Open Discussion: Monster PCs

[Maiyannah]

When I say 'toothless in the narrative', I'm referring to their ability to influence the world around them in meaningful ways, not the mechanical threat they represent.

Are player characters 'toothless in the narrative'?

[Ouroboros]

Depends on the tools afforded to them. I should clarify that I'm specifically referring to the fundamental ability for characters to influence and effect tangible change on the world around them, which is made more difficult in something like NWN 1 where a lot of changes have to be either done in the toolset and pushed out as an update, or put up as a per-reset series of scene changes. It's why I think player placeables are such a huge thing, because it permits each player to change the world around them in some way.

[Maiyannah]

Absolutely. However, I don't think we should neccesarialy limit "able to make RP stuff / marks / placeables" to just monster PCs, which is what I was getting at with my posts. They're useful tools to all PCs.

[Ouroboros]

Those things, no certainly not, but things such as limited NPC spawning tools, NPC control, etc, are something that more benefits a storytelling role rather than character-centric players.

[Maiyannah]

Agreed, but somewhat out of scope I think. I'll make a separate thread to continue that.

I think we can have character-centric MPCs without diminishing them. Indeed the classical story of the vampire is of the descent into alienation and evil - and for ones that try to remain good after being turned against their will, the eternal and difficult struggle to maintain that alignment. There's good stories in these more personal tales I don't think we should be panning.

[wilkins1952]

Yeah MPCs are a solid story telling device both MPCs and AMPCs that start out monsterous as both allow for similar yet different story based threats and concerns to be made and can even tie in with DM plots as well to give PCs something to do while inbetween DM overseen scenes.

[Maiyannah]

I suppose my bottom line here is I am of the opinion that we should seperate "they can be a monster" from "they have special storytelling tools."

The levels of trust implied in these two categories are not the same, and if we limit MPCs to the people whom we can trust not to abuse special tools, we're reducing the number of MPCs we can have.

I think anyone whom has a narrative which supports becoming a monster should be able to play one. We shouldn't have someone becoming afflicted with lycanthropy just to have to asspull a cure arc because we couldn't trust them with the tools. This is why I advocate for the two being seperate concerns.