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Get Competitive

Wagon Fulla Pamcackes in the Champeenship
In general, tabletop games are full of competition, from historical dice and card games right up to modern themed board games. There are certainly plenty of tabletop game tournaments out there... something that shouldn’t be too much of a surprise, as there are even jigsaw puzzle competitions. One might argue that there are a number of board games out now that unite the players as a team, but they are still competing against the clock, a target score, or some other metric. One tabletop genre where you see significantly less competition is roleplaying games. (By which I don’t mean there's a lack of games... though D&D still tops the charts, even if they’ve started to stumble). Some might argue that competition in RPGs takes the form if "players vs. the GM" (or at least the GM's BBEG), but that's not really the case. As we’ve mentioned numerous times in our posts, the GM is there to help the players tell a story - it isn’t about "competing" with them. So how can we bring some competitiveness into our tabletop RPG sessions without getting too adversarial? Sit back and see how much you can outdrink each other while reading this post from Never Say Dice.

The Friendly Bet

A friendly wager can bring in a fantastic element of competitiveness the tabletop. Your implementation is going to depend upon your style of campaign, but it's easy to think of Legolas and Gimli in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Who can get more kills at the battle of Helm’s Deep? In the overarching story of the War of the Ring, and even within the battle itself, this was a meaningless competition, but it allowed for both characters to drive each other onward. It was also a slight bit of comic relief. Competition in your tabletop campaigns can be just the same. While you may not have an army of orcs coming after your characters, letting the players challenge each other to different obstacles, combat or skill-based, is a great way to bring the competitive spirit even without life-or-death consequences like if they were defending Helm’s Deep. Your players might even decide to bet a silver (or credit) or two in order to “keep things interesting.” The challenge could also be meta in nature, which might take the form of "who can hit a certain number of 'successful' dice rolls or hits on enemies," "least amount of hit points lost in a combat," and so on. You can even make a meta competition for yourself - see how many times you can roll dice behind your DM screen without saying anything before a player comments...  then try to break that record! Though, we here at Never Say Dice would recommend against including real-world monetary betting on any of these antics - meta or otherwise.

A Simple Monkey Knife Fight
The Other Party

While your players might be the only adventuring party in your game's setting, unless that's a specific point of the story, it's highly unlikely. Setting up another group that's going after the same challenges or facing the same obstacles as the player characters can bring about some fantastic competition. Bonus points if you create their own personal Lesters and Elizas by making them very similar to the players' group. Even if you don’t want to add another complete adventuring party, personal rivalries can add a fun competition dynamic. Adding a rival to a character’s backstory (with their permission, of course) can provide a lot of options. They may not even be an adventuring rival, but one for the affection of another NPC, a rival voice on a town council, or just someone who just crashes the character's shopping trips and outbids them for fancy new gear at the local shop. No real harm gets done to the characters in your campaign, and it adds a significant amount of story that might otherwise not be there.

Competition is something you should absolutely consider bringing into your stories, no matter if the challenges are mortally adversarial, a friendly contest, or just a classic schoolyard rivalry. If you’re going to make something specific to a character’s personal story, make sure to get the go-ahead from the player first. Otherwise, you could be in for some unwanted frustration and arguing at the table. Also make sure to keep these challenges from having too much of an impact, especially in the real world. Adding competition should be something to enhance your games, not befuddle and be detrimental to your players or lead to a face-to-face arguments. Until next post folks, enjoy your competitions, your dice, and your tables. 

- A

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