Session 12C: To the Aid of Goblins
“The rest will be needed here. To hold the bridge,” Itarek said. “And they would not last long against the horrors that we have seen.”
Here’s something that I wish I was better at as a GM: Running NPC allies accompanying the PCs.
The internet is filled with horror stories of the dreaded “GMPC” – where the GM essentially tries to be a player in their own campaign by running a character indistinguishable from being another PC in the party. Although technically possible (and you can find a few success stories here and there), what usually happens is that the GMPC becomes the unabashed star / spotlight hog of the entire campaign and/or is used to forcibly railroad the players.
Because, frankly, the GM already controls the entire world, which should be power and participation enough for anyone. So 99 times out of 100, for a GMPC to exist there has to be some other shitty agenda motivating it in the first place.
The idea of running a GMPC isn’t just an obvious anathema to my whole ethos as an RPG gamer, I’m pretty sure it’s something I’m actually incapable of doing.
When circumstances, like those in the current campaign journal, dictate that NPCs will be allying with the PCs and traveling with them for some length of time, what generally happens is a simple, three-step process:
- I make an effort to make sure those NPCs are contributing and present in the group.
- I get distracted.
- “Oh, crap. Right. Robert is here. Uh… I guess he was standing in the back this whole time?”
Itarek and the other goblins in the current sessions actually work out pretty well because so much of their time onscreen is spent in raid-type or combat situations, which means that I’ve got an initiative list which constantly pushes them back into the center of my attention.
It’s odd, really, because I can successfully run incredibly complex social interactions featuring dozens of characters without a hitch. But as soon as an NPC gets firmly aligned with the PCs, it feels almost inevitable that they’re going to turn invisible.
I think there’s probably a couple of factors at play here.
First, to pat myself on the back a little bit, I am usually pushing myself to the limits of my mental gymnastics when it comes to running a game. I’m a pretty big believer in the idea that there’s always another element you could be adding to improve your game, it’s just a question of whether or not you can. So if something seems non-essential, it’s easy for it to get replaced by a different ball and fade away unnoticed.
Second, I think I have a strong, instinctual predilection towards viewing NPC allies as non-essential. One of my primary pleasures as a GM is seeing how player-driven decisions interact with the situations I’ve created in the game world. NPC allies, who should logically and naturally become part of the group’s decision-making process, aren’t just superfluous to that creative agenda, they’re actually kind of innately hostile to it.
GMPCs being anathema to my values as a gamer? I meant that pretty literally.
So whenever things heat up in the campaign, NPC allies are just naturally the first thing to get dropped in favor of almost literally anything else.
When you have a weakness like this, there’s generally three things you can do about it. First, you can steer away from it. And you will, in fact, notice that it’s a rather rare day when you’ll see me deliberately pushing scenarios in which NPCs will naturally ally with the PCs. (When allies do crop up, it’s far more likely to be because the PCs are seeking them out.)
Second, you can focus on improving it. In the case of losing focus on NPC allies, part of that is just literally focusing, of course. But you can also try other methods of keeping the NPC in the forefront of your brain. Giving them a unique miniature, for example, can help. (Although in some of the chaotic battlefields I run, they can still get lost.) An idea that just occurred to me as I was writing this: Clip a picture of the NPC ally to the inside of my GM screen so that the NPC is literally looking me in the eye. (Not sure why something so obvious has never occurred to me before.)
Third, find alternative techniques to achieve the same ends. For example, I’ll often kick an NPC ally to one of the players and ask them to run them as a secondary character if at all possible. (Often it isn’t, unfortunately, because the NPC has an independent agenda that can’t be assumed by the players, for reasons rather similar, actually, to why GMs shouldn’t be running GMPCs.) For NPC allies that are sticking around for awhile, I’ve even been known to invite in temporary players to assume the role. Having a co-GM who can focus on the areas where you’re weak can also be effective.
When you can have successes in the areas where you’re weak, of course, you’ll enjoy a real sense of accomplishment. That turned out to be the case with Itarek and his goblins, who came – as you’ll begin to see in Session 13 – to assume a very special place in the campaign.
I recall the first time a player asked if I would be running a “GMPC” in a campaign, and I had no idea what he was talking about; another player had to explain to me what it was. I asked, “Why would I do that? I run all the NPCs?”
I have plenty to worry about in a game to not need a full-time character to run on top of it…
One GM I know had a monk GMPC. He used to belong to an order with a vow of silence, so he only spoke in emergencies. I think the idea was to avoid giving too many suggestions to the party.
I have a friend who just discovered D&D for the first time a few months ago, thanks to Critical Role. His brother, who already played D&D, insisted that he GM, but he really wanted to play his own character too, so he did both. I’ve joined them a couple of times (he’s running the game for his two young kids, his brother, and his nephew), and I haven’t seen any tendency towards the abuses you mentioned.
Oh, that is interesting.
I suspect the difficulty is partly inherent in the premise. Like, if an NPC who’s temporarily along with the party tries to act like any other member of the party, it ends up with a lot of “NPC talking to other NPC” or “NPC suggesting courses of action when the GM knows what the likely outcome will be”.
So it naturally goes one way or the other. NPCs can be brought in for a specific role, either a mechanical one (“we brought along a hireling who knows how to track”) or a social one (“we’re escorting the prince”). In which case they usually hang back and let the party have the initiative, else you run into the problems above. And ideally have no role in combat or a nicely specific role in combat so the GM doesn’t need to try to use too much judgement calls while they’re also running the other side.
On the other hand, if they actually matter, it’s usually important that they have specific goals temporarily but not permanently aligned with the PCs and their own agenda. Then things play out like with non-accompanying NPC allies, or like at a dinner party role-play or whatever. They are constantly making relevant decisions and debating them with the PCs and it’s hard to forget them because they’re central to what’s going on. It sounds like that worked well in this case.
It certainly *can* work to have something in the middle, a party of PCs and some NPCs treated equally. But I think it naturally pulls against most of what you want to achieve, so aiming for “occasionally, a relevant ally, else a deliberately limited ally” may actually be better.
But I’m not sure, I’m working this out as I go along.
I have to confess that I’ve often forgotten about a GMNPCs existence when they would have been useful – such as the time a GMNPC who could fly starships apparently said nothing while the party spent half a day desperately in search of a pilot…
It’s interesting to me that Tomb of Annihilation (the most recent 5E hardcover adventure) has 9 guides for hire, some of which are a pair of guides in one. It’s heavily implied that all groups should very much consider taking these guides with them as they not only help in the literal guide role but also have side quests and knowledge they only impart to people who are employing them. Let alone their combat abilities, spell casting etc.
What is weird is that there is almost no advice on how to actually play these characters in a party. They of course have descriptions, motivations etc. but there is no direct GM advice on how much of a role they should have within the group.
Personally I’m going to handle them as somewhat silent NPCs who only really have an opinion if something goes against their alignment, is in their explicit areas of expertise, or relates to them or their sidequests.
Rereading my earlier comment after having read some more of the campaign log, I can see why the party and Itarak worked well together.
Funnily enough, I’ve been thinking about something similar, one of the PCs in my new group has an unusually active familiar, who in some ways I’ve been thinking of as an extra PC. But it feels like it will end up with 90% of the time the actions driven by the player, with suggestions and roleplay inserted by me when it feels appropriate. But the familiar will naturally not take a big part in actual decision making, which is necessary because I want the players to make those decisions, not works because it has a lot of suggestions that are deliberately not actually very helpful (but could occasionally highlight a relevant option). And because it’s natural for it to disappear off scene when it doesn’t have anything to contribute.
But that mostly works because it’s a small addition. A more equal participant, I think, would need to have clear preferences (always attack! never attack! or whatever) that mean they’re not usually leading major decisions. And even then, will just fight PCs for spotlight time if they’re there a lot.
Funny. When I am forced to do it, one of the first things that I try to do is insert that the GMPC can fail (and sometimes spectacularly) and that the conclusions they come to are not necessarily the right thing to do but what the NPC would logically think to do.
Ironically, that has lead to at least one GMPC’s death. Which was great … it sold the group that I’m totally willing to kill characters. (But then as the GM I had to make it clear if they kept losing the GMPC they insisted that I play to fill a role for the group, they will stop eventually finding people willing to join the group given what is going on.)
For me, I just treat it as another NPC to play out of combat — I just try to avoid lengthy conversations with myself if possible. I also limit the GMPC’s knowledge to what the players already know for the most part plus whatever the character would have from its background/experience. If the players failed to reach a conclusion, the GMPC isn’t likely to reach it either.
Along those same lines, you can instantaneously demonstrate the fallibility/unreliability of GMPC opinions by making sure there are at least TWO NPCs in the scene and that they strongly argue for two completely incompatible courses of action.