Well, I tried to buy the bundle, but sadly Humble Bundle does not seem to want my money. Card declined. Contacting my bank they say it's the shop rejecting it. Contacting Humble, they say the bank is rejecting it. End result, I can't buy it, so nyeh.
Well, I tried to buy the bundle, but sadly Humble Bundle does not seem to want my money. Card declined. Contacting my bank they say it's the shop rejecting it. Contacting Humble, they say the bank is rejecting it. End result, I can't buy it, so nyeh.
Huh. I thought they accepted both Paypal and Amazon Payments, though.
I don't even know what an "Amazon Payments" is, it doesn't seem to be a thing in Humble in my region. I guess I could try to necromance my four year old paypal account...
Got Star Trek Adventures to the table as planned. Big hit with the group, despite some rule hiccups. I wasn't quite as prepared as I thought I was, but the system seemed pretty forgiving of my flubs. And people want to play again, so cheeky clearly the errors weren't major.
Thanks to Jacobkosh for sharing his GM aid: it was a huge help. Probably about to splurge on some more books. All in all a very successful day!
Okay I have been reading The One Ring and the supplementals and it seems gangbusters, but my hang up is the same for every tabletop game. I have myself to DM, and my girlfriend and our neighbor to play. So many games are made harder to manage with just a two person party, and it seems like it would really diminish the Fellowship aspect, which is one of the more interesting draws of the game.
0
Options
JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
Yeah, difficulty with small party sizes is absolutely a fair gripe about The One Ring (and, yeah, a lot of other games).
My suggestion would be twofold: start the characters off with some bonus XP (so they can buy more skills) and also create a GM supporting character to accompany them and who can pick up some of their slack.
GM characters get a bad rap because sometimes a DM (since, let's be real, it's usually in D&D) is a dingus about making the players play second banana to his super special guy, but a good GM can really improve the overall game experience for the players by having an in-game voice who can offer the players support and suggestions when they're stuck.
Yeah, difficulty with small party sizes is absolutely a fair gripe about The One Ring (and, yeah, a lot of other games).
My suggestion would be twofold: start the characters off with some bonus XP (so they can buy more skills) and also create a GM supporting character to accompany them and who can pick up some of their slack.
GM characters get a bad rap because sometimes a DM (since, let's be real, it's usually in D&D) is a dingus about making the players play second banana to his super special guy, but a good GM can really improve the overall game experience for the players by having an in-game voice who can offer the players support and suggestions when they're stuck.
You can also have each player play two characters, one to fill each Travel role.
Further thoughts on Star Trek Adventures now that I'm at a computer instead of phone posting:
Combat struck the players as a little slow and repetitive, so I think I may have been adjudicating some stuff wrong. Additionally, I didn't do a great job of briefing them on all of the options they had other than making an attack (stuff like creating advantages and the like), so that probably added to the problem. Gonna need to make some player aids listing out all of the options they have in combat.
They liked Momentum and Threat, though they never took the bait and gave me any Threat to do stuff. That was probably because I prompted them to do so like I was the devil on their shoulder; may need to dial down the Mephistopholes next time. They were a little thrown by the idea of making easy rolls just to generate Momentum, though, figuring that there wasn't a reason to just kind of keep diddling around, making easy rolls, until they had a full Momentum pool. The answer there is twofold, I think: first, don't be a dick and slow the game to a crawl, and second, as the GM I need to write my stories with some pressure on the players to keep them from doing that.
I shouldn't have tried the "create a character in play" method for our first go-round. Where it worked it worked great, but a couple folks forgot they had the option to fill stuff in and I didn't catch it, so they were rolling against values that were considerably lower than they should have been for several rounds running (which contributed to the slow combat, above). Also, the fact that the Talents are chosen from a list meant that when people wanted to fill in their Talents the game slowed to a crawl as the book got passed around. Should've just done life-path creation. Ah well.
Despite the hiccups, I found the game easier to run than D&D, and I'm not sure why that is. At a glance, I don't think that the NPCs have fewer stats than a D&D monster, we were rolling a lot of dice to figure stuff out, and I was improvising a lot of difficulties and checks, but I didn't feel as drained by the bookkeeping and rules-figuring as I have when running a 3.5 or 5e game. Maybe just the excitement of a new system?
When it comes to technobabble, less is more. A couple times I was doing pretty well, spitting hot fire about tachyons and gravimetric isolators, but I needed to quit while I was ahead instead of petering out.
Most importantly, everybody had fun, and everybody wanted to give it another try in the near future. So I went out and got myself some more of the books.
Then this morning another, newish friend whose D&D group has been imploding asked me to run a one-off for some of them. So it's shaping up to be a bit of a tabletop fall in my world. Excitement!
+6
Options
webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
Yeah, difficulty with small party sizes is absolutely a fair gripe about The One Ring (and, yeah, a lot of other games).
My suggestion would be twofold: start the characters off with some bonus XP (so they can buy more skills) and also create a GM supporting character to accompany them and who can pick up some of their slack.
GM characters get a bad rap because sometimes a DM (since, let's be real, it's usually in D&D) is a dingus about making the players play second banana to his super special guy, but a good GM can really improve the overall game experience for the players by having an in-game voice who can offer the players support and suggestions when they're stuck.
You can also have each player play two characters, one to fill each Travel role.
For about the first four years of my D&D group it was just three of us. We played two characters apiece and it worked out pretty well. It also rapidly let us explore different character classes.
Thinking again about why Star Trek felt less draining to run than D&D does. I think it offloads a good chunk of the resolution work for a given roll to the players. So for an attack roll against a monster in D&D, I have to keep track of the AC, figure out whether or not their rolls hit, and then run the math on the damage. For an attack in Star Trek, once they know the combo of stats for the attack they can figure out what they need to succeed and how many successes they got without much, if any, input from me. The number of successes needed doesn't vary a huge amount, either.
Oh, and I really like that melee combat is an opposed check, so there's an opportunity to counter-attack then and there and score some damage out of turn. It felt very cinematic and led to a cool moment where one of the de-evolved humans they were fighting attacked the security officer. The security officer won the roll, and the de-evolved human gave itself a complication, so I ruled that in addition to damaging it he managed to disarm it. Quick, clean, and made for an exciting moment in the game.
Yeah, difficulty with small party sizes is absolutely a fair gripe about The One Ring (and, yeah, a lot of other games).
My suggestion would be twofold: start the characters off with some bonus XP (so they can buy more skills) and also create a GM supporting character to accompany them and who can pick up some of their slack.
GM characters get a bad rap because sometimes a DM (since, let's be real, it's usually in D&D) is a dingus about making the players play second banana to his super special guy, but a good GM can really improve the overall game experience for the players by having an in-game voice who can offer the players support and suggestions when they're stuck.
In my last 5th edition Eberron game I had a DMPC Warforged Paladin that subbed in when I had 2 missing players. I did a robotic voice for him and a customary fist bump greeting with the groups Barbarian. Even got to perform a heroic sacrifice T2 style with him holding off the hordes as a Creation Forge burned around him so the PCs could escape. Got some good emotions out of those players for it.
Is that really a DMPC? Wouldn't it be counted as an allied NPC?
This is one of those lines that is rarely defined but super important. As I have a strict no DMPCs, ever rule, but love allied NPCs.
Where I draw the line is whether or not they independently jump forward and solve problems. If the GM spends a lot of time pushing the NPC into the spotlight, talking to himself and rolling skill checks against obstacles, that's a DMPC. If the NPC mostly stays in the background, but gives advice and assists on checks when asked, that's an allied NPC.
In combat they can largely do whatever they want, but while they can be badasses they shouldn't be the only one who figures out a monster's secret weakness or the one with the special weapon that can kill the monster.
admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
Oh and also if the NPC is someone you forced on the party and they do everything in their power to get rid of them, but you make it fail, that's a DMPC regardless of anything else.
Honestly the line about passivity is a good one. They don't solve problems of their own accord, except outside of a very narrow specialized focus and that focus MUST be one that the PCs do not have.
So like the classic "Fuck it, the NPC Cleric accompanies you" style of thing it's okay if they will spontaneously treat wounded or ill folks provided no PC has any skills in that area. If you have a PC cleric or even a druid/bard/anybody with healing this priest was cleric horrible at the medicine they were taught and needs instruction or whatever.
In combat they tend to square off against lesser foes and against those foes things tend to just stalemate or show little change in either direction. Again, unless directed by another PC as part of a clever PC plan they tend not to do wonderous heroic things.
I had an NPC Skald in 4e that was great for this. They just presented passive buffs to the party and the party even used their actions to trigger their healing because that's how the Skald aura worked there.
Back in 3.5 edition, I had a recurring Dwarven Cleric NPC that would show up in my games if the party was short a healer... Thud Battlehammer. He was nothing more than a healing stick with a big axe and heavy armor who mostly dropped cure and restoration spells after combat ended. Really he was me as a DM throwing a bone to a group that maybe could have planned their party composition a little better.
Occasionally the players would get miffed that he didn't turn a pack of undead, or solve a puzzle they were having trouble with, or whatever and ask in a snit, "What about the cleric? Can't he do something?" and my reply would always be, "Sure. What would you like him to do?"
Also, I would have enough shit to take care of behind the screen rather than properly run a badass level 5 cleric with a big fuck-off axe.
I'm fond of NPCs who disappear at key situations and force the group to handle puzzles or combat without them and then show up again shortly afterwards babbling about something they found and then go "Why is everyone hurt?" or the like.
Like when there's a puzzle? Poof. Social interactions? Poof. Combat that the group can definitely handle without help? Poof.
KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
edited August 2018
Take a DMPC you plan to be a big part of the adventure with how big and stwong and knowledgeable they are and turn them into an antagonist. Turn all of the indulgent shit-talking, OPness, preparedness, etc into a threat to the PCs.
My distinction between the two was whether I followed the character creation/advancement rules for PCs or not. The Warforged Paladin I-95 (the freeway I used to get to our games) had a character sheet and everything. And I think the only time I 'broke' Ardent or Admanb's rules was when I had him Deus ex Machina a ghost to prevent a total party wipe.
Oh and also if the NPC is someone you forced on the party and they do everything in their power to get rid of them, but you make it fail, that's a DMPC regardless of anything else.
See, this I disagree with when my intent is to have exactly that kind of antagonist. In our last adventure the PCs were responsible for escorting an abrasive, spoiled, untalented scion of House Cannith to the Mournlands mcguffin. I-95 was the guardian of this house, so they got some good and some bad (and whenever I-95 wasn't available in the party my 'excuse' was he was off protecting Luis d'Cannith). So yeah they really hated Luis and loved I-95, just as planned. Of course, this is really just talking about how to make compelling NPCs in my mind. Like I said, I draw the line at whether or not my NPC follows the same rules for character development that the players do.
I think the context of a 'bad GMPC' is more along the lines of when the GM is also trying to play the game as a player while simultaneously still being the GM: it just doesn't work.
Actually for that campaign I had an entire adventuring group of fully stated GMPCs; they were slightly more talented and famous than the PC party, and also lived in close proximity. Almost like a Real World D&D. Made for good tension between adventures.
飛べねぇ豚はただの豚だ。
0
Options
AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
I think my all-time most successful NPC / demi-party member was Clyde the Sailor, who in one of our Pathfinder games had the very important job of securing the party's supplies and back-line as they explored the area they'd shipwrecked in. Clyde was a master knife-fighter; frequently they'd come back to camp to find him having sorted out a goblin or other comparative non-threat that had disturbed him while he worked on building a raft.
That game petered out, but I'd like to think Clyde got off the island.
My best party NPC was a badger-person in Gamma World. She started off as a (male) Badder soldier in one of the first combat encounters of the campaign. In Gamma World you draw some of your powers from a mutations deck each encounter, and the Radiant Regenerator drew Mind Swap.
The Badders were guarding prisoners in a burned out gas station, and the PCs were hidden behind a highway barrier. The PC first had the others tie her up and gag her, then she used Mind Swap to switch minds with one of the badgers. The badger's mind ended up in a restrained body and the PC controlled the badger's body and had "him" abandon the post and walk over to the PC position, where they tied "him" up. The PC then swapped minds back and they attacked the rest of the badders, now down a soldier.
Later, the PC's truck got blown up by a grav tank with the hostage badder still inside and the PCs were captured by another faction that performed experiments on them. I re-introduced the badger person as a cyborg using art I found on DeviantArt or somewhere.
The players decided from the art I used that it was a female anthropomorphic badger, so then I impovised that the mad scientist had genetically changed the character's sexual characteristics in order to make the subject more docile (it didn't work).
Eventually the PCs got free and saved the cyberbadger, who then decided a. She was actually trans previously and preferred her new body, and b. she couldn't go back to Wisconsin because they were extremely intolerant and misogynistic there and wouldn't accept a badger with an unconventional identity (fuck you Scott Walker!), so she threw her lot in with the PCs.
I made up stats for Tiberious T. Bone (she kept the name) and had one of the PCs control her as a sidekick, but the player approached me and said that she didn't want to have to control a second character in combat. After that I had Tiberious become a reliable character to guard the home areas and later, in a second campaign, she was the High Inquisitor in a kingdom that featured in the plot. She eventually started dating an anthropomorphic sloth spy/dancing girl and was with the PCs when they saved the space-time continuum.
I'm fond of NPCs who disappear at key situations and force the group to handle puzzles or combat without them and then show up again shortly afterwards babbling about something they found and then go "Why is everyone hurt?" or the like.
Like when there's a puzzle? Poof. Social interactions? Poof. Combat that the group can definitely handle without help? Poof.
So, Gandalf?
"We're gonna enter this really scary forest full of spiders and I guess maybe elves and the paths don't stay still. You're coming, right?"
"Lol nope."
I'm fond of NPCs who disappear at key situations and force the group to handle puzzles or combat without them and then show up again shortly afterwards babbling about something they found and then go "Why is everyone hurt?" or the like.
Like when there's a puzzle? Poof. Social interactions? Poof. Combat that the group can definitely handle without help? Poof.
So, Gandalf?
"We're gonna enter this really scary forest full of spiders and I guess maybe elves and the paths don't stay still. You're coming, right?"
"Lol nope."
The best part is the counterpoint. Random inconvenience? Hand-waved away!
"Oh it's a bit dark in this cave"
"I GOT YOU FAM!" *casts 'Light' as a 6th level spell*
Just learned about W.O.I.N., What's Old Is New. It seems like an interesting d6 dice pool system, and I like the life path system...but I already have Fragged Empire and Kingdoms, so I need to look into how the two are similar and see if it merits having one or the other.
I'm fond of NPCs who disappear at key situations and force the group to handle puzzles or combat without them and then show up again shortly afterwards babbling about something they found and then go "Why is everyone hurt?" or the like.
Like when there's a puzzle? Poof. Social interactions? Poof. Combat that the group can definitely handle without help? Poof.
So, Gandalf?
"We're gonna enter this really scary forest full of spiders and I guess maybe elves and the paths don't stay still. You're coming, right?"
"Lol nope."
The best part is the counterpoint. Random inconvenience? Hand-waved away!
"Oh it's a bit dark in this cave"
"I GOT YOU FAM!" *casts 'Light' as a 6th level spell*
Also the whole, "He, y'all, I know I was gone for awhile, but I had, like, a TOTALLY AMAZING AND UNBELIEVABLE ADVENTURE and I got, like a HUNDRED LEVELS. What have you guys been up to? Oh. Trudging through a cave? Ouch."
"Me and my high-level adventuring party from back in the day got together and beat the boss of the local raid dungeon; meanwhile, you guys haven't even finished the 'there' half of your quest yet? Noobs. Guess I'll have to carry you through the 'and back' part."
My physical group's latest GMPC is a firey young girl who attached herself to the party's wizard, a particularly arrogant chap, as an apprentice. She's from a tribe out of touch with the modern world, and I just get to have her be good in as dumb a way possible, and shoot fireballs. She will generate problems constantly and should serve as a foil to the (justified) paranoia of the party's healer.
The previous GMPC was a super high-level adventurer employed as a bodyguard, who never gave her opinion unless asked. She only actually fought with the party once, but got to show off some crazy stuff as a taste of what they can look forward later on.
0
Options
KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
I don't really have GMPCs but I have a set of followers the PCs can choose from to accompany them in my DH campaigns. I got a dog that was mutated into a tough bodyguard (a manhound) who can't speak but is very expressive and can track and fight (and she considers herself alpha over one of the PCs), a teenage street tough with a cockney accent who is a powerful untouchable and has self esteem issues from the whole "no soul" thing that is being trained to one day become an interrogator, a travelling musician who has two personalities that represent his material form as a kind of skittish, nervous, but approachable and charming bard and his immaterial form who is stubborn, headstrong, intimidating, and a powerful psyker. That last guy turns into his other personality when he gets really stressed out (like the Hulk I guess) and he uses a guitar as a psy-focus. I liken his two personalities as his material form being his superego and his immaterial personality being his id, where his character arc is controlling his powers (he's exploded everything around him once already) and combining the two into a stable ego (which he has a year to do before the inquisitor gives him up to the Black Ships to be tested on Terra). I like to have him use psychic shriek as him singing something like "Immigrant Song" with a heavy metal scream.
Also in the high end, they will have an expensive NPC in the form of a samurai space marine. So 40k doesn't really have an explicitly samurai-themed chapter or at least not one that's fully fleshed out. I thought it would be easy to do so why haven't they done it? So I made it a story thing that a samurai-themed chapter did exist, but it was destroyed by a traitor to that chapter who gave himself over to Tzeentch when he was found to be at the center of a progessivist plot and was helped by the Thousand Sons (to the point he has a number of rubrics under his current control). That samurai marine, who was barely out of being a scout when this happened and was friends with the traitor, cowarded out after taking two important heirlooms from his chapter and escaping the planet. He was later found floating in space by the Cachorodons and taken as one of their own. He proved himself to earn the gaze of the Deathwatch, and before coming to the planet that PCs are on he was working with them. He feels shame at his fleeing and once he deals with the traitor, he fully intends to kill himself to absolve his dishonor. Until then, he will basically be a peripheral character performing his own search for the traitor unless the PCs pony up the influence or at the very least a good lead to find the traitor.
0
Options
AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
I just got back from my first time playing in a game in a year, and it was in the L5R beginner game no less!
Holy shit. This was a game about CHOICE. Even walking through the railroaded tutorial, and only getting a couple scenes in, there was a lot of meat... like deciding that even though you know there's a better way to tackle something, you need the extra chances at success so you approach it from a different angle... Or deciding not to keep certain dice because it leads to more strife. Or using Opportunity to change the narrative a bit. I can't wait to play more.
I was thinking of picking that L5R Beginner Box up this weekend. From my read-through of the rules my impression is that it's relatively easy to succeed on tasks but managing strife is the real mechanic. How would you rate the combat? I'm hoping that it really recreates the feel of classic 1950's period films.
飛べねぇ豚はただの豚だ。
0
Options
MrVyngaardLive From New EtoileStraight Outta SosariaRegistered Userregular
WWII: Operation Whitebox just went free (or Pay What You Want) so I'm hoping to get my local players into some historical sessions likely to be "inspired" by Commandos and Inglorious Basterds. I might sneak some COD Zombies references in there to see if they notice.
"now I've got this mental image of caucuses as cafeteria tables in prison, and new congressmen having to beat someone up on inauguration day." - Raiden333
0
Options
AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
I was thinking of picking that L5R Beginner Box up this weekend. From my read-through of the rules my impression is that it's relatively easy to succeed on tasks but managing strife is the real mechanic. How would you rate the combat? I'm hoping that it really recreates the feel of classic 1950's period films.
Haven't gotten to any - we're still on the part of the story that is introducing the concepts behind using the rings to choose your approach to tackle a problem - and the fact that the GM can make it easier or harder depending on the approach you choose.
I'm running a session 0 of Blades in the Dark having run a quick skirmish with some ringers on Sunday. Gosh that game is so much more fun to DM for than DnD. The faction mechanics are a lot tho
I'm running a session 0 of Blades in the Dark having run a quick skirmish with some ringers on Sunday. Gosh that game is so much more fun to DM for than DnD. The faction mechanics are a lot tho
It takes a session or so to get plates spinning, but once you do it, boy does it get even more fun.
"Go down, kick ass, and set yourselves up as gods, that's our Prime Directive!"
Posts
Thanks to Jacobkosh for sharing his GM aid: it was a huge help. Probably about to splurge on some more books. All in all a very successful day!
My suggestion would be twofold: start the characters off with some bonus XP (so they can buy more skills) and also create a GM supporting character to accompany them and who can pick up some of their slack.
GM characters get a bad rap because sometimes a DM (since, let's be real, it's usually in D&D) is a dingus about making the players play second banana to his super special guy, but a good GM can really improve the overall game experience for the players by having an in-game voice who can offer the players support and suggestions when they're stuck.
- Combat struck the players as a little slow and repetitive, so I think I may have been adjudicating some stuff wrong. Additionally, I didn't do a great job of briefing them on all of the options they had other than making an attack (stuff like creating advantages and the like), so that probably added to the problem. Gonna need to make some player aids listing out all of the options they have in combat.
- They liked Momentum and Threat, though they never took the bait and gave me any Threat to do stuff. That was probably because I prompted them to do so like I was the devil on their shoulder; may need to dial down the Mephistopholes next time. They were a little thrown by the idea of making easy rolls just to generate Momentum, though, figuring that there wasn't a reason to just kind of keep diddling around, making easy rolls, until they had a full Momentum pool. The answer there is twofold, I think: first, don't be a dick and slow the game to a crawl, and second, as the GM I need to write my stories with some pressure on the players to keep them from doing that.
- I shouldn't have tried the "create a character in play" method for our first go-round. Where it worked it worked great, but a couple folks forgot they had the option to fill stuff in and I didn't catch it, so they were rolling against values that were considerably lower than they should have been for several rounds running (which contributed to the slow combat, above). Also, the fact that the Talents are chosen from a list meant that when people wanted to fill in their Talents the game slowed to a crawl as the book got passed around. Should've just done life-path creation. Ah well.
- Despite the hiccups, I found the game easier to run than D&D, and I'm not sure why that is. At a glance, I don't think that the NPCs have fewer stats than a D&D monster, we were rolling a lot of dice to figure stuff out, and I was improvising a lot of difficulties and checks, but I didn't feel as drained by the bookkeeping and rules-figuring as I have when running a 3.5 or 5e game. Maybe just the excitement of a new system?
- When it comes to technobabble, less is more. A couple times I was doing pretty well, spitting hot fire about tachyons and gravimetric isolators, but I needed to quit while I was ahead instead of petering out.
Most importantly, everybody had fun, and everybody wanted to give it another try in the near future. So I went out and got myself some more of the books.Then this morning another, newish friend whose D&D group has been imploding asked me to run a one-off for some of them. So it's shaping up to be a bit of a tabletop fall in my world. Excitement!
For about the first four years of my D&D group it was just three of us. We played two characters apiece and it worked out pretty well. It also rapidly let us explore different character classes.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Oh, and I really like that melee combat is an opposed check, so there's an opportunity to counter-attack then and there and score some damage out of turn. It felt very cinematic and led to a cool moment where one of the de-evolved humans they were fighting attacked the security officer. The security officer won the roll, and the de-evolved human gave itself a complication, so I ruled that in addition to damaging it he managed to disarm it. Quick, clean, and made for an exciting moment in the game.
In my last 5th edition Eberron game I had a DMPC Warforged Paladin that subbed in when I had 2 missing players. I did a robotic voice for him and a customary fist bump greeting with the groups Barbarian. Even got to perform a heroic sacrifice T2 style with him holding off the hordes as a Creation Forge burned around him so the PCs could escape. Got some good emotions out of those players for it.
That is an excellent DMPC story.
Add: C) Do not take away any of the glory (or shame) that belongs to PC
This is one of those lines that is rarely defined but super important. As I have a strict no DMPCs, ever rule, but love allied NPCs.
Where I draw the line is whether or not they independently jump forward and solve problems. If the GM spends a lot of time pushing the NPC into the spotlight, talking to himself and rolling skill checks against obstacles, that's a DMPC. If the NPC mostly stays in the background, but gives advice and assists on checks when asked, that's an allied NPC.
In combat they can largely do whatever they want, but while they can be badasses they shouldn't be the only one who figures out a monster's secret weakness or the one with the special weapon that can kill the monster.
So like the classic "Fuck it, the NPC Cleric accompanies you" style of thing it's okay if they will spontaneously treat wounded or ill folks provided no PC has any skills in that area. If you have a PC cleric or even a druid/bard/anybody with healing this priest was cleric horrible at the medicine they were taught and needs instruction or whatever.
In combat they tend to square off against lesser foes and against those foes things tend to just stalemate or show little change in either direction. Again, unless directed by another PC as part of a clever PC plan they tend not to do wonderous heroic things.
I had an NPC Skald in 4e that was great for this. They just presented passive buffs to the party and the party even used their actions to trigger their healing because that's how the Skald aura worked there.
That’s definitely not a DMPC right
That's called an Elminster.
Occasionally the players would get miffed that he didn't turn a pack of undead, or solve a puzzle they were having trouble with, or whatever and ask in a snit, "What about the cleric? Can't he do something?" and my reply would always be, "Sure. What would you like him to do?"
Also, I would have enough shit to take care of behind the screen rather than properly run a badass level 5 cleric with a big fuck-off axe.
Like when there's a puzzle? Poof. Social interactions? Poof. Combat that the group can definitely handle without help? Poof.
See, this I disagree with when my intent is to have exactly that kind of antagonist. In our last adventure the PCs were responsible for escorting an abrasive, spoiled, untalented scion of House Cannith to the Mournlands mcguffin. I-95 was the guardian of this house, so they got some good and some bad (and whenever I-95 wasn't available in the party my 'excuse' was he was off protecting Luis d'Cannith). So yeah they really hated Luis and loved I-95, just as planned. Of course, this is really just talking about how to make compelling NPCs in my mind. Like I said, I draw the line at whether or not my NPC follows the same rules for character development that the players do.
I think the context of a 'bad GMPC' is more along the lines of when the GM is also trying to play the game as a player while simultaneously still being the GM: it just doesn't work.
Actually for that campaign I had an entire adventuring group of fully stated GMPCs; they were slightly more talented and famous than the PC party, and also lived in close proximity. Almost like a Real World D&D. Made for good tension between adventures.
That game petered out, but I'd like to think Clyde got off the island.
The Badders were guarding prisoners in a burned out gas station, and the PCs were hidden behind a highway barrier. The PC first had the others tie her up and gag her, then she used Mind Swap to switch minds with one of the badgers. The badger's mind ended up in a restrained body and the PC controlled the badger's body and had "him" abandon the post and walk over to the PC position, where they tied "him" up. The PC then swapped minds back and they attacked the rest of the badders, now down a soldier.
Later, the PC's truck got blown up by a grav tank with the hostage badder still inside and the PCs were captured by another faction that performed experiments on them. I re-introduced the badger person as a cyborg using art I found on DeviantArt or somewhere.
The players decided from the art I used that it was a female anthropomorphic badger, so then I impovised that the mad scientist had genetically changed the character's sexual characteristics in order to make the subject more docile (it didn't work).
Eventually the PCs got free and saved the cyberbadger, who then decided a. She was actually trans previously and preferred her new body, and b. she couldn't go back to Wisconsin because they were extremely intolerant and misogynistic there and wouldn't accept a badger with an unconventional identity (fuck you Scott Walker!), so she threw her lot in with the PCs.
I made up stats for Tiberious T. Bone (she kept the name) and had one of the PCs control her as a sidekick, but the player approached me and said that she didn't want to have to control a second character in combat. After that I had Tiberious become a reliable character to guard the home areas and later, in a second campaign, she was the High Inquisitor in a kingdom that featured in the plot. She eventually started dating an anthropomorphic sloth spy/dancing girl and was with the PCs when they saved the space-time continuum.
All that from a 1st level encounter. Gamma World!
"We're gonna enter this really scary forest full of spiders and I guess maybe elves and the paths don't stay still. You're coming, right?"
"Lol nope."
The best part is the counterpoint. Random inconvenience? Hand-waved away!
"Oh it's a bit dark in this cave"
"I GOT YOU FAM!" *casts 'Light' as a 6th level spell*
More investigating to occur.
Also the whole, "He, y'all, I know I was gone for awhile, but I had, like, a TOTALLY AMAZING AND UNBELIEVABLE ADVENTURE and I got, like a HUNDRED LEVELS. What have you guys been up to? Oh. Trudging through a cave? Ouch."
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
The previous GMPC was a super high-level adventurer employed as a bodyguard, who never gave her opinion unless asked. She only actually fought with the party once, but got to show off some crazy stuff as a taste of what they can look forward later on.
Also in the high end, they will have an expensive NPC in the form of a samurai space marine. So 40k doesn't really have an explicitly samurai-themed chapter or at least not one that's fully fleshed out. I thought it would be easy to do so why haven't they done it? So I made it a story thing that a samurai-themed chapter did exist, but it was destroyed by a traitor to that chapter who gave himself over to Tzeentch when he was found to be at the center of a progessivist plot and was helped by the Thousand Sons (to the point he has a number of rubrics under his current control). That samurai marine, who was barely out of being a scout when this happened and was friends with the traitor, cowarded out after taking two important heirlooms from his chapter and escaping the planet. He was later found floating in space by the Cachorodons and taken as one of their own. He proved himself to earn the gaze of the Deathwatch, and before coming to the planet that PCs are on he was working with them. He feels shame at his fleeing and once he deals with the traitor, he fully intends to kill himself to absolve his dishonor. Until then, he will basically be a peripheral character performing his own search for the traitor unless the PCs pony up the influence or at the very least a good lead to find the traitor.
Holy shit. This was a game about CHOICE. Even walking through the railroaded tutorial, and only getting a couple scenes in, there was a lot of meat... like deciding that even though you know there's a better way to tackle something, you need the extra chances at success so you approach it from a different angle... Or deciding not to keep certain dice because it leads to more strife. Or using Opportunity to change the narrative a bit. I can't wait to play more.
Haven't gotten to any - we're still on the part of the story that is introducing the concepts behind using the rings to choose your approach to tackle a problem - and the fact that the GM can make it easier or harder depending on the approach you choose.
It takes a session or so to get plates spinning, but once you do it, boy does it get even more fun.