.....
How do I confront my DM...I think there might be a (whispering)...DMPC!
You glance around the table and utter the code word to attack!
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Heavens yes. I love running certain adventures with non-Euclidean space.
"You turn around and where there was a wall is now a hallway."
One adventure I have is the opposite of this. Where ever you turn, you see an endless hall extending in front of you. This includes left, right, up and down, with gravity adjusting so that your feet are still on the "floor" once it orientates to your current viewing direction.
The native denizens have eyes facing in all directions allowing them to travel in all directions simultaneously.
his is sounding less like a GMPC problem and more about trust and the GM. If the GM is going to mess with you, they don't need a character in the party to do it. And if you cannot trust the GM to play fair, then IMO you need a different GM or game.
Okay you guys can't have it both ways. First I'm an idiot for trusting my GM, now I'm an idiot for not trusting my GM? If the proponents can't even figure out how it should be, doesn't that at least lend a little weight that maybe it's just a bad idea all together?
It doesn't matter. Who's the GM? You. Who has inside knowledge of every event that takes place in the world? You. Funny voices doesn't change any of that.My players being smarter than to give my voice any more weight than I say it does certainly changes something.
Any GMPC I have acts on HIS knowledge, which can be and often is very wrong.
It is wrong, but the dmpc thinks he is standing for what is right.
:D
Moral dilemmas and roleplying ensues!
Heavens yes. I love running certain adventures with non-Euclidean space.
"You turn around and where there was a wall is now a hallway."
Yeah, we the party got stuck in a dungeon with few features, problems or monsters except a lot of doors. So many doors. Drove the party a bit crazy, but I'm not sure the dm intended us to start cackling and losing it. Doors and sanity loss dungeon, endless repetition.
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Yeah, we the party got stuck in a dungeon with few features, problems or monsters except a lot of doors. So many doors. Drove the party a bit crazy, but I'm not sure the dm intended us to start cackling and losing it. Doors and sanity loss dungeon, endless repetition.Heavens yes. I love running certain adventures with non-Euclidean space.
"You turn around and where there was a wall is now a hallway."
Man, makes me think about one dungeon I unleashed on the party...
A city was being attacked by an army of identical zombies. Apparently the necromancer was a guy who got trapped in a time displaced dungeon, who kept reanimating his own dead body murdered by a later (but obviously not last) incarnation of himself.
Went like...
Dude goes in, becomes a necromancer, finds a body that looks like him and reanimates, goes insane from the revelation, kills a guy, calms down and realizes what's about to happen when a crazy guy attacks and kills him.
What does that have to do with the thread? Well there were NPCs inside that thing as well, but not really DMPCs.
But it does play towards information flowing from the DM. The Players had to deal with confusing and odd information, especially as they didn't get the benefit of encountering the people in the dungeon in those individual person's chronological order.
For example, there was a kolyraut stuck inside as well, his later version encountered the necromancer and got unwound because of the temporal shennigans, but the kolyraut was initially dispatched to deal with a rogue kolyraut (itself) and did so by contracting with the party to destroy its own later incarnation since it knew it had to go spare and couldn't risk its later self killing it.
The party had a heck of a time trying to figure out who was who when even the who's in question had only a vague idea of what was going on.
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You know I was thinking about what makes GMPCs so much worse than NPCs. My thoughts are as follows.
- I think the expectation changes with the label. No longer are you running a stock character who you are dispassionate about you are now running a full blooded PC with all the competitive urges that implies.
- Competitive urges can make even the best and most well organized GM slip up and make things anywhere from a tiny bit easier to massively easier on their GMPC largely dependent on the GM himself.
- Those slip ups can be invisible even to the GM. I was remembering the look of surprise on Mr Perfects face when it was pointed out to him his traps had become far less lethal and far more infrequent since he started using a GMPC. Not that some of us thought that was bad...
- So why get competitive? Is it purely the label? No I don't think it is. Not purely anyway. I think the change in approach to the GMPC vs a NPC is the true heart of the problem. In many cases GMs use GMPCs to either "play the game" or to have a character they can carry to another game. In these cases you have a massive desire to fairly level the strongest character you can. But when you are the GM you can adjust the fairness slider and many often do.
- So how do you eliminate that competitiveness? Tough question. The best solution of course is to avoid GMPCs. But in a few rare cases GMPCs are a quick and dirty solution to real problems. In these cases a GM may not wish to dispense with this tool however poorly designed it is. Using a series of rotating NPCs rather than a dedicated GMPC may solve some of these issues. Perhaps insulating the rewards the GMPC earns to THIS game can drop the competitiveness from a GMPC used with the intention of being carried to other games. But that won't solve the issue if the GM wants to "play his own game". In this last case there really isn't a way out. The GM will do what he wants to do and no one can stop him short of walking out. And if this is one of the only GMs in town that may mean not playing at all. If this last guy is your GM then I truly wish you the best you are in a tough spot.
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Some of the arguments against a GMPC, while I disagree with, are at least logical and follow a certain intelligence, but...
...to whoever is arguing the "well how am I supposed to separate what the GMPC says from the GM" line...
...are you trolling or are you just that obtuse? Do you not encounter NPCs that lie to you? NPCs that don't know everything? NPCs that think they know something but got it wrong?
Psst...GMPCs can do all that too.
If you haven't encountered that kind of thing before, I pity your gaming experience.
Seriously, how do you separate one NPC from another in your mind if you can't separate the GM from a character?
It has to be trolling. I can't imagine anyone that obtuse. I'm too much of an optimist to believe there's people out there who voluntarily play a game that requires one guy or gal to be multiple people but cannot themselves seperate those people from the man or woman representing them. Nope.
It is a bit silly, isn't it?
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Wow, now if the GM roleplays a lying monster, suddenly is the GM that is a liar and cannot be trusted? No, no, no, no, you cannot possibly meant that, did you?
NPCs controlled by the GM who helps, evolves and are friends of the PCs can be a very fun tool! My groups are small and i use this tools frequently. All players that experience this end up loving it, so a very positive opinion about them.
I know, i know, some GMs use it very badly. GMPCs are tools, so are hammers. Hammers can be used very badly, but, even so, they are still unquestionably useful.
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Storytime!
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So which authors are we bashing today?
Also I tuned out for about 50 posts there so I'm not sure where we are on the subject... Which NPC is a 10 foot wide pit...
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Contributor
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So which authors are we bashing today?
Also I tuned out for about 50 posts there so I'm not sure where we are on the subject... Which NPC is a 10 foot wide pit...
Robert B. Wintermute is one of the worst writers I've ever read in any genre or medium. His so-called work ruined two separate Magic: the Gathering stories.
That is all.
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Oh! I hate Magic: the gathering so much!
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Oh! I hate Magic: the gathering so much!
I'm commenting only because the system won't let me favorite that more than once.
For everyone's sanity I will say +10 instead of commenting ten times with "I agree."
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Magic the Gathering is fun and addicting. Nothing more needs to be said.
Ditto!!! U/B FOR THE WIN!!!
I've always done well with W/R.
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Man, I loathe Magic: the Gathering. Heh.
Huh, the competitiveness argument is just to strange to me. First off because if I'm trying to upstage the PCs with my GMPC, then I'm outright doing it wrong. If anything, playing a GMPC is when you should be going for odder "concept" builds (though that complement the party and are still effective), rather than whatever the default power build is for that class. A GMPC shouldn't be a glory hog.
Second, going easier on the party because they have a GMPC is just alien to me - if anything, GMPC = larger party = harder challenges.
(Heh. The only death in my 4E game I ran was my own GMPC. A solo mob knocked out my pacifist healer cleric (which was a thing in 4E) and spent an action point to coup de grace her. Action economy just sort of worked out that way - an action point that would gone towards increased AoE damage against the party instead went toward finishing off the healer.
The action point->coup de grace subsequently caused my players to pay considerably more attention to their HP while fighting future solo mobs.)
Out of curiousity, did the one GM stop using traps because he had a GMPC and didn't want the GMPC to get hurt (incredibly lame of him if so), did he stop because the party was so good at dealing with traps that they were free XP, or did he stop because he realized the party sucked at dealing with traps?
UB is definetely win. It is the EPITOME of control... and I love control :P
Can we please derail on something other than M:TG, what about casting Augury on possible transsexual Gnomes jumping across 10 foot wide pits while googling PFS chronicle sheets so they can find some way of reversing the FAQ on spell like abilities :-)
Or, we can talk about everyone's favorite EDH Commander.
Note: This is not the same as everyone's favorite Commander General, because *reasons*.
Elder Dragon Highlander.
It's the original name for what Wizards now calls Commander
See the rules here.
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Ever since the Unchained Rogue came out it ruined my favorite means of derailing. Therefore, I have formulated a new one:
"I hereby posit that fighters are perfectly functional classes, and that if you don't like them you're a bad roleplayer."
Think it will work as well?
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What if you go with: fighters are an incredibly viable class, even without magic items:-D
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his is sounding less like a GMPC problem and more about trust and the GM. If the GM is going to mess with you, they don't need a character in the party to do it. And if you cannot trust the GM to play fair, then IMO you need a different GM or game.Okay you guys can't have it both ways. First I'm an idiot for trusting my GM, now I'm an idiot for not trusting my GM? If the proponents can't even figure out how it should be, doesn't that at least lend a little weight that maybe it's just a bad idea all together?
Well, here's what I think we're talking about. Most DMPC's are a full fledged party member, who gets a share of the loot, acts like a party member and what not.
Now once in a while, you get a 'richard" player who runs a PC who betrays the party. This is rather unfair since the genre has the "Unspoken rule" :
"D&D is a Game, and the object is to have fun.
In order to have fun, you must Play the game.
Thus, instead of vetting the new players character for a period, or even worse saying "Hey no thanks newguy, we already have a solid team here, no reason to add another": you allow the new guy to play, sometimes with no backstory, sometimes with a 10 minute intro. That's just the nature of the game- everyone wants to have fun, so you get the new guy into the party ASAP."
But once in a while the new guy turns out to be a traitor (and I am not talking the "change of pace" all-evil campaign, where such is expected). If a player pulls this more than once, he will be shunned.
We had this happen to a friend of the DM who used to summer with him, so intro-ed a new PC just for a few summer games. He betrayed us in the first summer. So, the next year, we did do some vetting, but still were betrayed. the next time we simply refused to play with him. There was some mighty sulking and the DM tried for hours to cajole us into letting him play, but we pointed out the last two times. "Well, just because I was a traitor twice doesnt mean I'll be one this time!". Yeah, and if you werent the DM's buddy you wouldnt have gotten that second chance, either bub.
Now, let us say the DM shows up with a GMPC. *NOT* a NPC, but a full fledged party member, who gets a share of the loot, acts like a party member and what not. One who is expected to join the group without any vetting.
Then that GMPC betrays the group.
See, that's unfair, just like the "guest player" who does the same thing. When the PC is introduced to the rest of the group as a fellow PC, the rule is to just let him join. There's no clues, no chance to vet him, no hint he may not be as it seems. That's simply taking advantage of the "Unspoken rule".
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Oh yeah, an actual GMPC that's designed to be with the party from the get-go being a traitor would be a huge no-no in most groups. That's just a dick mvoe.
An NPC who's introduced as an ally even slightly later (such as even in the very first session), but is still clearly an NPC, is another matter altogether.
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Ever since the Unchained Rogue came out it ruined my favorite means of derailing. Therefore, I have formulated a new one:
"I hereby posit that fighters are perfectly functional classes, and that if you don't like them you're a bad roleplayer."
Think it will work as well?
Ready to have your mind blown?
Ready?
The rogue still sucks after unchained.
Now just wait for the train wreck.
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Oh that's it!
There won't be a Cow untipped after this nerd fueled rampage!
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