Rage Against Capitalism: Pentex as a Werewolf Antagonist

If you've ever played a game of Werewolf: The Apocalypse, then you're already passingly familiar with a lot of the game's central themes and antagonists. For those who haven't, you are one of the garou, shape-shifting warriors who have fought on behalf of the Earth Mother Gaia since time immemorial. Once upon a time the three major powers of the world, the Wyld (representing nature), the Weaver (representing order) and the Wyrm (representing destruction) all existed in harmony. But the Weaver attempted to control the Wyrm, and the Wyrm has gone mad, rampaging across the world in an attempt to destroy everything. As Gaia's chosen you are the one who stands against the servants of the Wyrm and attempts to bring back balance... or at least prevent the apocalypse.

It's a really unique game, and perhaps one of my favorite parts of the World of Darkness setting... but there's also no other RPG I've played that has made it clear we all need to work together if we're going to stop capitalism from destroying the world.

Maybe the Red Talons had a few good ideas after all...

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Pentex: Capitalism As Antagonist

There are a lot of themes in Werewolf, but most of them can be boiled down to restoring the balance. Werewolves fight to stop the Wyrm from destroying everything, they struggle to maintain their Rage so it can be used against their foes without harming their loved ones, and they often have to balance between the physical and the spiritual worlds. There's the balance between pride in their actions, and the horror at the things they have to do, and attempting to hang onto themselves and their principles in the face of the yawning void that waits to swallow them up.

Pretty heavy stuff for a game about turning into a giant furry death machine and rolling handfuls of plastic dice.

So where does capitalism come into this?

Since Werewolf takes place in the World of Darkness setting, which is a grim modern fantasy, it was going to have to address capitalism sooner or later. And the game doesn't mince words when it comes to this financial system, either. Because at its core capitalism is about an imbalance of power, the impossibility of infinite growth, and reaping the planet for every penny that can be made. From dumping toxic waste into drinking water, to running child labor camps, to imprisoning people on meaningless offenses and stealing years of their lives just to turn profits, there is basically no corner dark enough that capitalism hasn't tried to turn a profit off of it. And though there are some aspects of the game that let you use the tools of capital to further your goals (the Corporate Wolves camp of the Glass Walkers, spirits like Easy Credit and Almighty Dollar, etc.), even characters who use these tools would be trying to use money, investment, etc., to oppose things like child labor, human trafficking, and environmental destruction rather than profiting off of them.

The game itself personifies the danger of capitalism as Pentex, a conglomeration of corporations that all share interests, and which are connected to each other by board members, mutual profits, love of money, and lack of scruples. And in a game that perfected the Ever Present Threat that can never truly be defeated once and for all in the form of the Wyrm, Pentex is a solid runner-up in terms of a villain. Because you can't kill a single CEO, blow up a particular construction site, or expose any one network of abuses and cover-ups to get rid of what Pentex represents... someone else will just step up tomorrow to try to do it again. The logo will be different, and the stationery has changed, but it's the same empty suits trying to finish the oil pipeline, restart the coal plant, sell you the toxic product, or get you to hand over your money in exchange for a false blessing from a mega pastor.

While a lot of STs are leery about using Pentex in their games, preferring to focus on the purely supernatural threats like vampires, Black Spiral Dancers, fomori, and corrupt spirits, this corporate villain works really well when it comes to defining the shape of the battlefield. Because Pentex is often a purely mortal threat, which can allow players to really cut loose and feel powerful as werewolves... but it also presents a lot of moral challenges to them. Do you use lethal force against the security guards, most of which are just working stiffs who need a job (any job) so they don't wind up on the street? Is the loss of the economic gain to the community created by destroying a dangerous project (coal mine, natural gas pipeline, fracking operation, etc.) going to affect their spirits just as badly as the pollution would affect their bodies? Can your message of balance, community bonds, and living in harmony counter generations of propaganda about how greed is good, money makes the world go round, and it's a dog-eat-dog world?

Though Pentex can (and often does) mix with elements of the supernatural from vampire investors and company officers, to mad scientists trying to mass produce supernatural templates, etc., it often represents a very mortal antagonist that is just as hard to defeat as any monster from myth. And that can often ground your game in ways that are hard to accomplish just fighting banes and fomori all the time.

Though The Written Material Often Falls Short of Reality

For those who haven't come across it, I recently put together my own supplement for STs who want to have their players go up against corporate interests. Evil Incorporated: 10 Pentex Subsidiaries was a particularly challenging piece for me to write because of a problem that I kept running into time and time again.

Namely that any time you end up trying to make some kind of super advanced monstrous version of capitalism, you just end up making something that already exists, or which has happened in the past. And trying to add vampires or Black Spiral Dancers into the mix just feels like you're working in metaphors to soften the blow, rather than letting the villain just be what they are; a stark testament to the atrocities that a lot of humans are willing to commit in the name of profit margins and personal gain.

The introductory story, dramatized over on the Azukail Games YouTube channel, says it all, really.

According to the soft canon, the idea that would become Pentex was born in the Texas oil fields sometime in the 1800s... but for those who are students of history, and are aware of the crimes of the East India Trading Company, Pentex can seem like a Johnny-come-lately. And while Pentex is often supposed to be this cartoonishly evil collection of villains that feel like something out of Captain Planet, is it really so unbelievable that people would poison huge swaths of the population or destroy the planet for money? That's no different than how cigarette companies fought for years to suppress widespread information about their products causing cancer, or how oil companies knew about global warming for decades and kept it wrapped up so they wouldn't lose money. Companies like Tesla and Apple have been accused of using child labor in their products, and the American military has been directed by corporate interests for decades to those familiar with the banana wars.

Hell, in my research for Can Large-Scale Telecommuting Save The Environment?, I found numbers that consistently said remote work increases corporate profits and productivity, increases worker morale, lowers overhead costs, and reduces emissions by millions of tons a year. But corporations are fighting tooth-and-nail to force people to come back to work in the middle of a pandemic, spending more money to be less efficient and to put their workers at-risk while making them more miserable. Why? Because the middle managers were exposed as mostly useless positions when they didn't have tiny fiefdoms of office workers to lord over, and pretend they were an asset to the company, and that loss of face (as well as the potential to cut positions that it turned out weren't necessary) was all it took to start the meat grinder up again.

So if you're going to run Pentex as part of your games, keep all of this in mind. Because it might feel close to home, but at the same time it might provide a unique catharsis that defeating a vampire lord or overcoming a great bane spirit simply won't.

More Werewolf Stuff, Anyone?

If Evil Incorporated is enough to get your mind going, I've got other stuff for an Apocalypse game you might find particularly useful. So if you're itching for shapeshifting stories, check these out too!

- 100 Garou Kinfolk Bundle: With over 1,500 NPCs (100 for each of the base tribes, plus 100 mokole' kin on top of that!) this will ensure that you're never lacking for support characters in your game.

- 100 Stargazer Kinfolk: The encore guide that came out after the bundle was set, this is for all the players and STs alike who want to bring this enigmatic tribe into your game... especially if these mystics intend to oppose what both capital and the state are trying to do to Gaia in their part of the world.

- Deadly Country: 100 NPCs of Central Florida: While a lot of these characters can be swapped around to other parts of the country, one might argue that there are few places in America more primed to be a stronghold of Pentex than Florida.

Like, Follow, and Stay in Touch!

That's all for this week's Moon Pope Monday. To stay on top of all my content and releases, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter at the bottom of the page!

Again, for more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, and stop by the YouTube channel Dungeon Keeper Radio. Or if you'd prefer to read some of my books, like my cat noir thriller Marked Territory, its sequel Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife or my latest short story collection The Rejects, then head over to My Amazon Author Page!

To stay on top of all my latest releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now Pinterest as well! To support my work, consider Buying Me a Ko-Fi, or heading to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a regular, monthly patron. That one helps ensure you get more Improved Initiative, and it means you'll get my regular, monthly giveaways as a bonus!

The Difference Between "Bad" Characters and "Evil" Characters

I've been dwelling on alignment a lot recently, but judging from the reactions my article The Punisher is Evil received, it's a topic that folks are interested in seeing more of. This week, though, I wanted to touch on the difficulty of shades of gray when it comes to our characters. When we want them to have a bit of an edge to them, but to stay out of darker realms.

What is the difference between a character who's bad, and one who is evil? I don't have an absolute answer to this question, but I have found some shadowy places that I think might be of interest to my fellow players out there.

The wearing, or not wearing, of skulls is not always an indicator.

While we're on the subject, though, are there any other characters you'd like to see me do a deep dive on their likely alignment? Or any particular alignments you'd like a 5 Tips post for, such as my 5 Tips For Playing Better Evil Characters? If so, toss a comment to let me know!

Where Do You Draw The Line?

Before we go too deep into this, first thing's first. Alignment by its very nature depends on absolutes in a setting. Moral relativism does not work with alignment because it's tied to games that have literal heavens and hells, angels and demons, etc. In these worlds there literally is a divine checklist and a neutral arbiter who decides whether your actions were good or evil.

How your character thinks about those issues, whether they feel justified, etc., is completely irrelevant. Whether they believe evil is good, or good is evil, doesn't matter. The divine laws of the cosmos have decided what is good and what is evil in many cases.

If there were no absolute goods, traditional LG paladins wouldn't be a thing.

Now, with that out of the way, the first thing you need to look at are what actions are considered inherently evil in your setting. This will vary from game to game and group to group, but we're not talking about small potatoes here. We're talking capital "E" evil actions.

Some of the more common options here include:

- Murder for profit (as well as just murder in general)
- Propagation of slavery
- Deliberate casting of evil spells
- Torture

The list goes on, but you get the idea. Evil actions are inherently bad things. Whatever your reason, whatever the character motivation, whatever the end result, it's fruit from the poisoned tree.

So, the first important consideration here is what actions are evil. Not just bad, or selfish, or harmful, but things that are outright evil. Because while it is true that characters who have committed evil acts in the past can redeem themselves and attempt to change their alignment, it takes a lot more work to climb out of that hole.

And if you commit more evil actions, it just means you dug yourself back into the hole again.

What Do Bad Actions Look Like?

Our morality as players tends to vary pretty widely. I've yet to be at a table where everyone agreed completely on what is good, and what is evil. However, a useful question to ask when it comes to characters who are bad, rather than being truly evil, is to ask what damage their actions do overall? Who is hurt by the things they do?

I said git out of my forest!

As a solid example of a "bad" character, take the classic thief. Your pickpocket, your burglar, etc. These individuals steal for a living, no question. They are breaking the law (as if that ever stopped an adventurer), and they are committing an act that most of us would really rather not have happen to us.

But under normal circumstances, I'd argue that action falls into the category of "bad" rather than "evil."

Why is that? Well, at its core, theft is a property crime. You are stealing a thing (gold coins, jewels, magic items, etc.) from another person. And in the case of pickpockets and burglars, the theft is usually the extent of the act. You might break a window to get into a home, for example, but at the end of the day you took a thing. There are going to be certain circumstances where this act is made more or less problematic (you knowingly stole the last savings from someone who then starved on the side of "makes it worse," to snatching food from a cart because you were starving and broke on the side of "well, that's not so bad"), but generally speaking property crimes aren't in the "evil" category.

What else might make you bad, but not evil?

Well, we've agreed that murdering people is generally an evil act. Murder is the deliberate killing of another person with malice aforethought, meaning that you set out to kill someone else deliberately after making the decision beforehand. However, most of us would agree that defending yourself from someone or something trying to kill you is not murder. Defending someone else is also okay, and often seen as a good act. A more questionable, "bad" thing to do might be to deliberately put yourself in a situation where someone will try to kill you, thus forcing you to defend yourself.

It's not evil, because they were actually trying to kill you. They could have chosen to walk away, and not attack you. You did provoke that response, though, which is... shady, shall we say.

Tangible Harm Versus Cultural Norms

There are dozens of different actions that might be considered unscrupulous, duplicitous, selfish, blasphemous, or otherwise "bad" that never cross over into real evil. A character might tell lies to hide their own actions, or to gain rewards they don't deserve. Someone might use threats and intimidation to force cooperation from those who don't want to help them, or to force someone else to back down from a fight. Someone might rob graves, commit adultery, burn down empty buildings, gamble illicitly, break religious covenants, or commit all sorts of other immoral acts.

But at the end of the day, it's important to ask if their actions cause tangible harm. And if so, what was the purpose of that harm?

This is where that divine slide ruler comes into the picture.

Let's go back to the thief. Did they need to steal whatever they stole in order to provide for themselves? If not, was the person they stole from tangibly harmed by that theft?

If a thief was starving and took bread from a merchant, they certainly broke the law. But did the loss of that one loaf of bread do the merchant any real harm? Probably not. But what if the thief stole a noble's jeweled ring instead? Well, given that the ring serves no real purpose other than ornamentation, the result is that some of the noble's wealth is now in the thief's hands. The noble may lose some face, and have to wear a different ring, but there hasn't been any true, tangible harm done to them. And if the thief broke into a crypt and stole the jewelry from the dead? Barring setting rules that involve the dead rising in wrath, dead people don't need money. Taking it from them harms no one, as it was just sitting there in the ground, unused and mostly unaccounted for.

Again, that doesn't make these actions good. It does, however, put them into that gray area of bad.

Anytime there's a question of whether an act should be labeled as bad or evil, it's important to ask what harm comes of it, and if the action is being taken to defend oneself against harm. And if you want a character who is bad, but not evil, don't try to justify them regularly committing evil acts. Try on someone who is irreverent, non-conformist, spiteful, or who is a little crass, vulgar, or illicit.

You'll have a lot fewer arguments, and you'll have to do way fewer mental gymnastics.

Also, as a pro tip, remember what I said back in The Risen Antipaladin. You get a lot more mileage out of someone who committed evil acts in the past, and who is trying to be a better person now. So when we meet them, they've managed to plateau at "bad" instead of being actively evil. That reputation might still be following the character around, but they don't create the friction of actively committing atrocities in team-based environment when some of your companions may feel morally obliged to stop what you're doing. Even if it might solve current problems.

Like, Follow, and Stay in Touch!

That's all for this week's Fluff post! If you've used this in your games, share a story down in the comments!

For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, and stop by the YouTube channel Dungeon Keeper Radio. Or if you'd prefer to read some of my books, like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife or my recent short story collection The Rejects, then head over to My Amazon Author Page!

To stay on top of all my latest releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now Pinterest as well! To support my work, consider Buying Me a Ko-Fi, or heading to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a regular, monthly patron. That one helps ensure you get more Improved Initiative, and it means you'll get my regular, monthly giveaways as a bonus!