Any superhero RPG
So for various reasons I was thinking about evil duplicates, including an evil duplicates adventure I wrote but that never saw light. (Possibly the publisher was just being kind to buy it; I was exceedingly desperate. On the other hand, "kindness" to me tops out at fifty bucks. So probably it was shakeups and then the adventure wasn't useful. I digress.)
Evil duplicates are a lovely way to point up the differences between the characters and the bad guys: they are the characters who made different choices. So, with that in mind as an overall reason, here are as many ideas for evil duplicates that I can think of after too many beers.
(I will try to organize these so less specific terms come after more specific terms.)
- Look, It's Just A Costume Get a bunch of people with roughly the same powers, dress'em in the heroes' costumes, and call them duplicates. It can be kind of interesting to see the changes that can be wrung on various powers. “What, being superb at throwing things makes you a pretty good archer?” (During Bendis' New Avengers run.)
- The Imperfect Clone On the one hand, this can give you Bizarro. On the other, it can be a pretty deep look into what makes the heroes tick.
- Bad Robot! These are robot duplicates but they've been programmed for EEEE-vil.
- Mirror Image Some magic device makes copies of the heroes, but evil copies.
- One Bad Day The Bad Heroes are from an alternate timeline where where the awful origin event was twisted, or from an alternate future where Something Bad has happened (Lois Love Interest died, for example).
- From The Bad Place. The duplicates are from the alternate dimension where everyone is the same, but the switch is turned to EVIL. (Earth 3 and the Crime Syndicate is the first one that comes to mind, but it's been done elsewhere, like the episode of Star Trek called “Mirror Image”.)
- Tweedledum, Tweedledee If all the heroes got their powers in the same incident, it's possible to have an alternate incident where things didn't go so well. I think of this as Batma and the Wrath writ for a group.
A slightly different version: Now I Have The Power The bad guy can take the hero's powers (or heroes' powers) and put them in someone else. This is technically power theft but maybe it just copies the powers, through Amazo's special doubletalk.
