Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Moscone 03-29-05, 04:41 AM	DMs: Have you ever thrown rival parties at your players? Whether they be outright evil or greedy freebooters. Do they have levels to match your players? I'm talking about a party of Belloqs or the Oktober Guard to harangue the PCs, throwing in some comic-book style combat between 2 adventuring parties only to have them keep running into each other in dungeons? I came up with a party funded by Zhentil Keep and headed by a Blackguard. On a similar note, I've always had a fancy to try and get together 2 separate gaming groups and pit them against each other in this fashion, utilizing miniatures quite heavily. I think it could be free<ahem> I mean, fun for all.
SammasterT 03-29-05, 11:02 AM	The original adventuring party of the campaign we're just getting back around to (after about a six month hiatus), was composed of a mix of pure adventurers and Cult of Tiamat agents. They have long since split up, with likeminds taking up the slack on either team, but have crossed paths on occassion, and have "recently" found themselves on competeing ends of a quest for the orbs of dragonkind. Very evil people whom the heroes would love to get their hands on, but who would give the heroes the fight of their lives if they ever did! On another occassion, this same band, early in their career, competed with another band to discover and explore an old ruin, which all culiminated in a great pitched battle between the two. Fun stuff. Sucked to be the "bad guys" though. Another idea that I've toyed with is the younger and much less experienced adventuring band harrassing the more experienced, not via a real "rivalry", but rather through their own ineptitude. They are constantly needing rescueing and baby sitting. This last group is the worst as they not only take experience points that belong to the proper band of adventurers, but you can't (shouldn't) kill them, so they don't provide any. And probably wouldn't provide much of an expereince in any event. Hehehehe.
Zevox 03-29-05, 11:24 AM	I'm going to be doing something like that very soon: a group of Mask-worshippering adventurers, mostly half-bloods and part-outsiders (headed by a Tiefling Ranger/Rogue/Assasin and Air Mephling Cleric), that have been hired on by the evil group the PCs are fighting atm. They'll ambush them in the caves the PCs are currently exploring in an attempt at getting the PCs out of thier masters' ways. Regardless of how the battle goes, I intend to have them escape (scrolls of dimension door are so useful ;) ) and come back to haunt the PCs constantly, even after they finish with the current group they're dealing with. It should prove tons of fun, especially since 2 of the four PCs are Cyricists (evil PC group), one of which is a cleric of The Mad One. ;) Zevox
Draco Strang 03-29-05, 12:44 PM	I did it twice, with mixed results. The first was a an evil mirror-party (ala OotS) created from bits of their flesh and blood, taken during captivity. They hated those guys with a passion, because they ran around getting blamed for what the bad guys did. The other time, there was a rival party that they worked with a few times to accomplish big missions, and my players were very bleh about that one. My advice? Try it and see what happens.
Lashan 03-29-05, 04:01 PM	Ruins of Adventure , the old FR module set in ruined Phlan is great for this idea. I used a couple of NPC groups to compete with the party for the various types of missions they could do. Sometimes, the party missed out on the exp and $$$ of something when they choose another route. One of the groups was called "The Riders". They were a group of CN barbarians from the Ride. They were lead by a beautiful sorceress, who was a chieften's daughter. When her magic powers materialized, she was ostracized by the tribe. Her close childhood companions all followed her and they formed The Riders. They were all expert horsemen and great for their uncouth behavior. Personally, I've always wanted to DM two different groups in the same module as competition. It would require a website with message boards where they can post and taunt each other back and forth. It would be most amusing.
Cole Deschain 03-29-05, 09:44 PM	Back when the Complete Book of Humanoids came out, I ran a sort of "head to head" campaign. The players ran both sides, hero and villain. Their "heroes" were standard PHB material, who had been hired to deal with a few attacks by Orcish bandits. And then I had the party roll up their Orcs. It rocked. Some players favored one side over another, of course, but the numbers balanced. So in one session, the "hero" party would raid the orcish headquarters, kill the chieftan, and just generally cause bad things to happen. Then in the next session, the Orcish raiding party (which included a multiclassed fighter/thief and an inexperienced Shaman of Gruumsh) came home from a successul burning and pillaging to find their chieftain dead, his bodyguard slain, and the warriors demoralized. The head shaman sent them, as the only uninjured orcs in the tribe, to exact vengeance. So, while the "hero" PC party was celebrating, the orcs torched an outlying farm, killed everyone, took all the loot they could, and left the severed head of one the "Human" party's buddies on a spike (this was, by the way, a nicely-established NPC). So, basically, I had my players running both sides of an escalating vendetta. It was a hoot. 'Specially 'cause the orcs won.
arrianna 04-01-05, 11:08 AM	I started my campaign as an evil campaign. Someone played a lute and changed everyone's alignments, but three of the PC's were unaffected (made their saves) Needless to say they rapidly split company. Tonight's game will feature the return of those three evil PC's, several levels later, to thwart the PC's attempts at attacking a Red Wizard. I think I'll let the players play their old PC's. I let you know how it turns out next week.
Jaxian Redleaf 04-05-05, 08:19 PM	Well my current campaign is set in the silver marches. The antagonists are the demonfay and their allies the arcane brotherhood. The Party consists of: Minadus, shield dwarf fighter/barbarian/battlerager Af'thal, human wizard/red wizard Cickric, kobold fighter Kelemir, tiefling monk (was killed last session when going against a red dragon) player now plays a moon elf bladesinger. This party is after a artifact that is split into 6 piecies and when whole can control a number of beholders. When they got the 3 first piecies they where betrayed by an elf (fey'ri but they don't know that) that helped the man who gave the PCs the job of finding the piecies. He killed the man and stole the 3 piecies. They have ran into other members of the "other team and soon they will have a clash with the whole evil team gathered. Jelanen, fey'ri fighter/sorcerer/eldritch knight (the betrayer) Malgrim, shield dwarf fighter/warrior of darkness (Minadus brother) Evaine, vampire rogue (had one of the artifact piecies but the PCs took it from her and she joined the evil team as a mean to get revenge) Aakesh fire genasi wizard (member of the arcane brotherhood "loaned out to the demonfay) The PCs really hate those characters and when they realize that they're in it together... they gonna fight big time! (sorry about the english...just can't get "piecies" right...)
arrianna 04-06-05, 10:24 AM	Sorry it took me so long to reply. The PC's never got to the anti-party. Hopefully they will get there next Friday. If they do, I'll re-post. The anti-party consists of A necromancer lvl 14 red wizard (she implanted necrotic cysts in two of the party members last game session) A assasin of Mask levl 14 (he's using the necrotic cyst with the necromancers help to scry on the party and use his "study" so he can do a death attack) A blackguard lvl 13 A cleric of Bane lvl 14 The cohorts of the necromancer are: a lvl 9 vampire whose base creature is a half orc barbarian, with all his spawn. a juju zombie lvl 5 whose base creature is a human rogue a juju zombie lvl 6 whose base creature is a human fighter She also has a few fodder zombies with no additional levels. We came up with an EL of 19 for the encounter. The party's EL is also 19, so it should be a good fight. I've told the players that they will be playing their evil counterparts and I gave out the character setts last week. The thing that is making it really intersting is the necrotic cysts. I LOVE that spell. I can't wait to burst one of them right in the middle of battle.
arrianna 04-29-05, 12:00 PM	Well, I played my rival party against my party, and I would call it a draw. there were 2 PC casualties and one rival party casualty (if you don't count the undead). They will meet again tonight, less prepared, but more angry, and with a lot more to lose. If you want detail take a look at my post in combat and tactics.
Rajorke 04-29-05, 03:09 PM	i did this once but instead of creating a rival group the pcs found themselves facing evil versions of themselves while in a dungeon that was in the middle of bleed from the plane of shadow, it was an extremely interesting battle seeing how the PCs didn't actually fight their own clones but fought other members. needless to say once the real PCs had one there were quite a few jests at how they easily killed their companions clone... especially coming from the shield dwarf directed at the half-ogre