Ep 64: Run DMPC

After listening to the episode, it almost seems like DMPCs are dangerous and costly in many ways. They take away player agency, they take away experience and gold, and they take away the spotlight. What do they actually bring to the game?

Continuous player empowerment.

The one thing a well crafted DMPCS does better than any other DM trick is to provide player empowerment. A squire will always be there to polish boots, feed animals, keep watch, and be abused. That +2 long sword is only there for the fights.

In order a DMPC to perform this task, it must fit the following criteria:

1. A DMPC must be likable. Don't give it any irksome flaws, physical disabilities or personality disorders. DMPCs are hard enough to like as it is, so please give them flaws that are less blatant, or at least somewhat understandable. Useful traits such as being a good cook or a smith also helps.
2. A DMPC must be of a lower station than the PCs. Don't put your PC's 6th level older brother, father, mother, grandparent, captain, king, prince, etc into the 3rd level party or watch your players lose their agency by deferring every decision to your DMPC. Ideally, a DMPC should be a squire, apprentice, a street urchin, an acolyte, a rescued slave, a dog or something similar. Give your players the illusion of agency by saying, "But m-master, can we go left here instead? The right side is awfully dark."
3. When a player says jump, a DMPC asks how high. Don't argue with your PCs about having to polish their boots or staying up for watch the third night in a row. The DMPC is usually there by the PCs' graces or request, not the other way around. Besides, when your obedient squire passes out from exhaustion or abuse, you can bet your players will feel bad for him.

Listen to some live play podcasts or watch some games with DMPCs. The most likable DMPCs are almost always the rescued child, the converted goblin, the urchin thief that got caught, etc.

Playing a little catch-up (haphazardly, and out of order). Just got around to listening to this. I'm glad this topic came up because I have been considering doing a DMPC in our group's next campaign.

A few thoughts:

The desire to play a character is most definitely my primary motivation for wanting a DMPC. NPCs are a dime a dozen, and its rare to have one who gets developed and actually becomes a part of the group. I haven't introduced one in the past because we have 5 players in our group (plus me as the GM, so 6 total) and that's a lot of personality to manage as it is. Two of my players will likely be dropping out next campaign, so there may be room in the party.

One issue that didn't get addressed much in the episode is narrative RP opportunities, and the desire of a GM to participate in them. The chance to develop a story from within the party. Lately, I've given my players a lot of agency to enact narrative elements outside of their party; even inserting locations and NPCs into the world. Is turnabout fair play? I'd be interested in any thoughts on this idea.

On the idea of the "ultimate solution": This is a matter of "player knowledge" vs. "PC knowledge", its just that the "player" knows a lot more. A GM should never, never even consider playing a DMPC if they are not confident in their ability to separate their own knowledge from the DMPC's knowledge. That is key to avoiding any abuse/metagaming.

I am a huge fan of the Campaign podcast. Kat Kuhl (the GM) plays a couple of DMPCs who travel with the party. One is a child that gets played by a one of the players as often as by Kat, but the other is for sure a DMPC of her own. She does a great job making this DMPC a "voice of reason" to the party, playing the straight man to the party's crazy antics. She also uses these DMPCs to enact story, to draw out story from other PCs, and to provide interesting mysteries and hooks. Kat does all this while successfully maintaining the balance of player agency and keeping the spotlight on the PCs. If you want to hear a DMPC run well, check out Campaign. Aram Vartian does a pretty good job of this as well on his Godsfall AP.

(Note: In case you didn't know, Kat Kuhl is my GM spirit animal. I've learned so much from how she runs her table. Campaign is my favorite AP podcast, and very entertaining. But listening to Kat GM is also educational! When I'm stuck on a tricky point in game, I ask myself, "How would Kat deal with this?")

Welcome once again to the forums! Love it when new members just jump right in!

I'm not sure how "inherent" the influence of a DMPC really is. If a GM plays the character well, and keeps GM knowledge out of the mix, why does that one character's opinion carry any special weight? Just because the GM is behind that character? If that is the case, I think there are some underlying trust issues between the players and the GM (something we have dealt with a bit at my table).

Also, I hear a lot about "democratic" party dynamics. Is this really a thing? I've never been involved in an actual vote at the table, either as a GM or a player. Decisions are made based on strategic discussion, in and out of character. The need for voting calls into the question the trust between players. One thing I emphasize at the table is that we are all on the same side; that our goal is to tell a compelling and dramatic story together. We all win if the story is cool and we're all having fun. When we've had issues of players wanting to do things like betray the rest of the party or do the classic "walk off 'cause my character doesn't wanna do that" move, I stop play and call out the break in the group covenant. To me, there is an (often unspoken) covenant at a healthy TTPRG table that says, "We're all here together, to play a game together. Even if our characters are antagonistic, we're going to stick together and play that out as a group." When that covenant gets broken, I stop play. Because to me, breaking that covenant is the same as breaking the game.

Having volunteered in my kids' classrooms, that analogy strikes home.

Your last point hits the nail on the head for why I'm pushing back at the idea of a DMPC "lackey". Why insert a DMPC at all if you're going to completely rob them of agency? Now, to be clear, I firmly believe that any DMPC or NPC or plot twist or anything a GM inserts into a game needs to have buy-in on PC agency. That is, nothing should be put into a game that reduces PC agency. Even difficult situations, moral dilemmas, dangerously overpowered enemies; all these need to take PC agency into account. They should always be free to make either choice in a dilemma or to foolishly attack that overpowered enemy (this is assuming the power of the enemy has been properly telegraphed; that the player knows what they are getting in to).

My argument in my previous post is actually a larger discussion about table dynamics. Having been active on these forums for quite some time, I've seen variations on certain themes that keep popping up. One of those themes is Trust. Trust between players and trust between the players and the DM. There was a time when being a DM was an adversarial role. You were trying to stop the PCs; trying to make things hard for them. That is shifting in the broader RPG space as people get a taste of games that encourage player engagement with the narrative.

Or maybe I'm just getting old. I saw a chart recently tracking interest in certain game play styles correlated to age. The notable trend was that as people age, competitive games (PvP) become less appealing. I'm feeling this way in a lot of places.

My desire to insert a DMPC has a lot to do with a desire to interact with the PCs more directly. To be more "in" the story, rather than just overseeing the story. Not to direct the story or narrative; the PCs should always be the stars and their directives should be paramount. I desire a chance to participate more intimately with the personal interplay between PCs. This is the angle I wish had been discussed in this podcast, and I'm very interested in everyone's take on it.

Lets look at the examples I cited from the Campaign podcast. Tamlin, the child (5yo), is very much the "squire" type DMPC. He lives with and travels with the full group, but is rarely involved directly in combat and rarely has a take on the big decisions (he's 5 years old, after all). But he plays a huge roll in the party's motives and interactions, both between party members and interactions with the external environment. There's arguments over being a "bad influence", the lessons being taught the kid, what sort of situations he should be involved in, how best to keep him safe, etc. These inform some of the party dynamics and the group's interactions with and surrounding Tamlin reveal pieces of their deeper personalities (as interacting with children often will).

On the other hand, we have Lyntel. She is an adult adventurer, very much created in the style of a PC. If someone else were GMing, Kat could easily play Lyntel as a primary PC. But often she falls into the background of the narrative. She is there, and throws in her two cents, making tactical suggestions, helping set up NPC contacts, even at times choosing the party's next destination when they are at loose ends. But when combat happens, she is almost always not involved, or her actions are dictated by the players and roleplayed by the GM (not sure about dice rolls, but I encourage allowing players to roll the dice as often as possible when rolls are needed). Lyntel also fills a roll of interacting with the PCs and pulling out interesting aspects of their personalities. Asking hard questions, discussing motives, goals, etc.

Now, in a broad sense, I think the DMPC is something to discourage. The PCs should always be the protagonists of a story, and many GMs already veer into the storyteller space rather than the story participant space. A DMPC can all to easily make this worse. But there are ways to play them out that can lead to interesting narrative play.

Very interesting angle that I hadn't really thought of! It bring up another issue I've been thinking about lately: How and when to have effective out of game conversations about the table; metagame discussions.

It seems that we often fail to openly discuss what sort of game we are looking to play around the table. It makes a big difference if I, as a GM, just throw a DMPC out there and run with it vs. having a metagame discussion with the group beforehand in which I outline my motives for inserting said DMPC and what the players should expect out of that DMPC in game. If a GM outlines that they will be playing the DMPC as if they had no knowledge of the metagame plot, as if they were a PC, then the players have a cue that they should take any advice or council from the DMPC with a grain of salt, and make decisions based on their PC's knowledge (as it should be anyway).

Now, here's another question: Shouldn't the players be able to trust that you will provide a light at the end of the tunnel? This is a rather large GM philosophy issue, but it bears discussion.

We talk a lot about worldbuilding, and one of the discussion that's come up is whether or not unbeatable opponents should be inserted into a game. Should there be challenges in the world that the PCs simply cannot defeat? Now, a game like Edge of the Empire makes this a mechanical concern. There is a tag you can put on an adversary called Nemesis. A Nemesis character can be revived by game mechanics when they are killed (flipping a dark Destiny point). This allows the party to "defeat" the Nemesis, but gives the GM leverage to bring back the major enemy at a later date. Basically, a Nemesis cannot be killed until it is narratively appropriate for them to die. 

I've come to dislike the option of the TPK. I've decided that, in my games, a TPK is only possible if it creates a dramatic change in the story and provides a fitting ending (taking a cue from the Nemesis rules above). I never want a player to walk away from my table with a dead PC's character sheet thinking, "Well that was lame." If a character dies, or the whole party dies, it should be tied in with exciting narrative. Some truly excellent stories have tragic endings (looking at you George R. R. Martin), but we still love them because they are emotionally compelling. Now, I previously relied on my group's confidence that I will kill them to provide tension in game. Playing EotE, where the players basically can't die mechanically, I've moved away from that and this has been a good thing. I'm now finding myself using more narrative to create tension. Inserting troublesome NPCs and old enemies, creating tough situations where the PCs seem to have no way out, pushing back against their characters' goals using story.

To your first points there: Me too. My goal is always to help facilitate the stories of my players. I've also had a few NPC who traveled with the party. I always forget they are there! Because they don't have enough presence to carry weight along side the big personalities of the PCs. Most recently, the group had their ship stolen and couple PCs got bound up and taken prisoner. There was an NPC on the ship with them. I completely forgot about him for two sessions. I've had to ret-con what happened and y'all know I how much I hate ret-con.

More importantly: the players forgot too. They haven't even asked about him. This is another piece of my desire to insert more fleshed out and significant characters into the story: my players treat NPCs as, to misquote Joat, "disposable magic items or loot dispensaries". I do my best to give them personality. I describe them richly, I give them voices and personalities, but in the end, they always get forgotten. By me and the players. I'm very open to feed back on this point. To be perfectly honest, I'm only realizing this is a motivation of mine as I write this.

I'll decline to post a pic of my cheap plastic WWKD bracelet...