Captivate Your D&D Players with Rivals & Foils

Rivals and foils are two advanced storytelling techniques that all game masters could put to good use in their D&D and TTRPG games!

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[dredgendorchadas]

Tip, if youre making a rival for a wizard, make it a sorcerer, if its a rouge try a ranger, if its a barbarian try a strength based fighter.

It adds more than just a similacrum of the pc

[mordecai]

One of my favorite rival party scenarios from my group started out with us kind of flipping the relationship on its head. The BBEG had hired the other party and we competed a few times, we also got some chances to talk with them though and realized they were just in it for the money. As the game progressed we hired them to work against the BBEG a couple times. One of the last interactions we had with our rivals was when we were being hired to fight two dragons. One of our party's evil ex-master was in the city and he didn't feel ready for that fight at the time. We sent word back through the king's messenger that we were unable to assist, suggested they hire this group and tp'd out. Our DM then gave us some info on the rivals stats, set up a one shot where we got to fight the dragons as the rival group's characters. We chose who we wanted to be and set up character sheets based on their stat blocks. Definitely hurt a bit to see the rival party get some of the loot our characters would have wanted, but we chose to avoid the fight, and it allowed us to see the "what if" as well as not letting the prep work of our DM setting up the encounter go to waste.

[andrewlustfield]

I have to admit, I've really been enjoying how much more comfortable you are in your presentation of late. This is an excellent video with a great topic. And the presentation--you seem much more comfortable than you did in earlier videos.

[nildesparandum]

Your channel should be called "The DM Muse"! Anytime I need inspiration or guidance on an adventure, you have it in spades! It's such an amazing resource. Thank you for your insights!

[Alresu]

I am prepping some rivals for my players in the background.
So far they met an assisine who was bested by the monk in a tournament, a troll hunter they went on a troll hunt with and a bard who was part of our bards backstory and made her always be only the second best there.
I only have to players but still want that rival team have four members, so I still need to come up with someone. :)

[stephenmanak]

I'm starting a new campaign on Sunday (already had session 0), and I am excited to have watched this because I've been working on rivals for them.
Reborn wizard's rival is a grave cleric
I've got a rogue for the rogue, playing the opposite styles of the rogue.
The Paladin's rival is a zealot barbarian.

[josephtaylor]

When i started playing ad&d (1982) i didn't know the RULES. My first campaign included a 'rival' npc party which leveled as they did. 'The Prince of the Orcs' and his entourage. The PCs eventually helped protect his kingdom from an evil human kingdom. Oh will, who needs rules when you have good players.

[Kidharlo]

Thank you for giving me a vocabulary for what I have been using in my game mastering! Alright so I would say my “go to” tool to motivate my players is the Enigma Foil, in the form of visions / manipulation from Deities. I find the Warlock Patrons to be especially enigmatic and great fun as the Patrons don’t have as well defined an agenda as the Deities do! As the campaign progresses and the adventurers grow in power, the Foils progress from curious tests / challenges to full out Divine Intervention. And the real magic? When the character’s actions / choices surprise those would be puppet mastering gods! Brilliant moments at the table!

[Master_Ulrich]

I know a few DM's that could greatly Benefit from your videos. Keep up the good work!

[treyokelly]

During my Extinction Curse campaign for PF2e we had the Celestial Menagerie another circus to serve as rivals to the heroes who belonged to another circus. Which is prescribed in the AP but I continued this theme and a homebrew character took up the mantle of the rival circus and continued it further into the AP changing it to The Midnight Menagerie.

[adamsturch]

So glad you've finally shared this I'm starting to run my first full module in the next couple of weeks and for some silly reason I picked call of the netherdeep, hadn't realised at the time how difficult it would be to run rivals, any tips on how to track things would be greatly helpful

[mrrizzla]

Great vid! More vids on storytelling and narration please 🙏

[peterclose]

Luke. Great advice, well done, thanks.

[jubalrahl]

Thank you for some ideas to inspire me.

[LadyKjell]

This is giving me ideas for an upcoming campaign. Thank you! ❤

[zork]

Great job Luke. Going to be *that guy* now ... I've noticed that you sometimes say climatic instead of climactic.

[RIVERSRPGChannel]

I'm going to try to use rivals in my next session coming to the party for help to go after the same BBEG.

[jonhaynie]

I really want to start using this more in my games, but right now all I have is a monthly 1-shot and I often don't know who's showing up until the day before or even the day of. I'm sure there's still ways to work it in...

I know it's fun though; I was in a campaign a few months back and our group had a rival party we bumped into from time to time. Fun stuff. My character wanted them as allies, but then one of our barbarians accidentally picked a fight with them. Oh well. Sadly, campaign ended a handful of sessions later.

[Drudenfusz]

Guess I can call me now an advanced storyteller, since I use Rivals and even more often Foils in my games, since I love to create very personal stories in my roleplaying games. For me that is rather simply, since I usually simply tell the players the theme I am going for and thus the foil can work with all player characters who have chosen to incorporate the theme into their character.

[FossilStudios]

Good video, gives me a lot to think about.