Why We Love Playing The Monster

In 1976, legendary game designer Ken St. Andre was pretty sure he knew why people would want to play monsters. In his game, Monsters Monsters!, he reversed the D&D paradigm: players are monsters that go out and attack human settlements. He wrote, “The turning of the tables, to play monsters as protagonists, has proven to be even more hilarious than the original games. A monster lives by a completely different code of ethics, affording a splendid opportunity to get rid of the impure and perverted impulses which affect most of us—impulses it is hard to express while playing a hero.” For St. Andre at that time, you played an ogre or a gremlin so you could break the rules for a little bit—throw off the straitjacket of politeness and decency and really, in the words of meme Princess Daisy, go apeshit. If you’re a person of real culture, it’s carnival. If you’re a person of realer culture, it’s The Purge (2013).