Giving your D&D players Rivals!
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 ก.ย. 2022
- *anime rival voice*: smell ya later! Every time i've run longform campaigns in D&D I have given my players a rival team to befriend/befoe/belove. How do you go about doing that in DnD, and why?
Check out the rival team creation guide HERE!
docs.google.com/document/d/1r...
Video Editing by the amazing Bia: / bnazf
Writing, Illustration, and Narration by me: / antodemico - บันเทิง
What if we had a ship-teasing, thinly-veiled-ridden swordfight duel at midnight over the roofs of the city?
haha just kidding
Unless? 👀
Sir you are writing the kinds of campaigns I long to be in ಥ_ಥ. Btw used your phantom rogue character idea for Belinda as my PC in Icewind Dale. I kept the cinnamon role aspect but amped up the creepy cute factor (think Sadako from The Ring but super friendly lol). She's been so fun to play!
this... is filled with tumblr energy.
Place and time ??
You laugh, but I introunced a narrative foil for my warlock and now he dreams of kissing the guy under the moonlight.
My first reaction to end of this video was gonna be "you forgot the most crucial part of rivals..... ROMANCE".... but then you post this banger of a response and now im beat 👀
I like the idea of the cleric/healer that doesn't have a rival in the rival team, and when the parties fight the two clerics just sit on the same rock healing their party while complaining to the other about all the stupid stuff they had to fix.
Better yet... They are lover
That’s a fun interaction, I love it
Hardly a fortnight ago, the orc sired moron drank a bottle of alchemists fire Thinking it was ale. By the gods, it would be easier to train a displacer beast to use a litter box...
In our Call of the Netherdeep campaign, the pre-made cleric ended up becoming a solo version of that. Our PC party was oddly-numbered and perfectly paired off with the rest of the pre-mades EXCEPT for their cleric, who had no foil on our side. So every time we interacted, their cleric ended up playing the third wheel / beleaguered parent chasing after both parties to mitigate the gas-fire the rest of us would inevitably become.
It honestly made the odd-man-out cleric somehow a foil of the whole of the rest of us, and made the rivalry interactions that much more entertaining. That experience and watching this video is making me want to deliberately add odd-man-out characters for the rival party in future games of my own.
I Love this.
Another cool idea is to have a conflict triangle involving the hero(es), the villain(s) and the rival(s), bonus points for having the "enemy of my enemy" moment, give your players one or two chances to temporarily join forces with their rivals to defeat the villain, depending on how the players treat their rivals have the rivals join the Villain or the Heroes
Yo.. you just saved me from trying to think up this plot hook, holy hell man ty
Came to the comment section to say exactly this. The "this one time..." moment can be so good.
I was thinking even in this video, using the example characters, that the villain team could be like:
Cyrilla's personal villain is an eldritch knight/warlock who used his force of will (and some backroom deals) to bind the other Dwarven nobles to his ambition, and is so corrupt that he allows his nobles to wreak havoc on the kingdom - the same kind of havoc as her father. Alois' personal villain could be the right hand of this tyrant, a knight whose sense of honor has him do everything the king demands to the letter, even if it's fucked up; He never refuses an order, and has made himself a loyal ally. Turmeric's could be an assassin who, like Turmeric, never knew his parents and was born in a gutter, but the Usurper saw potential in him and raised him as his own son like an adoptive father. He now serves the Usurper loyally, feeling like he owes him his life for raising him from poverty.
Uses the same model as Pointy Hat proposed (an opposite, a mirror, and a mix) but they're just straight up villains that the rival party would *also* have a reason to hate. Alois and Fornata would hate the deeds that the right hand of the Usuper would do because they'd be so fucked up, Cyrilla and Dario would hate the Usurper because, in Cyrilla's mind, he'd be destroying her father's legacy, but in Dario's mind, he'd be another tyrant but worse. For Turmeric and Moira, Turmeric would hate that the Assassin got the opportunity that he never had, to have a parent, and Moira would hate that the Assassin just *listened to* and *obeyed* their parents and would be confused by the sense of duty that he feels to the Usurper.
Also @Pointy Hat, followup video about creating good villains? I liked this one a lot.
I think another triangle that could be fun is like the Pokémon rival method.
You have one you counter, one that counters you.
Maybe a more antagonistic force and a more friendly competition.
Like one team will buy you a drink and swap stories with you. After a successful dungeon crawl, challenging you to drinking competitions, or “which team can catch the most bounties, winner gets half the losers earnings”
The other might be like Gary muddafuggin oak and challenge you to duels right after a dungeon. Then call you a “edit for TH-cam” for losing.
Oh totally. Even had the rivals become a lot stronger during a period of time the party was missing or they were far away on an adventure.
When my party went to the feywild, they returned only to hear how strong they became, and they tried to challenge the Campaign villain, and one member of them died and their leader lost an arm.
Later on during another Villain's arc, that villain encountered the rivals, and that gave time the players to escape the scene with the npc they were trying to rescue from a public execution, and my players stopped halfway through and said; "wait. We still don't want to leave. We want to know what happens, and who wins!"
I will never forget that session, they were truly hooks and for many sessions, I left the mystery of who won that fight and my players were trying to investigate what happened
One of my favorite rival teams was the first I created. It was entirely to prevent a TPK in a low-level dungeon. The PCs were pretty deep in the dungeon and after a few bad rolls they were ALL making death saves as the monsters loomed over them. Then another adventuring party showed up at full health (because most of the dungeon was already cleared!). The players HATED that they had to be rescued so THEY made this adventuring party their rivals!
Thats an awesome idea!
ya know thats amusing that things went THAT way as it is but in a world were adventuring is completive as can be i can see this happening
Sometimes the players do the work for you. USE IT SHAMELESSLY!
@@Zaprozhan indeed infact sometimes theres just in party rivals who will GUTTERISE eachother into problems and then if it gets the entire party into a mess they will have to unfuck the situation
This is one of the options created by the existance of a Rival team, a "Don't kill the party move" that offers more roleplaying options going forward, as long as not overused. But if these sort of things are creating too much vitrol in the party, one opposite trick would be an adventure hook in the form of a half dead Rival team member stumbling up to the party and after some back and forth swallowing their pride to ask for help because the rest of their team were taken prisoner and the PC's are the best chance they can see to save them.
i literally met my party's rival team in a session today so this is perfect timing... i hate them so much and it's so good ♥
I'm a dm in the process of planning the rival team for my party so I couldn't agree more
Can't believe this, I was building the rivals and planned to introduce them in 4 or 5 sessions, I'm adapting them to appear sonner now I had material to work with.
Ha same! Just made the conceptd of the rivals today 😂
I appreciate that Dwarven girl's beard quite a lot
This! I almost teared up. More dwarven women with beards!
I assumed it was a joke like she's played by a guy.
Dwarf goatees are very underated 👌
@@vukkulvar9769 Naw dude, classic tolkien. Dwarven Women have beards, which is why people think that dwarves emerge from stone. From the Hobbit.
@@greysonjones5429 Except of course that Amazon fucked that up
I thought of a funny rival being a necromancer wizard who is jealous that one of the PC's has such a large group of friends so the necromancer summons and takes control over undead to have their own friends. The further you progress in the game the more powerful undead they have like at the start they have a skeleton or zombie for each PC -1their idle. Then they slowly turn some them into stronger undead such as wights, ghouls and vampires.
👍
Brilliant
Maybe a more interesting twist on this could be the Necromancer literally wanting the PC's friends. So they kill them and then raise them! Yippy!!
You mean wraiths, right?
@@Victor-um9ce I mean the necromancer could also control wraiths but my typo was meant to be Wights as in the undead that can have 12 zombie servants.
Remember, you don't have to make rivals for the group ahead of time. You can turn an npc that a player has interacted with into a rival. This way you can see what basic premise the players respond to, then build from there.
I think this is a very good approach, as the players start to remember them and have personal grudge.
I think it would be cool to mark off a few NPCs as potential rivals, and have those who the players seemed most interested in show up again as rivals
Especially in a new champaign where you haven't gotten a handle on how the PC's will be running their character. If you find that one of your NPC's is making sparks fly with one PC, that's a good foundation, to expand from.
Yeah that's probably a better way of doing it, naturally there's gonna be NPC's the players dislike and it's fun to make the players hate those NPC's even more.
Antonio, you’re so creative and hard-working, it blows my mind. I’m so happy that you make videos for people to tune into to enhance their roleplaying experiences.
You should be so proud of yourself
Right? It’s insane that this level of content is free!
Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, inspires more murderous hatred in my players than me trying to set up a rival team for them to face. Like, I don't know why they always jump straight to "we must slit their throats in the night" mode... but they do. Always. It's kinda frustrating....
Aww :(
Have you tried leaning into that expectation and used the rivals to bait your party?
Maybe you could have the local authorities get mad at the party for straight up murdering other adventurers? That might make your players calm down
Some DMs adopt the rival team so much that they switch to a DM Vs player mindset, backing the rivals over the development of story (together, not the DM alone). I'm not saying it's what you're doing but perhaps consider it. If players who play for freedom feel like they're being restrained they'll often lash out as murder hobos.
The villain has been observing this behavior and sets up a team of assassins to cosplay as a foil party
Rival players can be very dangerous narratively, as their very existence questions protagonists in ways not every player wants to deal with. For example, the player behind the dwarven princess in the video may not have any desire to explore what her rival brings to the table, opting instead to just goad them into combat and kill the perceived 'disruption' to their character's planned arc. It's a good idea to let rivals occur naturally, or at least broach the subject with a player before trying to give them one.
I absolutely love how both Moira and Turmeric have round animal companions
and Adaine
Vodar nice profile picture
Turmeric's little buddy came part and parcel with their Urchin background. Moira's familiar? Purchased from a pet store for the aesthetic.
I feel called out by the Wizard Apos'Trophee Hyphen-Name, and I am here for it. I need a Wheel of Goals for villains to let the players spin for what is happening.
Maybe use a different wheel, that wheel had 1 "WW3 analogy" and the rest were "destroy the world".
I gave my players a Cambion Rival, he fought them 1v5 at like level 2 (he had no armor) with no magic items. Quite close, and they won. He escaped with his superior flying speed.
They met him a few times after, mainly doing his own thing.
Any he made his own little party that is doing many quests the party ignores, they even worked together once.
To keep up with the party, he also gained levels at Barberian (his AC is made from DEX+CON+CHA ;))
He mainly focuses on gainning political influence and getting in with the important tribe leaders
one very important thing, a "devil is in the details" kind of thing, is that it is VERY important thing actually know your players characters before even considering a rival. i'll say to give your characters a session, or two, or half the campaing ok maybe not that much, to get to know yout players, what they actually do what they actually think how do the actually react, it's never easy to get any of that on the character sheet the first time without some experience precisely because characters are always iterating upong themselfs while playing. your paladin may have syad that he is the shining face of honor and piaty but maybe the player themself isn't actually aware of sayd details and missed an oportunity to help someone or an insult to the crown simply flew over their head whem they heard it idk, a very important and specific detail that informs that a rival atacking sayd desire may not be able to fully succed in their objective but a ruval constructed in other direction upon the same character might have a bigger impact.
but still, rivals are their own people even if the narrative role they have isn't "as strong" as it can be, and it can also be worked arround in the same self iteration and improvement the character they are reflecting is going throw.
be careful and have fun, after all that's always the goal
I appreciate that you've given the dwarven princess a beard. It's a travesty what they did not giving dwarven women beards in rings of power
Of all the things to cry about
@@jonttopia Of all the things to cry about this is by far the greatest offense.
Not actually confirmed in any Tolkien work. Only implied as a joke in the Jackson films, which itself was possibly based on Terry Pratchett's Discworld books in which (as part of the satire of Tolkien) all dwarves do indeed have beards.
No really, it’s an assumption based on a parody of the original work. I used to get this wrong too.
@@intergalactic92 Appendix A: "Indeed this strangeness they have that no Man nor Elf has ever seen a beardless Dwarf - unless he were shaven in mockery, and would then be more like to die of shame than of many other hurts that to us would seem more deadly. For the Naugrim have beards from the beginning of their lives, male and female alike; nor indeed can their womenkind be discerned by those of other race, be it in feature or in gait or in voice, nor in any wise save this: that they go not to war, and seldom save at direst need issue from their deep bowers and halls."
@@jonttopiait was something unique to their race that a lot of people apparently liked, in a fantasy setting people tend to like the things that edge more towards fantasy rather than just normal humans, it added a sense of humor or intrigue to the dwarves that was stripped away.
I dont personally care, im just saying i understand why some do, I mean it was the 1st female dwarf pictured on screen and they willingly chose to subvert everyones expectation without replacing it or justifying it. I mean we could all just pretend she does in fact have a beard comparable to malw dwarves its just not on her face to preserve the humor at least.
What if, hear me out, what if we had a Wizard Hat tier list? I honestly believe humanity needs it.
I ran a rival group delving into the Underdark alongside my party once. At first, tensions were very high. They travelled together for the majority of the time, but they weren't as high levelled. Instead, I built them to be perfectly working together while the party still had a few issues with communication. Instead, they were proactive and had strong opinions, as the rival teams were all basic copycats of the party, with classes switched. The rogue-sorcerer became the bard, both being the heart. The Coffeelock became a cleric. The cleric and bard had a small fling, where as the Coffeelock and rogue-sorcerer were an active thing. They spoke about relationship stuff during downtime. The ranger became the... ranger... Different subclass. Planeswalker to horizon Walker, and from skeleton to aasimar. Lastly, our cleric, which became the eldritch Knight. Firbolg to Goliath. They had similar backstories to the party, but they were all based around a prominent location the party was exploring, where an elder Evil had touched the earth and permanently scarred the land. Had a lot of fun making new aberations for Y'chak.
Anyways, the party had a lot of fun bouncing off these NPCs, and without prodding, they gravitated to their counterpart, as well as the party's leader, the dwarf cleric. When they had to split up, I swapped a character out for a doppleganger, and that doppleganger was caught within minutes. The problem was the doppelganger was hunting the party and had his own group of baddies actively hunting the party down for main plot reasons. Long story. However, because they got caught early, the rest of the enemy party wasn't ready, leading to a 7 v 2 against a monk and hexblade. The monk and hexblade where higher leveled than the party. Level 14 to the party's level 9, and the rivals' level 7. With the numbers advantage, the doppelganger monk fled, covered by the revenant hexblade, who perished for the 4th time. Suicides, killing the rival ranger. One revivify later, and the only question was what happened to the eldritch Knight....
He was killed hours before, body lost in a river.
He was revived via clever use of a homebrew item that summoned a Coatl to aid the party, and brought back to life later by the party's cleric, his foil.
god damn ur pfp goes so hard
Zuko and Aang is a fantastic example of god tier rivals
I'm going to introduce a rival to my party's warlock: and it's his older brother. This video gave me everything I need to make this rivalry dynamic and fun!
ooh that’s cool i’m using a warlock and i want to ask my dungeon master if my character can meet his older brother which is a paladin it would be really cool because my character is kind of a demonic version of a paladin!👍 also my character grew up in a rich family of monster hunters and he is the only one that is weak and have no special powers and his goal is to somehow defeat lots of monsters and prove his worth to his family and his big brother is an extremely talented and powerful paladin i definetely think that he would be in the middle of the spectrum.
I’ve got a character whose main flaw is he’s overprotective and doesn’t really believe others can take care of themselves. He constantly worries about everyone, even one of his siblings who’s got a really safe job as a baker. A sibling just existing in another party would be a great rival
the little chibi illustrations of the party are SO good!!! I love it
I dm’d a campaign with two parties in the same storyline, one week party 1 had a session, the next week party 2 had a session and one week, both parties came and it turns out I collected party 2 to be rivals, so it was team vs team, and the parties loved it.
Gosh Darn It, you constantly impress me. Rivals, Angels, and pop singers (burlesque bards with fan blades). I'm not surprised that your views are getting close to the 100k, because every aspect impresses me: Animation (Love your aviator btw), voice (made for voice over - figure you either L.A. or Miami), and number one...your creativity. Gosh, that's where it gets hard to quantify. Creativity. You have it and your whole production shows it in spades. Keep up the great work, your steady growth in subscribes, shows that you've got "it". Now, get sponsors.
Steve is the guy that convinces you to play Minecraft for like 2 weeks max and then never touch it for a year
HI! I LIKE SHORTS! THEY'RE COMFY AND EASY TO WEAR!
It’s cool to see that I’ve had the same idea of giving my characters rivals!
I’m going to play a warforged bard who decided to abandon his life of violence to pursue his newfound passion: music. But his foil is his former commander who zealously believes it’s the purpose of a warforged to live and die as a soldier (and begins hunting his former comrade because in his eyes “you serve no purpose”).
Your content is excellent. Thank you.
I would love to see how you portray "Pointy Hat" as: an NPC, a Monster, and a magical item.
I personally have always been an item and a person
Rivals are so fun if you have players that get invested in that sort of thing.
My favourite kinds of foils are the mirror foils. There’s something incredibly cool about seeing all the cool tricks of your hero in the hands of someone he who may not share your protagonist’s morality.
Had a tough day and this really cheered me up. Thanks pointy hat. Love the vids.
I adore your art on this episode. Top notch. Also, I used your Hag and Tiefling ideas on my campaign and it's great, you, my dude, are a genius.
I made a campaign where the main quest is searching for exotic ingredients for the king's birthday feast. I made it a point to make the antagonists be competing guilds. My players really liked that concept and how those other guilds had optimized teams that they may or may not have the synergy to compete with.
Love the fact that the autosubtitles changed Palpatine to Papa Putin
3:30 I love how all the options are "Destroy the world" except the "WWIII allegory"
that's it, those are all the options
Dude, you are awesome, the editing, the drawings, the references, the jokes... You deserve every single subscriber and like
This is INCREDIBLE material. I'd honestly never thought of non-villain antagonists in D&D, and I absolutely love this concept and how you approached it. Thanks for this video!
Not me at the edge of my seat for how the hunt competition turns out only to have my hopes dashed as the video ends
Outstanding content. This series might be even awesomer than your DnD with a twist. They’re both great, actionable, and entertaining. Thank you!
I love your videos so much! It's not just the very interesting content, but also your edgy humor & superb editing skills.
I've always thought it'd be fun to have a rival party who while not particularly effective in combat, are a band of talented acrobats and illusionists who constantly try to upstage the party with elaborate staged battles and performances.
One thing I like about rival teams, on the foil aspect, is using them to show how much more effective a team is instead of a group of individuals doing their own thing. I've had far too many group who would rather risk death than consider doing even minor actions to use teamwork.
In my own personal Exandria game, I made a 'mirror' team of rivals that reflects a lot to my players' characters. Just making them was so fun, thinking of arcs to intertwine with theirs and personalities to 'mirror' them. I absolutely love what you made and love within this video of what are rivals, how to use them and how to make them in ones own game.
We are going to celebrate hard when we reach 100K and rightfully deserved for the amazing content ya make. The characters and rivals you made, GOD I LOVE THEM SO MUCH AND THE ART IS ADORABLE! I relate so hard to the Royal Knight and Blacksmith Revolutionary, also just an absolute sucker for a run away rich Pirate gal! Mi pana eres el mejor! Y mucho suerte con todo! 💛
The Premanger reference earned my subscription. Marvellous taste.
I love making parties of adventurers filled with the classes, races and alignments that my players didn't pick and making them sort of rival/parallel adventurers; They are not necessarily against the party, they simply are using different means to reach the same goals. Sometimes my players have antagonized them, other times they've formed relationships, but ultimately they are simply other adventurers trying to reach a goal
Leverage has a great rival team with one of the rival characters actually being villainous. The characters' responses to their mirror foils are: the two hitmen are competitive but mostly attracted to each other, hilarious; comparing strategies awkwardly but excitedly; absolutely hating each other; hating being compared to each other but mostly caring about their relationship to another character
Straightforward, very fun.
Based Pointy Hat with a pro public transportation message
I tend to make the rivals strong counters to certain party members while being neutral, and weak to others to create an interesting dynamic in combat.
Most recent campaign had a team of npc mercenaries also going after the same villain target. Wanting the fame/ recognition/ reward for themselves of taking down the big bad so from time to time they show up just long enough to try and throw a wrench in the players plan. It was great. The main hatred was still directed at the final boss, but the excitement of the players throwing the rivals off course or beating them to a quest objective was real. And nothing stoked the fires more than the players reaching the end of a dungeon only to find the objective already gone and a snarky note left behind for them.
You deserve the success you’ve gotten recently look forward to your new videos
I always get excited whenever I see a new pointy hat video. Seriously, I love all of the stuff you make!
You are quickly becoming one of my favorite dnd creators. You are amazingly creative ane put so much love into your work. Your energy and passion is honestly contagious, thank you for your work.
Aloys' little "Oh Beans" just broke me. So cute.
the problem with the Rival system is that PCs die. will that make the rival just keep living & declare victory? will the DM have to make another NPC to rival the new PC?
The Rivals have their own lives and struggles. So if a PC dies, maybe their Rival dies as well. Maybe they're crippled and have to find a replacement for themselves in the group. The same thing your party has to do, their party also has to do. They aren't magically better than you with infinite resources, they have to work like you have to work. In fact if a PC dies, maybe their new character could be their rival and so they have a complete history for their new character, including leaving the Rival Group to join the PCs.
@@LupineShadowOmega I think it'd be good if the rival PC left the rival group, opening up a spot for the rival of the new PC. That way you still have the old rival you can keep in your back pocket for later. Just because they aren't a rival anymore doesn't mean they won't pop back in eventually! Hell, if you do it right you could tug at some heart strings as the characters are reminded of their fallen comrade whenever they show up.
@@seasnaill2589 Also an option. In fact you could have it both ways and have the rival leave to join the PCs in tribute to their fallen rival. Maybe they say yes, maybe they say no. It could lead to a bad end for them, or it might be a point of contention with said character later.
The possibilities are as endless as the group's imagination. Which is why I feel like worrying about if someone dies is sort of missing the point. Because sometimes someone dying is just another story to be told.
@burneraccount LMAO
The rivals don’t have to be a direct 1 to 1 mirror. It might be an idea to kill a couple of rivals in advance to show that PC death is possible. You have limitless power as the DM. Use it.
Dude, I cannot believe your timing. I was preparing a rival team (with a really silly name gimmick) but was having trouble figuring out their personalities. Now I have a good source to do so, I'll probably play that card a little earlier than I had planned, to give my gang more time to expend with them. Big thank you, great material as always.
pd: I'm also using the Dragontouched idea, plan to have my gang taking part in their revolution. Huge thanks for that too.
This was fantastic! Thank you so much. I can't wait to try this out in the campaign I just started running for my friends. Love you, Antonio!
I love the classic trope with mirror matches. I've been in games with rivals like these, and it's so fun to interact with them!
I'm am so happy your Dwarven princess has facial hair ❤️❤️❤️
This is one of the few acceptable ways for a DMPC to exist.
I adore all of these characters you made so much!!! Their designs are so good, especially Darios, Cerella (not sure how to spell those names XD), and Turmeric. I especially appreciate Cerella having a small beard and Turmeric being non-binary and how naturally those things are presented. The names are great too, my favorites being Cerella sounding almost like a condensed version of Cinderella and Turmeric just straight up being a spice and presumably a name they chose themself.
Being non binary actually makes sense in DnD because it's all pretend
I love them too. It felt a bit weird when you described the PCs, because they sounded like the adventuring party in Hidden Fortress.
I’m always so excited when I see a new video from you pop up on my feed. You have quickly become one of my favorite creators on the platform. Thank you for all the amazing work and free dnd content you make.
You are so darn great!! Honestly, the fact that you have so many Docs to read is a great way to help, at least, me memorize these. Also love your analogies that help with figuring these stuff out.
pointy hat you are overthinking, sometimes the most mundane things are the strongest rivalry points, for example, what goes first, milk or cereal
ive been doing this and it is honestly so much fun. when in need of inspiration, anime is v helpful!
this is so cool! Thank you for your ideas! Your videos are always so informative and I love the illustrations you do for them! Good luck on 100k!
I used rivals in my last long term campaign.
Seeing as there was a power vacuum after the world's greatest adventures had not returned from their mission. The call went out to any adventurers to investigate their disappearance and compete the quest.
So the party was required to come up with their own group name, as they went up against multiple other groups.
They found themselves in constant competition with one other likely group, but if course they came out on top.
They would pop into each other from time to time but it all came together when the party accidentally stumbled into my big bad plans early and turned to their rivals for help.
They worked together and achieved a lot but the accidental death of one of their rivals in a warehouse fire was juicy drama and my friends loved it
Always love your video hat man. I've put some of your stuff in my games!
He explained how much I love frozen unironucalky because of how its two mcs are antagonist to each other. (plus idina & Kristen) I like it a lot when I look back at it.
Yes. It is perfect to highlight the difference between an antagonist and a villain. Hans is the villain, but he never gets in Anna's way until the very end.
Had a fun set of foils for a character. Child of an angel and a devil, hates his dad, all that stuffs. His foils were his 2 siblings, both trying to get their fathers respect. But the father only respected the players character, who doesn't want his respect. Was great to make his siblings villians. The younger sister was a necromancer trying to bring back accerak. The older sister was meant to be the strong knight type but failed at it and uses illusion magic to pretend
I had a situation where multiple players at my table all decided to be monks from the same monastery. I used your method to create some rival monks (from a different monastery) to serve as antagonists with both parties racing to find the same artifact.
My players took to it immediately; major Snake Eyes vs. Storm shadow, Gryffindor vs. Slytherin vibes. The "competition" element you introduced was a massive motivator for my players and it was almost shocking to see them slip into that "we can't let them win" mindset. I think they forgot that they weren't actually their characters a few times along the way XD
How do you reveal this very complex and detailed volume of information to the players? Will they sit still for pages of boxed text?
That's exactly what i thought. The players don't know anything about their destined rivals, they don't have their backstories and it doesn't really make sense for those self proclaimed rivals to just show up, monologue and know everything about the heroes. Basically i am asking the same question, how do you integrate them organically? how do you get to the point where the players know about the rivals and vice versa?
As I said, the rivals are not a one off encounter. Ideally, the players should be seeing these rivals pretty regularly. There are many occasions to convey the gist of a character in one or several of those.
Have them working behind the scenes, perhaps doing quests that the party dont do? Or maybe as a group that is trying to earn fame in ways your party isnt whether its fame or deeds. Or even, the bbeg hires them on without revealing himself, using manipulation or a vast network of contacts to basically paint the pc’s as “not as good as they act” so they have conflict throughout the game.?
Seeing Serena joy is weird to me, I see her as a straight up villian not an antagonist. Unless I'm missing something new from the new couple episodes
Nope, you're still right.
A villain is almost always an antagonist. It’s just that not all antagonists are villains. An antagonist is just someone opposing the protagonist/main characters, so they’re usually villains
I confess part of the reason I read pre-written adventures is to sort of do this in reverse: who are the antagonists, and how can my character be a foil to one of them? I find it heightens the drama and makes my own character feel more like they fit in the story instead of being some rando who just wandered into a plot because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I can’t believe your channel has grown so much! I’m so happy for you and I love your content
I love that the party is she/her, they/them and cool -definitely not pointy- hat
One way a Rival Party could help a DM is this: If a DM creates multiple plot hooks that the players wind up choosing between, assume that an unchosen hook gets picked by the Rivals. No need to solo play a full campaign, just take a few minutes to sketch out what they'd gain from it, how the experiences would impact them, and how this might affect the world.
This would let the DM invest a little more thought into plot hooks knowing that the skipped ones would still contribute to the campaign setting, provide more data for Player rival Roleplaying, and help the DM with creating non pc driven events to make the world feel more alive.
What a generous, entertaining and entirely charismatic content creator I have stumbled upon. Thank you for the tips and guidance, you're certainly helping a new DM!
My DM did this after I gave him the sob backstory of my character; basically a character my Tiefling Paladin thought was dead, wasn't...I really love him for it...
All of your videos are amazing. Rival parties are one of my favorite things in games and media, and it makes me happy to see it described and explained so well.
I love that you provide specific examples in existing fiction and also provide insight on how to craft new ones custom-made for player characters.
Keep up the good work!
Character foils are so fun. Once a pattern is set up between two PCs, they really help eachother shine.
I don’t like that the princess gives up being queen that easily. She seems more like the type to become a benevolent monarch in order to right her fathers wrongs
I'm always so excited to see your videos!! Such a treat every time ☺️
I introduced rivals in my last game and it was such a hit that I have vowed to keep them in every game I run in the future now.
This video is an absolute goddamn gold mine of DMing advice. You, sir, are awesome and you should feel awesome. I inadvertently already came up with a rival character for one of the players in my upcoming campaign before I watched this, now I'ma make up one for everybody else.
This was a incredibly interesting watch! Your videos are both informative AND funny at the same time. Its remarkable! Its inspired me to start working on a rival team for my own players :D
I love when you say you quickly go to saving the world. Over in BG3 El just said that the threat threatens the whole universe and I'm just staring at him like "Dude the level cap is 12, that puts me in "Master of the Realms," what you're looking for is a "Master of the World" like you, dude, sounds like this is your fight not mine, I'm gunna focus on removing the tadpole"
Dude, i cannot tell you how much I enjoy your vids. This is amazing in every way. Keep up the good work!!!
This is fantastic advice for systems besides D&D. A rival gang of edgerunners would add a lot to a Cyberpunk campaign, adding so much to the "always watch your back" tone that makes Cyberpunk. Plus, it gives you a great resource for jobs to go sideways. Your PC crew's rivals got hired by someone else for the same job the PC are working, or are working the other side, or just heard the PC's are taking a score and decided to try and take it for themselves, or both crews got hired together and now have to keep their rivalry in check long enough to finish the job and get paid.
I never make comments on videos but I was extremely impressed by the quality of this video and decided I HAD to leave a comment. I was already impressed by the first half of the video, then came the stunningly illustrated example characters and I was blown away. Bravo!!
You're an amazing content creator. Please continue to be as generous and respectable as you have been. I love your content and look forward to implementing your ideas into my future projects.
Thank you.
This video is great! I was reading Eberron rising from the last war and there was a bit about "creating an enemy that the player meets a lot" and hearing you explaining your point of view really helped!
Something that didn't get mentioned that I'd like to bring up- make it so the rivals also have their abilities be foils. This example isn't from DND but in one game there's a character called Feng. Big shark pirate captain with a cannon and summons her ghost crew to support her. If I were to make a rival, they'd probably be a high priestess of Atlantis. At her call is a legendary beast, the leviathan. Where as Feng is a powerhouse that can call support, the princess is a meek and very squishy support that calls on a massive monster to do her heavy lifting.
I have kind of a similar thing going on in my campaign right now. One of my players is a Dark Knight (FFXIV Homebrew) and their rival is a Samurai (more FFXIV Homebrew). Their abilities are similar in function but the focus on their fighting styles are very different. What’s even funnier is that the Samurai is the Dark Knight’s long lost brother but they don’t know it yet 🤭
I had questions about how you actually set up rivals but this man explained everything in detail, even with examples to help out. This video will help out so many of us, thank you for making it❤
Can't wait for your rival channel "Heel of the boot"
I love how the rivals presented in the end sounds very much like awsome PCs !
From an overachiever to another.
This is an amazing channel. It’s refreshing and nothing like other channels. Congrats on that! You are very inspiring!
Never seen your channel before today, but this video was so awesome, helpful, and genuinely entertaining it made me want to pick up DMing again. Needless to say, you've earned yourself a subscriber this day and I can't wait to see what else you have in store going forward.
I discovered this channel quite recently and I absolutely LOVE your content! As a DM (who also loves drawing my own art) I feel really inspired after every video I watch. Keep going, and thanks for all the free downloads aswell!
"A dwarvern princess."
Artistic inclusion of a subtle, well-kept beard.
CULTURED!
I love your videos and I'm definitely going to work on this in the future. I never even thought about it. Thank you for all you do to help with better DnD games and discourse! 😊
Brilliant writing theory. First video I've seen on your channel. Already subbed. Thank you for the PDF, that's a gift. 🙏
I can't express how good of a video this is. Your ideas are immaculate