Originally posted to our prior and, as of NYE 2024, suddenly and inexplicably dead old website (RIP), see below for a fantastic discursive review on the art of game-masters’ NPC-friends by our resident visual-arts/RPG design expert, Elodie!

It’s a fantastic article and forms part of both our Tabletop Thursdays segments, as well as intermittent pieces by Elodie, myself and the ISC team in the tabletop/hobby space.

Peace, Love, Game Mastery and Grindcore xoxo - Brady.

I think it's only fair that, rather than occupy space with news and other tidbits, given we have the arrival of a new entrant to the Inner-Strength Check contributor team, I'll gladly promote her fantastic thoughts on the oft-contested topic of gamemaster-run NPC's (usually referred to as GMPC's) front-and-centre for this week.

This is Elodie's first article with our team, and a special moment indeed!

And, I might add, her opinion in the article is something i definitely agree with personally, as a game-master. Acknowleding of course that everyone's game is different and, like anything else, this very much a to-taste and ongoing discussion thing between a GM/DM and their group.

p.s. Sanguine got a mention! Yay! Rest in Peace, Sanguine - post-apocalyptic Berlin hardly knew ye.

Without further ado, here's the scoop:

A Love Letter to the GMPC

A Game Master’s Player Character.

I’m sure we’ve all heard the same horror story about the high-level NPC who swoops in and steals the glory from a D&D party.

Why does he do it?

Because he can, and it makes the Game Master feel good at the expense of everyone else. But I’m going to posit something that may or may not be controversial:

That’s not what a GMPC is. Well, not a good one, at least.

This isn’t an issue of a GM not staying in their lane, as it is an issue of them having power and not knowing how not to abuse it.

This could be for any number of reasons, but my money says it’s because they never watched Spiderman.

Actually, I’m not really qualified to psychoanalyse bad GMs (but if you ever want to figure out why a tree is horny, I am so qualified), so let’s change lanes. What are some benefits of a well-executed GMPC?

Well…

Guidance.

I think this is the most obvious benefit.

A quest-giver NPC that’s portable enough to take on quests? Sign me up! So there are a few angles to this. For one, I think it can be comforting for new players (children especially) to have an ‘authority figure’ in the party to assure them they aren’t just wandering aimlessly into the forest, that there is in fact a goal that they are working towards.

And on a more immediate level, sometimes shy/new/young players just need an occasional nudge in the right direction (or, if your campaign is open-ended, any direction at all).

On the other hand, sometimes players need to literally be told how to complete a quest. Sometimes they don’t think to gather all the information they need before leaving town.

Sometimes, your lovely blogger admits to being a frazzled GM who relies heavily on improv and quick thinking. If a blogger ever does that, you can assume that she probably either forgets to reveal important information before the PCs leave town, or doesn’t figure out what information she actually needs to reveal until after the PCs have already left town and are discussing going in the exact opposite direction of where all her prepared material is.

Party Dynamics

In games like D&D, a small group or a party of carbon copies is no fun. Sometimes a GMPC can just pad the group out and provide extra opportunities for banter and/or other character interactions. It’s valuable to have a ‘spare’ character who can step in during those quiet moments. I want to call out one example in particular.

I remember my Mutant Year Zero campaign way back in (year that sounds recent in the scheme of things but feels like a lifetime ago). There was a GM-controlled character in the party. He was an absolute piece of work. We all hated him. Every time we came up against a powerful enemy we threatened to feed him to it.

[Editor's Note: She's talking about the pretentious pseudo-intellectual GMPC Sanguine, and he was a royal pain even to me as the GM! What a miserable toff. - Brady]

Um. This is a positive thing. Trust me. I’m getting to it.

I more recently played in a 5e campaign where a player character fell into this role organically, by possessing the remarkable ability to keep his foot in his mouth at all times. It was great fun at first. Our characters were tired, battered and facing the ultimate evil. And then here was this jolly fellow, rubbing salt in all our wounds every time he opened his mouth. Indignation is fun to roleplay.

But after a few sessions it felt gross. This character was, during that time, the guy’s only contribution to our group. And all he got in return for the contribution was rage. We didn’t know if that had been his intention and we didn’t know if he had the emotional fortitude to compartmentalise that part of himself (we got very into character).

Had he also been the GM, we could have hit him with ‘if we’re angry that means you’re doing your job’ or ‘don’t worry, you’ve already given us 50 lovable NPCs and this changes things up.’ In fact, I think it would have gone without saying.

And you know what? Sometimes it’s just fun to have a character follow you around and make you look cool (either because they decree you to be cool, or because they’re uncool in comparison).

That’s right - that bad GMPC I mentioned right at the beginning has an arch-nemesis.

Emotional Stakes

I’m a bastard.

Ask anyone I know. I’m cruel, vindictive and there’s nothing I love more than torturing lovable NPCs and pouring petrol on PCs’ dumpster fire angsty backstories.

Actually, scratch that. I love any sort of emotional connection in stories and games, and my players tend to care a lot less about the plight of ‘Scott who they bought a mushroom off twelve sessions ago in Neverwinter’ than of ‘Scott who’s been travelling with the party and has saved their lives repeatedly’.

What’s that?

Did I hear you say ‘But Élodie, if you want to torture players, why not target the PCs directly?’

Great question!

And the truth is, I do. I’ve made campaigns around character backstories and I’ve killed PCs. But, well, even the juiciest, most tragic backstories can’t carry a whole campaign, and, well, occasionally I get a crazy player who doesn’t send me a novella-length backstory about how cool and edgy their character is.

And on that second point, I try to avoid killing PCs with impunity, for reasons that could fill an entire blog post on their own (I believe there have been several, in fact). But the upshot is that- if you’re trying to craft a story where the stakes feel real- it’s problematic to threaten ending a PC’s journey outright, but it’s deliciously juicy to threaten the things they care about.

No, my players did not threaten my life when they thought my GMPC had been killed in a teleportation accident, I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Organic Storytelling

If a player makes a decision that makes sense in the established fiction and doesn’t, for whatever reason, ruin everybody’s fun, I don’t enjoy having to say ‘no’. I’ll admit I’ve done it before for mechanical reasons (I quickly thew out that system). When I run games, I don’t usually set out to play a character in the party, but it often happens organically. If a player recruits- or in some cases seduces (not naming names but the seductress manages a blog that rhymes with ‘dinner-length trek’)- an NPC into the party, my response will never be ‘sorry but they’re not joining until you can recruit or seduce another real person into the party.

Speaking of ‘spare’ party members, I’m in a campaign with long-term attendance problems and even longer character arcs. The remaining players didn’t want the GM to shoehorn in an unsatisfactory excuse for the orphaned character to leave the party, and neither did the player who left said character on their doorstep. Doubly so since he was considering returning to the campaign some day. So who does the character go to? The GM?

Well, actually, no. In this case the character went to a brand-new player (coughmecough). But what happened after this was the original player eventually returned during a dramatic moment where the party didn’t really want to go on a recruiting spree. But guess who had already ingratiated themselves into the party and was blank enough to be swiftly and easily taken over by a player?

I think you can guess this one.