Good monsters are stand-ins for the NRA and job automation

The Best Monsters are Explicitly Political

D&D monsters are meaningless and shallow

I’ve said it before but it bears repeating: the monsters in Dungeons &Dragons don’t mean anything. D&D doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a knock-off of Lord of the Rings without any of that story’s deeper themes.

I suppose D&D’s dragons could be metaphors for greed, but D&D never makes that connection.

Other games have far more engrossing and relevant monsters.

Automatons — DIE: The Roleplaying Game

“They’re frightening. There is a comfort in the fact automatons have a set programme they cannot break. Because they are so close to being sentient, so close to becoming a real boy. They invoke fear because at any moment, after any pause, the clockwork creature might turn its head the wrong way, look directly at you, say something it shouldn’t say — something it can’t say.”

— DIE RPG, pg. 200

Automation is scarier than ever. It has threatened factory workers for a century, but now it’s coming for writers and artists. And helping the cops. And becoming weaponized. But it’s not the automatons that are the problem. It’s the users. Cheap bosses and lazy cops and ambitious generals.

I’ll bet that during the recently launched writers strike, a Hollywood producer will try to make an AI-written show or movie. It’ll be pitched as an “experiment”, but the point will be to show how unnecessary writers are.

If it actually gets made, it will be just good enough to encourage some studio execs to dig in their heels.

Note that DIE’s automatons aren’t metaphors for power dynamics or obedience. That’s a different monster.

Followers of the Gun — Spire: The City Must Fall

“It remains unclear whether Brother Hellion is a genuine worshiper of a yet-undefined deity or an elaborate con-artist with something up his sleeve, but he is amassing a congregation of the angry and powerless, given means to change the world through guns.”

— Spire: The City Must Fall, pg. 102

“Angry and powerless” is an apt description for American gun-lovers. But let’s be clear; the NRA is the actual bad guy. The typical NRA member is just a victim of marketing from an industry with no rules and a bottomless ad budget.

The metaphor isn’t perfect. First off, the aelfir won’t let Brother Hellion get TOO powerful, since he’s a filthy dark elf. NRA President Wayne Lafayette, on the other hand, is already part of the real world oligarchy.

Second, there’s no question that “guns” is just a grift to Lafayette. He doesn’t believe in anything. He certainly doesn’t believe in not letting kids die.

Finally, the Followers are far more sympathetic than typical NRA members. The drow ARE oppressed and guns might be the only way to end that.

The average American gun owner is not at all oppressed. They are in NO danger of being oppressed by anyone but Rich Conservatives once they don’t need anyone to work or vote for them anymore. And that oppression will be passive. Rich Conservatives won’t DO anything to them. They’ll just let them starve without welfare while unemployment climbs to 90%.

Hooligans — Sigmata: This Signal Kills Fascists

“They have been given leniency to commit the atrocities that terrify local communities and compel compliance with Regime directives. Stay loyal, assimilate, or else.

— Sigmata: This Signal Kills Fascists, pg. 206

Hooligans are stand-ins for Proud Boys. They are civilian hate groups co-opted by the setting’s explicitly Trumpian government. Shit stains like this will be given plenty of cover and leeway during a second Trump term. Then they’ll be free to commit atrocities.

Again, it’s not a perfect metaphor. In the game, Hooligans are a purely rural threat. That’s because the Freedom Fist — Sigmata’s jackbooted military/police — hate anybody getting in their way. Of course, real world cops are rather chummy with fascist groups.

Liches + Skeletons — DIE: The Roleplaying Game

“…unlike other undead, liches still retain their passions and personality (such as it is: for most liches, it’s techbro necromancer tycoon). As far as they’re concerned, liches have won the game of life. That’s why they’re grinning all the time.”

— DIE RPG, pg. 231

“What kind of evil overlord chooses to create a mindless mob of undead rather than hire a (let’s be honest, more effective) crew of thinking beings? Do they simply want to avoid such pesky things as “paying wages” and “having to feed their army” or is the mindlessness the point? Is the ability to impose one’s will and hatred on hundreds of other beings more important to them than those beings acting tactically and reacting creatively?”

— DIE RPG, pg. 238

I mentioned skeletons in my DIE RPG review, but I’m doing it again because they’re exceedingly topical. All of DIE’s monsters are metaphors, or Echoes, for something. Skeletons echo exploited workers.

Any other kind of fantasy mook would be more cost effective. It’s obvious that the extra money spent on living beings would be worth it. But a lot of people in power HATE workers with any sort of agency.

Liches and skeletons represent most managers’ ideal relationship with labor. Not just obedience, but a complete lack of agency. Slaves. And since they can’t have those anymore, they’d rather have beaten-down, obedient workers than on-the-ball unionized workers.

Mainframes — Index Card RPG

“Their purpose is not known, but they seem to appear in times of calamity or disaster.”

— Index Card RPG: Master Edition, pg. 134

Artificial Intelligence will murder more jobs than it creates, starting with marketing departments. It doesn’t matter that “stochastic parrots” don’t make great content. They’re way cheaper than hiring someone to write ad copy or make thumbnails.

New Mainframe Power: Job Destruction If Mainframe kills a hero, that player's next character starts with half the normal starting gear/money/resources/etc. This represents the destruction of good jobs in that world due to their existence. It’s assumed you were screwed somehow.

Market Serfs — Heart: The City Beneath

“In the twisting depths of the Red Market, gangs of followers devoted to their Incarnadine masters carve out territory with bludgeon, sword and shot. To these serfs, their master is a godlike figure; they were all riddled with debt, and the Incarnadine saved them and their family from ruin in exchange for service. There are many households living comfortably in the lower levels of the City Above thanks to the good work of the Incarnadines and the bloody empires of trade and murder protected by their loyal serfs.”

— Heart: The City Beneath, pg. 193

Market serfs are the embodiment of Steinbeck’s “temporarily embarrassed millionaires”. They’re simps for unrestrained, unregulated capitalism. They glorify the system that almost doomed them just because they were lucky enough to be plucked from destitution by an opportunistic boss who just needed someone at that moment in time.

Mercenaries — Lancer

“Mercenaries offer their services to the highest bidder. They may have an attachment to a faith or flag, but when it comes to doing business, they’re loyal only to the highest bidder.”

— Lancer, pg. 328

In a galaxy where everyone can have Universal Basic Income, there will still be asshats who have a stake in Crony-Hyper-Capitalism.

Lancer NPCs are a bit more granular than in other games. GMs pick off-the-shelf mech Classes, then layer on Templates that futz with the default Class. One of those Templates is Mercenary.

The Mercenary’s Opportunist feature gives them a bonus when they attack an enemy that’s already in a fight. Their Efficient Killer trait makes it easier to attack a foe on their last legs. These make the Mercenary the embodiment of Amazon’s Project Gazelle, picking off the weak for the sake of profit.

Taken literally, Mercenaries are obviously stand-ins for PMCs like Wagner Group. While Wagner has a reputation for having competent fighters, their new crop of penal volunteers would be better modeled by a yet-to-be-created Cannon Fodder template.

Vampires — Cryptomancer

“Vampires are cursed undead creatures that covet and hunt for the thing that mortals possess which they do not: true names… If a vampire can drink straight from the veins of a mortal, it has the option to steal its victim’s soul key.

While in possession of a stolen soul key, a vampire gains knowledge of its victim’s true name and can encrypt and decrypt messages with the stolen soul key. Further, the blood of mortals is used to power a vampire’s physical mimesis. They can transform into the exact physical likeness of the soul key’s original owner...”

— Cryptomancer, pg. 357

Cryptomancer’s vampires are the ultimate identity thieves. When they drink someone’s blood, they steal their soul key, which is basically their magic master password to everything.

All of the victim’s shardnet messages and whatnot are now accessible to the vampire. The vampire can even impersonate them nigh-perfectly. Moreover, the victim can’t access anything until the vampire does it to someone else.

This is just one example of Cryptomancer being way scarier than any horror game. Being locked out of your accounts is a terrifying and exhausting ordeal I wouldn’t wish on anyone that wasn’t rich or a Nazi.

Xenophobic Bastards — Mazes

“Any place you go, you might encounter a xenophobic bastard. If you are not of their tribe, they consider you an enemy — most likely attacking on site. They are weak minded, and low-skilled combatants, but will only attack in a mob — so that can make them dangerous. These bastards are most dangerous when they have a strong leader who is willing to send them into the meat grinder.”

— Mazes, pg. 214

The jackasses who invaded the US capitol on January 6th, 2021 are xenophobic bastards. They may be other things as well, but their fear of anyone or anything “alien” is what drew them to Trump and each other. Socialism. Immigrants. UBI. Queer kids. Feminists. Anthropology majors. Experts of any sort.

Obviously there’s more than one real world someone “who is willing to send them into the meat grinder”, but Trump seems to be the only one able to do it. No one will ever storm anything for Ron DeSantis.