Idea: Different Villains Who Are One And The Same

[Leliel]

Well, I was playing a rather obscure RPG, Live-A-Live, and have just finished the penultiate chapter, where you find out that all the villains encounted are actually different incarnations of the same time-travelling villain, Odio aka Orsted, the protagonist of said chapter.

This gave me an idea-the PCs are in a seemingly episodic campagin, but as they play through, they begin to notice similarities in each baddie-all are female spellcasters, for example. While they may ascribe this to laziness on the DM's part, they keep it in mind. Later, they discover that some the dungeons have a common element as well. These strange similarities grow more and more stark, ultimately culminating in the reveal all the baddies are a single person, having created temporal clones of himself with different abilities. Which, in keeping with the Live-a-Live idea, is actually the future version of a heroic NPC, and possible love intrest, whose pretty face hides a lot of psychological wounds which have festered in the current timeline, turning her into a psychologically unstable villain.

So, how would you impliment this idea? What would you do to show your players that no, these similarities are not just coincidencies?

[Prometheus]

I use the "two people you know are really the same gimmick" a lot in by campaigns, almost to the point of cliche. Somehow, the PCs never notice, even when I make it obvious. "The other other famous spellcasting half-elf female with short dark hair."

[DigoDragon]

Well, one giveaway is if both incarnations of this villian knows a piece of mutual information where logically they both should not.

For example I ran an adventure where a female vampire BBEG was trying to aquire an artifact that can create a large dome around an area that filters out certain rays of the sun. This allows sunlight sensative creatures to be unaffected by sunlight as long as their within the radius of the dome. The idea was figuring out how she could make this dome big enough to cover an entire kingdom. Yeah, not cool...

Anyway, so she had hired two famous wizards who were known for their backgrounds in evil artifacts like this. The PCs managed to foil her hirelings and destroy several labs. So the BBEG tried something different-- She disguised herself as a druid who wanted to help the PCs locate more of the research in an attempt to "reverse the effects" rather then just destroy what research there was. The PCs at first fell for the ploy and nearly finished her research, but at the last minute the PCs caught on that she was writting letters to the same two wizards that she was using as the BBEG.

She escaped back to her castle for the final confrontation which proved quite Epic. It was at High Noon and all the undead minions were there. :smallamused:

[random11]

Use any unique traits of the villain, the more you described the first encounter, the easier it will be:
Symbols he uses, nicknames the minions call him by, unique spells or items, any kind of signature like killing his victims in a certain way, preferred art that will cover his new dungeon etc.

[The Rose Dragon]

I used it before, but in an awkward fashion. The heroes were destined to prevent the future from getting destroyed by taint and the death of gods, so I had them transported to the future. There, they met a young anima mage, who seemed most intent on fighting the spread of taint. Of course, his future self kept traveling to the past to defeat the heroes who stopped his plans of gaining ultimate power... several times. By the time the game ended, there were four evil versions of him traveling in the past.

EDIT: Of course, each of them had different symptoms of taint (in fact, one was so powerful but also so mad due to it, he destroyed an entire fleet without a thought but spared the PCs in the fleet), so they wouldn't know it.

[Suzuro]

Hey, man, Orsted had to be the deepest character in that game. I mean, he was Fethed over. Repeatedly. Who wouldn't be kind of pissed and take on the powers of a demon? I know I would.

On topic: Yeah, I think it's just similarities, such as maybe distinguishing marks, and certain quirks.

-Suzuro