Shades of Eternity
Legend
One of the stranger gaps in RPG monster design is the near absence of car monsters. Fantasy games don't have automobiles, while post-apocalyptic and modern games usually treat vehicles as equipment, treasure, or transportation rather than creatures. Yet popular culture is full of living, haunted, possessed, or monstrous vehicles. From Christine and The Car to Maximum Overdrive, Monster Trucks, and even Transformers, we've spent decades imagining automobiles as monsters. RPGs, however, rarely seem to make the jump.
I suspect part of this is a sort of "Tiffany Effect" of monster design. We instinctively categorize cars as technology rather than fauna, even in settings filled with dragons, giant insects, and walking plants. Once something looks like a vehicle, players immediately start asking how to drive it, salvage it, or mount weapons on it instead of treating it like a monster encounter. Still, that leaves a huge amount of unexplored design space. Highway predators, bus leviathans, hermit-car mimics, living RVs, and entire ecosystems of automotive wildlife seem like ideas that should be far more common than they are. Am I missing some notable examples, or is this genuinely one of RPG gaming's forgotten monster niches?
I suspect part of this is a sort of "Tiffany Effect" of monster design. We instinctively categorize cars as technology rather than fauna, even in settings filled with dragons, giant insects, and walking plants. Once something looks like a vehicle, players immediately start asking how to drive it, salvage it, or mount weapons on it instead of treating it like a monster encounter. Still, that leaves a huge amount of unexplored design space. Highway predators, bus leviathans, hermit-car mimics, living RVs, and entire ecosystems of automotive wildlife seem like ideas that should be far more common than they are. Am I missing some notable examples, or is this genuinely one of RPG gaming's forgotten monster niches?
