Non-Villainous Antagonists?

[Presto2112]

In the home-brew campaign I am currently running, the PC's party has developed a bit of a rivalry with another adventuring party. Upon returning from a quest commissioned by a local lapidary, their host invited them to a celebratory dinner. At this dinner, the gem dealer introduced the party to his niece, Prinvar, and nephew, Chovan, who are part of another party who called themselves The Gemini Compact. This group of four adventurers (which include a Hobgoblin cleric of heironeous and an elf ranger) were, at the time, quite low level (2nd), but incredibly boastful, brash, and arrogant, particularly the niece and nephew, and really got on the PC's nerves.

The Gemini Compact has made cameo appearances twice more since that session, and it's to the point now where if any of the PCs see Prinvar or Chovan they start in a different direction, not out of fear of combat, but out of sheer annoyance! It was not where the relationship between the PCs and the compact was meant to go, but personally, I love the development!

Anyone else have have similar stories of non-villain antagonists?

 

[Chimera]

In the home-brew campaign I am currently running, the PC's party has developed a bit of a rivalry with another adventuring party.

This is a trick I've used quite effectively in several campaigns. It only makes sense that there are other adventuring parties out there and when there are none but the PCs, it tends to break my belief and take me somewhat out of the game.

One of my primary tricks is the rival group led by a smarmy (and often flamingly gay) Paladin. The group has it's own goals and pursues them actively. It never overshadows the party except when needed. That being, when the party fails to undertake key missions, ignores dangers to the local community or just plain screws up, the rival group is there to save the day and take the gold and credit.

The key being the idea that there ARE other groups out there that will run off and kill the Ogre threatening the small farming village, deal with the Orc Bandits and/or save the Princess when the PCs are too arrogant, stupid or distracted to deal with such things.

The other side of the coin is that I often have several such groups around, and they are not always out adventuring. I try to keep them friendly rivals to the party and even try to create friendships between them and the PCs. Should the PCs be short of manpower or in need of assistance, then hey, such-and-such group isn't doing anything right now and their Cleric or Wizard or Rogue or Whatever is interested in keeping busy and traveling with you guys for a short while!

 

[xnosipjpqmhd]

The only "group of adventurers" I've used as rivals were the Stormblades in SCAP. The idea of adventuring groups, in general, smells cheesy to me.

More often I tend to have shopkeepers, minor nobles/officials, and relatives as rivals. Those whose actions are unintentionally problematic for PCs are probably better termed foils.

 

[Psion]

Anyone else have have similar stories of non-villain antagonists?

Well, more like your example than the title line, I have a NPC that is the director of the agency that the PCs serve. I modelled him mentally after Colonel Nathan Jessup, the hardline military commander portrayed by Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men. I chose this persona specifically to raise the players' hackles. But for some reason, my straight out portrayal never really bugged the players.

However, when I was running a living spycraft adventure, I translated things from the tone the adventure gave (that of a bookish accountant type control) to my Jessup-like speak... it was just the right combination to really get on my player's nerves.

 

[DonTadow]

The very first game of my last campaign the party got together to compete against other adventuring groups in a tournament. The tournament had six other groups in it, some of them recently formed as well. One of those groups was the Mockingbirds. I got the inspiration for them from the Magic of Incarnum book (each was a race and class from he book).

The fun thing about the tournament was it was completely openended. there were five groups of npcs all of which could have rivaled the PCs. The dice were very favorable for the mockingbirds though, and the games began a heated rivalry between the two groups that was too good to leave alone. The PCs (called the Blood Silver Cresents) ended up losing and coming in second place. The next session the pcs were so adamant that one of them in game had cooked up a scheme to get the results of the last contest thrown out (there was a caster on the sidelines helping out the mockingbirds and he was able to prove the cheating through some magical divinity. Even though he was the caster and was actually cheating to help his team win).

I created a polo like game to settle the odds and the PCs won, but not without one of them dying and them killing one of hte mocking birds.

The rivalry would never be the same. I initially set the campaign up so that something would happen during the award ceremony but I decided to run with this instead. The early part of the campaign had them competing and sabatoging each others mercenary jobs. The two remained bitter to the end.

In my next campaign, 200 years later, both have formed world wide mercenary guilds and still compete against one another for job titles. Both are aligned good but their hatred dates back centuries.

 

[Dragon Snack]

I've had a few Good NPCs take an antagonistic turn with my groups (even some in the RHoD). Most of the time they just avoid them rather than face off against them.

I did have one group almost come to blows with the other Good group. They thought that group was "stealing their kill" when they went into a dungeon as the party was leaving. Unfortunately my group didn't think that was 'fun', so I dropped it...

 

[2WS-Steve]

Just a note, I read a really good term for this kind of opponent -- contagonist.

I think Malfoy in Harry Potter falls into this (unless he turns into a real antagonist in the books that haven't been movie-ized yet).

 

[InVinoVeritas]

Ooh, Contagonist, nice.

I wrote a Living Greyhawk adventure that had non-villainous contagonists that could become antagonists, a villainous antagonist, and a villainous protagonist. The protagonist (a tribal death priest) knew that the activities of the non-villains would release a great evil, and supported the PCs as much as possible to stop it--but the protagonist was himself clearly kill-it-now-before-it-spreads evil.

A lot of players liked the death priest more than the much-more-good society they moved in.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

CAn't think of any examples, but yes: I do use rivalries and such forth to create a different sort of enemy. Me, and my players, like a bit of variety in the game. We don't want every situation to be one that is soluble only through violence.

Oh just thought of one: a player took an enemy flaw and rather than some BBEG I gave him a professional rival, another actor who came and heckled his shows. The idea was to have a rival for good gigs, someone to just come and (deliberatley) cause annoyance, drunken brawls, that sort of thing.

I think anyone who has played games other than DnD (in all its forms) would be very comfortable with the idea of rivals et. al. Many point based games give this option as a standard disad.

 

[Thurbane]

How about a rich noble who the PCs (or one thereof) have slighted in some way. Maybe they showed him up at a social event, maybe one of them had an inappropriate rendezvous with his unwed daughter.

He would have the resources to constantly (but subtly) put obstacles in the way of the PCs, such as pushy tax collectors, paying sages to give them mis-information about adventure sites, hiring NPC adventurers to beat the group to treasures etc.