Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Reality vs Myth

I was recently over at a friend's home for dinner and their two daughters play Dragonquest. In the course of the discussion the daughter that plays Luka Dragonclaw kept asking me if her old mentor/patron was dead or alive.  I have often told her that the bronze dragon mentor was dead. The group has been away from the main campaign world and things got ugly in their absence. One of the lines I blurted out was that I was God (as far as the gaming world went) but any good GM/DM/Narrative Provider can tell that is a myth. While one might fancy themselves the "god" of their little campaign world, the real truth is very much the opposite. You play a cast of thousands, mostly forgettable, many dead, and only a few memorable castings along the way. Memorable NPCs can add a lot to the game and its fun, however they are not the core of a campaign, the players are. Bad GMs flex their nigh-divine might more readily and will probably lose players in the end as a result of their indiscretions and erroneous decisions. Bad GMs tend to make their NPCs overshadow the players as the main agents of narrative flow. When this happens, one has to ask why the players even bother to play? Anyway, just a random comment on a slow morning.

1 comment:

  1. When I write NPCs, I try to create characters that may be a bit more powerful than the PCs, but they tend to be deeply flawed in a way that keeps them from reaching their full potential. Unhampered by such baggage, the PCs are the ones most capable of reaching the heights. As they advance, the PCs will still be bogged down in petty dramas and crippling emotional trauma.

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