With Hustle Culture constantly in everyone’s faces, it’s hard not to come to the false realization that capitalism loves you as much as you love it. Rise and grind! Work, work, work! Breaking every bone in your body means more money! Meanwhile, you have next to nothing in your bank account because the surgery needed to fix those bones…that’ll cost you a small fortune. But if you’re a mercenary for hire in my 2002 home brew RPG Cutthroat, broken bones and small fortunes are just another part of the job. In which case, capitalism loves you so much that it’ll give you a kiss on your owie when you get shot in the chest or stabbed in the leg.
The year 2002 was one where I gave less than a shit about politics. I knew I didn’t want to conform to society. I knew that people should be treated fairly. I also used to believe in the death penalty because I wanted it to apply to my high school bullies. As someone who didn’t give two fucks about politics, let alone someone who was old enough to vote, it showed in my world-building techniques when I put together the rules for Cutthroat. In the distant future, every continent on planet earth not named Antarctica waged war against each other. Why? Fuck if I know. Maybe war is just fun for these autocrats. Maybe there is some growing tension between North America and Africa because of…reasons? Maybe Europe and Asia want to start lobbing grenades at each other because…they’re bored?
If I had more storytelling skills back in 2002, coming up with a reason for intercontinental war would have been easy-breezy-lemon-squeezy. Maybe South America wants revenge on North America because of an assassination or terrorist attack. Maybe Africa wants revenge on Australia because the latter has resources that Africa wouldn’t otherwise have without taking them by force. Maybe Asia wants to bomb the shit out of Europe because superpower flexing is more important than perpetual peace. There are lots of reasons to go to war. Pick one, damn it!
Throwing together a bullshit reason for intercontinental war wouldn’t have been that hard. But even if the guns for hire weren’t believers in each continent’s political ambitions, money will always be a motivator for anybody who wants to eat and have a roof over their heads. Which is why when I ran this RPG in 2002, I was baffled by the reactions of my players when their characters were approached by job recruiters. One character (we’ll call him Clyde) ran away and tried to hide in a shadowy alleyway. Another character (we’ll call him Ninjo) slaughtered his recruiter in the bathroom. Cutthroats must really love unemployment! Either that or they’d rather work at Burger Monarch or Taco Hell and get emotionally scarred instead of physically. So how about we take a look at these two scenarios and try to determine why Clyde and Ninjo were so allergic to employment opportunities.
First, we have Clyde. He’s kicking it in England having a drink at the bar. He’s no doubt looking for his next paycheck so that he can have more alcoholic beverages to fuck up his liver. But when he’s approached by two trench-coat wearing men who call out his name, his first instinct…is to run away from them. Granted, the two men look incredibly suspicious in their trench coats. They could have been carrying weapons in their pockets. But if they were, they didn’t pull them out. Instead they were like, “Hey, come back! Wait up!”, begging and pleading for Clyde to slow down. But instead of slowing down and listening to reason, he runs into an alleyway looking for a nice hiding place in the shadows…on a hot sunny day when shadows won’t do shit to help you.
Surprise, surprise, the trench coat guys find him and explain that they were only approaching Clyde to give him a job. A nice, big fat contract that will guarantee him enough beer to keep him permanently pissing until the end of time. Clyde eventually saw the light, sunny day aside. I know now that trench coat guys who know your name will always look suspicious, but if you run away from your job recruiter and they have to blow out their lungs to hire you, you’d be lucky if you got the job in the first place. Imagine going into a job interview and then running out of the boss man’s office because you think he looks a little too weird for you.
Actually, now that I think about it, it makes perfect sense. Young people are starting to wake up to the fact that capitalism means more work for less money and maybe running away from the boss man is how they’ll gain any semblance of leverage. Not to sound passive-aggressive, but running away was definitely a genius move on Clyde’s part…mainly because accepting the job and sneaking onto a military base got him gunned down in a storm of bullets and lasers. He should have ran faster.
And then there’s case number two: Ninjo, an assassin for hire based in Japan. No doubt he needs work as well and he doesn’t want to serve cocktails in a pretty dress, so assassinating people is the avenue he wants to go down. There he was enjoying a nice meal in a restaurant when he suddenly had to move to the nearest urinal. Pissing in privacy would have been a heavenly request that he understandably should have been forked over. But then a Mexican in camouflage fatigues uses the urinal next to him and introduces himself as Jet Guile, Ninjo’s would-be employer.
To Ninjo’s credit, there are so many things wrong with this scenario that 16-year-old me didn’t pick up on before putting together this campaign. First of all, what is a Mexican mercenary randomly doing in a Japanese bathroom? Second of all, why is his name Jet Guile and not something…you know…a little closer to his nationality? Thirdly, and this is the most important question of all: why the fuck is he trying to give someone a job interview…in the bathroom?! What, is Jet observing Ninjo’s sniper skills by watching the piss hit the toilet? What if Ninjo had bad diarrhea from the sushi he was eating? What if Ninjo didn’t make it to the toilet on time? Would Jet refuse to hire him for failing to “deactivate a bomb” in his ass?
In hindsight, this was weird on so many levels. It should come as no surprise that the minute Jet Guile said Ninjo’s name, Ninjo beat the holy fuck out of him and left him a bloody and useless corpse on the bathroom floor. Ninjo may love unemployment, but he loves peeing undisturbed even more. Well, he didn’t get either; three more Mexican mercenaries hired him anyways in spite of what happened to Jet! That’s right: Ninjo got a job despite killing one of his employers. Turned out to be one of his tests, not because I had it planned all along, but because I pulled it out of my ass and made an even bigger mess than Ninjo’s piss puddle and Jet’s bloodbath put together. Imagine if Homer did this to Mr. Burns on an episode of The Simpsons. Work would be less stressful, for sure, but that’s only because scooping prison food is easier than handling nuclear rods.
So…why is it that Clyde and Ninjo were so reluctant to allow their employers to hire them for soldier work? Chasing someone into an alleyway and interviewing someone while they’re draining the lizard are reasonable enough answers to me. Or maybe there is something to be said about not feeding the capitalist machine…in a society where war is the main product. Or…maybe Clyde and Ninjo were supposed to keep their identities a secret and the minute their employers shouted their names, they bailed. And then it hit me like a sack of bricks: war isn’t always fought with soldiers gathering together on a battlefield and shooting at each other. It isn’t always about bombing the fuck out of cities and capitols either. Sometimes a little stealth is paramount to getting a job done. Maybe your enemy will be more easily defeated if they don’t know you’re coming. Keep the name a secret. Keep the employment a secret. Keep everything a secret. The less they know, the less they’ll see coming.
Undercover work should have been my first guess all the way back in 2002. Of course they’re running, because their cover was potentially blown. Of course they’re beating up employers because they could be assassins themselves. Trust and friendship are two of the rarest things you’ll find in war, because the object is to kill or be killed. Sure, you can trust your fellow soldiers, but a complete stranger? That’ll take a little more vetting. I guess the lesson to be learned here is to not lay all of your cards on the table so soon. They call it a poker face for a reason. They also refrain from wearing mirror shades to a poker game. Right, Kim?
Refusing to lay your cards on the table is not only necessary for succeeding in war, but in other aspects of life too. Suppose you do get a job interview that’s not in a bathroom or a dingy alleyway. Sure, you want to be open and honest, but do you really want to let your boss man know everything about you, be it mental illnesses, bad experiences in school, bad experiences with other employers, or divorces you’ve had? Same thing goes for any other activity, whether it’s dating, friendship, or playing a good old fashioned RPG. You want to give them just enough to get a good idea of you, but if you spill too many secrets, then you’ll never get passed the front door.
But that also depends on what secrets you choose to keep and how doing so will negatively affect the relationship. If you’re trying to keep abuse a secret from your peers, it’ll get out one way or another, especially in an argumentative setting. In which case, don’t get into the relationship at all and seek help before you spiral into an early grave. If you have murder-hobo tendencies and you’re playing an RPG where your character kills everyone around them, that’ll derail the game in a big fucking hurry. If you’re an alt-right nutjob and your paladin uses “stand your ground” laws as an excuse to kill innocent orcs to become an oathbreaker, then get some goddamn help!
Your GM doesn’t have to know everything, but they should know enough to decide whether or not they want to play with you. If you put yourself in a situation where it’s you or the GM, then the GM will pull a Clyde and Ninjo and run the fuck away from you. Or they’ll kill you in the bathroom while you’re interrupting their pissing session, one of the two. This is not an instruction manual for narcissists, because fuck them. But if you’re genuinely looking for new opportunities in life and you’re going to make the most of them, then getting your foot in the door is as easy as getting both feet out of bar on the way to a garbage-covered alleyway.
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