I posted this on the arrpeegeedotnet forums in the "Best and Worst Mary Sue Characters Run By GMs" thread. I post it here because otherwise all I will do is complain.
The worst one for me was with a GM (called John) who lived on the same street as me. We had taken to playing Role master set in Middle Earth, because the GM was totally obsessed with all of Tolkien's books. The game started out quite well, as sometimes he ran really good games, but in the second session he introduced us to an elf that was to travel with us. The elf, he told us was a chance for him to have a character in the game, because at the time there was nobody else (I was taking a few months off running games) running a game.
The first fight we got into we realised that the elf was just way to powerful for us as he totally destroyed our opponents. We didn't say much about it though because we hoped it would be a brief interruption and there was also no other game available. Over the course of the session the fights got tougher and tougher until we were really on the periphery watching the GM play with himself*. He still kept asking us what we would do on our turn and we still kept doing stuff that was largely ineffectual.
I managed to end it all by bringing up the problem in character...well kind of in character. We were in a massive fight, but not really being very successful. The GM's character was fighting a pair of trolls, while we attempted to help by being swatted aside by them and getting under their feet. On my turn I got some parchment, string and ink out of my bag. Next turn I wrote the name of the GMs' character in really big letters on the parchment. On my next turn I found a stout stick and with the string, attached the parchment to the the stick like a flag. On my last turn, which was the last turn of the game, I ran around behind the GM's character waving the flag and cheering for him.
The GM put his dice in his bag, collected his books and papers and left in a huff without a word.
*intended
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I'm luky in that I haven''t really had the full Mary Sue experience with any of my GMs, though I have had the occasional one that has pretty much every NPC you run into far more powerful and effectual than you, making me question why we're bothering to do stuff in the first place when it looks like they can do it faster and better than we can.
ReplyDeleteHmm.. I think that may be a Mary Sue experience after all?
That was an awesomely funny in-game way to deal with the situation, but I'd imagine it caused some problems between you two in the real world.
ReplyDeleteI hope I've never done this... I don't think I have! I do have NPCs that I'm very fond of, but they're not "my characters" by any means. The players have to be the world movers. Case in point: Howler and Stalwart, two of the more powerful hero NPCs in "Balance of Power", are used sparingly, and never as the characters who make the plan, execute the plan, write the theme tune, sing the theme tune, and defeat the bad guy. Stalwart is a background presence, Howler's a team player. I don't think of them as my characters.
A GM shouldn't have a character on the team, plain and simple.