Rival Motivation

[TigerT20]

So basically, I'm planning a one-shot that's just the opening scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark. The party must venture through a ye olde temple in the jungle to fetch an idol. However, instead of riches or research being their motivation - unless the PCs turn out to be inclined towards those sort of things, of course - the reason they're there is because the idol is emitting a plague called 'Spider Pox'. Their job is to retrieve it and deliver it to some researchers who can try to cure the pox.

Instead of waiting outside with a bunch of the locals, the 'Bellock' in this scenario is instead actively hunting through the dungeon with their own party, seeking the idol.

Why do they want the idol?

Note that while I want the PCs to perhaps be sympathetic to their reasonings, they should still be opposed - it shouldn't be a case where the PCs can go 'well if we just let them have the idol, they can do our job for us!'

[prabe]

So, maybe Bellock (or the people who hired him) also want to cure the Spider Pox. They just want to turn a profit by charging for the cure. Or, maybe they intend for the cure to be free--at first--but either addictive in the literal sense or in the sense that it's less like (in older spell terms) Remove Poison and more like Slow Poison. Or, may they want to cure the Spider Pox but aren't likely to share said cure--there are various antipathies that can be drawn on here.

Depends on how villainous you want your antagonists to be.

[DevilMcam]

Or they want to cure it for free, because the bad guys are the PCs employers

[prabe]

Or they want to cure it for free, because the bad guys are the PCs employers

That's also a possibility. Maybe more likely to work on new players who haven't experienced "your employer is betraying you" as a trope/cliche in adventure design. :wink:

[Lupine]

Perhaps you make the idol also responsible for some positive aspect of nature. Sure, it enables Spider Pox, but maybe it doesn't directly cause it, but allows it to be spread. But it also helps the environment in some way. Rival party is druids.

I don't know how open you are to change your story, but you also might look into the yuan-ti and have the idol be something that transforms people into yuan-ti. Humans want to stop it, because it is taking members of their community away, new Yuan-ti want to take it, and form a new society with it. Party could let them take it, and the humans no longer are get transformed into yuan-ti, but this will cause issues later, as they start capturing people to transform them, and generally becoming a nuisance.
Party doesn't want to let them take it, because the condition might be reversible, and the yuan-ti they meet are members of their community who they know and treasure.

This also works to prevent the PCs from killing the rivals, because they hope to free them from their condition... but the yuan-ti have no such convictions.