So veteran Kiwis will recognize that quite a number of us (myself included) originated on /tg/, the traditional games boards on the *chans, where board gaming, tabletop gaming, and so on call home.
One tabletop RPG of particular note that I've always had a fondness for was d20 Modern, which was a unique d20 setting RPG designed to be modular. Unlike Wizards' infamously sketchy supplementals during the 3.x era, virtually all the d20 Modern books were good, with a lot of interesting ideas allowing you to run almost any campaign you could think of, from a Caribbean-themed Pirate Campaign circa the 1600s to a Bloodborne-esque Victorian piece, to a horror or Space Opera campaign. Thus was the beauty of the modular nature of the system.
What does this have to do with our dear ADF? Well... Glad you asked. As it turns out, WotC put out a supplemental material known as the Menace Manual, a book full of tons of additional monsters, pre-built NPCs (Mercenaries, Cultists, etc), pre-made organizations ready to be dropped into a campaign as a backdrop or even as a big bad for your campaign, and so on. One such group is the Circle A's, a group of 20-something pseudo-anarchists designed to be used as a low-level encounter-piece. Their leader, it seems, is someone called Mad Monkey. Now, unlike Phil, Monkey is not homeless, not Trans*****, not a latin@x, and not.... Well, any of Phil's myriad psychogical bibble-babble made-up conditions. But where they mesh up - almost eerily similar - is their confused, deranged, and just plain hilarious political ideology, if you can call it that.
If I may read for you, my dear Kiwis, a few passages:
So already, you can probably see a few commonalities. The following paragraphs describe that the Circle A's started relatively small before gradually growing more bold, before getting a bit into Monkey's past: Born one Thomas Asherton, he was the son of a relatively successful businessman and throughout his childhood went on about how he hated his family, dropped out of college when he felt that he "had learned everything The Machine could teach him" and drifted about the country for a few years, getting involved with various activist groups before he either left them for being "too soft," or getting his ass kicked out for being too extreme and unstable. It's then he adopted the moniker and started trying to recruit for his own group trying to "take the revolution to a new level."
Whilst it clearly references the counter-culture anarchy movements of the late 90s, the number of personal similarities to Phil are nonetheless fascinating. Monkey himself is hilariously under-equipped for level, both in terms of gear and items. He has armor, but isn't proficient in it. He has a handgun, but no ammo for it. He has dynamite, but nothing to light it with. Perhaps the funniest part of it, however, and the part that cements that this fictitious anarchist is none other than an analogue for our dear Phil is one item he has in his inventory that perfectly encapsulates him being an analogue:
A copy of Mein Kampf.
Phil hasn't brandished one of these yet, mind, but given his love of being edgy, I may as well start a betting pool before he fricking does.
All in all, it's surprising, and almost baffling, how essentially a joke "anarchist" mini-group in an obscure tabletop RPG made over a decade ago can essentially perfectly encapsulate Phil and his - or rather, how they see themselves. The rest of the Circle A's encapsulate what might best be called SJWs at best, with one of them, Queen B, essentially being a fat violent woman wearing slogan'd t-shirts and shrieking about feminism, the main difference being that the group's willing to be violent and actually do shit rather than talk smack on the tubernets, ergo being a target of law enforcement.
One tabletop RPG of particular note that I've always had a fondness for was d20 Modern, which was a unique d20 setting RPG designed to be modular. Unlike Wizards' infamously sketchy supplementals during the 3.x era, virtually all the d20 Modern books were good, with a lot of interesting ideas allowing you to run almost any campaign you could think of, from a Caribbean-themed Pirate Campaign circa the 1600s to a Bloodborne-esque Victorian piece, to a horror or Space Opera campaign. Thus was the beauty of the modular nature of the system.
What does this have to do with our dear ADF? Well... Glad you asked. As it turns out, WotC put out a supplemental material known as the Menace Manual, a book full of tons of additional monsters, pre-built NPCs (Mercenaries, Cultists, etc), pre-made organizations ready to be dropped into a campaign as a backdrop or even as a big bad for your campaign, and so on. One such group is the Circle A's, a group of 20-something pseudo-anarchists designed to be used as a low-level encounter-piece. Their leader, it seems, is someone called Mad Monkey. Now, unlike Phil, Monkey is not homeless, not Trans*****, not a latin@x, and not.... Well, any of Phil's myriad psychogical bibble-babble made-up conditions. But where they mesh up - almost eerily similar - is their confused, deranged, and just plain hilarious political ideology, if you can call it that.
If I may read for you, my dear Kiwis, a few passages:
d20 Modern Menace Manual said:
So already, you can probably see a few commonalities. The following paragraphs describe that the Circle A's started relatively small before gradually growing more bold, before getting a bit into Monkey's past: Born one Thomas Asherton, he was the son of a relatively successful businessman and throughout his childhood went on about how he hated his family, dropped out of college when he felt that he "had learned everything The Machine could teach him" and drifted about the country for a few years, getting involved with various activist groups before he either left them for being "too soft," or getting his ass kicked out for being too extreme and unstable. It's then he adopted the moniker and started trying to recruit for his own group trying to "take the revolution to a new level."
Whilst it clearly references the counter-culture anarchy movements of the late 90s, the number of personal similarities to Phil are nonetheless fascinating. Monkey himself is hilariously under-equipped for level, both in terms of gear and items. He has armor, but isn't proficient in it. He has a handgun, but no ammo for it. He has dynamite, but nothing to light it with. Perhaps the funniest part of it, however, and the part that cements that this fictitious anarchist is none other than an analogue for our dear Phil is one item he has in his inventory that perfectly encapsulates him being an analogue:
A copy of Mein Kampf.
Phil hasn't brandished one of these yet, mind, but given his love of being edgy, I may as well start a betting pool before he fricking does.
All in all, it's surprising, and almost baffling, how essentially a joke "anarchist" mini-group in an obscure tabletop RPG made over a decade ago can essentially perfectly encapsulate Phil and his - or rather, how they see themselves. The rest of the Circle A's encapsulate what might best be called SJWs at best, with one of them, Queen B, essentially being a fat violent woman wearing slogan'd t-shirts and shrieking about feminism, the main difference being that the group's willing to be violent and actually do shit rather than talk smack on the tubernets, ergo being a target of law enforcement.
