My Life As A Gamer: When Someone Wins The Game

Remember the story about how the Cleric class came about?

For those coming in late, a summary:

Once there was a Fighter, Sir Fang.

He became a vampire, when vampries meant "Hammer Horror" and not "Sparlking Pretty Boys".

Sir Fang came to dominate the campaign, such that other Fighters and all the Magic-Users (the only classes in the game at this time) could not touch him.

Players went to the Game Master--Gygax--and asked him to do something about it. He reasoned that Dracula compels Van Hellsing's appearance, so he created the Cleric in that image.

Gygax added appropriate fantasy and medieval trappings to make it work, and Sir Fang's days of dominance soon came to an end.

That is how the third of D&D's Core Four classes came to be.

Your campaign will come into similar difficulties.

Sooner or later, you will run into a situation where--much like real life--someone Wins The Game and comes to dominate the campaign.

Contary to gamer mythology, this is not a bad thing. This is an opportunity.

Most such players are reasonable enough to see that keeping the focus of attention on a dominant player is not good for the campaign. Even if they wish to continue playing that character, they will--in the interest of maintaining a fun campaign for everyone, and thus for themselves--transition that dominant character into a background player by means of using that dominant position to create more opportunities for others to act.

I do not know if Sir Fang's player was one of those asking Gygax to make a Van Hellsing to his Dracula, but it would not be out of line if he did.

A similar thing would be to use that dominant character as a sponsor for others, as most such characters cannot be in multiple places at once to pursue multiple agenda items at once, and as many would-be clients approach the patron for sponsorship as the patron recruits clients for enterprises.

In addition, power attracts power, and in a campaign that means a rising patron will attract the attention of established peers and superior powers- to either oppose or to engage. Welcome to the Diplomacy subgame, which inevitably means also the Intelligence game as even (more or less) friendly powers want to surveil such parties to protect their own interests.

Depending on the specific game you're playing, you will have to contend with fantastic avenues of contact and thus conflict--rivals from below, above, or beyond--and the risk of being swept up into even grander scenarios.

But, even when there are special powers to work around this, you still have one hard limit: time. You cannot be everywhere at once.

The savvy Game Master will make this the cornerstone of his administration. "Yes, Glorious Wizard King, you could do that but then you are unable to pursue your research on that spell you want to add to your grimoire- which, in turn, delays your item creation plans even further."

Even if time manipulation and travel are the board, greatly complicating things, that is still the case. "Yes, Timelord Victorious, you could do that but your past self is already there trying to stop the Trollop Queen from turning your then-betrothed Princess Purity into a corrupt priestess of calamitous promiscuity in service to Molech. You take a serious risk of undoing yourself by way of a paradox."

The responsible player will collaborate with the Game Master to make the most of this position.

Player: "The Unconquerable Gunt will rage and squeal as his curse on the Great Jester delivers its final stroke, calling together the Guntguard and rallying the hordes for one last campaign into the Laughing Man's frozen dominion, daring anyone and everyone to stop him from taking the Jade Princess for himself."

GM: "Sounds good. I'll pass that on to John for the next event. Oh, looks like the Cult Leader wants in on this already."

Player: "General Badguy will issue Letters of Marque for raiders if they attack the farmlands and mines of the Glorious Wizard King, targetted by the general's spy network, and permitting the raiders to keep anything they loot or slaves they steal away."

GM: "Fantastic. Post that notice to the group and I'll have a list of initial targets for you by the weekend."

You get the idea.

Expand the frontier, get players to start sponsoring operations that their guy can't handle themselves, get players to start tackling threats- get them thinking and acting BIGGER. The price of dominance is being in control, and being in control means getting things done. You don't get to sit back and do nothing but maintain what is; that is how you set yourself up for a big fall.

Reasonable players recognize this and do so for the betterment of the game. Reasonable Game Masters welcome collaboration to ease the burden of administration therein while reserving the right to act unilaterally as required. Contrary to gamer mythology, as mocked by Knights of the Dinner Table, this is far more common than you think so just do it already- and if you run into something like this below, RUN.