The DOUBLEGANGSTER

I was having a conversation earlier today with my girlfriend (check out her blog, Half Again As Much! She has a great post on there about spells collected by her dad Mike Gunderloy from the early days of D&D!) and in the course of that conversation she used the phrase "doubleganger" rather than doppelganger, and when confronted about that made a joke about not wanting to use loanwords. That snowballed into a bit between us about a "doublegangster," and I said I'd write it up as a monster on my blog, so here's that!

photocollage of John Dillinger made by yours truly

DOUBLEGANGSTER

Number Encountered: 1d3

Hit Dice: 6+1

Attacks: 2 punch (1d4) in close quarters OR 1 pistol (single target, save vs. Getting Shot or take 1d4 HIT DICE damage) OR 1 Tommy gun (up to 6 targets in a cone or swipe, save vs. Getting Shot or take 1d8 HIT DICE damage) (see below).

Armor: Unarmored (0)

Morale: 7

Double vision: Doublegangsters look like two people at the same time, hazy and indistinct on top of one another, like persistent double vision. Ranged attacks against them always have disadvantage. Doublegangsters can be seen in two places at the same time. 

Firearms: Doublegangsters wield guns, EITHER 1 pistol OR 1 Tommy gun. Only the mob boss of the doublegangsters (which appears in doublegangster lairs) wields multiple firearms (two Tommy guns, one in each hand). When a firearm is fired, there is a 2-in-6 chance of the gun jamming or running out of ammo, which takes a full combat round to resolve. 

GREED: Doublegangsters are horribly greedy sumbitches. They're after gold, jewels, deeds to rich estates, inheritances, life insurance policies, Rolls Royce cars they can refinance, big cartoonish bags marked with dollar signs. They're open to a deal if the players offer it. 

Uncanny countenance: The doublegangster looks exactly like another character present, or a (randomly determined) NPC that the PCs know (if you have a recurring NPC table, roll on that). The only difference is that, instead of their normal garb, the doublegangster is clad in a pinstripe suit, slacks, and a wide-brimmed hat.

 

DOUBLEGANGSTERS are uncanny supernatural creatures that take on the appearances of innocent men and woman to frame them in delinquency, crime, murder, burglary, scandal, gambling, racketeering, and WORSE. They enter the world from stage right, cast in shadow, the steel of their Tommy guns glistening in the moonlight, go on a Bonnie and Clyde gun moll rampage, then exit just the same. Their lairs, torch-light caves, often half-flooded, full to the brim with stolen cars and piles of gold and dollar bills (marked with the faces of presidents you've never seen nor heard of before), are always in the last place you expect. And yet, for the poor saps that a doublegangster has mocked by stealing the face of, such dark corners feel uncannily familiar. Nobody knows why they steal innocent faces or frame them in the court of their peers, and even fewer know why you can never quite focus your eyes on them, why a doublegangster always appears to have two heads, four arms, four legs, two black ties on white dress shirts in pinstripe jackets. Their voice comes out in terrible stereo, issuing forth from two mouths. Their guns fire out twin streams of bullets, but leave only one set of wounds. One of the gangsters ain't real, you dig? But the mobster will reach out his pinstripe-sleeved arm and invite you to touch, like whatshisname with the real hole in his hand, to show you just how real the whole thing is.

 

COWARDS would say this is a monster for Call of Cthulhu or similar, or maybe Gamma World (it would really work great in those kinds of contexts, of course). But real ones will be BRAVE ENOUGH to drop a two-headed ghost gangster from the 1930s into a D&D game. Put a doublegangster on the random encounter table for your dungeon!!! Let your players steal a weirdly hazy double vision Tommy gun from the cold dead hands of a mobster with your best buddy's face!!! It'll be fun!!