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The Dresden Files => DFRPG => Topic started by: Surfmonkey01 on August 20, 2010, 12:47:37 PM
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My group is starting our game next week. We did chargen last night, and we are all pumped to start. For our first game, I plan on using a plot nugget I saw in another forum a few weeks back... A Rock Band that has somehow developed Oracular abilities. 1 in every 7 of their songs come true. The problem is this: I'm not sure of the reason why this has happened, but even more importantly than that, I haven't been able to decide on a band. I want it to be a real one, whose actual songs I can play during the game as their lyrics start coming true. I just can't decide whose songs and lyrics to use... Anyone got any suggestions?
Oh, our game is set in the Cleveland area, and the supernatural is just beginning to rise to prominence. Their are representatives of most of the major groups somewhere in the area, but no one has really risen to any great power yet.
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The 'why' is fairly easy. One member of the band has the Cassandra's tears power. Mostly they collaborate with another lyricist on their songs, but there's one song on every album for which they wrote the lyrics for alone and that's when their gift comes to the fore (gives you a way for the players to work out who it is too).
The who is more difficult. It depends what type of music you want them to play.
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How about Jonathan Coulton? Then his song Re: Your Brains could become real. Then you can have real flesh eating zombies running around. But that is the night they go to check out what is going on. The previous night, several programmers are transform into monkeys because of the song, Code Monkey.
The cause is his new Guitar. Poor Jonathan isn’t even aware it is doing it.
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How about Jonathan Coulton? Then his song Re: Your Brains could become real. Then you can have real flesh eating zombies running around. But that is the night they go to check out what is going on. The previous night, several programmers are transform into monkeys because of the song, Code Monkey.
The cause is his new Guitar. Poor Jonathan isn’t even aware it is doing it.
And if the game world's date is the First of May...
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The Cassandra's Tears angle might work, but if you want to go a different route (for fear that the players might too easily think that someone in or attached to the band has oracular abilities), why not play with the idea that it is not the lyrics that make the song come true, but a certain type of music, say snippets of the Song of Creation (pick your mythos) that have been written into the music that make the lyrics come true.
Just a thought.
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Jonathon coulton is too much of a running gag amongst us, he'd completely take everyone out of the story. Good out of the box thinking, though. I'm trying to think of bands that are originally from the Cleveland area... So far I've come up with Nine inch Nails and Filter.
Hmm... One of those could work...
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Not sure about the band; but as for the why...
Synergy. The group just got a new member, and they're accidentally doing bardic rituals/magic. (It's one of those things where with the new guy/girl, everything clicks musically...and magically.) Mundane rituals, so they don't even have to be clued-in or magical. And the band is becoming a rising star, because everything is starting to work out right...
Sponsored. One of the Fae got enamoured with the band, and is trying to help them out. (Alternatively, there's some plot afoot with the band as pawns.)
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One idea might be the members of the band are all minor talents. But their minor talents mesh so perfectly that the whole is much greater than the sum of the individuals. So the few songs that they all collaborated on are the ones that come true.
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I like the idea but the administration (finding a band, combing through their song list) would kill me... but if you could pull it off, it would be mighty leet.
Like that post's idea of the sum of the whole coming together in some inadverdent way - the red herring could be the newest band member to join, but really it was that addition that did it.
Perhaps one of them has bought a vintage instrument recently that channels power.
Maybe its the slightly tweaked logo that they have now.
Perhaps the singer adlibs on the fly but the band is so raw that nobody really notices or cares, and just assumes he's screaming out something on the spot, not realizing that he's really in a trance and that some oracular spirit has taken over his body and is dispensing divine truth.
It'd be cool too if that advice isn't general but is aimed at somebody in the crowd - somebody who knows that this power is happening is actually in the front row, shouting questions at the singer and getting their answers.
What if they aren't the only ones? What if a prog trance DJ is spinning medleys whose titles put some kind of message out?
That folk fiddler on the corner is throwing together reel sets that haven't been heard for a hundred years?
That child prodigy who was supposed to perform a Rachmaninoff at the Performing Centre feels compelled to play the a Hungarian folk dance that he hears everywhere, and he's hearing snippets of it from DJ's, folk fiddlers, that punk band that's opening next week... and it all weaves a tapestry that's directed by somebody, someone, somewhere, for some purpose...
Anyways. Off the top of my head. Hopefully some are helpful...
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Hmm... Good ideas, all. I'm getting closer to figuring out the "why" and "how.". As for the "who," I'm now strongly leaning towards Filter and the song "Hey Man Nice Shot," which could be the cause of increased suicides in the days following the show... Maybe all the deaths are sacrifices to power something big and nasty...
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If you go with Cassandra's tears or the like, it could be fun to have that character make other random, hard to verify statements while performing... like "maybe one of you is going to get lucky tonight" (crowd cheers) "...and then get hit by an ambulance or some sh*t. I duuno" (crowd laughs). Then months later a rumor pops up of a kid at the concert that night actually getting hit by an ambulance while leaving his girlfriend's house.
I think the musical instrument is a bit too easy of an explanation, and too easily solved/fixed (break it!). A drug that the group regularly does that enhances precognition (like the 3-eye drug) is perhaps too close of a resden rip, but could be good for leading the PCs into something larger.
Or, as demons can't come into our world without an invite, perhaps they are somehow managing to invite demons in by music? like a ritual: diabolery spell, but the words of the song form a binding that the demon must act in a certain manner.
Or, perhaps they have a lawbreaker wizard friend who travels time and is trying to use their songs to cause or prevent some future. He tells them about his crazy dreams and they make some into songs...
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My group is starting our game next week. We did chargen last night, and we are all pumped to start. For our first game, I plan on using a plot nugget I saw in another forum a few weeks back... A Rock Band that has somehow developed Oracular abilities. 1 in every 7 of their songs come true. The problem is this: I'm not sure of the reason why this has happened, but even more importantly than that, I haven't been able to decide on a band. I want it to be a real one, whose actual songs I can play during the game as their lyrics start coming true. I just can't decide whose songs and lyrics to use... Anyone got any suggestions?
Oh, our game is set in the Cleveland area, and the supernatural is just beginning to rise to prominence. Their are representatives of most of the major groups somewhere in the area, but no one has really risen to any great power yet.
You could save yourself some trouble and have the band be a local one that mostly plays cover songs with a few originals mixed in. They pick their set list, either consciously or not, based on whatever oracular powers they have. That way, you aren't stuck with just one band and you can play any song you like if its lyrics are appropriate. Of course, it's their original songs that are really scary-accurate. <evil grin>
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I think we're getting somewhere now... I think I'm going to make it a local band, as suggested. This makes it mire plausible that they'd be doing multiple shows, so a pattern can more easily start to emerge. I think I'm going to have the whole band have Cassandra's Tears, and they all trigger at random, which is why it's never the same song it works on twice. I think they won't even know they have it, but all the effects they cause are amassing power for the big nasty of my campaign (whatever I decide that to be... It's early, I can be vague). Their songs will be almost entirely covers, which also lends to the random effects. As for the songs themselves and their effects, I'm working on a list. So far I've got...
Filter- Hey Man Nice Shot - increased suicides, gun murders
Offspring - Come Out and Play - increased youth crime
Nickelback - Never Again - increased domestic violence
Green Day - Having a Blast - suicide bombers
Metallica - One - soldiers returning from Iraq have lost their arms, legs, sight, hearing... This one is REALLY dark...
I need some more. Anyone got any for me?
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It doesn't have to be ALL bad. If they were predicting good stuff too, it casts the underlying power's morality into shades of grey.
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Based on the kinds of music I normally listen to, I'm having a hard time with the "good"... Give me a few :)
Also, as noted above, it leans towards the bad because the source of the power is less than benign, and is amassing dark energy for something not good
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I think we're getting somewhere now... I think I'm going to make it a local band, as suggested. This makes it mire plausible that they'd be doing multiple shows, so a pattern can more easily start to emerge. I think I'm going to have the whole band have Cassandra's Tears, and they all trigger at random, which is why it's never the same song it works on twice. I think they won't even know they have it, but all the effects they cause are amassing power for the big nasty of my campaign (whatever I decide that to be... It's early, I can be vague). Their songs will be almost entirely covers, which also lends to the random effects. As for the songs themselves and their effects, I'm working on a list. So far I've got...
Filter- Hey Man Nice Shot - increased suicides, gun murders
Offspring - Come Out and Play - increased youth crime
Nickelback - Never Again - increased domestic violence
Green Day - Having a Blast - suicide bombers
Metallica - One - soldiers returning from Iraq have lost their arms, legs, sight, hearing... This one is REALLY dark...
I need some more. Anyone got any for me?
You may be able to draw on this old medieval myth about the tritone, too. Maybe all those monks weren't wrong? Perhaps when the interval is played by someone with the "right" supernatural heritage, it really IS evil? Bwahahaha!
http://www.religionnewsblog.com/14485/the-devils-music (http://www.religionnewsblog.com/14485/the-devils-music)
Just Google "the devil's interval" or the "devil's chord" and you'll find more info on it.
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Try Hierophant...as in Shooter Jennings & Hierophant. It's a concept album, with Stephen King as a DJ who's about to get hauled away by the "authorities" as freedom of the airwaves ends.
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I just came up with the band's name... The Raconteurs of Gibraltar.
Has a ring to it, dontcha think?
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Based on the kinds of music I normally listen to, I'm having a hard time with the "good"... Give me a few :)
Also, as noted above, it leans towards the bad because the source of the power is less than benign, and is amassing dark energy for something not good
Well, lets say the acts that we interpret as "evil", the power pragmatically sees as "necessary" - slaughtering that tribe chops off their worship of a small pantheon that includes good gods and bad, but its more interested in stopping the worship of the bad from flourishing (I say good and bad in relative and subjective sense) because its only its way to turning into something worse.
Maybe it wants to destroy a city because its simply the easiest way to disrupt a key ley junction that, in concert with a few other points on the planet, create a foci that's calling to an outer Horror. What's a city of a few million to the survival of the rest of the few billion?
Even if its horrorific, maybe its the lesser horror in a big picture. How awful is it if the players have a chance to stop something... and then force themselves not to, because it really IS necessary for something worse not to happen? And even better yet... not just stand by and not do anything about it, but now fight others and former allies who can't see it that way?
It really depends on what your group is like.
Butt-kickers, tacticians and straight-ahead A-To-B'ers will roll their eyes and be frustrated until you can point them at something to blows-them-up. Your storytellers & method actors will be squirming with orgasmic glee and desperately seeking fresh underwear for the moral dilemna's.
Its one of those things that reinforces that the older and long-lived powers simply see things on a different scale and quite possibly have had centuries to rationalize, justify and think is necessary.
Anyways, cool name for the band :)
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Man... this would also be an unbelievably awesome way to call in any emissaries of power or sponsors, whose power sources may or may not be directly involved in supporting this, or actually be responsible for it, and say this is why you have your power, because they want you to help them out. And you trust them, don't you? Because they've never let you down in the past?
Or changelings who are maintaining relationships with their fae parents...?
Ah, fun times.
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See, now you're making me rethink leading the campaign off with this... It almost feels too "big" for Book One. I dunno. I need to dwell on this some...
Then again, they can resolve then situation with the bad, but that doesn't mean there won't be others later... Hmm... Maybe it is a good Book One after all, they can have a victory but still leave it open for more to come later....
Anyways, more details I've come up with about the band itself... Their symbol incorporates the Third Eye... They meant it as a tribute to Tool, but of course it means more than that. The Tool song "Anema" is the trigger for their collective powers... It's a very apocalyptic song, and anything they play after it is supercharged by it, thus making it come to pass. Since the band varies their setlist, it's always something different...
Damn, this is fun.
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You can totally think of leading the campaign off with this, because you don't launch right into the apocalyptic holyshit the mutherfrogging worldisgonnablowsup end-scene - its going to be a bunch of small things that gradually form that picture when you piece it along with everything else. It would be an entire Buffy season, and each one of the things that come together would be the episodes... over-arching baddie and an epic storyline that leads up to the big reveal...
Cue thunderous climatic music with power guitar!
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I think the ideas are settling now... Since this is our first game, I want to leave things open for interpretation and adjustment on the fly. I'm going to have the detective NPC (somewhat in the supernatural know, aspect of "Cop of tomorrow - today!") first bring a case (probably the mass suicides) to the groups attention, then we can go from there.
For the bands aspect, I'm thinking "third eye not-so blind"
Damn, I'm so pumped for this game.
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you could just identify them as a really talented local cover band. They don't write their own songs but play others really well. Once people get a little bluesy with their requests, all hell breaks loose
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you could just identify them as a really talented local cover band. They don't write their own songs but play others really well. Once people get a little bluesy with their requests, all hell breaks loose
Or, with even more potential for a wider range of music: a live karaoke band. Which means that people are, in some ways, requesting the doom that befalls them.
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Or, with even more potential for a wider range of music: a live karaoke band. Which means that people are, in some ways, requesting the doom that befalls them.
Heck, I'd have all of the above as a problem that's not localized to just one band or musician, but to a pattern of incidences across a city or a region, caused by the same underlying Power That Be...
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I am really enjoying all of the different ideas from people. I have to say that I just love games with sound tracks. What about if you had it happening with different bands? Lets say there is a Cult that worships dark power X. Each member of the cult is a stage hand or a sound director. As the band is playing, there is a subsonic (or something) recorded ritual that takes about the same amount of time to finish as it does to play 7 songs. Whenever the end of the ritual happens, it triggers the energies and concepts of the song currently being played. The sound director would know the playlist and could plan out which song he/she wanted to be triggered. They could also make subtle suggestions which order the songs should be played in. The energy of the audiance would feed the generation of the ritual. This could be happening for any number of local bands (if you make it local, then you don't have to worry about a touring band). You could also have some mishaps where the crowd begs for a song in the middle of the play list, which would mess things up a bit for cult X (not everything goes right for the bad guys all the time, no matter how well they plan). This way, it might make it a little harded to track down, but it might also have the problem of being more convoluted.
Songs:
Lights Out- Breaking Benjamin Red Court vamps take a night rampage out on the town (PCs might have heard that the vamps were planning something like this but they didn't know when it was going to happen)
Drive- Incubus No reports of any DUIs and a mass drop in unemployment (oops ^_^)
Possibly something from Pearl Jam?
Perhaps something from Disturbed?
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Damn, MorningDarkness, that's awesome. I may need to make a few last minute adjustments before my game tomorrow...
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And with multiple cover bands, you can include a female fronted rock/metal band that covers things like Evanescence, Within Temptation, Lacuna Coil, Fly Leaf. Maybe even some Nightwish or HeavensDust. Have fun!
Evanescence- Going Under (there is an unexpected flood from a water main that freakishly kills an entire city block)
Evanescence- Imaginary (a prediction of some kind of sleep monster that draws people into a coma and feeds off of their nightmares)
Within Temptation- Gatekeeper (perhaps the prediction of a number/one demon who crosses over into our world, go on a killing spree and then possess a human man)
Within Temptation- The Howling (a prediction that a loup garou comes to town) **I actually had a whole game that was inspired by listening to this song**
Fly Leaf- I'm So Sick (a disease hits the most populated part of the city: symptoms include vomiting (emptyness), loss of voice, drowsiness, high pitched ringing of the ears that causes itching and secondary infections, shaking/muscle spasms, and eventually death) I know, I am horrible :p
Maybe Lacuna Coil-Our Truth but I don't have a good suggestion of what to do with it.
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You could also go for songs that are full of meaning... Leonard Cohen's Last Year's Man comes to mind, as does Chris de Burgh's Crusader. You might even signal the end of the band when someone sing The Day the Music Died.
Richard
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So we started our game tonight... I kinda upped the seriousness of the "music comes true" thing on the fly, making it a nationwide/possibly global thing. Of course, the group focused mainly on the local area, and their investigations are still pointing them towards the Raconteurs. But now, since it's a widespread thing, stopping just this one band won't be enough. Now they have to figure out how and why it's happening, and try to get the word out so that the other instances can be stopped as well...
I'm still toying with who's pulling the strings and what their end goal is... I have an idea, but I want to do some more reading before I "name" it here... maybe tomorrow...
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Sometimes that's all that you need... kind of lets you feel out your group too to see which way they're heading, or more importantly, tie it to which one of their aspects is coming into play or even to hit up one of their locations / faces.
Thumbs up!
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I just need my research, and I think I've decided... The nationwide music-related magically-induced weirdness is going to be the work of the Denarians, specifically Tessa's faction. They're using the dark energies released by all these events to gather power for something... Apocalyptic...