The Monolith turns rage into a Christian splatter-punk board game

When a Christian game designer talks about “adrenaline hits” from outrage online, he doesn’t preach. He builds a grim, splatter-punk tabletop game—The Monolith—that turns religious nationalism’s violent energy into a provocation players have to survive. The st

Rage doesn’t just live in comments. It shows up in your body.

Phil Gross describes how he’d get pulled back into the same online fights again and again—finding the posts even when they weren’t popping up in his feed—because the feeling arrived like a hit he couldn’t ignore. “It was like I needed that adrenaline hit,” he says.

Gross knows the shape of that pull because he’s been on both sides of it: he’s one of the two men in a story about two avatars in a comment section who “tear each other apart. ” until real acquaintance turns into caricature. bitterness. and fewer real-world gestures between them. Their connection didn’t start in politics—it began as “a decent real-life acquaintance” that existed before the 2016 election and its fallout. In the years since, outrage has hijacked that relationship.

So Gross does something unexpected for a game designer: he takes the electricity of rage and builds it into a tabletop world meant to warn rather than entertain.

Earlier this month, he and his publisher Plaid Hat Games launched their new splatter-punk-inspired tabletop game, The Monolith.

If Settlers of Catan is folk. The Monolith is ‘90s punk—specifically The Pixies. which Gross listened to repeatedly as he worked on the game. The cover and rule book show angry red splotches against stark black and white. Inside. the mechanisms include “boast and slay. ” and players obey a shaman’s command to feed enemy hearts to a looming entity in the middle of the board.

It’s grimdark. It’s also, Gross insists, tied to a very specific faith formation—one he says is influenced by the pacifist Mennonites he used to work with.

The game leans hard into wickedness without softening it. Calvinists committed to the doctrine of total depravity, the framing goes, would recognize the straight talk. The Monolith “pulls no punches about human wickedness. ” and it sets its horror not against religion as such. but against what happens when violent impulses are sanctified.

Gross remembers growing up in conservative spaces and watching religious mentors trade virtue for political power. One college professor, he says, rubber-stamped Putin because he wore a cross necklace. He also watched election-season Facebook vitriol and the tactics of theo-bros on Twitter—now X—turn into fuel that Gross translated into The Monolith’s play.

“Religious nationalism” isn’t the only influence in the game. The Monolith is also shaped by a tradition of satire and by tabletop history, including Warhammer 40,000.

That wargame helped influence The Monolith. and it matters because Warhammer 40. 000 features hyper-masculine Space Marines: muscle-bound. glowering. towering uber-mensch figures the alt-right has become obsessed with. In practice, the connection has a way of looking less like irony the closer it gets to the internet.

But designer Rick Priestly. who intended the Space Marines as a dark joke. described the intention in a 2015 interview with Cardboard Sandwich. “To me the background to 40K was always intended to be ironic. ” he said. adding that the fact the Space Marines were lauded as heroes “always amused me. ” because they’re brutal and “completely self-deceiving.”.

In Gross’s telling, The Monolith’s play style should serve as a warning—about Christian Nationalism’s tactics in the U.S., and about what happens anywhere religion melds with the ruthless pursuit of power.

He compares the approach to Caravaggio or Beethoven: art that doesn’t look away when violence becomes aesthetic.

Caravaggio’s Judith Beheading Holofernes is offered as a reference point. The artist shoves an artery spurting from the drunk man’s neck into the viewer’s face while carefully recording young Judith’s disgust and determination alongside her servant’s grim bloodlust. It’s a Baroque splatter-fest, and the gore, the piece argues, gives violence ambiguity, doubt, and distaste.

Beethoven’s 5th symphony appears too—the “dun dun dun DUN” that builds conflict into music. For a while, it looks as if evil might win.

But the article pivots from these old masters to a grievance that feels current: in much of Christian art today, the mood tilts toward being stubbornly upbeat.

Gross points to a local Christian radio channel with the tagline “positive, encouraging!” And he argues that many current Christian publishers won’t risk the kinds of darkness that horror, dystopian fiction, and violent tabletop games have always used to talk about real fear.

He names a gap he thinks American church-funded art tends to avoid: Ezekiel’s body-horror bones, Ecclesiastes’ cynicism, Revelation’s monsters, and Judges’ sick spiral into humanity’s worst.

The argument isn’t that light is bad. It’s that the church often leaves believers without language for fear. rage. and doubt when they can’t find a silver lining and when losses won’t be resurrected on this side of heaven. “Glib theodicy,” the piece says, betrays the people hurt by a sabotaged world.

It brings in Paul Ricoeur’s words about suffering: “Victims of evil cannot be silenced with either rational explanation (theodicy) or irrational submission (mysticism),” Ricoeur said, “Their stories cry out for other responses.”

Art, the story continues, is one of those responses.

Horror, in particular, becomes a way to speak fear without lying about it—and the article connects that to the people who make and read it.

Noah Thomas Vance. a novelist and horror enthusiast Gross interviews. argues that Christians were always involved in making horror. in film and literature. Noah points out that “up until the late ‘70s. Christians were active in all art forms. including horror.” He mentions filmmakers Terrence Fisher and Christopher Lee. and writer M. R. James, a devout Anglican and scholar of early Christianity who became the Father of Folk Horror.

Things changed, Noah says, with the rise of the Religious Right. Many Christians fled mainstream arts for a faith-based industry. He traces that shift to “the moral majority politics of the ‘80s and the conservative resurgence now in the SBC. ” which positioned a lot of art as “they’re attacking you. the culture is attacking you. and it’s demonic!”.

In Noah’s eyes, that approach was a missed opportunity—especially when it comes to fear as warning.

He brings up William Peter Blatty, the author and screenwriter of The Exorcist. Noah says Blatty’s intent was to scare people “into believing there is a higher power.” He describes the conservative moral message of those movies like this: “evil is evil and we need to stay away. These are warnings.”

Noah’s own work moves in that same direction but from his own damage. His debut horror novel is set in a Southern Baptist-esque church and pushes abuse out of the shadows. He says he “went through a negative series of church experiences” and wanted to write “cathartically about it. ” aiming for the kind of release Jordan Peele got in Get Out.

His influences include Dan Simmons, Robert McCammon, and Stephen King.

Noah explains why horror fiction fits his need better than memoir: genre fiction. he says. is “the cheese you wrap the dog’s pill in.” He wanted to talk about something real. but in a form that makes it “just palatable enough.” He adds that wrapping his story into horror “helped my story become palatable to me.”.

Gross connects those artistic claims to trauma in a concrete way: not all horror fans have trauma. but many trauma victims are drawn to horror. Scary media serves as exposure therapy—an exposure that lets fear be faced “without being harmed.” For PTSD victims and other trauma survivors. tense fiction can bring closure for the helplessness felt earlier. because it grants agency. “The survivor can shut Misery or pause Mother Mary. ” the piece says. “stand up to stretch. and get back into it when they’re ready.”.

Catharsis, it argues, can come in choosing, then releasing, fear.

That idea also lands in the business-side confidence of Plaid Hat Games founder Colby Dauch. who tells Gross that spooky art hones survival instincts. “Horror ‘lights up a primal part of our brains concerned with risk analysis. as part of the survival instinct. ” he says. adding that the games and stories “play with that part of our brains that makes us feel like: ‘I’m learning how to assess risk. I’m having my worst fears played out. and I am getting the chance to process them and deal with them.’”.

The piece then asks a more uncomfortable question: why are so many horror-and-violence draws male.

Gross wonders whether it’s just catharsis. or whether a modern American division has left testosterone with nowhere legitimate to go—between the categories of “toxic male” and “gentle feminist.” He suggests the posturing of a Space Marine or the swagger of Andrew Tate could look appealing if fight-or-flight instincts feel unsanctioned.

He writes about his own son. a ten-year-old who got in big trouble at school after finding a stick in the field and pretending it was a dagger without jabbing anyone or threatening anyone. He understands the school’s policy in a nation shaped by school violence. but he also understands that boys turn just about anything into pretend weapons.

The question becomes: is there a righteous form of that instinct?

Gross leans on Zachary Wagner. author of Men of Virtue. who says: “When God created the male body—testosterone and all—he said it was very good. Whatever we say about the challenges or sins or misbehaviors of boys and men. we as Christians should be able to confidently say that maleness is a very good thing.”.

Christ was meek, the piece says, but also fierce—defending the woman a violent mob wanted to stone, condemning religious hypocrisy, and turning tables instead of letting anyone bar the way to God.

If men and boys are meant to be warriors, Gross asks where they are asked to practice that strength outside of the military or the occasional heroic response to a mountain lion attack.

Sports, games, and play become the answer.

That leads back to the tabletop mechanics, but with a different emphasis. Competitive board games are described as a “magic circle” where the game—rather than society—defines acceptable behavior. Aggression that isn’t embodied outside the circle is “welcome here on the board.” Allies betray in Diplomacy. Magic: The Gathering is “a fight to the death.” Even party games like Chameleon. and kids’ games like Sorry. ask players to lie and sabotage.

The Monolith, the piece notes, offers only villain roles.

Gross asks what happens when players take on “bad guy” roles. Phil says he avoided anything in the game that would be a realistic representation of a war crime. “You can’t bomb a school. for example. as the US bombed the school in Iran. ” he says. referencing the Minab school attack. “You can’t kill civilians at all.” The planet in The Monolith has no civilians and no innocent victims.

But he says what he wants players to think about is that violence’s spirit is self-perpetuating. “It feeds on itself. It is beholden to idols.”

Colby Dauch adds that Monolith plays with violence in authoritarianism and religion, exclusion and otherizing—so that if players recognize those traits, they can reflect on how such religion may create a power structure that can be abused, and how that play can help them recognize abuse.

The story insists that a room full of people can correct behavior in subtle ways. It cites the claim that games can increase sharing. complimenting. and building partnerships when kids and elders play together. and improve memory retention. spatial awareness. and good decision-making. It also points to findings that positive attitudes among group members improve the likelihood of pro-social behavior.

There’s also a social correction mechanism at the table. “Conflict-based games can actually teach you how to deal with your feelings,” Colby says. When someone clashes or things don’t go their way, you learn to handle conflict. The group can even gently reprimand an overreaction—“maybe everybody at the table gets kinda quiet. ” he says. and the person realizes they affected the vibe.

The emphasis is physical and communal. “We are more shaped by the act of physically gathering with other people to play a game than by the game we choose to play. ” Gross writes. tying it to a microcosm idea: players oppose each other on the board but still bond afterward. “This person I am diametrically opposed to in the game. with totally opposite goals. is also my friend that I am going to be bonded to after this game is over.”.

The Monolith demands brutality on the board, but Gross reports that play-test sessions were filled with joke-cracking, snacks, and glad camaraderie.

That contradiction—grimness as a tool, not a destination—is where the story lands hardest, in the last stretch.

Gross circles back to Christian concerns about darkness in media—calling out Dungeon Masters, Huntrix fans, and Gryffindors by name. His view is that communally gathering for a common goal offers scope for sanctification. If believers invite the Spirit to shape interactions. then games. movies. and books can become a way to receive healing and develop patience. generosity. and joy. Transformation happens in embodied relationship.

That’s not abstract for him.

Gross says the final step toward healing wasn’t online. It was a lunch break.

He tells how he finally decided to meet his online enemy face-to-face. The two men met over Phil’s lunch break, on a park bench in downtown Syracuse. Gross remembers the day: “It was a bright, sunny day.” In person, he says, “it was immediately a different conversation.”

As they talked, he says something changed in him. He remembered the other man’s childhood—something he knew only a bit about—and he could picture him as a skinny young guy “before life got hold of him.” In sunshine and skin, the two shared ground of Christ.

“I wasn’t trying to argue with him,” Gross says. “I had real questions. There was so much understanding.”

The conversation didn’t erase their political opinions. Gross acknowledges that the rift runs deeper than one chat in a park, and he knows it will take more than a game to heal what plagues modern America.

Still, he offers a hard truth about the people who lash out: “Violent people carry heavy burdens—real, unaddressed baggage which they feel must be unloaded into revenge.” Idols, he adds, “identify enemies and promise justice for their hurts,” while the real hurt hardens beneath.

Unaddressed hurt, he says, begets more hurt. Forgiveness can break the cycle.

He asks how to frame hurts without revenge: “God does have harsh words for false teachers. Yet there must be room for forgiveness, too.”

Since that day in the sunshine, Phil Gross has designed plenty of games—both silly and sincere—but he says The Monolith is the one he keeps coming back to. “There’s a spiritual depth there I don’t think I’m done exploring yet,” he says. He laughs a little and admits, “I’m not gentled yet.”

Christian art tabletop games splatter-punk horror fiction religious nationalism Plaid Hat Games Phil Gross The Monolith Warhammer 40 000 The Exorcist Get Out Jordan Peele trauma and horror Mennonites Syracuse