03-27-2018, 11:50 AM | #11 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: GM's PC
Avoid outside of troupe style games. In a troupe style game, they should usually be delegated to being somewhere else or doing boring background stuff.
I would generally use rivals or adversaries for that. |
03-27-2018, 12:01 PM | #12 |
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(If you have to ask . . .) Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Somewhere high up.
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Re: GM's PC
That usually has the problem where new players don't know what can happen if they get hit with something they're unclear about. (Or unawares of.)
Let them observe a fight, between NPCs, where these "sick moves" are being displayed. If the focus of the game is for the PCs to learn how to fight, they might react badly to it, but a Mr. Miyagi scene, where he shows up to save them, then teaches them how to fight might also work. The way that has always worked for me, with new players, is simply telling them, during the fight: "Hey, right now, if you do [insert maneuver here], you stand a good chance of [expected results of maneuver]." And give them a few times to get the hang of it. Additionally, you can just ask "what do you want to do?" and they tell you, in common terms, what they want to do. You then translate that into maneuvers and penalties, whilst explaining yourself, and give them the final roll they need to make. The PCs should be the focus of the game. GMPCs tend to be scene-stealers and game-killers. That's not to say that they can't be done well, but that they usually aren't. |
03-27-2018, 12:14 PM | #13 |
GURPS Line Editor
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: GM's PC
A fully realized character played by the GM is almost never a good idea. Playing a character with anything like the same level of attention players are expected to sustain consumes mental resources that even the best GM ought to be devoting to the myriad tasks of being a GM. And even if the GM is being 100% fair and honest, the players will suspect favoritism. So you'll end up distracted and doubted . . . not good.
The way to teach the players the system is to counsel them on actions the PCs should be good at; e.g., "You have Karate at 20. You know, there's this option called Deceptive Attack that gives you zero risk for -2 to enemy defenses. It's better than just rolling to hit at 20." If a character has a decent investment in doing a task, player inexperience shouldn't stand in the way of that task, and it's the GM's job to show the players their options. Of course, that isn't the same thing as "no henchmen, hirelings, sidekicks, or fodder." Less-capable NPCs – or those added to provide a capability none of the players finds interesting – are generally fine. They should probably be fairly low-profile most of the time, though, both because that preserves the GM's mental resources and because it avoids upstaging the PCs. "Look, a computer. Have the pencil-neck hack it while we do cool action stuff" is fine.
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Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch <kromm@sjgames.com> GURPS Line Editor, Steve Jackson Games My DreamWidth [Just GURPS News] |
03-27-2018, 12:15 PM | #14 |
GURPS Line Editor
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: GM's PC
This. It's pretty much a required GM skill.
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Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch <kromm@sjgames.com> GURPS Line Editor, Steve Jackson Games My DreamWidth [Just GURPS News] |
03-27-2018, 12:22 PM | #15 |
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Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Southeast NC
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Re: GM's PC
Or prominent NPCs that are simply not the focus of the story, even if they are critical to it. For some reason, the first thing that popped into my mind is the master in a Maid RPG game.
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RyanW - Actually one normal sized guy in three tiny trenchcoats. |
03-27-2018, 12:31 PM | #16 | ||
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: GM's PC
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I'd also recommend one other option: Run a campaign where the PCs are students, or apprentices, or new recruits. Then you can spend part of each session with them doing a training exercise where they all have to do some particular maneuver that you want the players to know about, at default, and under non-live-ammo conditions. This will both give them a chance to become familiar with it and give them a sense for how hard it is, so they can decide if they want to try using it and/or put training time into buying it up. I did that in my French swashbuckling campaign and the results were good.
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Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
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03-27-2018, 12:36 PM | #17 |
Join Date: Aug 2012
Location: Northeast Kansas
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Re: GM's PC
I will say that I am about to run a game with 2 full point GM controlled PCs, but it's an Action game where everyone agreed that a wire rat and a hacker were essential, but no one wanted to play them.
These "GMPCs" will make all their rolls off-screen, and mostly only exist within the player's space if the players want to bring them along for some reason, or as a voice on a headset. So the intention is that the hacker and the wire rat roll into town in advance of the real PCs, set up surveillance of some obvious targets, and give the PCs the chance to do what they want to do: bullet ballet. But if the PCs want to get bugs into a highly secured area, they may decide to send the Wire Rat back in with the infiltrator so they can get more intel. She's mediocre at best in combat, and has cowardice, specifically so that she'll never outshine the PCs in what they want to shine in. But these characters are extremely useful within their specialties, which no players actually want to play. If my Players decide they don't want a wheel-man, rather than create an expert transporter who does all the cool stuff in chase scenes, I'm just going to tailor the chase scenes to the skills of the players involved, or remove chases altogether. |
03-27-2018, 12:59 PM | #18 | |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: GM's PC
Quote:
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"The navy could probably win a war without coffee but would prefer not to try"-Samuel Eliot Morrison |
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03-27-2018, 01:09 PM | #19 | |
Join Date: Jul 2012
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Re: GM's PC
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For instance, our assassin's trick of Fast-Draw Hidden Weapon then Targeted Attack: Face required a lot of skills to work (Holdout, Fast-Draw, Knife or Thrown Weapon: Knife, and enough Targeted Attack to stand a decent chance of connecting). If the player wanted to do a trick like that, thinks it is something their character would do, but didn't realise all the skills they would need, I'd let them use these "spare points" for rounding those skills off. The other idea is just allowing minor point debts. If it's a skill the player sees the character as having but had an oversight when it came to putting points into it, I'd allow them to put 2 points into that skill right away and then take it out of their points for the end of the session. |
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03-27-2018, 03:23 PM | #20 |
Banned
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Bristol
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Re: GM's PC
I found them useful in the form of flagging the PCs in the right direction if they get hopelessly lost. Or providing the transport to the next scene.
More often they are not present, maybe a phone call away but nothing really involved. |
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