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Old 03-27-2018, 11:50 AM   #11
Anthony
 
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Default Re: GM's PC

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Originally Posted by cabaiomonte View Post
So, what are your opinions on Master's PCs?
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.
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Originally Posted by cabaiomonte View Post
I'm soonish conna start a game session with 3 players new to RPGs.
I wanted to give them a character to show them all the sick moves they can do in GURPS
I would generally use rivals or adversaries for that.
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Old 03-27-2018, 12:01 PM   #12
Mark Skarr
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Default Re: GM's PC

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I would generally use rivals or adversaries for that.
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.
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Old 03-27-2018, 12:14 PM   #13
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Default 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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Old 03-27-2018, 12:15 PM   #14
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Default Re: GM's PC

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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.
This. It's pretty much a required GM skill.
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Old 03-27-2018, 12:22 PM   #15
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Default Re: GM's PC

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Less-capable NPCs – or those added to provide a capability none of the players finds interesting – are generally fine.
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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Old 03-27-2018, 12:31 PM   #16
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Default Re: GM's PC

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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.
I agree with Kromm's endorsement of this. I used it all the time.

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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.
Yes. I really like it when one of my NPCs starts coming to life, and the PCs get enthusiastic about them. But if that happens, I make a point of not having them on camera more than a fraction of the time; they shouldn't be the focus of attention more than half as much as any one PC.

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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Old 03-27-2018, 12:36 PM   #17
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Default 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.
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Old 03-27-2018, 12:59 PM   #18
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Default Re: GM's PC

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* It's really hard for the GM to shut out their GM knowledge while making decisions for the GMPC, which gives the GMPC an advantage over the other PCs. This is made worse if the GMPC also becomes the GM's method of guiding the party through the adventure, as it limits the other players' freedom of choice.
If the GM is playing Mentor to another PC's Telemachus that could be a feature rather then a bug. Of course Telemachus did not know who Mentor was.
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Old 03-27-2018, 01:09 PM   #19
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Default Re: GM's PC

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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.
Another trick that might be valuable is giving the PCs say around 20 extra character points that aren't allotted yet, left floating in case a character wants to do something that the character probably knows but the player isn't aware that they needed skill X for it.

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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Old 03-27-2018, 03:23 PM   #20
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Default 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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