My response to a question about favouritism in Role-Playing Games.

[reynardo]

(This is a copy {slightly edited} of what I wrote in response to a question on The "SO of the DM" syndrome. )

I am the GM, my husband plays an elvish druid called calair, whose posts can be found on shinyshinyelves.

He is an excellent tactician. Brilliant. Which is a total and royal PAIN. Because I do not play favourites (considering the game also has my son da_norvegicus, his father, and some close friends). But Calair is by far the best, the longest-lived and the most powerful character.

I have been accused by a player of playing favourites with this character, but it's more the player's abilities outwitting my usual tactics. It even got to the point where when a (finally) well-laid trap (with a few mistakes on my part in the playing) by my NPC enemies resulted in serious injury to Calair, my husband accused me of railroading.

I looked at the discarded plot-ideas, town plans and setups that I had had to throw aside as the characters (as all good characters should) had made their own way in their own manner and at their own speed over my country. I considered the number of times I had had to completely wing a game, making up everything as I go, because of the party doing something completely over the top. I invoked the name of a now-legendary kobold NPC whose existance was supposed to be as cannon-fodder in our earliest days. And I glared at my husband:

"The countryside you play in is littered with the bodies of the surveyors of any railroad I attempt to build, thank.you.very.much."