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P&P 2.0: When DMs become DMPCs, and PCs become NPCs. With a twist!
So, me and a group of friends decided to get into pen and paper. We're not really experienced, aside from our DM, who has played multiple games and systems when he was studying abroad - Perfect choice for a DM, right? Since we're from a part of the world where "The Dark Eye" originates from, we decide to get into this system and go for it. I buy the rulebooks, read the whole thing and get some character sheets up for me and the party - A process that took us weeks, just to make sure we did it right.
Meet our players; A Dwarf Bard (me), a Human Rogue and a Humand Soldier. Nothing extraordinary, and not really relevant. We meet up as agreed beforehand, and start our adventure.
Right off the bat we start to notice a few oddities. While on one hand the DM hands us out some pretty detailed materials like hand drawn maps and sketches of weapons, like a fancy epic spear, but he keeps stumbling across the story. NPC names change, plot holes, inconsistencies. He is obviously making things up on the fly, doesn't take notes and forgets his own story. Whenever a big plot hole pops up, he patches it with newer, spontaneously made up information. Great.
As the session(s) went on, it was pretty clear that we're winging it. To keep this bearable for you, let me summarize:
- We barely use our dice. Maybe once or twice per session.
- He has obviously no idea what the rules are, and therefore avoids combat, or never uses a skill check.
- There is no meaningful interaction for us. A few yes/no decisions, almost no way to play
- The only time we got to "play freely" were downtimes in camp, where we were expected to improvise roleplay with no purpose or topic. We started asking for skips.
- Every session there was at least one DMPC that was the main protagonist, he literally talked to himself for extended periods of time, while we were sitting there giving eachother annoyed looks
I am a veteran Ultima Online Roleplayer, so I'm pretty familiar with staying in character, but as our sessions go on, I can't help it and push the boundaries of what he's putting us through. I start forcing him into scenarios to spice things up, and that's when the whole thing started going to shit. But he doesn't know how to handle my outrageous antics, so he kind of just lets them happen.
As we approach the end of our journey, we're supposed to storm the house of the big baddie. It's in a city, surrounded by a ton of guards, and he has a very specific thing in mind on how we're supposed to enter this building (more on this in a second). I don't give damn and I do what a bard would do: as I am swimming in money, I leave the party to do my thing - I cautiously start telling him what I'm doing, and he goes along with it, but I make sure he doesn't realize the full extent yet so I'm not getting shut down. I go back into the city and start riling up the beggars and homeless, offering them coins upfront, with promises of more if they show up to said house in an hour. By the time I make it back, there's a revolt going on and shit's lit, yo.
People are breaking into the mansion, from the front, from the back, overwhelming all the guards. There's a slaughter going on, so my party takes the opportunity and uses the chaos to get in and face the big baddie. All the guards end up dead, even though they've probably killed all the beggars, too. Doesn't matter. What matters is that ONE SPECIFIC guard survived miraculously, and he just refused to die repeatedly. As with every other DMPC he starts tagging along, but for once, this guy seems to have a very elaborate background story. Guess what?! We were supposed to find this specific guy and get him to help us. Why? No clue.
Remember the epic spear I've mentioned shortly at the beginning? Well, it was broken then, but lucky for us, new guy over here is not only very proficient with them, he also knows a guy that is able to repair said spear. And since he can use them well, he might aswell keep it, right?
We wrap up the rest of the story in an hour or
So, me and a group of friends decided to get into pen and paper. We're not really experienced, aside from our DM, who has played multiple games and systems when he was studying abroad - Perfect choice for a DM, right? Since we're from a part of the world where "The Dark Eye" originates from, we decide to get into this system and go for it. I buy the rulebooks, read the whole thing and get some character sheets up for me and the party - A process that took us weeks, just to make sure we did it right.
Meet our players; A Dwarf Bard (me), a Human Rogue and a Humand Soldier. Nothing extraordinary, and not really relevant. We meet up as agreed beforehand, and start our adventure.
Right off the bat we start to notice a few oddities. While on one hand the DM hands us out some pretty detailed materials like hand drawn maps and sketches of weapons, like a fancy epic spear, but he keeps stumbling across the story. NPC names change, plot holes, inconsistencies. He is obviously making things up on the fly, doesn't take notes and forgets his own story. Whenever a big plot hole pops up, he patches it with newer, spontaneously made up information. Great.
As the session(s) went on, it was pretty clear that we're winging it. To keep this bearable for you, let me summarize:
- We barely use our dice. Maybe once or twice per session.
- He has obviously no idea what the rules are, and therefore avoids combat, or never uses a skill check.
- There is no meaningful interaction for us. A few yes/no decisions, almost no way to play
- The only time we got to "play freely" were downtimes in camp, where we were expected to improvise roleplay with no purpose or topic. We started asking for skips.
- Every session there was at least one DMPC that was the main protagonist, he literally talked to himself for extended periods of time, while we were sitting there giving eachother annoyed looks
I am a veteran Ultima Online Roleplayer, so I'm pretty familiar with staying in character, but as our sessions go on, I can't help it and push the boundaries of what he's putting us through. I start forcing him into scenarios to spice things up, and that's when the whole thing started going to shit. But he doesn't know how to handle my outrageous antics, so he kind of just lets them happen.
As we approach the end of our journey, we're supposed to storm the house of the big baddie. It's in a city, surrounded by a ton of guards, and he has a very specific thing in mind on how we're supposed to enter this building (more on this in a second). I don't give damn and I do what a bard would do: as I am swimming in money, I leave the party to do my thing - I cautiously start telling him what I'm doing, and he goes along with it, but I make sure he doesn't realize the full extent yet so I'm not getting shut down. I go back into the city and start riling up the beggars and homeless, offering them coins upfront, with promises of more if they show up to said house in an hour. By the time I make it back, there's a revolt going on and shit's lit, yo.
People are breaking into the mansion, from the front, from the back, overwhelming all the guards. There's a slaughter going on, so my party takes the opportunity and uses the chaos to get in and face the big baddie. All the guards end up dead, even though they've probably killed all the beggars, too. Doesn't matter. What matters is that ONE SPECIFIC guard survived miraculously, and he just refused to die repeatedly. As with every other DMPC he starts tagging along, but for once, this guy seems to have a very elaborate background story. Guess what?! We were supposed to find this specific guy and get him to help us. Why? No clue.
Remember the epic spear I've mentioned shortly at the beginning? Well, it was broken then, but lucky for us, new guy over here is not only very proficient with them, he also knows a guy that is able to repair said spear. And since he can use them well, he might aswell keep it, right?
We wrap up the rest of the story in an hour or