# Forum > Gaming > Roleplaying Games >  How would you introduce a rival adventuring party?

## chinyu

I'm running a Pathfinder game set in a fantasy game-show dimension where the PCs are actively competing against other NPC adventuring groups to be the most entertaining, interesting, and/or powerful party. My players haven't encountered any rival adventurers yet but expressed interest in meeting comparatively overpowered rivals soon (who they could strive to surpass).

I was drawing blanks on how to introduce a rival group in a way that was fun and memorable. I could just have the rivals appear out of nowhere and steamroll them, but that doesn't seem very engaging.

How would you do it?

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## Kurt Kurageous

> I'm running a Pathfinder game set in a fantasy game-show dimension where the PCs are actively competing against other NPC adventuring groups to be the most entertaining, interesting, and/or powerful party. My players haven't encountered any rival adventurers yet but expressed interest in meeting comparatively overpowered rivals soon (who they could strive to surpass).
> 
> I was drawing blanks on how to introduce a rival group in a way that was fun and memorable. I could just have the rivals appear out of nowhere and steamroll them, but that doesn't seem very engaging.
> 
> How would you do it?


Foreshadow. Let them discover the existence of another group. 
1) NPC, "Oh I've heard about you. You're the (other groups name) who did (something the party didnt)."  The confusion delivers the message. 
2) Entertainer telling a story about (other groups name) during downtime.
3) Proclamation by ruling faction of greatness of (other groups name).

Introduce as competitors to take on a quest. Use them to put a clock on it like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indy versus the Nazis to get the ark. Very exciting of the rivals have a head start...

Reputation (not the DMG optional rule) is important. I make my parties pick a name which becomes their brand. No one is going to memorize the made up names of your players. But they will remember the time they were visited by "The Snow Walkers." And if the party does wrong, their reputation suffers.

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## Alcore

Foreshadowing...

Have them see _multiple_ groups entering or leaving a town. Given that I do PlayByPost it is not hard to just include a more detailed description. Most of these groups are as deep as a simple description, a list of names and a rough average level. Obviously the rivals will have so much more.


The important thing to established that adventurer parties are a thing that exists outside of the main party.


This all assumes they are not of the "bizaro twin" method.

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## Reversefigure4

Smugly and with bravado. These guys are rivals for the party to hate, remember.

Give them a quest info dump from the old man in the inn about retrieving the gem of Amara from the nearby ruin. Finish, agree how much the party will get paid... And just before money crosses the table, enter the Order of Amazing Adventurers who hand the gem across, then spend the evening buying drinks for the party patronisingly and bragging about how much treasure they got from the ruin, impressing all the bar wenches and the town.

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## KorvinStarmast

> How would you introduce a rival adventuring party?


"They'd meet in a tavern ..."

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## gbaji

Yup. Lots of ways to do this. The aforementioned method works, as does having the party follow the clues for <whatever> only to find another group already there entering the tomb, dungeon, whatever, and basically saying "we got here first, bugger off". Of course, you have to have a feel for how your players will react. Doesn't work if their approach to deal with this will be "kill the rivals". Although that could certainly spin off into "interesting" things as well.

The reputation concept works well, too. I ran a series of adventures with some new characters in a new area of the game world, and they were basically starting out in an area where hiring of adventure groups for various things were common, complete with boards listing openings, hiring offerings, wanted stuff, etc. And there were also some other groups that were more established, hanging around, showing off. It was honestly a lot of fun for a while, but I only used it for an opening bit. Once they got established (and yes, they picked a name for their group too, so as to get a rep), they launched off on a larger adventure and more or less never looked back.

Also played in a game somewhat recently where the GM did the same sort of thing. We were, once again, the new up-and-coming group, with other more experienced and better equipped groups out there. Wasn't so much a rivalry or hatred thing in either case, more of a "these guys are better than us, but we'll pass them up someday" thing. Again though, it worked better as an intro thing to the environment and to get us into the adventures and get us some items, cash, and experience. Once we got going, there wasn't a whole lot of value to sticking around worrying about who was in some group we once looked up to (or envied) when we were first starting out. I suppose there could be some fun running into one of them again, and maybe being in a situation of saving their bacon, or something?

So yeah, there's some value in doing this sort of thing. I guess my experience (both as GM and player as it happens) is that the party will (maybe should?) grow out of such things.


A bit of a tangent, but I also ran a (super long, world/dimension spanning) adventure where there was basically the "good team" versus the "evil team", both trying to obtain key pieces needed to open the ancient gods age tomb thingie with a "prize" that both sides wanted. I'd prefaced this over the course of years of other adventures by having them find a couple odd pieces and not knowing what they were for. Added in an assumption that "team evil" had found a couple as well. Then had the gods get involved and concoct a competition to see which side would gain the prize. Of course, for this to work, I had to contrive some <magic whatsit> reasons the gods created for key pieces not being something that could just be taken. Each team had a sealed box for their pieces. Only they could open/access. And all pieces needed to open the tomb. So this set them up for having to "cooperate" in the sense that all pieces had to be obtained, and had to be taken to the final tomb to open it. But they could still kinda snipe at each other, or try to throw obstacles in the other teams way.

I also threw in some honestly awful doggerel style poem stanzas that were the "clues" they had to follow. Shockingly, they were able to interpret pretty much every single one and figure out about where the pieces were. Also ensured that at least two clues lead to places that a team could not possibly obtain (held in places totally impossible for one team to get to, so they had to rely on the other getting that one, while they got the one only they could get to). I also tossed in a world altering time master mage, who held one, such that each "team" having found one of the pieces would also find a clue leading to an ancient long abandoned city of great power, in which a portal to the time master mage was, but the two cities were in different locations for each of the teams, representing two different time lines. The mage then had them fight, and the wining team got to stay in his "floating outside of time" citadel, while the other timeline was erased, the other team never found a clue, and the ancient city was never actually founded (by him, as it turned out) in the location they found it in, but had really always been where the winning team found it, and they were really the only team that found a clue to find it, and his portal, and him. Cause, that's just how the most powerful (and only as it happens in this world, except for copies of himself of course) time mage rolls. And he then sent them off traveling through a few planes, to another final piece, then back through another time portal to the far past, assisting in his own creation, and then sent them off back to their own time/place to continue the mission.

The teams encountered each other some what peripherally a few other times. Had to actively cooperate one time (representative of both teams had to go to an oracle to get some info). And yeah, then a final race to another (temporally stable in this case) ancient abandoned city for a final piece (which involved a bit of sniping, and some serious sacrifices to get there first), and the on to the tomb, where (after glaring at each other for a bit), they entered a chamber with another super powerful guardian of pure law thing that kinda set rules, and had them fight again (or for the first time for one team), with some playing field imbalance set based on which team had more key pieces. Insert some random "avatar of Nyarlathotep shows up when you kill the evil necromancer choas mage guy cause he sacrificed his soul to get that shoggoth that almost ripped your ship apart in the last part of the journey" shenanigans (and it's so chaotic, that the guardian of pure law just can't even see the darn thing, so have fun), and the winner gets "the prize" and the losers get, well, "stored" somehow? Dead, but in a place where there's no planar connection to hell, so they gotta go somewhere. Law dude says "they'll come out when/where they're needed".

Which, of course, leads to endless possibilities to have those guys come back. yeah. In this case, team evil lost, and team good won. But it was closer than I thought it would be (I did give the bad guys some icky  edges), and I'd also contrived a way for their characters to "come back" if they'd lost. But of course, that also means the bad guys can too...

Worked remarkably well. Gave me an opportunity to have the party explore areas of the world they hadn't been to before (and created some new ones, and new planes, and hooks for new/future adventures, as well). I actually have since had them run into one of the members of "team evil". Was a guy they only knew as "the map seller", because he happened to come from a city they went to while following one of the clues (as it happened it was the clue only "team good" could follow), so he may have sold them a map which mislead them as to where to go. Then had some underlings ambush them (his evil cult has a strong following in that particular city). He popped up on the far side of the world, where the same cult existed in another land, but in this case, while still "evil", turned out the high priest of said cult was actively trying to prevent an even more evil bad guy from <doing even more evil bad guy things>, but had to work behind the scenes to do this, using outside resources so he wasn't discovered. Party in this case was trying to stop the same super evil guy, so found themselves working with this high priest, who sent them off on their way to yet another land where he had "an operative" who would help them. Said operative was the map seller, released from storage/prison/whatever, who was sent there because he was of the same religion, but from a completely different part of the world, so had no potential for being in an opposing faction who might betray the high priest. So just the kind of "maybe trustworthy" person said high priest of evil cult needed to work with him in gathering information about the main evil bad guy.

Yeah. I also tend to like to run adventures where it's not always clear cut who the bad guys really are at any given time. Sometimes, it's straightforward, and sometimes "The enemy of my enemy is my, er, not friend, but someone I can't kill right now cause I need their help?". Tends to work well too.

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## SimonMoon6

Here's a plot idea that's been simmering in my head for many years:

The PCs hear about a dungeon and they head over to it. Ideally, the PCs are being slow, like spending time crafting items or whatever before they actually get to the dungeon.

Well, when the PCs get there, they find a rival group of adventurers leaving the dungeon, having just cleaned it out. They have a wagon full of treasure that they have loaded up with all the stuff from the dungeon. Basically, the PCs were too late. The rivals have killed all the monsters and taken all the treasure.

Now, if the PCs decide to go into the dungeon to explore anyway, they may find that the rival PCs did a fairly thorough job, but a reckless one. And they may even notice that the rivals failed to spot certain clues (or failed to solve a certain puzzle) which means that a Great Menace is going to be unleashed. Maybe the PCs can stop it from happening, maybe they can't. Regardless, this sets up the idea that the rivals are reckless screw-ups and are not to be trusted to save the day.

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## Pauly

The party rescues the princess in the tower.

When they finally get to her she complains about being rescued by dime store knock-offs, not real heroes.

When the party point out theyve fought their way through the towet to rescue her, she asks Wait how did _you_ guys get past the Lich Queen and the Hydra?
Party What Lich Queen? what Hydra?
Princess, So thats what happened, someone else did all the heavy lifting then you bunch of scruffy nerf herders waltzed in at the end. Theyve probably had to go back to a temple to get someone resurrected.

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## Bohandas

> I'm running a Pathfinder game set in a fantasy game-show dimension


How about a game show introduction then?

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## Quetzalogic

I've had the Black Hats appear posing as various minions of the BBEGs they have faced throughout the campaign who always escape while Our Heroes are taking down the BBEG. One even traveled with the PCs for a while, determined they were too stupid to be a threat, and took off with their dragon egg. The heroes hate them individually but are still clueless. Eventually they are gonna discover that all these guys are warlocks of the same patron and have been pulling strings from the shadows.

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## TyGuy

Here's what I did.
The players party missed their chance on renting travel to go on a monster bounty. They found out a ship was already setting to go to their goal destination. The snag was that another party had contracted the voyage. The player party asked if they could hitch a ride. Through RP, the NPC party found out they were interested in the same bounty, but would like some friendly competition. 
The player party tagged along, but the players instantly hated their rivals. The audacity of someone else trying to do the same thing as them. Every step of the way, the NPC party was ahead of them. They rented horses and set off with their cage-wagon long before the players got their act together in the port. The players spent some resources fighting creatures in their way. While taking a long rest, they heard hooves. They tracked the sounds to find the rival party with the captured monster. In murder-hobo fashion, the players attacked the npc party. They failed, the rival party wasn't interested in killing them though. They regained consciousness in the stables. At that point the players HATED the rival party.

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## gbaji

Yeah. That's always an issue you have to handle carefully. The players will tend to go murderhobo on "rivals", so you have to be prepared for that, and manage it in a way that doesn't allow the players to just steal their rivals efforts, while not getting themselves all killed either.

It can be a tricky balance.

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## Resileaf

If the players and rivals are of similar levels (or if the players are aggressive and aren't good at judging an encounter's difficulty level on sight), I would argue for meeting the rivals on neutral grounds first to avoid the first meeting being immediately hostile. That way you get to create a dynamic without the immediate threat of a job being stolen or taunts being thrown around. You can better show what kind of people the rival group is on their downtime and how appreciated they are by townsfolk. If the rival group is friendly, can have them meet the PCs out in the wild (perhaps as part of a random encounter) where they fight together. If unfriendly, the PCs can find the remnants of whatever their rivals fought as a proper introduction to their capabilities. 

You want there to be possibilities for RP before a deadly confrontation happens so the PCs see the rivals as characters and people rather than targets and obstacles if you want them to last a long time in your campaign. Otherwise chances are that a single combat encounter will be the only meeting between them.




> The player party tagged along, but the players instantly hated their rivals. The audacity of someone else trying to do the same thing as them. Every step of the way, the NPC party was ahead of them. They rented horses and set off with their cage-wagon long before the players got their act together in the port. The players spent some resources fighting creatures in their way. While taking a long rest, they heard hooves. They tracked the sounds to find the rival party with the captured monster. In murder-hobo fashion, the players attacked the npc party. They failed, the rival party wasn't interested in killing them though. They regained consciousness in the stables. At that point the players HATED the rival party.


Big lol at this though. Player mentality is so funny that they become murderously angry at a different group having the same job as them and sparing them after being attacked completely unprovoked.

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## Slipjig

For most tables, I think the biggest challenge will be to stoke the rivalry while preventing the parties from killing each other.  To do that, I'd suggest giving the rival party some ties to NPCs that the players don't want to upset.  If the Rivals have had successful missions for the temple, it becomes a much bigger deal if the PCs actively interfere with them.  If one of the Rivals is the third son of the local lord, expect a huge amount of fallout if the PCs publicly brawl with him (let alone engage in lethal combat).

Even better, if the PCs have families, have one of them be dating a member of the rival party.  You aren't obligated to LIKE Mom's new boyfriend, but you can't exactly leave him to die either (let alone kill him).  And if you DO leave him to die and he escapes, expect major fallout with your family.  This can also work both ways, putting an effective cap on how terrible the Rivals can be.

Another thing you can do is have the Rivals tackle problems in different ways.  If there is a plague, one party goes storming the tower of the plague cult responsible while the other party goes searching for a holy artifact to cure the plague.  This puts the PCs in a race, but since they aren't in the same space it removes the possibility for, "F these guys, roll initiative."  Maybe they don't about each other's actions, and the slower party comes back from their adventure expecting a heroes' reception, only to find out that their quest was made irrelevant by the other group's success (and since the other party got back first, they are getting the reward and credit).

It would probably also help to have the Rivals interfere with the PCs in ways where a lethal response would be a clearly inappropriate escalation.  For example, if the Rivals untethered the PCs horses while the PCs are camping, that could cost the PCs several hours of travel time while they round up the horses the next morning, possibly allowing the Rivals to get somewhere first.  While that's clearly a rotten thing to do, murdering the Rivals over it would be a clearly inappropriate escalation.

Finally, consider having the Rivals have at least one Belkar-like character who is just a jerk and goes out of his way to antagonize the PCs, but also at least one Roy-like character who will apologize and promise to keep him on a shorter leash going forward.  The Roy character may not be sincere, but it's tough to justify going in blades-first if there is a Peacemaker present who has made the Jerk apologize and promise not to do it again.

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## Slipjig

Oh, and if it's a reality-show setup, have the showrunners let the players know "off-screen" that while non-lethal conflict is "good television", actually killing the other party is heavily frowned upon until the "season finale", when anything goes!

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## Quixotic1

A gameshow dimension? Okay, that sounds hilarious and awesome.

But...why is there a need for any intricate framing device at all? It's a gameshow, right? So they meet their opponents when the host introduces them.

I feel like the host would just *have* to have some kind of campy, punny name. Sajak, Dawson, Trebek or Barker done-up as some fantastical monster-man, etc.

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## Bohandas

> A gameshow dimension? Okay, that sounds hilarious and awesome.
> 
> But...why is there a need for any intricate framing device at all? It's a gameshow, right? So they meet their opponents when the host introduces them.


That's what I was trying to say with my response, although I think you've said it much more clearly.

Have the host or the emcee introduce them or whatever

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## KorvinStarmast

*How would you introduce a rival adventuring party?*

By having them attack the party as they cross a bridge.  :Small Cool:

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## FabulousFizban

are you familiar with Mr. Nimbus?

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