Mirror Parties: A Way to Spice Up Your Campaign

In TRPGs, the players embody a special kind of person. They are the type of person who is so powerful that they are capable of taking on special challenges that the average person is not prepared for. Player characters, then, are a unique kind of person who exists in the world, a kind of person who is elevated above the concerns of average people. TRPG characters are rarely farmers or shopkeepers concerned with getting by; they're heroes who answer the call of adventure. But does it make sense that the player characters are the only heroes in the world? I don't think so. So I add in other heroes which can complicate the story. I do this specifically in the form of what I call a "mirror party," a group of heroes who are matched with the party of player characters, and this mirror party can cause all manner of interesting additions to the story. Read on for how to develop a mirror party and how to use one in your campaign. 

First, some examples of how mirror parties have benefitted my games. When I was running a campaign early in my GMing career, my party of player characters were deciding whether to protect the royal family or tear their kingdom down. I inserted a group of four adventurers who seemed to have similar interests to the party; they too wanted to be involved in the shake-up surrounding the kingdom. In this case, their agenda was to protect the kingdom, and they often encountered the anarchist faction of players. This created an opportunity for me as GM to challenge the anarchists via the story. 

Time passed, and I wanted to refine my mirror party idea. When we launched the podcast Listen Check, two of my three players had played in the palace guard campaign. So I took the mirror party from the old campaign and inserted them into the new campaign. The four adventurer mirror party traveled to the city where the podcasted campaign took place and had a new agenda: their fourth, a monk named Hyrum, had accepted a misleading bargain with an evil god, and his soul was being tortured by the god. The mirror party then sought to free Hyrum's soul from the evil god. This was complicated by that fact that Hyrum, now partially possessed by the evil god, was killing innocent people across town. This storyline went for a stretch of episodes, and the player characters sought to stop the murders; their paths met with the mirror party a few times, always pushing towards stopping Hyrum from further violence. The mirror party was more or less a force to advance this storyline, and it worked well as a way to remind the players that they weren't the only forces of heroism in the campaign. 

Let's jump forward to today. Now I'm running the mystery campaign, and the mirror party concept has taken a new form. One of my players suggested a mechanic wherein each character has a secret, and the players gain bonuses for keeping their secret from the other players. But this mechanic doesn't really lend the players to investigating each other; they gain more by tacitly keeping their secrets and benefitting as a group. So I tweaked the mirror party formula and created Dirk St. Patrick, a private investigator who is constantly messing with the player characters. Thanks to his prodding, one of the player characters has lost their secret, and the other two players are closer than ever to losing their secrets. All it takes is Dirk suggesting things about the player characters, and the rest unfolds naturally. Here, it is most in focus that the party dislikes the mirror party; Dirk is a destabilizing force moreso than the somewhat helpful mirror party in Listen Check. It doesn't have to be that way, but it often plays out in such a manner, so be prepared to relish the opposition of your mirror party. 

A final example before getting into how to design your mirror party and implement them: also in Listen Check, I tweaked the concept of the mirror party. One player, my brother in fact, had two concepts for his character before we played. One was a stalwart monk who had been wronged in his childhood by a terrible gang; the other was a fighter who specialized in shield combat and wielded two shields. Ultimately, he picked the monk. But his backstory called for a gang leader who had orchestrated his childhood pain, and I wanted that character to be special and intimidating. So his archenemy became a dual shield-wielding badass based on his original design. My point is this: the mirror party doesn't have to be a rival gang of adventurers; they can simply be a foil to the party. 

So how do you design your mirror party? You have a couple of options. One is to take each member of your player party and create duplicates of each character. You are running a campaign with a fighter, bard, druid, and warlock, so the mirror party is also a fighter, a bard, a druid, and a warlock. Build these characters the way your story will most benefit from them; I personally take joy in creating more powerful versions of the party members with my specialized GM knowledge. You can also create bizarro versions of the players; maintain their general personalities, but create alternate class versions of them--a bard becomes a performance-based rogue, a warlock becomes a charismatic sorcerer, etc. This choice basically comes down to your goal with the mirror party; if you want to entertain your players, it's best to mimic them, but if you want to challenge them, it's best to try to upstage them. 

As I indicated with my explanation of Dirk St. Patrick and my brother's archfoe, you don't need an entire party of adventurers to create a dramatic foil. One character can be enough to disrupt your party and create storytelling moments. Dirk, in fact, only appears for a moment every few sessions--he is only there to shake things up and leave before the party attacks him (which they have done). I did a similar thing in my National Treasure campaign, where a highly talented bounty hunter kept crossing paths with the players; he would talk shop, and my goal was to impart some strategic pointers to the party through him. It worked to a certain extent, but whether or not it accomplished that goal, it did develop story moments and roleplaying expressions out of nothing, and that's a powerful tool to have at your disposal. 

Once you've got your mirror party, it's time to decide how to use them. You may want a rival party to add drama to the party's goals. The thing about a lot of adventure hooks in TRPGs is that a questgiver offers a reward to the players for completing the quest. But would a questgiver only support one group of people trying to help? I think they would be willing to pay anyone who helps as desired. So a mirror party can also pursue the quest, which means that there is external opposition. Now the party must outrace, outthink, or otherwise outmaneuver the mirror party to succeed. They might even engage in a direct conflict. These are all great effects for your story, and all it takes is the appearance of some rivals. 

Maybe your players are resisting a certain quest hook. Often the trouble there is a lack of dramatic stakes. But if a mirror party is working towards the goal as well and asks for help (perhaps with the promising of returning the help later), the party may be more likely to get invested. Similarly to how the mirror party worked in Listen Check, where they advanced the evil god/murder storyline, you can have your mirror party take actions to move the story along that the players don't, which means you have the freedom to focus on stories that the players haven't latched onto yet. 

Perhaps like with Dirk St. Patrick, you want an out-and-out villain who isn't the BBEG. With the right capabilities, that kind of character could seriously complicate things for the players. You can even use them as a check on unbalanced gaming (or cover your behind if your players outsmart one of your challenges). Now, rather than the players taking an action that throws off your story, you can use your mirror party to right things. Let's say my mystery campaigners were to decide to kill someone they suspected of the murder they're investigating. In a traditional TRPG format, it's pretty likely that they could get away with it. But with Dirk around, there are consequences. He can either block them from the murder (perhaps by appearing at just the right moment) or investigate them after the murder (using his skills as a private investigator, he would be able to pressure them considerably). A mirror party can give you the ability to up the dramatic stakes quite easily. 

A final note on mirror parties: have you as GM ever wanted to speak directly to the player characters? Do they need to be set straight, are they misunderstanding a key detail, or is there some other reason you'd like to be able to just talk to them? It's inelegant to address things out-of-game to make sure the player characters understand something, but you can do it naturally with a mirror party. Your mirror party is kind of liminal--they exist between the spaces of the gameworld and your influence on that world. They can talk directly to your player characters and communicate things directly. Did they misinterpret a clue? Have the mirror party show up and address it. You can get your players back on track with a simple conversation that actually dramatically works. 

Mirror parties are a fun and simple way to add some variety and storytelling tools to your game. Remember that even though your mirror party is fantastic and will help, the story isn't about the mirror party. It's still about your players. So be cautious with your use of mirror parties, as they can distract from the players if used carelessly. That's all for now. Coming soon: how to develop continuity between your campaigns, what details to bother roleplaying, and how to avoid overpreparing. Until next time, happy gaming!

Back to the homepage (where you can find everything!)