Pokemon Umbral Discussion 22: The PCs Have the GM On Lockdown

[Geminex]

Wait, let me rephrase: is your sidequest still the one where we get to go half-demon, considering all the changes going on?

AB will get back to me on that as soon as he finds the time. I'm assuming that it still is.

Yes, I have some ideas to warm Pierce up to Impact, but it's not really in my best interests to help you with that.

But we've already determined what the outcome of their interactions will be. It is up to us to make this outcome plausible. It's neither in or against your best interests to help me, since, like we agreed, Pierce will support Impact anyway. It's a foregone conclusion. We can justify that conclusion elegantly, or we can't. It's up to you which.

And besides, Impact and Pierce are (potential) enemies. The two of us aren't. Or so I hope.
You wouldn't want hostility between us, would you? I certainly wouldn't. It would be... tiresome.

That comment about her being rich got your interest, eh?

Well, it got me thinking, certainly. AB limits our characters' power quite effectively... but really, if we're free to create any NPCs we want, and if we have free control over our NPCs, then it's rather easy to create an NPC with a lot of political or financial power and a plausible motive to help our respective character, to further our characters' aims.

And I'm not sure how to fix this. The best way would be to simply say "We don't control NPCs we create, they behave like standard characters", but I have a feeling Pierce would object to that. Another option would be to simply forbid players from using their NPCs' power to their own characters' advantage, but that wouldn't be good either. I mean, it's perfectly plausible that one of Impact's former squadmates would be in some high-ranking position, or that Pierce should have... some rich relative or another?, and that they'd be willing to help the character in question. I dunno how he's related to Liz.

What're your thoughts on this? It's no immediate problem, but there's potential for abuse, I think. How do we curb that? Do we do anything at all?