Musical Inspiration Challenge Part 6: Why Should The Players Care?

 For this, we got ‘Losing You’ by Dream Evil.

Now, given that ‘Losing You’ is from an album titled ‘Dragonslayer,’ it’s obvious that Dream Evil can be pretty easy to use as inspiration for D&D or Pathfinder stuff.

In fact, my concern when it came up was that it was too damn easy.

Onto the lyrics…

///

In the dead of the night
As the candles die out
I'm watching her going to sleep
She has to be strong
She's left all along
I have to go out in the fields

You're all I ever wanted

And I can't go on without you
But some things come between us,
My love

Words cannot express
The sorrow I feel
I wish I could turn back time
To where we began
Where love had no end
And you and me were as one

You're all I ever wanted
There's just pain without you
Hear the angels cry in heaven, my love

I'm scared I might be losing you
And I don't know which way to turn
I fell I might be losing you
I can't live my life without your love

The sound of your breath

The smell of your hair

The touch of your golden skin

They keep me awake

Through out every night
To think of what might have been
You're all I ever wanted
You're my life and my lust
I could never mean to hurt you, my love

I have fought so many battles
I have suffered so much pain
Without you to love and hold me
All of this would be in vain

///

Fairly straight forward.

Love. Love and the fear of losing that love. In the specific case of the song, I presume it’s from one of the Dragonslayers worrying for what will become of the woman he leaves behind when he ventures forth to destroy the beast and save the kingdom.

This song though, is meant to provide a rationale for why the players would care. In a way I think that this is one of the most important parts of the adventure design.

PCs, and players, have multifarious reasons for doing what they do. Quests are undertaken for material gains like treasure, earning xp, bragging rights or the like. Adventures are also sometimes foist on the heroes.

It’s difficult to predict the origins of adventures, but the one guiding point, the one thing that most normal people have, is a home town. A place where they come from. The shire for Bilbo, the place where your parents live, that nice area you want to settle down in when you’re done with the demon smashing part of your life.

Now, here’s where it can get even more interesting. Let’s assume that our issue is tied in with that stuff we mentioned back in part 5. Assuming that our antagonist is busy trying to remake an area into their own vision of what they’ve lost, what if they’re making the hero’s old home or stomping ground into that? The party arrives and finds their old bully has changed not only his behavior, but his name, and is perhaps married (or unmarried) differently.

The home front. The place that people want to return to is usually expected to remain static while the heroes change. When the Shire gets scoured however, it causes another sensation. A sensation akin to betrayal.  As the song says, without the beloved to hold them, their fights may be in vain. Maybe that’s even what motivated our villain in the first place? She came home from a long and mauling campaign and discovered that everything had changed, or been destroyed.

It may seem trite, but personally I love the little framed conflict that we’re growing into here.

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.