#rival parties

[educationaldm]

Dungeons & Dragons: 5 DM Ideas For A Rival Adventuring Party

Add some life to your D&D campaign by making your party not the only one out on an adventure.

I definitely want to put more rival parties in my games. Here are some good ideas of different rivals to run.

[educationaldm]

D&D: Best Ways To Use Rivals To Motivate Your Party

Use rival parties to motivate players and plot.

Having rival parties in a campaign can add an extra level of chaos, challenge and fun to your games. Have you ever used rivals in your game?

[dwimmersworn]

"Inside the office, the characters found Jasper -- dead and nailed to the ground with long spike made of silvery-black metal. Brother Candor recognized that this was the Final Torment of Turms Termax, the one from which he escaped by divine ascension. Naturally, this led him to believe that cultists of Turms had slain Jasper"

Grognardia, Dwimmermount Session 11

Jasper is murdered relatively early on in Maliszewski's original Dwimmermount campaign, but he's still around in mine (at the time of writing). Termaxian cultists have been hassling him, but as yet have stopped short of outright murder.

Dwimmermount has a lot of backstory, factions, and NPCs, but few prescribed plot beats once the campaign is set in motion, so it's only natural that events will play out differently. In the last few (in-game) days of play, the Termaxian cult and one of the rival parties have come much more the fore, so I'm expecting them to pop up with greater frequency now.

[dwimmersworn]

There are lots of elements of old school play that have been forgotten over the years and one of the ones I miss a lot is rival adventurers. Starting with OD&D… there was always the implicit assumption that the player characters weren’t the only adventurers delving into a particular dungeon. These other adventurers might not necessarily be evil, but, seeing as they were likely after the same things as the PCs, they could certainly be called rivals, with whom the PCs might even come to blows, as famously illustrated in the Dungeon Masters Guide, which describes the battle between Aggro the Axe, Abner, Arkayn, and Arlanni against Gutboy Barrelhouse, Balto, Blastum, and Barjin.

Rival Adventurers, Grognardia, March 2009