Image Source: RPGnet’s Forums. (Check out Wil’s blog he’s a gamer too.)
This is part of a series of articles that tackles the concepts of tropes and how they can be applied by a DM/GM to improve their favorite Role-Playing game adventures. It is heavily inspired by the sheer goodness of the TV Tropes Wiki.
We’re probably all guilty of having introduced a Marty Stu (or his sister Mary Sue) at least once in our careers. Who are they you ask?
Mary Sue is perfect. The hero of the story pales into insignificance beside her…or would, if he wasn’t crazy in love with her. The villain can harm her (perhaps) but will never break her magnificent spirit — and even if she needs rescuing occasionally (got to give the hero something to do), she will in the end save the day.
(Marty Stu is) The male of Mary Sue. Handsome, clever, better at everything than anyone else on the show. Quite often an author stand-in in Fan Fiction. (Source TV Tropes).
I don’t think I’ll have have to adapt that trope too much gather where this is going…. (All DM blogs seem to tackle this one sooner or later).
Mary and Marty are our beloved Pet NPCs. Our stand-ins with the party, our (cough) ‘Interactive Narrative Devices‘, our Elminsters, Gandalf and Dritzz. They know everything about the campaign’s baseline plot, they are more powerful than the players (sometime the whole party), they send your players on lamish Fed-Ex quest only to show up later on the same quest to ‘help out’. Yeah I’m talking about those.
I think that having Pet NPCs is okay, it shows a DM’s emotional involvement in the game and it can help build flavor and believability. You’re more likely to role-play a little harder and pour yourself a little bit more in playing them. But pet NPCs are only good as long as don’t hog the PC’s spotlight, and this can be hard to do.
I have had my share of Pet NPCs in my 2 decades of DMing. From talking daggers to Neurotic Dragons, including Genius Trolls, a Wight named Barry, Turncoat imps, Food-god halfling cleric using a chicken leg as a holy symbol, and a Goblin Merchant with an oddly familiar Phoenician Accent.
I don’t think I made any of them Marty Stus but I did write some of them in a little too many scenes.
I think Jeff Rients’s summed up the Rule Zero of NPC’s: Your NPCs suck and they are all going to die.
This rule should especially apply if you suspect that you wrote a Mary Sue or a Marty Stu in your plotlines. I guarantee that if you give your Marty a Red Shirt and get him killed in the most cinematic, gory catastrophe ever, your players will never stop cheering and will probably be ready to take the very next plot hook you present them with no hesitation.
Now fellow DMs/GMs, since we never seem to get our players to care enough to hear it, tell me about your Pet NPCs . I’m taking notes here.
Certifications like 70-293 as well as 642-845 train one in conventional manner. 1z0-042 and 642-552 help in going away from the typical and 642-436 helps in bringing in more contemporariness.
Excellent stuff, Phil – I love stumbling across blogs like this (and Dr. Rotwang’s, etc.).
Okay, pet NPCs…something of a caveat first, though. I’ve played far, far more than I’ve ever GM’d, and I only GM occasionally – twice a year or so (we have a game each week, usually). But I’ve been drifting more and more towards the GM/design side of things, at least in the time I spend thinking about the games, as opposed to playing them. In our ‘primary’ game, I’m the sounding board for our regular GM, so I have a hand (sometimes a heavy one) in the world and plot creation. Sure, there’s some of the suspense that I miss, but that’s made up for by the fun of springing stuff on the other players, and getting to roleplay in the world I helped create.
My Pet NPC is almost more conceptual than a character – he’s got a name, but he’s appeared in various incarnations in various settings. For the most part, he was a PC, mine, but as time went on he made appearances as an NPC, and at this point as I start DMing for my oldest son, he’ll probably start showing up there.
Without further ado, I give you…
Belisarius Alexandrovitch Leonov, ‘Bel’ to his friends.
Bel started off life in a MUSH, as a Vargr; a big ol’ uplifted canine (yeah, there’s a bit of furry in my blood). Bel was raised in a mixed-race ship, conceived and born while the ship was in jumpspace (not the same jump…). He was a single birth, an auspicious oddity amongst Vargr. His parents had taken on the names of early human spacefarers, thus his last name – his first name was considered to be a name of power; crafty human military leaders were somewhat revered by their culture.
By the time Bel had arrived in the indeterminiate setting of the MUSH, he had been a merc (what he was good at), a pirate (what the mercs turned into as things got desperate) and a whore (what he had to turn into to survive after the pirates were annihilated).
Bel met and fell in love with an Aslan/hani type felinoid, founded a merchant clan, got sent to jail for drug-running, fought a trade war, so on and so forth.
He was a great character; I loved playing him.
Next, he moved on to an online Amber MUSH (AmberMUSH), pretty much where he left off. There he became a general, quit that job, fell in love more than a few times, defied Chaos and Amber – and suffered and thrived for both actions.
Much later, Bel made his first NPC appearance: a hound archon in the service of Bhamut, the companion of the mother of my bronze-dragon-stuck-in-elf-form NPC. Bel was his assigned protector, but wasn’t needed/didn’t appear until it was dramatically appropriate. He was at this point older in appearance, and something of a crusty old soldier; his first part was in one of the background stories of my PC, where Bel is relaxing with the PCs mother, drinking beer and flirting shamelessly, complaining about the quality of the new archons these days that he has to train.
Most of him was later consumed by Blackrazor as he took on the Big Bad, giving the PCs time to escape. Some scraps of his spirit survived, however, and Bahamut could hardly let a loyal, grumpy servant vanish…
Bel’s next reincarnation was as, once again, Belisarius Alexandrovitch Leonov, this time as a Gnoll in our Shadowrun Greyhawk game. As an unknowing servant of Bahamut, he was a veteran of the Bug Wars with a nasty case of PTSD, a wife and pups, and a lecherous disposition. His faith eventually gave him some solace from the former, and helped him control the latter. Surviving the campaign, he retired to the Mars colonies, and it was noted in the epilogue that his second son would lead the colonies in a successful revolt for independence many years down the road.
Bel returned to NPC status in a later campaign, as one of the players used the ‘Summon Planar Ally’ spell, and out of the blue said, ‘I call on Belisarius, Hound Archon of Bahamut!’.
I could have kissed him. 🙂
Bel shows up with his greatsword in one paw, holding up his hastily donned trousers in the other, growling, “This had better be really damned good, whelp…”
(The ensuing discussions were hilarious and tense, the combat was not epic but truly enjoyable, and Hound Archon Belisarius left them with a shake of his head and a muttered growl about ‘prime plane idiots needing their butts rescued…’, then a broad, toothy grin, a wink and a flick of his tail for the ‘hot elf rogue chick’ in the party before disappearing back to Celestia.)
He’ll show up again, in some form and setting or another, most likely as a mentor for my kid’s PCs as he begins to get a grasp of how to play.
Good stuff Noah. Having a player call on one of your Pet PC/NPC from a previous game is such a rewarding experience.
Thanks for the comment and the kind words.
Pet NPCs?
Well, there was Gankorou, a Fair Folk noble in my Exalted campaign. Like all Fair Folk, he fed on emotions – and he played the PCs for all they were worth. Here are two highlights of what he did:
– He drained some of the self-control from all the citizens of a major city after one of the PCs had accidentally given him the permission to do so. This happened during a very emotional speech another PC had given, and for a long time they had thought his speech had simply been “too good”.
– He later manipulated events so that he became the ruler of the city while the PCs were away – and married the local princess who happened to be pregnant with the child of one of the PCs.
In the end, two of the PCs wanted to kill him, while two others saw him as a useful ally. He eventually provoked the first two into killing him after he said: “We can’t work together like this if you constantly scheme to kill me. So either kill me right now in the open – I won’t resist – or stop doing so entirely.” This provoked a fight between the PCs and resulted in the biggest Angst-fest yet. And when the PC who had killed him awakened from her Limit Break (Exalted-specific Angst effect), it turned out that he had named her his chosen successor – she was to become the new High Princess of the Realm, a position which she absolutely did not want but which all others thought was a good idea.
Well, what can I say? He went out as he would have wanted it.
Nice Marty!
A bit of the Magnificent Bastard too I’d say?
both of these are from a Vampire: the Masquerade Live Action game I ran. When I wasn’t needed to adjudicate rules, I often had free time in which to play signature / setting NPCs which helped establish the setting.
Caliban Whitmore & Johnathon James Congress were my favorites to play. The first, I actually inherited this NPC when I took over the LARP game which had been running for a few years. The only real instructions I’d been given for him were “less powerful than he plays himself off as being, with kind of a pirate thing going on.” Except he was also supposed to be an Elder of a clan of aristocratic vampires.
What I loved about him, I think, was his absurdity. He was powerful enough, and old enough, to be above most of the politics of the day. He played the grumpy dad who would come in, complain about “kids these days” and then wander off. I knew the players thought of him as kind of an ST mouthpiece, so when he’d complain about somebody being out of line, the PCs would kind of self correct. And, if I *really* needed a Deus Ex Machina, I could pull it out of the hat… and then make people pay for it in other, more creative ways.
However, he was “quirky” enough that when a PC needed a mentor, or a bribe, or a plot hook that he could step down and provide that without it seeming incongruous. Occasionally I’d have his “wife” come to town, and instruct people on how to best “manage” him (that is, provide polite training for the various PCs on the best ways to work within the political system of the game world).
But, mostly, with him I got to be absurd, old fashioned & anachronistic… and, occasionally dashing and charismatic… then exit stage left, leaving people wondering what is it that just happened.
My other favorite NPC was John Congress: a member of a serpent cult devoted to evil… except he swore he had quit with the “fanatics and evangelists” and was actually in the “reform faction.” He had enough status and power to be politically acceptable, but not anywhere near dominant, so he always had to watch his mouth.
So, instead I just used innuendo. I’d have him be selling something I knew people wanted, but was bad for them. Or buying whatever they wanted to sell, but degraded them to procure… and then coming up with “special requests.” If somebody was offended, he would sincerely apologize and offer a boon to repay the insult… and, in the repayment of such, discover what it is they desired. He’d prove his loyalty by selling out his Clanmates… but, always, despite winning the war against evil, they’d end in up debt to him… while the external forces of scary darkness merely retreated from a disposable safehouse.
Also, he could talk to anybody who was “on the outs” with the ruling faction. With them, I would be far more generous than I would with the elites who sought his wares – often trying to recruit several together (who might not otherwise have cause to work together) to acquire some “seemingly harmless curio.” The drama spawned over such trivial mcguffin quests was delicious.
But, mostly, with him, I got to be as sneaky and dirty and naughty as I wanted to be. I never actually did anything *bad*, but because everybody knew I *had* to be up to *something* they came to me when they wanted to be bad too…
In both cases, I really tried to make sure the NPCs only really existed to further the PCs plot – and were weak enough that if the PCs actually wanted them to go away, they would. However, because I made sure I was always making /somebody/ happy, that never happened.
Good times.
Good story Xavier. Also good on ya of avoiding making the NPCs be martys.
Welcome to the blog BTW, thanks for stopping by.