One of my fondest memories with my group has always been my party's interaction with this group of three foil characters to my team.
>Our group was two entertainers and a merchant who ran away from the circus. Theirs was a bunch of bard's college drop outs
>Our group had a childish, idiotic ogre sorcerer, Theirs had a wise orc wizard.
>Our group had an optimistic gnome rogue. Theirs had a pessimistic, high DEX deep gnome paladin.
>I played as friendly, father like duergar demolitionist, their group had a friendly, fatherlike dwarf ranger who focused on trap making.
The gnomes would always be butting aheads and a moment alone away from a knife fight, the orc would see the ogre as a long distance apprentice, and the two dwarfs were drinking buddies and good friends. I know most people hate seeing rival parties and question why they would even let the other live at some point, but I've personally had great experiences with them.
GM's, Players, What are you expereinces with Rival/Other parties?
I have literally had a campaign where the DM dropped the bomb on us that
>Nope, [other adventuring party] defeated the BBEG. You will go down as competent local heroes, but they're the ones that everyone will remember for the ages. You can keep playing if you want, but you're never going to get another shot like this.
I was utterly fucking flabbergasted. In retrospect, it was obvious, but it was such a divergence from my own meta-experiences with RPGs that I never saw it coming even though the clues were staring me right in the face. If anyone else in the group figured it out, they certainly did a good job hiding it.
I've never done it, but the comments in the original AD&D PHB about the DM needing to track time for each adventurer because "not all participants are likely to play at the same actual time" have always made me want to run a campaign for multiple parties in the same setting.
I was part of a campaign where the DM made his friends ( who were sadists and assholes) really really broken
>Let players change lore via self made religion that was essentially a KKK but believed humans and dragonborn
>one player obtained a sword that does 6d10 damage
>let one player have unlimited money and the excuse was that he had "untold riches"
>let wildshaped characters cast magic at whatever level
>People would just play characters that were the exact same after the previous one died and would even inherit equipment for some bullshit reason and DM didnt do shit
>didnt put his friends in any situation where they wouldnt get their way
>oh yeah also forgot he tried to DM a party of 10
The party was split in multiple ways and constantly members were conspiring against others. Eventually, me and my friends decided we were going to slit 3 of the dominating members throats, and enforce a rule that no members of mentioned religion could join the party. then the campaign crashed and burned like it should have long ago
believed humans and dragonborn were inferior*
I was part of a pretty long-running campaign focused on the fact that the other party were the ones in the spotlight. We were an advance force that would move in under over of shadow to disrupt local power structures, assassinate important targets, or mostly clear out dungeons so the other party would have an easier time being big damn heroes. The entire premise was that the king thought the peasantry needed proper, goodly heroes to look up to in order to support the rule of the monarchy, and we were the ones making sure the heroes were always able to come out on top.
Need to save a noble lady from a gang of thugs, cutthroats, and highwaymen? We snuck into their camp, killed their lookouts, and poisoned their water and wine the night before the heroes attacked. By the time the Knight and his stalwart party of noble adventurers came along half the camp was shitting and vomiting all over themselves and the other half was dead.
Need to slay the vile dragon that is threatening the countryside? We crept through the scaly bastard's lair slaughtering its minions and disarming its traps. A few short hours later the heroes traipsed right through the whole fucking dungeon and murdered the bitch with relative ease.
We did shit like this for years. Trade negotiations, opposing armies, royal marriages, guilds; we manipulated, poisoned, sabotaged, or straight-up murdered them all so that the kingdom would have righteous, noble heroes that would never be in any real risk but always appear to be toppling dangerous foes. All in all, it was a pretty baller campaign.
I just did this with my shadowrun group.
>A metal head troll combat-mage with a big sword, a quick temper and sensitive side
>A chromed up human infiltrator police academy drop-out, tricky, professional and a lover of natural food
>"Kawaii Princess" an elf decker-rigger, blogger, anime nerd, prefers to work at a distance with drones and hacking
The troll wakes up after taking home a cute korean razor girl from the fight club. He's got a call from the Infiltrator: two weird looking dwarves have been flashing around rubies at the diner he (the infiltrator) works at. He's tracked them back to a boarding house and plans to rob them but he's worried they might have some sort of special security.
The troll discusses this with him over the comm in normal vocality with the razor girl in the room.
The dwarve's only security was an earth spirit but that ended up being the least of the team's troubles since they had to go up against
>A punk rocker elf combat-mage out to stick it to the man, she learned everything she knows from pirated action movies
>A human razor girl , a Seoulpa leftover, she's a slippery jack-of-all-trades and ironically likes NERPs
>"WeedDRAGON69" a human decker, he likes high-tech traps, video games and tentacle porn, he will share all this openly
And so
>Infiltrator eats a lightning bolt to the face and lives but looses the rubies
>Troll snaps Weed's datajack, throws his deck in a dumpster and makes him wet himself,
>Punk-Mage insists on calling them diamonds for dramatic effect or due to a learning disability
>Troll gets his heart broken
>Motorcycle stunts and jumping out of windows ensue.
>Troll learns why you pack a gun when fighting a fellow mage
>Punk-mage gets solid snaked by Infiltrator who is thankfully running full nonlethal
>Princess rams RazorGirl with a shortbus and takes her hostage
>Razor girl escapes kills one of Princess' drones
We end with a Troll holding a blade to Razor Girl's throat, Punk Mage with a bucket on her head cursing everyone out, the unconscious Weed's comm filled with sexts from a very thirsty elf, an Infiltrator with a very small bag of rubies in hand trying to descalate the situation. All in the back of what is effectively a military grade senior's Action Bus.
The two teams call a truce and part ways.
The dwarves never get their rubies back.
>unironically*
I'm failing to see how that's fun and not arbitrary as hell?
It's not like it takes the DM any effort to say 'lol the other party killed the bbeg suckers' and it's not like the players can do anything about it as it's pure fiat.
It really depends on how the DM is selling the game. If he's up front that there's a set of failure states in the story then it's fair game.
Tried this once, ran three parties during the same campaign. First was a fairly typical party of adventurers on the main quest, they'd been hired by the king to aide the bratty DMPC prince in becoming a great hero. Second was a group of the kings elite soldiers who operated in the shadows and would try and make things easier for the first party and tie up any loose ends they left when they inevitably fucked up. Third party was a group of petty criminals who were simply just trying to scratch out a living in the wake of all the realm changing events the first two parties were responsible. Was ultimately a lot of work and ate up a ton of my free time but it was definitely the most rewarding experience I ever had as a GM.
None of the advance force ever tried to start shit or take credit? None of the "proper" heroes ever got a big head or trashtalked you guys in public? Nothing like that?
That sounds really nice. Are there any pre-made modules where they specifically say that it can be run for more than 1 group simultaneously?
Alternatively, do you have the notes or stuff from your campaign?
I opened a campaign once with the party killing their nemesis and his main henchmen who were all analogues of the party. The nemesis cursed them as he died. they slowly became the nemesis and his henchmen
Oh, no, it wasn't pure fiat. He literally had dozens of pages of tables to simulate what these 3 other major parties were doing, how quickly they'd level up, what sort of "treasure level" they'd have, and eventually, how quickly they'd kill the BBEG if given a chance.
The entire setup was a race that we didn't know we were in. It wasn't just to knock out the BBEG, but to do so quickly, and the deadline being someone else beating you to it rather than the BBEG doing his EVil Plan and ruining everything for ever.
And in practice, it was very divisive over the table. I was the most neutral in just being stunned by it all; everyone else thought it was either awesome or the worst thing ever.
It was not explicit that there were these sorts of failure states. But it was obvious, and well known to us that there were other NPC adventuring parties tracking down the same leads we were. We even teamed up with one of them to take out a stronghold at one point at far lower level than we would have been able to survive otherwise.
I think it sounds pretty cool. I would to of seen how it was handled.
This is why I like tabletop to video games. I just played though yakuza 0 and while I really enjoyed the story. The story iteself happends over a few days.
However I still have time to go and hit the batting cages, raise to the top of the underground fighting arena, send people to collect rare weapons in the north pole, become a slotcar champion, take over a hostclub and become the best hostclub in the city, master video games, go on dates, learn sogi and a bunch of other bullshit.
In rpgs, the world dosn't just stand around and if you are not the only people of power in the world (as in DnD where you can't throw a rock without hitting someone with hero levels) then someone else may save the day.
i have 2 groups of players who never met each other
the most ambitious plan for a campaign i have is a shared universe where they find themselves opposite sides of a power struggle between two nobles
noble 1 send party 1 to do something shady to discredit noble 2
noble 2 needs to clear his name so he has party 2 try to find the real perpetrators
persistent world, any dumb grafiti party 1 puts on the walls or some shit stays when party 2 gets there
eventually one party finds out about how the other noble is doing a similar operation, follow one step behind the other party
eventually two parties meet
end both sessions. invite them all over for one mega session, see how the players resolve the situation
Wait did an NPC party kill the BBEG or was it another group? If it's an NPC party that's pretty stupid. A DM's job is first and foremost to make the game fun, if you got sidetracked and do your own thing he shouldn't punish you for it. I'm not saying he should've made the world revolve around your group because that's stupid and I try very hard to avoid that but the reason it's hard is because the world does in fact revolve around the group. Honestly it sound's like your DM's one of the people who want people to play their novel.
>Wait did an NPC party kill the BBEG or was it another group?
It was an NPC party.
> A DM's job is first and foremost to make the game fun, if you got sidetracked and do your own thing he shouldn't punish you for it.
In his defense, that's like saying that if the party gets sidetracked to do their own thing, the main villain should hold off his evil plans to allow the party to do their stuff. Unless you have a thing against in character time limits in general, from a neutral perspective I'm not sure what the difference is other than the form of overall failure.
> Honestly it sound's like your DM's one of the people who want people to play their novel.
Most definitely not. I'm not even sure how you come to that conclusion. Adam's a bit weird, but he always offers us almost unlimited scope to do whatever we want.
What I would do is try to incorporate whatever you were doing with shitting up the BBEG's plans. Although I suppose I don't like time limits unless they're short and not campaign ending. The main problem I have with it is that while it's definitely realistic you're playing a game and that's not a fun or interesting way to end. Also the reason I came to that conclusion is because he seemed more concerned with his story making sense than your game.
Well, here's how I look at it. It was definitely a loss, and it was definitely a loss due to dawdling too long. That is fundamentally not different from "Oh hey you dawdled too long the BBEG ascended to godhood or took over the country or whatever the fuck he was up to, and now you lose.". But I don't have an intrinsic dislike to time limits and "you lose" conditions that are not TPKs. (I have noticed other people do seem to get upset by it though, which is why I asked in the first place).
What irks me a bit is the blinders. If it was something that the BBEG is a week away from completing the Dark RItual that will grant him the power of the gods, muwahahaha, then you know your deadline and can at least try to have a strike in place before that. Here, we did have one semi-known deadline (BBEG's own plan, which gets a little involved), but another that came out of left field in the form of the NPC competition. It's the inability to prepare for that that shook me up.
But the inability to prepare for that wasn't intrinsic; we definitely knew (generally) what these other bands were up to, they were often the talk of the town, interspersed with what we were doing. If I had realized we were in a race at all, I could have urged the group to go faster. But that is ultimately part of the experience of game as opposed to story, of trying to manage a limited resource, in character time, and in this case not doing it so well. You could argue the ultimate fairness of setting up a trap like this, but it's definitely one that impacts the game as a game more than the game as a story.
As for Adam, our GM's actual motivation, while he's never outright admitted it, I'm about 99% sure the entire thing was a genre blindness playing thing. That is entirely the sort of idea that would amuse him to death, to see how long we'd go before we got the hidden mechanic that was actually pretty damn important.
Hmm, well I suppose it depends on how long of a campaign this was and how invested in it you were. If you say the it wasn't a story thing than I guess it wasn't although I would argue he stopped you from reaching the climax but perhaps the fight with the BBEG wasn't the main focus? I don't know I lack too many details to make a suitable judgement. You said the table was divided, were some of their views similar to mine or am I completely off base?
The campaign was about 14-15 weekly sessions, each about 6 hours long, minus however much time we spend actually joking around rather than seriously playing.
As for focus? I mean yes, our group's focus was definitely stopping this guy. The focus overall? That's harder to say. Adam tends to have this "overwhelm the player" school of GMing. Every game I've ever played with him has made the conflict scope regional, something that will affect several nations but probably not the entire world, and there's always 5 things going on for each one we have time to respond to. They're always these chaotic riots. Somehow he manages to either shepherd us into a "Main" conflict or just lays the tracks down fast enough under our feet so that what we do develops into one. He's not the sort who would entertain questions about how he works to that detail. It's hard to pick out the focus he's intending, if he even intends one at all and isn't just following from the front, as it were.
>You said the table was divided, were some of their views similar to mine or am I completely off base?
Well, I never went around and explicitly polled anyone as to the exact nature of the upset. Most of it seemed either directed at Adam in general for pulling this kind of trick/bullshit on us, and there were more than a few suggestion to go after Thul and his crew (The ones who actually brought the guy down) and murder the fuck out of them.
I *think*, but I might just be projecting my own notions onto the rest of the group, that the main cause for upset was the unexpectedness of it all. It's one thing to lose because you didn't fight hard enough or you missed a vital clue or whatever. It's another thing to lose because of a factor that you had no idea was a factor, or because of some tiny detail you overlooked 10 sessions ago. That he wasn't entirely "playing fair", less than it was about losing the opportunity to have the big dramatic showdown fight.
My old GM tried to have a couple guys in the party betray us new players. They were dicks in general, but they just stopped coming. The campaign was a mess anyways.
There was one guy playing an assassin who was an active threat in a session. That guy did a good job. One of the few memorable moments of that clusterfuck.
Not the guy you're talking to, but I love how you describe your DM. Nothing is worse than total lack of unexpectedness. Following rails to a foregone conclusion. As a reader, the fact that the NPCs actualy matters flabbergast me. I am NOT used to that. I would love the idea that you can actually have others picking up the slack should the PCs fail. Makes me think I don't HAVE to be a literal demigod just to sate the plotline.
>tl:dr DM sounds hella based. 8/10 would play with.