So, it's like this.In a campaign I'm running, my players are in a pretty custom sci-fi fantasy setting about 400 years after a huge war with this massively powerful villain, like the guy would have done well in the middling tiers of DBZ characters he was so busted. The bad guy, let's call him Dave, died at the end of this war he waged to try to take over the galaxy, as evil eons-old dark lords often do.The party are aspiring supersoldiers who are learning on-the-job as it were how to be the next big damn heroes of the galaxy someday. One of their mentor figures for the record is Dave's son, let's call him Bob. Bob turned on Dave during the war because he was not interested in a career as Dave's successor to rule everything as a giant evil dark lord, you know the drill.Anyway! What matters is, Dave and Bob are of a magical near-human race that is, among other things, tied to the world as Tolkien's elves are, and they tend to reincarnate eventually. If they are quite evil, as Dave was, this entails a full scrub of their personality such that it's essentially a whole new person who has taken the soul's essence, and will eventually get some of the powers and memories. And one of my players, due to being a friend of 12 years who I trust implicity, was given permission to quietly, without any of the other players knowing, make their character Dave's reincarnation, which that character realized by campaign's start but hadn't told anyone, nor had they accessed most of the goodies left behind from Dave's life (that comes later).So, I need help with planning a future thing involving this, but I'm running out of space so I'll just post in the thread for the rest...
So, what I'm looking for help on is... well, let me explain further. At some point later on in the campaign, they're going to go into a dungeon that spits clones of them at them, think that mage exam in Frieren. Now, they'll have faced such a dungeon once before by that point, with the first being a test in controlled conditions and this next one being a REAL dungeon. In fact, Bob takes them there, where they have to 1v2 a clone of him in that dungeon as a test at one point, using their individual builds to get around behind the Bob vs Bob duel and tilt things in favor of the real Bob.The extra spice for the second time around, aside from the clones respawning faster and the dungeon itself just being larger and having more and nastier hazards, is that the entity producing the clones can see more deeply inside their souls. The first one could precisely reproduce their present abilities and equipment and be shut out with a certain spell, hence it being a training environment. The second one, though, not only can't be blocked out, but it can also sense the best version of you that you ever were.For my player who is a reincarnation of Dave, this means that somewhere in this dungeon, they aren't going to be fighting a copy of that player but instead an albeit-weaker-than-OG version of Dave.I already plan to potentially hint them into this - first off, conspicuously having Bob, who is present at this point as an NPC (they'll be stronger by this point, such that having Bob for a proper battle isn't too much whilst I have him more distant as a teacher who lets them do their own thing for now while they're low-level), say that this entity can't be blocked and can potentially read more deeply into them.
Also, the Dave reincarnate's copy will be very conspicuously absent, and when they run across Bob's replica, it will be a bit stronger than the real Bob - Bob is also a reincarnation, though nobody knows that yet Bob included, so that's an additional hint for a yet-later bit of the campaign.Anyway, with all my babbling out of the way, what I need help with is hyping up Dave to the players - sure, he's a huge part of the setting's backstory, but that's not enough, I want him to feel like a threat to THEM. I want my players to start shitting bricks when they open a door and find a replica of what can only be Dave chilling in that room waiting for them. It will also be important in possibly exposing the Dave reincarnate player's true past, which that character has kept hidden.I'm thinking that in a setting with VR battle simulators I'm regularly having them step into so I can get away with encounters that don't make sense for where and when they are where they can afford to be killed, we might have replicas of battles that Dave took part in. Bob being present and someone the players can befriend closely might also help, he was Dave's son and is himself formidable, so he could be used for some storytelling there too.But yeah, how do I hype Dave up so that my party has his name (it's not actually Dave lmao, don't worry) in their minds and is absolutely terrified when I end a session with them stumbling across a replica of him?
I think you made a mistake by diluting Dave (and bob for that matter) with so many cheap copies.
I get why you feel that way, but clone battles are one of the more fun things I've seen in several shows and games. What better thing to throw at someone's brokenly OP build than themselves?
>>98241992You could make them into some kind of cult following. Like elvis fans that wanna look like elvis. You don't need to create a copy of Dave but some Dave cultists. This way you could leave clues of what godlike being Dave actually was. You can make different Dave sects hold different info on Dave, The players could get terryfing greater picture once they piece together the puzzle.
>>98242022Like celebrity follower cultists, Stalin cult of personality cultists, Lovecraft cultists worshipping a world-ender being cultists? Lots of ways to do that, I'd need to think about it. Fortunately, I'd have months before this session happened so.
>>98242042No, I'm talking about about cultists who are trying to be like their idol. Party would basically fight trash Dave wannabes and progress through less trash Dave wannabes until they dig out info on how powerful Dave actually was?
>>98242099I didn't have a gang of Dave impersonators as if they were evil Elvis impersonators on the bingo card, but you know what? That's actually pretty neat. I'm still dropping the clone on them at some point because it fits my longterm plans, but this is a genuinely cool idea. Thank you, internet stranger.
>>98242139>Thank you, internet stranger.No probs. It's just what I would do to add in some variety. I know myself that I would get bored of clones if I was the player
>>98242165It's for two specific dungeons that they'll be facing over dozens of sessions, so I'm not particularly worried. Fighting yourself is a unique challenge and forces you to use teamwork and awareness of your weaknesses for the training one, so if I pull it the one time it won't be that bad, I'm thinking. For the second one, it's quite a ways separated so it won't feel samey, and the main challenge is then facing a ripoff of a world-ender mage and furthermore having to figure out why the fuck he showed up, probably exposing the one player character. From there, I'm going to be slowly building their characters up so if they work with Bob and a couple other NPCs and use the strengths I'm carefully giving them the chance to develop in a coordinated team strategy, they genuinely can beat the downpowered Dave clone as a major milestone and coming of age almost before they start running up against some of the real threats of the setting's "present."
>>98241945As a story, it's very neat. My concern would be for the player that's playing the incarnation. Either he ends up betraying the party, which very rarely works out; or it would feel like he's the main character, a la Knights of the Old Republic. Do the other players have their own super cool, unique thing?
>>98241945It sounds like you want to write a novel, so just do that.
>>98242531My other group is murderhobos who crave oceans of monster blood, this group is about the story. Know your audience and all that.
>>98241945Physical devastation. This is some physically potent demi-god.If we're talking mid-tier DBZ (I am assuming Cell Saga when you say this) have planets that Dave destroyed that people have returned to. Not Dave's army, not Dave's super weapons, Dave. Mild displeasure from Dave has left new oceans, ever-burning craters, and other shows of apocalyptic force. People have recovered from this, and these places might be lived in now; but the faint memory that a single guy completely altered the terrain with a flick of his hand is built into the mythology of this land.Maybe primitive or more superstitious group attribute natural disasters to Dave's spirit grumbling in the afterlife, maybe shrines are left out in bad storms to make certain Dave doesn't destroy the neighborhood.
>>98241945Traditional games?
>>98241945Have entire worlds that are still afraid of Dave and continue to uphold his laws because they don't believe he's actually dead. For a specific example, have the players need to get a certain rare resource, and learn that there is a huge stockpile on a certain world. Once they get there, however, the stockpile is heavily guarded, and the locals refuse to sell, use, or otherwise part with any of it. If the players investigate they will eventually learn that this was one of Dave's personal stockpiles, and millennia ago he left them orders to guard it. After a few centuries passed and they did not hear any further from him or his followers, the locals figured he had forgotten about it or died, and started using the resource. The very next day, Dave personally showed up, messily killed anyone who dared to touch his stuff, put their corpses on display outside stockpile, and then, just to remind them he was always watching, carved his own face on the world's moon. Sure enough, the players will find badly-mangled skeletons still on display outside the stockpile, and Dave's scowling face looking down on them from the sky at night.
>>98242646It's fine that your other group doesn't like games. You can just write your novel and read it to them.
>>98241945I tend to run short-lived high lethality sandbox campaigns, my villains normally appear directly to attack the party, or else are the guy you're hired to put a hit on, or else just heard about in passing doing some dastardly shit.I hype them up by having them appear dramatically, and I describe them in detail.A decrepit hag riding side-saddle on the shaft of an unyolked plough, pulled by no animal, which is churning up the road itself in her wake.A slaver with a thick black beard, he wears a disc breastplate over a leather jerkin, his arms are wrapped in chains, and he leads two debtors by neck-irons.The Queen of the Elves; she is white like a silver birch, and garbed in velvet mosses and glistening dragonflies, surrounded by satyrs and sprites, and noble courtiers, some radiant and nude, others clad in armour of burnished copper leaves, bearing weapons of enchanted ironwood and garlands of wildflowers in every hue, as if plucked from the height of summer.Two shaggy barbarians on stocky ponies, they bear axes of bronze, and are swathed in hides, their tattoos indicate that they are Orlanthi warriors. (This was a tpk, players utterly fumbled an attempted ambush)
>storyshitwrite a book fag
>>98242099The Jokerz from Batman Beyond, in other words.
>>98242139"Maybe I am Dave's reincarnation and don't know it!"If the idea of Dave reincarnating fits, maybe hint that another player was Dave at some point. If you made another player one of those magical creatures, you could feed that player's previous life memories that would hint at him being Dave.A very interesting twist to Everyone is John.
