Following up on my notion of "cusp" versus "rise" characters, character
re-use is central. So now I'm thinking about re-using a character.
Obviously, if the character was intended to be re-used, it's
easy. Or if the character got away, all you need is a motivation, either
a diamond as big as the Ritz, or revenge if the character was an
onion-skin away from capture.
Maybe character write-ups should come with a "re-use" category,
indicating the ease of incorporating the character into your campaign
over a long term. Well, relatively few characters are sold with the idea
that they can't be reused (though there are situations that call for it: Dr. Immoral Dilemma, for instance, also known as SAW).
But let's say you have a character who was a one-off but the players are
still talking about him or her. How do you bring that villain back?
And, in fact, I'm going to challenge my earlier idea and say that there
are some characters who are refreshing to see again but they aren't tied
to any long-term goal. They're just wacky or inventive or fun. The
Foxbat character from Champions was like this.
Anyway, in one sense, it's a silly question. In my youth, when we wanted
to bring a character back, we said, "He broke out of jail and now he
wants revenge. And he's bringing friends." And it can be that simple. If
that's what you want to do, go for it.
On the other hand, that was hit and miss. Sometimes it was worth doing
and sometimes the character just showed up and it was another ho-hum
session.
Nowadays, with more time between sessions, I'd ask myself some questions before bringing a character back.
Why was the character popular? Was it the connection with one of
the PCs? Was it the cool power? Was it the plan? Was it the hostage
situation? The costume? The seasonal connection? The fact that the
villain always brings candy canes? You don't want to destroy what made
the character a success in the first place. Presumably you're bringing
the character back because the players talk about him or her. What do
they say?
You don't have to do the exact same thing, of course: sometimes it's
fine to riff off the previous adventure, presenting the villain and
heroes in the opposite light. Maybe the villain is trying to shake off
the depression after having tasted godhood. Maybe the villain wants to
be arrested because he's hooked on prison food (The Emerald Epicurean
has been promoted at the Superguy prison, and his breakfast souffles are
to die for.)
What do you need to change, if anything? When you resolved the
last adventure, what had changed for the PCs or the villain? If the
villain had a great plan revolving around the worship of Samhain and
it's early Easter, do you have to take that into account? If the villain
professed her undying attention for one of the heroes who has since
gotten publicly married, does that change things? If the villain wanted
to get hold of the eighth star of the Pleiades that fell to earth in the
fourth century AD, and it got destroyed, what's the villain's plan now?
In fact, that can be a large part of the adventure: a plan that would
have been fine before the heroes got responsibility fails because the
heroes just have too much to do nowadays (no, I'm not projecting; why do
you ask?) so the villain falls on increasingly desperate attempts to
get their attentions.
A special case of change is if the villain died. Coming back from the
dead is almost as old as comics, dating to when they wanted to bring
back the Joker, so there's no shame is revealing that the villain
survived the terrible fate that apparently befell them. (Bonus points if
someone said, "No one could have survived that!" when he or she died.)
Heck, you can even have the villain actually be an imposter trying to
duplicate the original's MO, or have the villain simply shrug it off.
"But...I sent you to the pits of Tartarus!"
"I got better."
Why is the villain back? Let's face it, any sensible mercenary
villain would go, "Hey, they beat me. I'll go work in the Congo, where
there's only war and strife to worry about." So why did the villain come
back here, to the campaign location? There are a couple of
possibilities. Revenge, of course. Maybe what they want is only
available here (there's a reason that the museum of supervillain
trophies is in the town with superheroes), or they need the eclipse
that's going to be visible locally. Maybe they are just too attracted to
the hero or NPC to stay away.
Sometimes it's fun to beat up the bad guy who keeps trying to win
(though my players are more likely to find out his inner problem and set
him up with a job); sometimes there's a complex scheme that evolves
from the return of a bad guy.
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