Sure, we hear about where the candidates stand on the so-called "issues." We read their resumes, their five-point plans for improving this or reinventing that.

But all that is trivial. What we all want to know is: What kind of characters would these guys play in a Dungeons & Dragons game? And what kind of players would they be? Role-players or merely roll-players? Would they come in costume? If they played an elf, would they come to your house in Spock-ears, or what?

And what about ethics? If you let, say, Joe Lieberman borrow your +3 Dancing Flame-tongue Blade while your rogue sneaks through a narrow cavern in a warren of kobolds, would he give it back to you when you returned? Or would he, like, completely dick you over?

Heady issues, certainly. But we here at Ace of Spades Central Command soar where the media big boys fear to tread. And so, here you go. After analyzing the various Democratic Presidential candidates for a good ten or twenty minutes, we proudly present this definitive D&D guide to the Democratic hopefuls.

Dick Gephardt

Character name: Etrias Elvenbow
Race: Human
Class/Level: 6th Level Ranger
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral (Good)

You know, in any other presidential year, Dick Gephardt would deserve to be ripped a new one. But this is no ordinary presidential year. This is the year when Wesley Clark, John Kerry, and (good Lord All Mighty) Howard Dean are considered the class of the Democratic Presidential contenders. Given that, Dick Gephardt starts to look positively statesmanlike.

You want to hear something scary? The other day, a guy says to me, "You know who's got some really fresh ideas and moral courage? Dick Gephardt." True story.

How scary is that?

So let's go easy on Dick Gephardt. He'd be a Ranger, because he'd probably be good at camouflage, what with the way his eyebrows just sort of blend into the scenery. He'd have a high Armor Class, due mainly to his +5 Ring of Protectionism.

And that's pretty much that. What the hell else is there to say? This is Dick Fucking Gephardt we're talking about. Not even Dick Gephardt has much to say either way about Dick Gephardt.

Joe Lieberman

Character name: Haggard Halfstep
Race: Gnome
Class/Level: Eighth-level Cleric
Alignment: Neutral

Joe Lieberman's alignment is easy -- clearly, he'd play a True Neutral. True neutrals are balanced perfectly between both Good and Evil, torn e'er betwixt the lure of both Law and Chaos. And such is Joe Lieberman. Yes, perhaps we need to experiment with school vouchers; but oh no, we can never do so now. Of course Bill Clinton committed perjury and broke trust with the American people; but alas, we certainly mustn't do anything about that. Perhaps the American people deserve a tax-cut; then again, maybe not.

His Class is similarly a no-brainer: Cleric. While the media is constantly on guard against George W. Bush's plans to re-make America into a Christian White-Supremacist Theocracy, they scarcely seem bothered by the fact that Joe Lieberman can't so much as adjust his tie without fulsomely praising God:

"O Glorious Day! I've gotten the Democratic Vice-Presidential nomination! All praise to the Author of All Blessings!!"

"It's a beatitude that I'm here with you fine Democratic activists in scenic Ocala, Florida! Let us sing hymns to the Maker of Miracles!"

"Another Arby's along Route 95! Weaver of Wonders, Transcendent Creator of Economy-Priced Roast-Beef Sandwiches, I kneel before you in tender supplication!"

This guy can't get fresh pepper on his soup without quoting extensively from the Book of Ruth.

He's a cleric, then, but one with a very mild heretical streak. He's willing to occasionally attack his fellow liberal True Believers, but, being a cleric, he can only use a blunt weapon when doing so, and thus never inflicts any real damage.

John Edwards

Character name: n/a (see below)
Race: Human (Butterball Boy-Child)
Class/Level: 0-Level Spectator/Geek Wannabee/Snack Fetcher
Alignment: Neutral

John Edwards doesn't even have a D&D character. He aspires to one day have a D&D character.

He's like the chubby kid brother of one of your players, but who's just too young, too immature, and too hyperactive to actually be allowed in the game. He doesn't know the rules and doesn't have a lick of understanding about what any of you are doing, but he just hangs around the table while you're playing, watching in wide-open wonderment at all the incredible adventure. He's just never seen anything like it.

"Go scamper off and grab me a Diet Mountain Dew," you tell him, hoping to make the little butterball useful. But he's just too enraptured by the ongoing bartering session between your Rogue and a nameless merchant about the proper price for rope, and he absolutely refuses to leave the table until the epic negotiations are concluded. "He's got the merchant down to two copper pieces per yard!" he exclaims, voice squeaking into its most childlike upper register. "I just can't afford to miss what happens next!"

"I swing my crossbow!!!"

Every once in a while the kid gets too damn excited and impulsively grabs a big handful of random dice between his pudgy little fat-kid fingers. He rolls like six d8's, three d12's, a d4 and a couple of tokens taken from your Star Wars Stratego game to boot. And he cries out, "WOW!! I just rolled a forty-seven plus three Bespin Miners! Do I hit the dragon?!!"

And you just say, "Yeah, you hit the dragon, Kid. You knocked him silly. Now... about that Diet Mountain Dew you and I were just chatting so amiably about."

John Kerry

Character name: Sss'kilith (alias John "Kid Irish" Goldberg-Kerry)
Race: Doppleganger (but appears Human; see below)
Class/Level: Second-level Fighter
Alignment: Neutral Evil

An agent of the shape-shifting race of Dopplegangers, John Kerry has successfully infiltrated the highest ranks of human society, using his mutable cellular structure to appear as a tall, thin, somewhat bizarre-looking human. His powers of shape-changing have allowed him to appear, variously, as a WASPy Boston Brahmin, a scrappy Dublin immigrant boxing under the nickname "Kid Irish," and well-respected Jewish podiatrist Dr. Abraham Goldberg.

If Kerry survives the race long enough to campaign in Florida, no doubt he will "discover" that his real name is Juan Carlos Reyes-Royas, and that he's the long-lost great nephew of deposed Cuban strongman Fulgencio Battista.

His doppleganger heritage grants him the ability to use the spell Polymorph Voting Record five times per day, allowing him to claim that he voted for the war, no, against it, oops I mean for it, but only as a threat, and only with UN permission. Wait, no, I'm sorry, he voted against it. Check back with his press secretary for further updates. His contradictory, alien thought patterns render his political philosophy entirely immune to press scrutiny.

But enough about the actual, real-life John Kerry. What sort of D&D character would he play?

Obviously, he'd be a fighter. He was a decorated veteran in the Battle of the Land of Green Rivers, and he'll never fucking let you forget that.

Never.


Carol Mosely-Braun

Character name: n/a (see below)
Race: n/a (see below)
Class/Level: n/a (see below)
Alignment: n/a (see below)

The annoying thing about Carol Mosely-Braun is that everyone is expected to pretend she's a real candidate for president. She's not. It's a big goof. Apart from kissing up to venal dictators and the occasional bout of corruption, her resume is pretty thin.

She's a real presidential candidate like that retarded kid was a real "assistant coach" for your seventh-grade soccer team. Yeah, you all pretend he's an assistant coach, but really you're just being nice to a retard.

And so that's what Carol Mosely-Braun is. She's got her "#1 Special Assistant Coach" baseball cap on, and she's got the "special coach's whistle" hanging around her neck. The "whistle" is "special" in the sense that they took the little pea-ball out of it, you know, the part that actually makes the whistling sound, so the whistle is effectively silenced. Because you know you can't just go around handing out whistles to retards. Retards love whistles. That's just asking for a brain aneurysm, that's all that is.

But "Coach Carol" keeps puffing on that whistle anyway, making no more coherent sound than if you rubbed a sock on a marshmallow, giving you the sort of advice you'd expect from a retarded soccer "coach," like telling you to choke up on the bat and wait for the right pitch. And you're just like, "Okay, sure. Nice call, Corky."

Well, other people can play that game. I won't. I'm not making up a character for Carol Mosely-Braun. The hell with all that. I'm doing important work here, and I can't be bothered with such nonsense.

Dennis Kucinich
Character Name: Baradach Brightsword
Race: Half-Elf/Half-Satyr
Class/Level: Twelfth-level Druid/Fourth-Level Shiftless Dreamer
Alignment: Neutral Evil

The interesting thing about making up a D&D character for Dennis Kucinich is that you know, with a very high level of confidence, that he's made up D&D characters for himself already. If there's one Democratic candidate who knows how many hit dice a Gelatinous Cube has, it's Dennis Kucinich. You've gotta know that somewhere in the back of his one of his closets is a first-print copy of the Fiend Folio, pages stuck together with decade-old bong resin.

Obviously, he's a Druid. You know, the whole Commune with Nature thing; he's like a Vegan, sickly-pale Beastmaster. He doesn't actually fight monsters; instead, he casts one of his many Summon Squirrels spells, shouting out, "O, my Friends of the Silver Forest! Come to me, O Woodland Creatures! Protect me from this fell beast!" You know, that kind of pansy shit.

And the big problem isn't that he's played the game. No, the problem with Dennis Kucinich is that he's the guy that got way, waaaaay too into D&D. The guy you worry about.

He's the guy that just can't limit himself to a two page character sheet; no, he's written a sixteen page opus about his character, tracing his family's lineage back to the Age of Chaos, and he's spent three months sculpting his own miniature because it's just imperative that his figurine displays his correct arms (broadsword in the right hand, sickle in the left) and armor (dragonhide studded leather). He's always talking in that godawful British accent he got from hearing other people repeat Monty Python bits, and he's forever nattering on about his character's improbably-convoluted backstory, how he was the bastard son of the Black King Gondorad, how he served in his youth as a guard in the King's Royal Concubinage (and what ribald tales he can tell you of that!), and that his evil half-sister Orgasma is forever scheming against him, lest he ever lay claim to the Black Throne.

And you're like, "Dude, that's all well and good, but I just need to know your Armor Class so I can see if this gnoll hits you with the stick."

And he's just so freaky and creepy, you're all on pins and needles around him, wondering when exactly this lunatic is going to have his next regularly-scheduled psychotic break. The Dungeon Master in particular is absolutely scared shitless, and always fudges his saving throws to keep him alive, because you just know that if his Druid Lord ever goes down in a fight, Dennis Kucinich is going to go all Mazes & Monsters on the whole group. He'll kill you, skin you, make soup out of your meat, and store your polished skeletons the crawlspaces of his parents' basement.

And so that's how it goes. Every time you find a treasure, the Dungeon Master is like, "Oh, look, Dennis, another +6 Vorpal sword for mighty Baradach Brightsword!" Until he's got like eight of the frigging things, like they're a set of Ginsu steak-knives or something. And when the other players complain -- "Why does Dennis keep getting all the kick-ass magic items?" -- the Dungeon Master just takes them aside and says, "Dude, give me a break. This is life and death here. I want to live long enough to make blue belt in my aikido class."

Al Sharpton

Character name: "The Reverend"
Race: Hustler
Class/Level: 2nd level Cleric/8th level Demagogue
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Well, that's all too easy, isn't it? "The Reverend" is a 2nd level Cleric of Malebolge, Demon God of Racial Tension, and an accomplished Demagogue as well.

He's armed with a Staff of Racial Arson, allowing him to cast incendiary fireballs into any racially charged situation. The Staff is +3 against White Interlopers, and does double damage against Jewish shopkeepers. He has been known to wear a Jogging-Suit of the Judgment-Proof, making him completely immune to creditors and defamation lawsuits.

Finally, he also wears a Medallion of False Moderation, giving him a limited mind-influencing power to convince anyone with Intelligence and Wisdom scores of 6 or less that he is in fact now a "mainstream, respectable" political leader, because, hey, he hasn't incited any race-riots in the past six months. What, are all of you still hung up on Crown Heights? It is time (as it is always time) to "move on."

Fortunately for The Reverend, most of the American media does, in fact, have low Intelligence and Wisdom. Chris Matthews (3rd level Newstwit) is particularly susceptible to the Medallion's effects, and takes -6 on any saving throws to resist the charm's power.

Wesley Clark

Character name: n/a (see below)
Race: n/a (see below)
Class/Level: n/a (see below)
Alignment: n/a (see below)

Basically, the key to Wesley Clark is this: On the campaign trail in New Hampshire, he decides to boast of his strong belief in time-travel. It's not as if there are pressing, real-world issues to talk about. Just a global war on terror, an economy producing an anemic rate of job-growth, and perhaps the most ideologically-important election in, oh, fifty years or so. But General Wesley Clark has his eyes on the really big issues -- you know, like the various plot inconsistencies in Quantum Leap.

Geeky as I am, even I look down on this guy. Sure, I'm sitting here making up D&D character sheets for presidential candidates, but this guy is on the campaign trail debating the feasibility of the solar-slingshot time-displacement maneuver in Star Trek.

I can't wait to see this guy's detailed four-point plan for improving job-growth:

1) Federally-funded job retraining programs

2) "Fair trade" rules imposing penalties on countries with substandard worker and environmental protections

3) Increasing the tax credits for the working poor

4) Flux capacitors

So that's key. That's the central insight into determining what sort of D&D character Wesley Clark would play: he wouldn't be playing D&D at all. He'd be playing his own lavishly-detailed science-fiction homebrew game, mixing elements of Traveller, Gamma World, and Call of Cthulhu. You try to get this guy to roll up a D&D character, and he's like, "Oh, no, I couldn't possibly, I'm far too busy detailing the interplay between the Zhodani psionic nobility and the cultists of Hastur the Unspeakable."

"Bugbears...? Highly illogical."

And it only gets worse. Because his preference for sci-fi also destroys your seventh-grade blues-rock band. You and the rest of your friends have decided you're going to be a Zeppelin-tribute band, writing songs entirely about Tolkein's Lord of the Rings (you've even got a great name -- Simarillion-- how can you fail?), and this miserable dweeb starts making trouble, pushing for you all to be a Rush-influenced band, insisting that you all write songs all about the Dune series. He just never shuts up about it, completely undermining the morale and integrity of the band; he's like a Bene Gesserit Yoko Ono.

It all comes to a head when he writes a pair of songs he claims are "totally killer." One's the pretentiously-titled Triumph of the Mind: Warsong of the Fremen, which is a forty-minute minor-key free-form jazz-improv piece which only contains a single lyric -- "The Spice," heavily filtered and modulated through his cousin Stevie's Casio synthesizer, repeated over and over at odd points of the song. The other one is Knights of Dune Sandworms, and it's even worse, because it's just a shameless ripoff of the Moody Blues' Knights in White Satin, except the poetry is even more vile now that it's larded up with obscure references to Arrakis and stillsuits and embarrassingly-forced rhymes for "Atreides."

And, in an attempt to make peace with this guy, you all agree to at least give his awful songs a fair hearing. But he accuses you of "phoning it in" during the third extended drum solo in Warsong of the Fremen, and then he and his cousin Stevie split the band, taking away that cool-ass Casio synthesizer. You later hear that he and Stevie have formed their own two-man band --called Duncan Idaho and the Guild Navigators -- and both of them got the shit beaten out of them at a grade-school Battle of the Bands competition.

And sure, you take some small satisfaction in that, but your own band falls apart shortly after. You just never realized how much your band's sound relied upon cousin Stevie's laconic-yet-funky keyboard stylings. Wesley "TimeRanger" Clark has ruined everything, and Simarillion will never get to record that four-disc concept album you'd planned.

You gotta hate this guy. What a fucking asshole.

Howard Dean

Character Name: Deangol/Gollum
Race: Evil, Mutated Hobbit
Class/Level: Tenth-level Bush Basher/Seventh-Level Character Assassin
Alignment: Full-on Chaotic Evil

Mesmerized by the prospect of reclaiming the One True Ring of Presidential Power once possessed by his political party (if not himself), the strange little being once known as "Deangol" has been warped into a hateful and pathetic creature of the night.

Ever his mind is fixated on the ring; it drives him with a will and a hunger of demonic intensity.

Who can doubt that Howard Dean is in the late stages of a monstrous transformation? Listen to the strange gurgling sound he makes at the end of his statements, a bit like an evil duck gargling with rocks as it chokes down a meal. Can one but doubt that by November, that gurgling will become a full-throated "Gollum! Gollum!" ?

Just examine his positions:

On the environment: The environments is preciousss, yess, preciousss it isss. We loves the cariboussss.

On pre-emptive military action: We wouldn'ts hurts a fly, gollum, gollum.

On white Southern men: We lovessss men who drive pick-up truckses with Confederate flagsss on the bumperssss, we do, we do. We jussst want to kiss their foreheads and pat their golden hairssss. Praise Jesusses!

On the Bush tax cuts: We wantsss thats moneys back! We wantsss it back, we do!

And on Bush himself: Nasty, false, trickssy Bush! We hates the Bushesess! We hates it forever!!

Although a thoroughly repellent creature in every respect, Deangol/Gollum is a potentially formidable foe. His near-midget size grants him a +3 Armor Class adjustment when battling beings of greater stature and gravitas.

His levels in Character Assassin give him the ability to disseminate vile Internet conspiracy-theories in broadcast interviews without the establishment press so much as batting an eye. His special ability of Dark Charisma has allowed him to Enchant a half million evil henchmen to support him, all similarly twisted by hate, anger, and covetousness for raw political power. Deangol/Gollum can call upon these wretched folk to donate 1000-20,000 gold pieces (d20x1,000) to his coffers per month.

Finally, he proudly wields the Bloody Shirt of Florida when campaigning. When he waves this evil garment, red-stained with Gore, he drives all allied henchpersons within a 1000 foot radius into a seething, frothing beserker rage.

He is therefore a dangerous opponent, and not to be taken lightly. But he does have one weakness:

The Bush clan are all Texas Rangers (even though they were all born as Patricians), and they have all selected Liberal Hobgoblins as their favored enemy. All Bushes therefore get a +4 bonus to hit against such silly creatures, and furthermore inflict triple-damage when wielding negative ads.

Leonard Nimoy Sings Geek