Musical Inspiration Challenge: Part 10: The Second Encounter

If I Could Change Your Mind by Alan Parson’s Project

Ok, we’ve got a storm crashing in. Our party just fought their way past a terrible seductive siren and her minions, the storm echoes in the distance, the walrus statue must be recaptured, the town freed from the Hellknights. The party is getting a pretty big pile of stuff they have to take care of, but that’s why they’re heroes.

Blood pumping! And uh..

More easy, slow paced progressive stuff.

Well, heh..heh, uh.. I need stalling time. Onto the lyrics!

/////

I prefer to spend my time in solitary ways
Keeping myself to myself
Can't pretend that it's been easy since you went away
Living with somebody else

If you should change your mind
If you should turn around and look behind
If you could see me the way I used to be
At the risk of bringing back the sorrow and despair

I would do it all again
Holding on to memories and pretending not to care
Knowing that the show was soon to end
If only I could change your mind

If only you would change
If I had the chance I'd do it all again
I would do it all again

I remember windy shores on melancholy days
Drifting along with the tide
And the joy of simple things and ordinary ways
Taking it all in my stride

If you should change your mind
If I could let you see what lies behind
If you could see need me the way it used to be

Even for the moment of the happy times we shared
Living in my dreams since then
At the risk of losing only castles in the air
Come with me and we can try again
Oh, if I could change your mind

Can't pretend it's not been lonely since you went away
Oh, if I could change your mind

///

Ok. I can work with this.

As I stated earlier, these are set piece encounters. An actual adventure is like a feast, small appetizer encounters, tasty entrees, but there are always masterpieces that need to stand out. So by this point, our heroes have battled past the seductive storm siren, and probably fought some crabs in the tunnels, and then had it out with a few of the Hellknights. Assuming the party hasn’t been ghosting the place like some level in Splinter Cell, the Hellknights should be aware of them but (natch) can’t really mass the amount of resources to assault into the weird pirate caverns under their complex without leaving the exterior undefended, particularly with the search going on for the walrus statue and with the storm coming in causing them to lose control of the town below.

So one of the Hellknights, a lieutenant decides to go below with a few of his people, and tries to do the unexpected.

A social encounter.

He tries to convince the party to table their nonsense until they can find the walrus statue. This is good for two reasons. It lets the players more organically find out what the hell the HKs are up to (“We’ve already lost our home once before, we won’t lose it again, not after all this trouble!”), lets the social or sneaky players do their thing, and gives the players the benefit of cutting the HKs in half or getting a lead from the HKs on where the walrus is Clue-style (“We know for sure it’s NOT in the left vault”).

And if the players can convince the HKs, who are good at the whole order and maintaining things perspective, to help with the storm coming in, they might be able to engineer a happy ending for a lot of folks. This tends to make players happy. Still, even if they can convince this lot, their boss is still hell-bent on her course of action, and the HKs won’t help fight her since that would require that they truly betray her and their companions, and there are some things you just can’t do.

Speaking of her..

Musical Inspiration Challenge Part 8: The First Complication

Alan Parson’s “Where’s the Walrus.”

Alright, this is the point where I make a small comment, and then try to buy my brain time to think by copy/pasting the lyrics.

Only problem? This song has no freaking lyrics.

As I said back when I started this, and before I was betrayed by my iPod’s shuffle function, the First Complication represents those weird and incongruous elements that occur in adventurers. It’s there for stuff like wandering dragons, or everything happening in a thunderstorm, or the fun weird nonsense that doesn’t necessarily tie directly with the “aim” of an adventure.

So this is going to be where we get into really weird territory.

My first thought was ‘Sheesh, an instrumental?’ and I was considering just having a giant Walrus factor in. Then I got snarky about the title and was like ‘Ah, it should be a giant invisible walrus!’ Invisible walruses (walrusi?) presumably being a sufficient threat.

But this isn’t really about a given monster. It’s about a complication. Things that make life more complicated. Like having to compose an adventure segment using an instrumental titled after a freaking walrus.

And that’s when it hit me. Stop focusing on the title, and focus on the song. The instrumental (I have a link back in second post in this series) is a driving, kind of 80s song, that has a sense of movement to it. A regular focused driving tune.

And that’s what got me. Amidst the pirate treasure, and the Kate Bush inspired Hellknight, we’ve got a bigger and more annoying complication. The town is being over run, its being turned into a Stepford version of the Hellknight leader’s old memories. And..

It’s about to get wrecked by a terrible storm or wave coming in.

Seriously, that’s where this Walrus song led me to thinking. The party has to locate a part of the old treasure hoard where the Hellknights are held up, that supposedly has the power to stop the weather effect that’s crashing in. This also locks us in at a level below where the players can do that themselves.

The complication? Ah, this is where it gets ridiculous. The item is a magical walrus statue. So they have to ask ‘Where’s my walrus?’ Heh, heh…. I’m not crazy.

Now the song also has some oddities, snippets of dialogue just out of earshot, and some phone dial tones (which might help us thematically tie things back to Computer Eyes). So.. Tying in with the idea of gaslighting people, what if our Hellknight is looking for this item too? Scouring through her recently captured pirate stronghold, trying to find it. And our heroes want it. And the item itself has a mad protector, or guardian beast, who is desperately trying to keep it out of both of their hands. The guardian of course unaware that he’s dooming the nearby village by keeping it out of the players’ hands.

So our complication is that the heroes need to find this freaking walrus statue, which is guarded by a hidebound idiot of a guardian, AND the bad guys are hunting for it too. The bad guys don’t want their village eradicated anymore then the heroes do, after all.

Ah, that’s even better.

The heroes have to find out about this, by overhearing the villains! Will they attempt détente? Try to forge an alliance? Or try to make sure that the Hellknight doesn’t capture the item and secure their control over the township even more?

Complicated.

Working as intended.

Suck it, Walrus!

Musical Inspiration Challenge Part 2: Our Contestants

Well, let’s begin this poorly thought out challenge idea for an adventure.

I realize I should’ve thought of a way to determine level. Whoops.

Song 1: The Inspiration

A Sound of Thunder, by A Sound of Thunder, from the Album “Out of the Darkness”

This is going to be tricky.

Song 2: The Antagonist.

Never Be Mine by Kate Bush, from the album “Sensual World.”

..not making this easy, huh, iPod? Also yeah, I listen to Kate Bush. I’m old and she’s awesome.
 
Song 3: The aim of the conflict.

Computer Eyes, by Ayreon from the Actual Fantasy Album.

…oh boy. I probably shouldn’t have made this Pathfinder.

Song 4: Why should the players care?

Losing You, by Dream Evil from their Dragonslayer album.

This one should be easy. 


Song 5: The theme of the ‘dungeon.’

Pirate Song by Alestorm from the Black Sails at Midnight album.

Ok, I think I can work with this.. And getting an idea. Alestorm and Kate Bush, yeesh.

 
Song 6: The first complication.
Where is the Walrus? (Instrumental) by Alan Parson’s Project from Stereotomy.

An instrumental titled after walruses. Its ok, Spook, its ok. This is a dumb idea, but WE’LL POWER THROUGH! BWAHAHAHA!

Song 7: Encounter 1.  The first of our encounters.

With or Without You, by U2, from the Joshua Tree Album.

 Well, I’m certainly glad that in my iPod library, with all of the heavy metal I have, it chose the slow pop song by U2 for our encounter. Wouldn’t want to make this easy, would we?

Song 8: Encounter 2.

If I Could Change Your Mind by Alan Parson’s Project from The Definitive Collection. It’s certainly from a real album, but not on my iPod. Artwork on the video looks like its from the album Eve.

Ok, so two out of three of our encounters are now based on easy listening pop and progressive, and our antagonist is based on Kate Bush. I don’t think that this is going to be a barbarian overlord.

Song 9: The Climactic Encounter.

The final battle. THE CLIMAX. Of our opposition against our Kate Bush themed bad guy, and our other encounters involving U2 pop songs and soft 70s prog rock.. We get..

The Evolution of Circuitry by The Megas, from the Megatainment album.

And once again, hrm. Ideas!
Song 10: Reward.

Jonas Psalter by Styx, from Pieces of Eight.

That’s disturbing for its implications about rewards, but..

Song 11: Our Second Complication!

The First Man on Earth by Ayreon from The Universal Migrator.

Even weirder.

So, to summarize what I have to try to form a cohesive story and adventure from..

1.)    Inspiration: A Sound of Thunder by A Sound of Thunder.
2.)    Antagonist: Never Be Mine by Kate Bush
3.)    Conflict: Computer Eyes by Ayreon
4.)    Why should the players care?: Losing You by Dream Evil
5.)    Theme: Pirate Song by Alestorm
6.)    The First Complciation: Where is the Walrus by Alan Parson’s Project
7.)    Encounter 1: With or Without You, by U2
8.)    Encounter 2: If I could Change Your Mind by Alan Parson’s Project.
9.)    Climactic Encounter: The Evolution of Circuitry by The Megas
10.) Reward: Jonas Psalter by Styx
11.) The Second Complication:  The First Man on Earth by Ayreon

First impressions. Apple’s shuffle function is ass. Two Alan Parson’s Project songs and two Ayreon songs in a selection of 11 out of 2,704 musical tracks.

Second impressions. Pirates. Jonas Psalter and Pirate Song are both about piracy, pirates and privateering.

So at the moment, we’re looking at piracy as a potential thing. In our next post though, let’s start unpacking our candidates and see what we can do with them.