Two parties at odds

[Barcode]

Heya,

I was curious as to whether anyone (outside the "Head of Vecna" party) has tried running two groups within the same world, but on opposing sides, or at least rivals. I was thinking of running Spycraft, but rather than run my usual group of six, I thought it might be fun to split them and run two groups of three working for different factions within a fragmenting agency.

Whatcha think? Any problems outside the fact that it would be almost twice as much work?

-B-

 

[Teflon Billy]

We tried it once with GURPS Cyberpunk, but it was *really* difficult and didn't work particularly well.

It was hard to integrate things so that they would interact with one another, but would still have a fair amount of free will as well.

 

[mmadsen]

I brought up this same idea a month ago in my Adversarial Campaign thread.

I think it's a great idea -- with a few caveats. First, both sides can't just barely win every encounter, the way an adventuring party seems to. Not every encounter has to be decisive certainly, but you're still not going to see the typical series of escalating encounters leading to the big boss monster. Expect higher player lethality, because the losing side isn't the DM's party of villains; it's one of the player teams.

Second, you can't really sit at a table with both teams as they plot against each other. To maintain "fog of war", you really need to play by e-mail or play separate planning sessions before meeting in person as one big group to play out a big battle.

 

[Zappo]

Two DMs, two rooms, two laptops, a few meters of ethernet, and the "fog of war" is ensured. And if one of the parties manages to place a bug in the other's suitcase, just load netmeeting and turn on the mic without telling them. Sounds wonderful.

 

[VoodooGroves]

I've done a few campaigns that were competitive with mixed success. Of course, any game with a high death rate or guaranteed conflict (Stormbringer, Paranoia) makes for a good choice.

The largest honest RPG was a Vampire: the Masquerade campaign that peaked around 30 players, although only about 10 full-time devotees. This was in college and I had loads of time to spend on it. It worked well for about 8 months and was based on a few key drivers: (1) the current prince / ruling class in Chicago (the setting) was gone / lost and there was a struggle for power (2) there was an astronomical event of great importance which happened to basically coincide with the date of the council which would determine the new Vampire leadership (the council would be meeting for a solid week, the convergence was on day 2).

We had a good mix of players and characters including some vamps, some hunters and some werewolf characters (and about 5 oddballs - normal humans, ghouls and one mummy), but mostly because there were NO direct confrontations. The basic rule I had was, unless both PCs were there, they were generally unavailable for direct conflict. Instead, henchmen, hirelings or friends were the bait and since Vampire is a game where quite easily a stronger combat vamp can be the henchman of a weaker, mental-dominating vamp it worked out well. I have to say it was one of the best groups to deal with because we had virtually none of the "every RPG must be comical" or "I am my character" types in the game. They were all mature, or at least cared enough to pretend.

The final culmination was a giant live-action new-years party at my house with about 90% of the players, full and part-time, showing up. There were additional rules then, but basically the game had quite a few ambushes of folks in small closets where direct confrontation worked itself out. One group managed to get their TNT (all props represented by index cards) through the search at the front door (I had assistants helping with the game resolution of search / hide / etc.) and blowing the place nearly to hell at the stroke of midnight. At that point, the game was off and everyone just got their drink on. We worked out survivors and the outcome during the next week (the assistant storytellers kept track of where folks were at midnight.

Those that lived (either because they left the house or bomb vicinity...or maybe were just that strong, etc.) determined the course of the city, then a smaller group remained and the campaign continued for a few months with a normal sized group (6-8).

 

[mmadsen]

We tried it once with GURPS Cyberpunk, but it was *really* difficult and didn't work particularly well. It was hard to integrate things so that they would interact with one another, but would still have a fair amount of free will as well.

What was the basic set-up? I'd think having one security force defend a number of installations against another force could work well. The street samurai try to case the joint, the security team tries to pick up on that, they plan an assault, the security team has defenses in place, etc.

 

[mmadsen]

The largest honest RPG was a Vampire: the Masquerade campaign that peaked around 30 players, although only about 10 full-time devotees.

Wow!

This was in college and I had loads of time to spend on it.

Evidently!

The basic rule I had was, unless both PCs were there, they were generally unavailable for direct conflict. Instead, henchmen, hirelings or friends were the bait and since Vampire is a game where quite easily a stronger combat vamp can be the henchman of a weaker, mental-dominating vamp it worked out well.

I naturally assumed that a team-vs-team game would involve a lot more underlings than a typical PCs-vs-DM game. Kingdom-vs-kingdom, guild-vs-guild, goblins-vs-humans -- they all naturally involve lots of underlings, lots of intelligence, strongholds to defend, etc. The "reverse dungeon" seems like a gimme.

 

[VoodooGroves]

I had to stress alot of times the fact that allies, underlings and henchmen are rarely slaves. They take what they hear from you about what you want to do and how you want it done, shove it through a filter that is basically their perception, memory of your conversations with them and their own preferences and then do something. Because of that, if you were to tell them to "grab Joe while he's sleeping and then throw him out into the noon-day sun" they would have a discussion which may or may not end up with them doing just that. Maybe, they want to PAY someone to grab joe for them, or maybe they don't think the noon-day sun is going to be enough to take care of Joe...maybe Joe needs a stake through the heart first.

Again, there were really only about 10 movers and shakers (actually trying to steer events), 10 more who had just plain personal or quirky motivations (to be the best damn poet the beatnik coffee bars ever saw in this god-forsaken town) and another 10 who were along for the ride.

 

[Sigma]

I've run one or two adversarial games, and the biggest hurdle is keeping them from killing each other right away. Players are a bloodthirsty bunch, and if they have the opportunity, they will generally try to kill off members of the opposing groups. If you've ever tried to make a recurring villian, you know what I'm talking about.

 

[mmadsen]

I've run one or two adversarial games, and the biggest hurdle is keeping them from killing each other right away. Players are a bloodthirsty bunch, and if they have the opportunity, they will generally try to kill off members of the opposing groups. If you've ever tried to make a recurring villian, you know what I'm talking about.

I think you have to play an adversarial game quite a bit differently in certain respects. For instance, if you treat each time as a typical adventuring party, only you arrange a confrontation between them, they will naturally try to wipe each other out. Each team sees the other as a room full of (tough) Orcs.

If each team has a stronghold and loyal "spear carriers", even a simple war turns into a series of adventures. A frontal assault against an equal force that's dug in should be suicide. Thus, each team should want to perform raids on less protected areas (villages, farms, etc.), scouting missions to determine the enemy's defenses, etc. Again though, the last thing you want is for each team to just meet once and duke it out.