I rolled a politico a while back

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/233765-so-rolling-up-a-basic-human-politico-colonist/

Anyway I expressed concern over the ship owning force wielding GMPC.

He started by rescuing the other pcs from their servitude/ bad situations, he sets the destinations...and talks about leading by consensus. His character was brought over from another campaign so we are not the same power level...

Just now he just spent his time in hyperspace tricking out his ship.

Really having a bad feeling about this.

Thoughts?

The other folks seem ok, but I am thinkng I am not a good fit.

No thanks would be my response.

GMs shouldn't play in their own games. This sounds like wish-fulfillment, running the game the way he wants to and doing the cool things he wants to. Everyone else is along for the ride. Might need to have a conversation or find a new group.

I would definitely have a talk with the GM. It's possible they do not realize what they're doing. If you are uncomfortable, I'd say adios .

Yeah, he is also a gadgeteer with custom gear and a very customized starship.

Yeah, he is also a gadgeteer with custom gear and a very customized starship.

That sounds to me like a player whose GM lost the reins a long time ago.

I guess it comes down to the level of this character's involvement? Does the rest of the team not have a pilot type, that this guy just delivers the team to where they need to be, occasionally dispenses Fortune Cookie wisdom and then stays behind to guard the ship while the rest of the players get on with the business of playing the game? Then F it - let him fly a freakin' Death Star for all it's worth.

But if he starts involving himself and playing the game with his sidekicks? Then yeah, that's a Bad Thing and you need to express your concerns clearly to the group. Let him correct matters first, and if there's no change after that - bow the hell out, and tell them exactly why. Transparency is vital.

One wonders why a GM needs a PC when it could just be an NPC like the entire rest of the mutliverse of characters that aren't PCs. If the GMPC just sits back and tricks out the ship but doesn't steal player agency or action, I reckon there's little harm in it. But nobody wants to play in a game where the GM's PC is the hero all the time.

As a GM, I don't even like when a helpful NPC is around the group for longer than a few minutes. I don't want to track this NPC throughout sessions and I don't want to artificially aid the PCs in any way. If by some situation, the players bring some NPCs onto their crew, the NPCs take a backseat and I will actively look for ways to "offload" the NPCs from the crew.

There's a NPC tagalong with my group. He's the harmless, awkward "I like you guys" guy that everyone loves to hate, but he's got plenty of Obliga...er, reasons to be someplace else for a while every once in a while.

Curious how this has played out, for purely nosy reasons. Did you concerns become well-founded OP? Did he carry on being the star? Or did he start taking more of a backseat role?

As a GM, I don't even like when a helpful NPC is around the group for longer than a few minutes. I don't want to track this NPC throughout sessions and I don't want to artificially aid the PCs in any way. If by some situation, the players bring some NPCs onto their crew, the NPCs take a backseat and I will actively look for ways to "offload" the NPCs from the crew.

QFT. My players had that guy in Mask of the Pirate Queen (no spoilers) following him around, and after every battle we would be "Oh yeah we had that guy with us..." They would have to remind me every battle to roll initiative for him, if they remembered themselves. In Beyond the Rim the players did not trust the droid character at all and kept him away from anything, except for when they got rid of him by using him as bait. Yeah, keeping track of sidekicks is just too much hassle for me.

Sounds like your GM doesn't want to GM he wants to play. Actually it doesn't sound like he wants to play it sounds more like he wants you guys to sit around in awe of him while his character has adventures. If he were one of my players I would take him aside and tell him that this "style" didn't suit my type of game. I'd give him a chance to tone it down but failing that he would be gone.

Seen as he is your GM though, perhaps you should talk to the group as a whole; get an idea for where this is going. Games such as this can easily fall apart when one player is OP, regardless of if the other players are happy with it initially.

There could also be a plot reason for this. It can be a good narrative tool to give the PCs a character to work with who is powerful and can provide them with lots of cool resources for them to grow to depend on, only to have him killed leaving the party adrift with nothing

There is only two situations where I would tolerate a superior PC: If the PC belonged to another player of the party (namely due to attrition within the party, the group recruiting new members.) then having more experienced deckhands is OK. Or alternatively a time jump has occurred and the PC is either getting on a little bit long in the tooth to continue for much longer or has taken a grevious injury which makes him limited or short on time, but wants to train successors for (reasons), or alternatively a NPC around to lead the party into an adventure, but is too much of a hot property to remain around the group for very long, without the fear of the empire tracking him down (See Luke.)

Kinda like it would be cool starting an adventure as a bounty hunting group and having an experienced "captain" who doesn't do much fieldwork anymore, but has people and small jobs of his own to get on with and occasionally is there for the really big jobs, only to one day get killed off as many bounty hunters do. My party (an alliance cell) has a captain that we report to and is kind of the go to handler if we have any particular difficulties or quires and is often manning one of the ships guns to tree up hands for fighter combat. That being said, these NPC's while they have skills are only really there to ensure the party stay on track.

The fact that he's gathering around the PC's but is taking time of the players time to modify his GMPC's ship really isn't acceptable. Really there should be a stat sheet for him and a stat sheet for a not necessarily optimal ship and that's it. But he is clearly treating his guy as one of the PC's and that really isn't on since it is cutting into organisation time that the PC's could be having. He has the rest of the world that he could be crafting without potentially making the other players his sidekicks in what should be there time. Again it might be cool if, say he was going to train the party or what not, but there needs to be a clear group and story dynamic established from the start. Might be worth talking to him to determine whether he actually wants to GM or is only doing so.


My group has had a lot of NPC's that have come and gone, anything from bounty hunters to allience agents to Mara Jade and even a trandosian slaver gang (My Trandosian businessman called on family that had tried to avoid calling on when the majority of the party was jailed. Everyone was cheering as they swooped down to take over a starport, those cheers soon died when when the vicious slaughter was eing described and a large number of imperial citizens were described as being fitted with slave collars... Despite being a force and destiny adventure, all the force users wanted nothing to do with that, resulting in a healthy wad of conflict all round! Though said PC took the iniative to sort things out later, with a trial by combat... XD)

Being a GM, I have had a PC in the game too. One of the other players picked up the reigns to run Chronicles of the Gatekeeper to give me a chance to play, so I introduced an NPC before I handed over the reigns to him that would be my PC while he ran. I found the best way to make it work was to have an NPC that had a temporary alignment of goals with the group. This allowed me to play an interesting counterfoil to the group, providing good role-play material and a solid background/reason, while it also allowed me to shelve the PC after my run was over, so there would be no conflict of interests later. The best part about it was I now had a very fleshed out NPC later on that could recur. I would never want to try to balance the desires of a PC and the balancing of a GM at the same time though - nothing good ever comes of it.