Drakevarg
2010-01-18, 01:15 PM
A while back, I was playing a campaign run by my cousin. In this campaign, which was admittedly quite rambling and incoherent, he introduced three characters which I would categorize under DMPC, Deus Ex Machina, and ???.
The DMPC was a fellow named Wilhelm ver Magnusson, whom we first met upon awaking in the aftermath of an ambush that our military party recieved. (Our background was that we were officers in the local military, or rather the party's ranger was. Being a Gnoll who didn't speak Common, the military basically considered me the ranger's "pet," since he was the only one who could understand me.) He was the only other survivor.
After a violent battle that result in our near-death before he came out of completely nowhere, sprinted across the entire battlefield in one round, and used a custom weapon to instantly take out the leader of the bandits we were fighting, he stole an opportunity for my character to torture the bandit leader for information, I tried to kill him via tossing him off a cliff. He escaped and we kinda just assumed he'd become a recurring villian because of that. Later he turned up, mauled half to death by some minotaurs we'd killed not long before, and told our ranger (who'd been scouting ahead and found him) that he was actually a member of this world's equivalent to the CIA and was ordered to hunt down some mysterious evil fellow. After chugging down a health potion, he wandered into some dungeon, killed the bad guy off-screen, and the fortress we were in started to collapse. So we did the whole outrun the fireball thing, and he wandered off to collect the bounty, which he later came back and split with us before riding off into the sunset again.
I call this guy a DMPC because he pretty much got to do the plot all by himself. He beat the bandit leader, he tortured the bandit leader for information, and he killed the villian (that we weren't even TOLD about), and basically did all the day-saving alone. Meanwhile, our party wandered around a vaguely haunted fortress all day, getting pissed off by what appeared to be a pocket dimension filled with an infinite supply of identical rooms.
Oh, and he didn't even bother to get statted out until after the whole bandit fight.
Next, the Deus Ex Machina; this one was alot simpler. Whilst taking a boat to the nearest city that didn't suck (the one we were at only had a single silver weapon in the entire city of 10,000, apparently.) we met a fellow named Dan the Man. At one point, we we had an encounter with pirates. Very well equipped pirates, since they had alchemist's fire-based spearguns and a boarding party that consisted of a tower shield phalanx. (Fortunately my character had absurdly high Strength and I just lopped the shields in half.)
Anywho, my plan was to board the pirate ship and light their supply of alchemist's fire, making their ship kersplode. I managed to get the boarding half done, but as I was trying to punch a hole to the floor below me to reach the alchemist fire stores, the pirates abandoned ship and lit the stuff themselves. With the ranger and I still on board.
Predictibly we died in the resulting explosion. However, by some amazing coincidence Dan the Man was an epic-level cleric and rezzed us. I say Deus Ex Machina because we had no hintings at all that Dan the Man was anything but background fluff.
And now the ???, and the actual question behind this whole rant. ??? was a fellow named Vlad. He was a 6th level mage, and I knew his stats because I was asked to write them up myself. (The DM in question was good at ad-libbing, but I knew more about the rules than he did.) The character wasn't invincible, my character could snap him like a twig if I ever got within melee range, but he did have access to the spell Summon Undead III, which became absurdly overpowered when you considered that the DM houseruled that summon spells last until the end of combat. Vlad could use it to summon a Young Adult Red Dragon Skeleton. With 20 HD. Yeah.
The reason I'm not just labeling him as a DMPC just yet is that after he'd done his thing and left, he showed up again in a later session. This time he didn't have stats, and basically just wandered around as an omnipotent nutjob. He never did anything that directly affected the plot, he just wandered in and out of the story, did wacky things, and left. The DM later told us that Vlad was basically his "Stess Ball," which he made come in and do insane things just so the DM wouldn't snap under the stress of pulling an entire narrative out of his ass.
So the question I offer to you, apart from an invitation to simply give your thoughts on all that, is "does an omnipotent nutball who wanders in and out of the story but never directly affects the plot" a DMPC, or just a distraction?
The DMPC was a fellow named Wilhelm ver Magnusson, whom we first met upon awaking in the aftermath of an ambush that our military party recieved. (Our background was that we were officers in the local military, or rather the party's ranger was. Being a Gnoll who didn't speak Common, the military basically considered me the ranger's "pet," since he was the only one who could understand me.) He was the only other survivor.
After a violent battle that result in our near-death before he came out of completely nowhere, sprinted across the entire battlefield in one round, and used a custom weapon to instantly take out the leader of the bandits we were fighting, he stole an opportunity for my character to torture the bandit leader for information, I tried to kill him via tossing him off a cliff. He escaped and we kinda just assumed he'd become a recurring villian because of that. Later he turned up, mauled half to death by some minotaurs we'd killed not long before, and told our ranger (who'd been scouting ahead and found him) that he was actually a member of this world's equivalent to the CIA and was ordered to hunt down some mysterious evil fellow. After chugging down a health potion, he wandered into some dungeon, killed the bad guy off-screen, and the fortress we were in started to collapse. So we did the whole outrun the fireball thing, and he wandered off to collect the bounty, which he later came back and split with us before riding off into the sunset again.
I call this guy a DMPC because he pretty much got to do the plot all by himself. He beat the bandit leader, he tortured the bandit leader for information, and he killed the villian (that we weren't even TOLD about), and basically did all the day-saving alone. Meanwhile, our party wandered around a vaguely haunted fortress all day, getting pissed off by what appeared to be a pocket dimension filled with an infinite supply of identical rooms.
Oh, and he didn't even bother to get statted out until after the whole bandit fight.
Next, the Deus Ex Machina; this one was alot simpler. Whilst taking a boat to the nearest city that didn't suck (the one we were at only had a single silver weapon in the entire city of 10,000, apparently.) we met a fellow named Dan the Man. At one point, we we had an encounter with pirates. Very well equipped pirates, since they had alchemist's fire-based spearguns and a boarding party that consisted of a tower shield phalanx. (Fortunately my character had absurdly high Strength and I just lopped the shields in half.)
Anywho, my plan was to board the pirate ship and light their supply of alchemist's fire, making their ship kersplode. I managed to get the boarding half done, but as I was trying to punch a hole to the floor below me to reach the alchemist fire stores, the pirates abandoned ship and lit the stuff themselves. With the ranger and I still on board.
Predictibly we died in the resulting explosion. However, by some amazing coincidence Dan the Man was an epic-level cleric and rezzed us. I say Deus Ex Machina because we had no hintings at all that Dan the Man was anything but background fluff.
And now the ???, and the actual question behind this whole rant. ??? was a fellow named Vlad. He was a 6th level mage, and I knew his stats because I was asked to write them up myself. (The DM in question was good at ad-libbing, but I knew more about the rules than he did.) The character wasn't invincible, my character could snap him like a twig if I ever got within melee range, but he did have access to the spell Summon Undead III, which became absurdly overpowered when you considered that the DM houseruled that summon spells last until the end of combat. Vlad could use it to summon a Young Adult Red Dragon Skeleton. With 20 HD. Yeah.
The reason I'm not just labeling him as a DMPC just yet is that after he'd done his thing and left, he showed up again in a later session. This time he didn't have stats, and basically just wandered around as an omnipotent nutjob. He never did anything that directly affected the plot, he just wandered in and out of the story, did wacky things, and left. The DM later told us that Vlad was basically his "Stess Ball," which he made come in and do insane things just so the DM wouldn't snap under the stress of pulling an entire narrative out of his ass.
So the question I offer to you, apart from an invitation to simply give your thoughts on all that, is "does an omnipotent nutball who wanders in and out of the story but never directly affects the plot" a DMPC, or just a distraction?