RPG Evolution: Who Are You Again?

Picture courtesy of Pixabay.​

What Do You Mean You've Never Heard of Me?​

As Dungeon Masters, we invest heavily in our bad guys. We craft intricate backstories, devise cunning schemes, and anticipate the look on players' faces when a past foe steps back into the spotlight with a flourish. It should be dramatic, a triumphant return as the PCs exchange nervous glances or note how the villain has changed. But more likely, the response is blank stares and confusion. This happened to me in a recent game:

Darrasdun wore a pair of impressive deer antlers, an elaborate longbow in his grip. He was outfitted in a tunic of greens and reds, with a fiendish flare since they last saw him. He rode atop a melalo the size of a horse, its two grotesque, vulture-like heads snapping and screeching. Behind them, a pack of other melalo – immense, flightless birds with two heads apiece – surged through the chaotic undergrowth, their movements a flurry of sharp talons and snapping beaks. This was no organized pursuit, but a primal, frenzied hunt, the melalo driven by a savage instinct and Darrasdun by a wild, exultant glee. Their eyes, mirroring the chaotic energy of this place, fixated on the party, and the hunt turned their way.

“Who are you?” asked Lilliyana.

Darrasdun, across the way, pulled his melalo up short. The other squawking birds stopped shrieking to look between them in confusion. “You don’t remember me?” he asked, sputtering.

“Wait,” said Sorow. “Oh yes, I do – are you that little guy that we shot with a bow at the very beginning of the Calcio Games in the Flandrian Mountains? The thing with the gnomes?”

“What?” shouted Darrsdun. “No! How dare you confuse me with one of those idiots!”

“Who is this? “ asked Erna.

“You weren’t there,” said Allumer with a sigh.

This scenario highlights a challenge in long-running D&D campaigns: characters (and by extension, their players) rarely remember important NPCs, especially villains, given the sheer volume of faces they encounter throughout their adventuring careers. So what to do about it?

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The Drama Deficit​

This lapse in memory creates a significant dilemma at the table. If your players don't remember the villain, their reaction shifts from reacting dramatically to their return to simple confusion. From a plot perspective, villains who return should feel like they went through a lot to get back into the spotlight; from a mechanical perspective, there's often valuable information from past battles that may make the villain easier to beat the next time around. If nobody remembers the bad guy, what's the point in bringing them back at all?

Villains, bless their evil hearts, have a myriad of ways to return in D&D:

• Undeath: A classic. A fallen foe returns as an intelligent undead like a lich or vampire.
• Return from the Afterlife (as a Fiend/Celestial): A soul condemned to a lower plane might ascend as a devil or demon, or a righteous one might return as an angelic avenger.
• Resurrection/Reincarnation: Powerful magic, divine intervention, or even a pact with a dark entity can bring a villain back to life.
• Clones or Simulacra: The original villain prepared for their demise, creating duplicates to carry on their work.
• Possession/New Body: Their spirit or essence could possess a new host, reanimate a golem, or inhabit a different physical form entirely.
• Impostor/Shapeshifter: Not the original, but a cunning individual (like a doppelganger or a master spy) pretending to be the fallen villain to sow chaos or achieve their own goals.

I once had a red dragon named Molyemaia bedevil the PCs named so badly that they chopped her head off after encountering her for the third time, only for her to return as a ghost. They were not happy about that.

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Making Them Memorable​

So, how can DMs ensure their antagonists stick in the players' minds? It requires proactive planning and clever execution.

• Maintain a Campaign Log and Reference It: As the DM, keep a detailed log of important NPCs, their appearance, motivations, and key interactions with the PCs. When a villain returns, don't just spring them on the players cold. Instead, give a brief, evocative recap: "You remember Kaelen, the necromancer from the Shadowfen, whose dark rituals you disrupted two adventures ago. His eyes, burning with renewed hatred, fix on you now..." This gentle jog to the memory can trigger recognition without breaking immersion.
• Give Them a Signature: Equip your NPCs with something unique and easily recognizable. This could be a distinct catchphrase ("You will never escape my labyrinth!"), a peculiar mannerism (a nervous twitch, a guttural laugh, always adjusting a monocle), or a highly distinctive item. Perhaps it's a specific magic item they always wield, an unusual piece of armor, or a cursed pendant. Make sure these signatures are reinforced during their initial appearances.
• Make Them a Recurring Villain (Even Briefly): Don't make their first appearance their only appearance before a long hiatus. Have them escape, or cause trouble from the shadows, making multiple (even minor) appearances early on. This builds familiarity. The more times the PCs interact with them, or even hear about them, the more ingrained they become in their memory. These could be brief encounters where the villain unleashes minions and then retreats, leaving a memorable calling card.
• Dramatic Entrances and Exits: When the villain does appear or reappear, make it memorable. Use vivid descriptions, sound effects, or even background music. Ensure their entrance immediately conveys their power or cunning, solidifying their presence in the players' minds. Similarly, their escapes should be dramatic and frustrating for the players, reinforcing their ongoing threat.
• Tie Them to Player Backstories/Goals: If possible, weave the villain into a PC's personal backstory or current goal. Villains who have directly affected a character on a personal level (e.g., stole their family heirloom, killed a loved one) are far more likely to be remembered.

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The Unforgettable Foe​

A well-remembered villain provides emotional stakes, elevates narrative tension, and transforms encounters from simple combat puzzles into epic personal confrontations. It's an investment that pays off immensely, but it requires a lot of work on behalf of busy players and DMs in campaigns that can span years. NPCs are only as good as they are memorable. If you do a good job of building their presence and reinforcing their identity, PCs will learn to love to hate them.

In the end, the fact that poor Darrasdun wasn't very memorable was my fault. I had the PCs roll Insight checks and they all failed; if I really wanted them to remember him, I could have simply told them who he was. Even then, it wasn't that big of a deal -- it didn't manifestly affect the game if they remembered him or not -- but the failure to remember him turned into a hilarious plot point as they relentlessly mocked Darrasdun so badly he used his charm ability to FORCE a PC to listen to him lecture about his exploits before dying, again, in the same fashion he died the first time.

It ain't easy being a bad guy.

 

[Voadam]

I found the Paizo APs were pretty bad about not having a consistent recurring villain, often having the end boss only be introduced in the last module. Often this is because the typically six modules are written by different authors and they focus more on their assigned theme and on making them capable of being their own solo module, so there is sometimes little connection from one to the next and little to connect something through all of them.

When I did a 5e conversion of the Carrion Crown AP I had great effect using suggestions from the paizo board on how to make the end bosses of modules 3 and 6 be recurring NPCs/villains through the whole set while setting them up from the start as NPCs the party interacts with even though not as adversaries to start. I set up the module 6 boss as a creepy patron for the party from the start and the module 3 boss as an adversary fairly early that they pursued after discovering he set up the problems of module 1 which led them to module 2 (where they stayed with module 6 villain as creepy patron) and it was a good setup for module 3 to be a climax campaign end if I wanted (I only got part way through module 2 before the pandemic shut down my participation in that face to face game group for a long while).

 

[prabe]

Maybe recurring villains aren't a panacea. My own feeling as a player--and as a GM--is that once the PCs have solved a problem, it should probably stay solved; and fighting the same guy again certainly doesn't feel as though anything is staying solved. My approach is to keep important villains offscreen as long as possible, then build them to be as effective as they need to be, given the narrative that's emerged from play. Obviously, this works better if you're writing up villains so they'll be relevant to the PCs' interests and needs.

 

[talien]

I found the Paizo APs were pretty bad about not having a consistent recurring villain, often having the end boss only be introduced in the last module. Often this is because the typically six modules are written by different authors and they focus more on their assigned theme and on making them capable of being their own solo module, so there is sometimes little connection from one to the next and little to connect something through all of them.

You make a really good point, which is that a continuing villain is a luxury of consistency, and that usually means on DM throughout. Which not everyone has; it also implies a consistent campaign where the players play regularly. The odds of remembering someone (or even caring) go down considerably if the players don't play that often, drop in and out of the campaign, or there are rotating DMs with their own pet villains.

 

[talien]

Maybe recurring villains aren't a panacea. My own feeling as a player--and as a GM--is that once the PCs have solved a problem, it should probably stay solved; and fighting the same guy again certainly doesn't feel as though anything is staying solved. My approach is to keep important villains offscreen as long as possible, then build them to be as effective as they need to be, given the narrative that's emerged from play. Obviously, this works better if you're writing up villains so they'll be relevant to the PCs' interests and needs.

Fair. I think you probably don't want TOO many recurring villains. Sometimes bad guys do escape though and it's perfectly reasonable for them to show up again; I had this happen a few times in a different campaign.

 

[prabe]

Fair. I think you probably don't want TOO many recurring villains. Sometimes bad guys do escape though and it's perfectly reasonable for them to show up again; I had this happen a few times in a different campaign.

My thinking is that more than one villain, one time, is probably too many. At least, I'd work from that presumption and pay attention to how the players reacted. Whatever problem the recurring villain is causing/presenting if/when they come back should probably not be the same kind of problem as they did the first time--beyond their inherent nature, I guess; they should be doing something different, and solving the problem should require the PCs to do something different. That's possibly advanced study, though.