If you read the Order of the Stick webcomic (which I highly recommend — it’s great in so many ways), you’re familiar with the Linear Guild — the NPC foils to the main characters, the Order of the Stick.
The Linear Guild is essentially an evil version of the Order, right down to their D&D class roles — much like Link (in the Zelda videogames) always has to fight an evil copy of himself, or the Mirror Universe versions of themselves that Star Trek crews are always running into.
In those media, evil counterpart characters are a lot of fun. Their authors and creators take care to use them well, and a bit of humor (or more than a bit, for OotS) is involved. But does this concept translate well into RPGs?
Would your players enjoy occasionally fighting, or scheming against, evil versions of their PCs? Or would the similarity in abilities — and the obvious metagame aspect — get on their nerves?
Evil versions of the PCs is a bit much, IMHO. In my experience to cheese off a party a;; you need is any old group of NPCs that hit the dungeon a couple days before Our Heroes, clearing out the easily-grabbed treasures. Or a rival supers team that does a lot of saving kittens and helping grannies across the street, but are conspicably absent when Dr. Omegalypse tries to incinerate the city.
I love to run Villains & Vigilantes, and I’m considering starting a Mutants & Masterminds game. Both are Supers games and I am sure that players would enjoy the evil duplicate because with V&V I have done it.
This is a common storyline in comic books though (check out DC’s Earth2 graphic novel), and I don’t know if it would translate well into other genres. Yet a slight twist on this idea does work well in my opinoin – the bad villain team created by someone the heroes have thwarted in the past.
The heroes are becoming well known? They probably have a few wealthy enemies by now. What if one of these wealthy scoundrels gathered a group of of villains together that had similar but evil abilities?
I’ll use D&D as an example. He calls upon a Cleric from the party Cleric’s god’s rival. He tells an Anti-Paladin how killing the party’s Paladin would win him the favor of evil. An Assasin could be hired to go after the party Theif. Add a Drow for the party’s Elven Ranger, and an Evil Sorcerer (maybe even a Lich for added flavor if you can develop a good story for it) to counter the party’s Mage.
This approach acheives the same desired efect, but you don’t have to worry about explaining how the evil “duplicates” were created.
In a long running AD&D game in college, we had a rival, NPC adventuring group, the Flaming Fists. They weren’t evil, just annoyances. The one key lesson I learned from that experience is: in D&D, if you’ve got NPCs in the game who are leveling as well, make sure they “earn” their XP, and they do so at a rate that seems fair to the players. Our group was very bitter that the Flaming Fists appeared to gain levels more quickly and with less work than us. Instead of viewing them as rivals to challenge, we just felt cheated.
Good timing: I’m about to use this technique in my d20 modern college campus game. Just in time for Halloween!
There are a few ways to tackle this concept:
-The recurring anti-party. Not quite “evil twins” but a rival group of NPCs. We’ve had fun planning against their classes for our encounters.
-The one-off evil twin scenario. Shows up in a lot of tv shows, and is good for games that follow those kinds of plots (like my game does)
-The friendly rivals. Remember the scene in Shaun of the Dead where the main characters encounter a very similar party? Now that’s good stuff.
I agree with Alan in terms of making a group of Rival NPCs.
I used to run a Palladium Fantasy game where the group had Rival NPC party. Occasionally, they would bid for the same job at the Merc Guild, or some such… Or if the party was off somewhere, they would come back to hear rumors and stories of the rivals. The rivals usually(There were rare and spectacular exceptions) performed deeds of slightly less complication, but also got less renown, magics, and so on than the party did.
It’s best to create rivals who are slightly underpowered if they are not in direct conflict, and have them slip by the party to perform well in rare occasions. It really creates a fine rivalry for RP purposes.
Thematically, evil or opposing counterparts can be good for stories… but exact mirror-image clones somehow only seem to work in superhero settings.
In my Marvel Superheroes game of long ago, the heroes were transported to an opposite/alternate timeline where their counterparts were villains and the villains they knew were the only heroes (basic Earth-3, Crime Syndicate stuff).
But in a recent 7th Sea, I made the prominent villain for much of the game the exact same as one of the heroes in approach, abilities, and outlook–just ‘ramped up’ a bit on dedication (i.e., he was a fanatic where the PC was only self-righteous).
It made for interesting encounters as the villain spelled out his rationale for doing things and the hero wound up agreeing with him every step of the way.
I seem to remember a creature in 1E D&D (Aaleax?) that was used by the gods to punish PCs. It was an exact duplicate of the character, only it had some insane regeneration rate…
I think scheming against evil versions of themselves would work fine for an adventure or two, but might quickly pale. A similar rival group (like VV_GM’s D&D group or the linear guild) can work on a consistent basis.
A close variation is infiltration, where some PC is kidnapped and replaced with a double. That’s particularly hard to detect if you get the normal player to play along. Dopplegangers, Alter Self, lots of superhero powers, or even just disguise skill can set the situation up. It sometimes seems unfair, since players often consciously metagame to keep the party together and this technique deliberately undermines it. While it can be a memorable encounter, it can undermine group cohesion for a long time to come.
When I give this a shot in a campaign, I’m coming back here to find out how to do it. You guys rock. 🙂
I think maybe exact duplicates (depending on the scenario) might be a bit much, but rival NPC’s is great.
An interesting scenario might be that evil villain clones or duplicates the party in a way that doesn’t make them evil, just duplicates, then gets defeated. Now the clones/duplicates/etc. are stuck in this world they don’t know, leaving the PC’s trying to decide how to deal with them and what to do.
Of course you could also make the clones 1/8 the originals size . . .
While I haven’t gone the “evil twins” route, I’ve tried a number of related ideas. In one D&D
session, the PC’s were travelling in a “nexus of realities” type place, and had gotten seperated (to handle out-of-game issues, such as player’s schedules). One of the players rejoined the group as an alternate reality version of her character, in a
reality where most of the party had been converted into vampires. At first, she mistook the party for their vampiric selves, and after that was cleared up,
a vampiric party member attacked.
Then they met “hack-and-slash” versions of themselves from yet another reality. These weren’t evil, but had mercilessly slaughtered all the “evil” creatures encountered by the party, many of whom had later become their allies. Since the “hack-and-slash” versions were defined by their propensity for violence, I was expecting a fight, but was suprised when instead the real party took the h&s’ers under their wing and gave them some pointers on restoring their besmirched honor before sending them home.
In a recent game, I was very unsure about which players would show up. So after struggling with
prep for an appropriate challenge to a random
party, I decided to play “one-on-one” defense. I chose one NPC per possible PC that had related
abilities for each PC. For each player that showed up, the corresponding NPC showed up. They weren’t exact analogs, but were close enough for a more-or-less balanced fight. (Druid with dire wolf
vs druid with dire wolverine; enchanter vs. bard, rogue vs. awakened dire weasel w/ rogue levels; cleric vs. evil cleric).
John and Russell, thank you for the additional (good) ideas. 🙂