How do you feel about enemy adventurer parties, whether they just be a group of adventurers with conflicting interests or plain foils of your PCs working for the Big Bad?

>>95841598 (OP)
It's fun when they appear individually and team up organically.

It's not fun when the GM creates an entire group in a vacuum and expects the players to care once they're introduced all at once.

>>95841598 (OP)
I'm going to assume we're talking about D&D, since the concept of a "party" doesn't go far from that. So, good in the early game. Coming across rival delvers who don't appreciate you touching "their" loot is a classic conflict. Highly distracting, and unnecessarily dangerous in the later games. D&D player characters scale wildly out of line with monsters by design, so hostile entities designed as players will invariably be monumental threats, especially if you throw them at the party with them fully charged and ready to nova, while the party has already exhausted any level of their resources.
Ultimately, you need a good reason for the evil party to have gotten so far and become so powerful and yet still insistent on being bastards who can't just get along. Very difficult balancing act, and all too easy to make them nonsensical and outright stupid elements that still blow you up for no good reason.

>>95841598 (OP)
gay as fuck

>>95841598 (OP)
sounds interesting enough. but i dislike the aspect of adventuring party.
player parties are basically mercenaries. and there should be enough other mercenary groups to make this happen. do you have specific instances in mind?

>>95844364
Yea yeah whatever we know the only reason for your post was bumping this shit thread.

>>95844592
not really. i came across it and tried to participate. could've been nicer and engaged but whatever

>>95844364
Something I came across while digging through old D&D stuff was a Known World Gazette adventure about playing orcs and other evil humanoids, giving rise to the idea of a sort of opposing party that could be working against the party's interests or, as >>95841630 put it, just simply wanting the loot or reward for something.
It's a shame fights like that don't scale well. I love reoccurring opponents where the party and them can measure up.

>>95841613
>Introduce persistent villain (BBEG, recurring Team Rocket-type, whatever)
>When the party seriously pisses someone off before moving on, they get into talks and recruit them into a little "fuck these guys" posse
>evil power of friendship

>>95845338
so basically like a pokemon nemesis that gets stronger when your group gets stronger

Rogue Trader games likely live and die on good recurring enemies. NPC Rogue Traders and their cadres, powerful Ork Kaptains, Eldar pirate bands, and Chaos worshipping hijackers are just a handful of fun nemeses that you can throw at your players. Not to say that the most dogged enemies you could introduce come from the Imperium itself.

>>95845338
If you've never read the 2E module Reverse Dungeon, it might be up your alley.

This is why i like the concept of adventurer's guilds. It makes sense of why fantasy worlds have the PCs in a adventuring party and have other groups of adventurers exist including evil adventurer groups and rivals for glory etc.

>>95841630
Why would you assume this is D&D? PvP is fucking atrocious in D&D.

>>95841598 (OP)
Most fun when adventuring parties/mercenaries aren't a one off thing but a somewhat regular occurrence in your world. Most should be chill or rookies that haven't learned not to pick an unnecessary fight yet.
But with there being so a couple of them roaming the country it's not that unlikely your party will piss off a group. They'll make for far more interesting villains if your party knows it was their actions that lead to their feud with them.

>>95841598 (OP)
Cool in principle hard to do justice.
Most PCs will attempt to kill them immediately if they are hostile to their plans so don’t expect a cool longstanding rivalry

>>95854264
Which is why i use the guild idea. A guild provides dor adventurers and does stuff like smoothing out repercussions, punishment etc like the society of hitmen/assassins in John Wick movies. You do not want to be without them and their services or worse at the hands of the adventurers guild and in order to keep that adventurers need to register with the guild and follow their code especially when it comes to fellow adventurers and adventuring parties

>>95854264
So if they kill a adventurer or group of adventurers they would have to pay penance, refuse to and every adventurer with a adventurers guild (since every big city has one with smaller ones operating in areas) will be out for you group, you'll have to watch out in woods and forests for archers and traps, good luck going into any city, you'd have to make your own deals and if they betray you, you have to have your own back and deal with the consequences if you attack some powerful person even if they didn't pay you what they owe you. If you get on the bad side of someone with authority or power there won't be anyone to smooth it out. At least that's how i use the guilds in my campaigns.

>>95841598 (OP)
I have done a few of them before. From simple rival adventurers also doing quests, to being paid to target the party for good and bad reasons.

>>95841630
Who doesn't like that Rival Adventurers party known as the Blue Motherfucking (Gary) Oaks pop in when you half dead after being a dungeon to challenge you and take the credit for clearing the dungeon and all the loot you gathered.

>>95854530
DICKS Oak was fine, he was just one character (plus cheerleaders), making him fun to hate.
A full on rival party is annoying.