Put other adventuring parties in your game for your players to interact with. Either as friends, allies, or even enemies.
Oh yeah totally! I’m a big fan of making players aware of the fact that the world moves without them and telling them their rivals did the quest they’ve been meaning to do for the past four months is a pretty great way to accomplish that.
Important Party Types and Their Uses
The Rival (derogatory): party that is, whether seemingly or legitimately, significantly more accomplished than the players. Best used to stir up petty drama and/or inspire subtle action.
The Rival (affectionate): the party that happens to show up to claim the same or parallel jobs, is as skilled as the players, and is fair about competition. Best used as a non-lethal testing method, or as a resource to be tapped in large, multitask quests.
The Kennys: just as skilled as the players, only job is to show the players they are in deep shit, usually by rushing in and dying or worse.
The New Kids: significantly weaker than the players, but eager to prove themselves. Use to either inspire mentoring or to trick the players into calling themselves dumb by calling out repeats of the same dumb shit they pulled.
The Experts: hired agents by the government, use to show how you interpret law, procedure, and the relative power of elite officials in your setting. These parties should be both generic and static; if an elite dragon hunting team is level 5, they stay level 5 forever.
The Sweepers: as or more skilled than the players, they exist to take on time sensitive quests in exactly the ways they don't want. They are the bad ending group, and exist to add, not relieve, time sensitive pressure.
The Kevins: a party that exists only to be found injured and going away from the quest location. Use to drop clues about encounters and to instill fear.
The Five Daves: a joke party that the players will of course get attached to and of course seek out for jolly cooperation and thus you find yourself having to voice these clowns in increasingly unlikely and unclownlike situations until they become as or more fleshed out than the players characters.
