Advice on GM characters for a first-time GM

[Barrington]

I recently sat down with my gaming group and talked about running a game for the first time, to give our long-suffering and very good GM a break and let him play. I'm in the process of coming up with the NPCs and characters that will inhabit the city we're going to build, and I wanted to ask for some tips on GM characters from those with more experience. How far is too far with a GM character? The city we're setting up (New Orleans) is going to have a very old, very powerful voodoo practitioner who has amassed a level of power on par with a Senior Council member over the years. He'll be a shadowy figure who's never spoken of or seen but controls everything in the city through a web of contacts and underlings both mundane and supernatural. My question is, how much do I use such powerful NPCs and GM characters before it starts to take away from the players and becomes railroading? And what is the best way to avoid making situations where it takes a Deus Ex Machina with a powerful allied GMPC to save them?

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YOU ARE SO SMALL! IS FUNNY TO ME!

[Steppenwolf]

Just a question to start my thought process:  
Who is going to define the role of the npc?

[luminos]

The key to not going over the line with your NPC's is to know what their purpose is story-wise.  If their purpose is to enable the players to better tell the story of the PC's, then you are on solid ground.  To this end, the NPC is only important if he makes a PC more important than itself.  Always define them in terms of how they will challenge the PC's (whether as opposition, or by presenting difficult choices), and then just try to play things out.  When an NPC is not giving the PC's situations to overcome or choices to make (or worse yet, solving problems for the PC's) find a way to put them on the bench or write them out of the story.

[TheMouse]

Things with powerful NPCs:

Never assume that the PCs will be in awe of them. The PCs are extensions of the players, and it's hard to impress your players by saying, "Yeah, this guy is like really, really impressive."

Don't have absolutely everything come back to them. They can be connected with a lot of stuff, but it gets really boring if everyone works for them and every plot is theirs.

Don't have them know everything. They can know a lot, more than anyone else, even. But don't assume that they automatically know every plot and secret. Even the most well informed people miss things, sometimes really important things.

Do give them goals and motivations. This lets them want things from the PCs that they can trade for.

Do give them limitations. Everyone has things that they can't do and things that they won't do.

[DFJunkie]

My only worry is the phrase "controls everything."  If that is literally true, the PCs will be constantly overshadowed by this gentleman and his network.  

The key is to balance raw power and involvement.  There's a balance to be struck with NPCs in the supernatural heavyweight division.  The greater an individual's power, the more constrained it should be from getting involved at any specific time.  If the NPC is nearly omnipotent in NOLA there should be some reason, even if only you know it, that he doesn't simply rule the city with an iron fist.  Maybe his power is actually exaggerated, and he uses smoke and mirrors to seem more threatening than he actually is.  Maybe he legitimately is a supernatural heavyweight, but just like the Senior Council must obey the Laws he has to obey the dictates of the Loa, to whom he owes his powers.  Or maybe he's a mortal practitioner who also obeys the Laws, or who keeps a low profile to avoid the entire council from hatting up and taking him out, as they would for a threat of his magnitude.  

[Bruce Coulson]

GM Characters that are heavily involved in a story should either set a challenge, or present a challenge.  In either case, the challenge should be difficult, but not impossible.

If the character COULD apparently solve the problem with a flick of their fingers...there has to be a reason they don't.  And why the PCs have to act.

In a first story, the PCs in my campaign were given an assignment by the local Emissary of Summer to deal with a rogue spellcaster.  Why didn't the Emissary handle it?  The spellcaster was a mortal necromancer, not fae; so enforcement had to be handled by the new Wizard in town.  (This was also a way for Summer to conserve their resources...)

[riplikash]

In regards to railroading:
Just remember to plan out situations, not stories. A GM is not an author or a playwright.

So for a traditional Dresden Files game, come up with a bad guy (or bad guys) and a scheme (or schemes). Come up with the groups, figure out some ways they are likely to react. Decide on some clues, i.e., holes in the plan that your players can exploit.

Do NOT come up with solutions, climatic battles, etc. Those should come about organically due to the choices of your players.

Don't worry too much about scaling situations to the players, the world doesn't work like that, and doesn't need to. Sometimes they have to approach situations with a bit more subtlety, creativity or finesse. Other times they will curbstomp their opposition. Both options are fun, as long as they are still given choices, e.g., they aren't just ambushed by a dragon.

As long as you are just presenting situations and allowing your players to interact with the world as they see fit, they will have a difficult time accusing you of railroading.

[Drachasor]

My only worry is the phrase "controls everything."  If that is literally true, the PCs will be constantly overshadowed by this gentleman and his network.  

Indeed.  Take a page from the Dresden Files.  There's no single entity controlling Chicago.  Even Marcone only controls the traditional criminal element and he starts off with almost no knowledge of the supernatural.  He certainly doesn't know or care about a lot of things that happen in the city.  And he doesn't want to mess with Harry which is why they keep their distance from each other -- he later decides Harry tends to be more beneficial than not so leaves Harry to his own devices.

Also, make sure to have a lot of stuff this Voodoo guy won't care about or at least not care much about.  That way you won't have to have him interfere in every plot.  If the City has some super-powered heavyweight who literally controls everything, then that's a pretty awful place to set a campaign in.  If the players piss him off, you'll have to contort yourself on how they don't end up dead if he's mostly a bad guy.  If he's a good guy, then you'll have to do the same to justify why he doesn't solve all the problem.  If he's somewhere inbetween, you still have to justify why he doesn't make any significant problem go his way.  Good books like the Dresden Files are like good campaigns in this respect; they keep those super-powerful people far away from the main characters/players.  Maybe they visit the area once or twice over the years, but they don't have this insane network that controls almost everything going on.  That might sound cool, but it leads to terrible gaming or storytelling.  When the players get powerful enough to potentially tackle such threats, THEN you can have them start making more regular appearances or even have the players go to their base of power to take them on.

[Sanctaphrax]

A few brainstormed limitations for a superbeing:

-He's a drug addict, and can't be bothered with anything other than his next hit.
-He has an extremely restrictive religious or moral code.
-He's busy fighting against other superbeings.
-He just doesn't care about anything.
-His attention is entirely consumed by some huge magical ritual.
-He's a good guy without a grand overarching vision of the world, and tries to act purely as a mediator between factions.
-He's a bad guy without a grand scheme, and is only dangerous/evil on a small scale.

[Steppenwolf]

Well, about NPCs Drachasor and Riplikash got the point.
I add another one: it's boring to have just a Big bad "Evil mastermind-type" Super Boss, cause there are less plot ideas.
Having more factions which contend the territory or keep each other in an unstable peace can create many more opportunities either for GM to set the situations and for the PCs who can forge temporary alliances, receive help (for a price), etc.
Besides the heavyweight NPCs should be used more like plot devices than real opponents, until PCs can dispose of them.

About GMPCs: simply don't use them.
You can surely put some minor NPCs to give some help, hints or suggestions, but you have no need to use them to save PCs.
Players can Concede, in Conflicts, so no need to have the masked hero of the day come to rescue their characters.

And pay attention to the skills the players have chosen for their Characters. They are the key to understand the kind of situations you players want to see in the game.
If none has Driving but all have good fighting skills, use car chases very rarely but throw in a plenty of fights.
Of course Players' intentions precede everything else.
Do the PCs want to break in the warehouse but none got Burglary? Let them hire  a professional burglar who opens the door, but then let the characters continue on their own.

[Barrington]

Thanks for all the advice, guys. You've given me some good points to think about, and they'll help as I build the city with my people. The shadowy houngoun definitely is going to be removed by several orders of magnitude from the street levels, and the characters they build and the city we come up with will decide just what pies he has his fingers in. The real point of the character is to have that deadly urban legend everyone whispers about, the one that they attribute all sorts of bad luck and happenings to.

Another question: How fast is too fast when it comes to letting PCs gain power? I don't want to hand it out so often that upgrades aren't exciting anymore, but we can't play as often as we'd like, so I don't want the game to take six months before it hits it's first significant milestone either. Where have you all as game masters found the best balance?

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YOU ARE SO SMALL! IS FUNNY TO ME!

[riplikash]

Advancement always comes down to the feel you are going after.

My players get 1 refresh after every major storyline (3-4 sessions, 1 major adventure and 1 minor adventure per in game year). But I started them out at 6 refresh and wanted to go from solving small time mysteries to epic heroes saving the world over the course of about a 1-1.5 years. The downside is that at that point we will have to retire the characters. I'm good with that, because I always want to try something new after about a year.

If I wanted them to REALLY get into character and run a campaign for several years, going for that long time, established feel, I would give them a refresh every 2-4 campaigns.

If you just want to focus on a certain type of adventure (small time intimate, big time saving the world) you could even give them NO refresh, instead giving them other, in game rewards.

Just decide on what kind of feel you want to have, and how long you want the campaign to go.

[Remy Sinclair]

As Your Long-Suffering and Very Good GM (Me) says this: "You need to make sure that the character has a role in the game other than just being powerful and nasty. A character like that has to in my humble opinion have to be involved in more than one plot point. As you have told me you have a great idea on this character, but does he work in any of your Story lines? Is he part of your Meta-Story Line?

When you make any NPC in your game be it an Ally or Enemy or Tweener if they have a purpose be it for one  Storyline, Plot Point or part of the Meta Story Line.

We as a group have not sat down to build the city yet. When we sit down and do this be it over the phone as a group (my spouse and I are the players) or at my home, where we game. Things could change. Heck I am doing my leg of the researching to toss in my ideas and my location in the city. All of this may effect how your NPC may be and where. I know when I ran my game you and my spouse really tossed me a loop since we did Submerged Rules neither of you went for a Spellcaster.

Overall you have a great idea just don't pigeon hole yourself that can be the worst thing to do as a GM. Be adaptable. Players surprise you no matter what. A lot of people here have great advice to listen to and you coming here was a great move."

[EldritchFire]

Well, about NPCs Drachasor and Riplikash got the point.
I add another one: it's boring to have just a Big bad "Evil mastermind-type" Super Boss, cause there are less plot ideas.
Having more factions which contend the territory or keep each other in an unstable peace can create many more opportunities either for GM to set the situations and for the PCs who can forge temporary alliances, receive help (for a price), etc.
Besides the heavyweight NPCs should be used more like plot devices than real opponents, until PCs can dispose of them.
...

To add to this, the Big bad could be pitting each faction against each other, to keep his power. The players, then, could be representatives of one or more faction who's fed up with the status quo.

As the PCs investigate as to why no one can get a foothold, they find out someone/something is pulling strings behind the scenes. At first, it's no big deal to the BBEG, since the PCs are a bunch of upstarts, and no real threat. However, as his machinations are brought to light, the Big Bad starts to take a pointed interest in the PCs. That's where the real drama starts! Going after family, friends, even allies. Hell, trying to drive a wedge between the PCs themselves could be fun!

Just my 2c.

-EF