D&D: Five Villains for When the Bad Guy is Capitalism
Look, we all know Capitalism is the ultimate bad guy. But how do you make that work in your D&D games? We got you.
If watching Dimension 20 on Dropout.tv has taught me anything, it’s that no matter what, Capitalism is the Bad Guy. And it’s as true in real life as it is in D&D. But sometimes it can be hard to figure out how to let folks know that Capitalism is the bad guy. Especially since you can’t buy that shirt on Dropout anymore.
You can, however, sign up to be notified if/when it’s back in stock.
Don’t worry. We got you covered. Here are five villains that prove the bad guy was always Capitalism.
The Healing Mage Organization
The benevolent Guild of the Healing Mage Organization—or HMO for short—is a guild that exists ostensibly to provide magical healing to whosoever needs it. They gather together bards, clerics, wizards with access to cure light wounds and celestial-pact warlocks, and paladins, even necromancers. They then provide that healing magic to people who qualify according to their standards and saddle them with a reasonable fee.
Those who can’t afford to pay it (which is anyone who isn’t a noble), are offered an “alternative cure” whereby their symptoms are relieved because they’ve been turned into a zombie, or a skeleton, or a wight or a ghoul, take your pick, the HMO profits whether you’re alive or undead.
Ogre Landlords
A couple of Ogres whose greed and hunger know no bounds have bullied their way onto a merchant consortium, and directed caravans through their territory to raid them. They use their ill-gotten gains to buy the deeds to poor people’s houses so they can eat them when they can’t make rent.
And then they drive the prices up so that no one can afford to buy a house, instead, renting them to more peasants whom, again, they eat when they can’t make rent.
A Red Dragon
Red Dragons are D&D’s embodiment of greed and avarice. And it’s fitting that a Red Dragon was one of the first instances of Capitalism being the bad guy in Dimension 20. The villain of Fantasy High Freshman Year was Kalvaxus, a libertarian Red Dragon who wanted nothing more than to be rich and to destroy everyone who stood against him.
Which, if you think about it is most Red Dragons, who are described as, “the most covetous of the true dragons” who “tirelessly seek to increase their treasure hoards.” With a disdain for all other creatures, and a penchant for valuing wealth above all else, Red Dragons are basically Capitalism given form.
Vampires
What is a man? A miserable pile of labor, waiting to be exploited by the elite.
Let me think. A wealthy, powerful individual who can only exist by eliminating all other would-be competition so they can suck the literal life from the working-class people around them? Hmmm. Sure sounds like a metaphor for Capitalism, or at the very least a monopolist robber-baron type to me.
The Hedge Wizard Manager
This is a powerful lich that has used its vast wealth to manage wizards’ access to arcane reagents, spell components, magical focuses, and so on… of course, if it thinks a wizard might become powerful enough to become a lich, it takes action, hiring adventurers to take down their would-be rival before they can become a threat, ensuring that there’s only ever one arcane tyrant devouring souls in the kingdom.
How do you make Capitalism the bad guy in YOUR games?
