F'n Metal

[Castlin]

Here's a half-[formed | baked] idea I've had for a while:

The game is a heavy-metal concept album, each encounter being a song. There is a cast of characters associated with the album, and each player may pick up different roles in each song (and not all characters are in all songs). Preferably, the album should end with a mighty warrior defeating his evil brother or father, who happens to be a demon overlord with a 10-foot hornspan.

It's all about revelling in metal stereotypes and going as far over the top as you can. It's not about being the BAND playing these songs, it's about being the CHARACTERS in the songs. That said, you should have plenty of time-travelling warriors and epic dragon battles.

The characters have four abilities on their sheets (Power, Glory, Grace, and Wisdom), but their portraits should all be silk-screened on black tee shirts or airbrushed onto vans.

See also: Hammerfall, Iron Maiden, Metapocalypse, Manowar, Hammerfall again.

[dikaiosunh (Daniel)]

Considering that half my high school D&D games had their genesis in metal songs (including an entire campaign based on Manowar's "The Warrior's Prayer"), I would totally play such a game.

My off the cuff and unasked for input:

- I wouldn't spend too much time making this a full-on system.  To my mind, one of the drawbacks of over-the-top games that I've played, like Tales from the Floating Vagabond, or HoL, is that their underlying engines were too crunchy and too much like "real" games - the laughs and excess often got lost under characters that were built as if you were supposed to care about them, do resource management, etc.  I'd be most likely to play this game if the characters were pretty thin vehicles for the game play ("Dude, he's a time-traveling warrior, like, whose father was a dragon, and his guitar has a flaming sword for a neck!"  "Great, go!"), and you could do set-up and run a whole satisfying game in an hour and change (i.e., the length of a metal album).  Basically, and I only speak for me, I might pick this game up just for irony/nostalgia value if I saw it, but I'd most likely to play it if I could treat it like a party game rather than a serious RPG.

- I think it'd be awesome if you could tie metal into the mechanics somehow.  I remember reading about (can't remember the name) a game where the characters were diminutive people who lived in apartments and worshipped television - and part of the game was turning on the TV and then trying to "interpret" its omens.  Maybe capture some of the "we should play a game where Metallica all have super satanic magic powers!" by making part of the character/situation creation a matter of putting your metal collection on shuffle and then pulling elements from the first song that comes up.  Or maybe make getting to control the music that's on part of the reward system (we used to have epic, game stopping fights about whether Iron Maiden's "Powerslave" sucked or ruled, so maybe I would overrate the value of such a reward system).  And given that this sounds like a sort of campy game, maybe you could even reward players for incorporating metal vocals and air guitar into their descriptions of action resolutions? 

Anyway, I am now going to have to go grab my mp3 player and put on "Hail and Kill."

- Daniel

[Vulpinoid]

This idea is cool.

I'd even be tempted to run with with some other classic concept albums Pink Floyd's "The Wall" or even "Dark Side of the Moon", possibly even David Bowie's "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust".

The essence of using the Heavy Metal rock concept album in this manner is pure gold.

V

[Callan S.]

Check out this clip: http://youtube.com/watch?v=yov344ma5ic

If I didn't have that clip, what I'm going to refer to next would seem dry and contextless. What makes the clip strong is the uncertainty involved as you watch it. It hits you - bam, bam, bam. Like the clip I think you need to look at where uncertainty comes into your game. Stats in general are anti - uncertainty, since high is good, low is bad and it's obvious from just reading the rules well before playing. The more stuff you have in game that's like that, the more people have already played the game just by reading it.

[Castlin]

Well, that game looks pretty amazing. Spontaneous bat wings are spot on the kind of thing we should all aspire to.

The only reason I was thinking of stats is to use the over-the-top descriptors of Power and Glory. I agree this, if implemented, should be a rules-light and playable in an hour. What if it incorporated a sort of Toon-like mechanic where there actually was a time limit on the game?

To my mind, one of the drawbacks of over-the-top games that I've played, like Tales from the Floating Vagabond, or HoL is that their underlying engines were too crunchy and too much like "real" games

I didn't know it was possible to actually play HoL.

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

I think I get it! Very much like the movie Heavy Metal, only kickin' it harder with real metal.

In the interests of inspiration, let's get away from video games and go straight to the juice: Hard Rock Halleluja.

So: a game like that, then? Which is to say, one of the episodes might be playing something like that?

Best, Ron

[Vulpinoid]

Eurovision as a roleplaying game...that's a SCARY concept.

V

[F. Scott Banks]

I like the idea.  Who wouldn't want to challenge Mighty Odin to a thrash contest, or seduce the God-Queen Freya in her chambers with a haunting warsong?

Sorry...imagining a half-naked viking goddess sitting up rapt in her bed trying to decide whether to have me torn apart by wolves or loving me on the innumerable hides of legendary beasts while I play the ballads she learned in her immortal girlhood.

In my mind, she's really pretty and mostly naked.

As far as the rules, perhaps the stats could be soft and the characters allowed to choose a fistfull of feats or abilities and pay for them out of a dice pool.  Failures would diminish the pool.  It's simple, allows for over-the top gameplay since the stats of the character are simply how many dice you have on hand to roll into the ability.  So, Power, Glory, Grace and Wisdom perhaps might not be fixed, but rather just pools from which the character pulls their dice.  An ability tied to one of the stats gets a bonus of +the number of dice in that pool so the stats aren't throwaway, but a character isn't crippled by having a fewer dice in a particular stat since every die is a bonus to a roll.  The higher the bonuses, the more outlandish the feats a character can perform.  The lower the bonuses, the closer they are to being merely mortal.  That should support over the top gameplay since no character is "bad" at anything, but no character is "awesome" at everything either.

Anyhoo, sounds tight and I can't wait to see what else you come up with for this one.

[Monkeys]

This guy could do the artwork: http://warhammer.deepsilver.com/de/images/wallpapers/warhammer09_800.jpg

[Filip Luszczyk]

A while ago I've been toying with an idea for a game I tentatively called Power Metal: Fantasy on Crack. As the title implies, it was supposed to be... kind of like that.

So, that's cool that you're writing the game - now I don't have to

You might want to check out Kumquat Tattoo: Fucking Metal Fantasy (direct download link). It's not exactly what you have in mind, but it might prove inspiring.

Eurovision as a roleplaying game...that's a SCARY concept.

We did, in fact, discuss a Pop Fantasy game concept on one Polish forum recently

[JackTheOwner]

Nice idea Castlin.

I think that maybe players control characters and events by music itself? Maybe one session is about band jamming together new song?

Ok, you have a band, where all players takes some instrument.
One player takes drum so he will keep beat (he can accelerate the pace of scene example: "barbarian has a meeting with The Queen" and after accelerate Queen may "kisses him" or "summons guards to take him to prison"),  vocal is giving details/complications about characters and events (example "Quenn is beatiful and she's a whore" or "Ok, you have the sword but it's broken"), Bass player sets the next scene (example: "Next scene is swamp where our hero lost his hopes" "When he fall from cliff scene ends") and Guitar player introduce conflicts into play.

Or, the players don't have specific roles.
Example: you can have some level of "the drum" and "the bass" and other player have some "the bass" and "vocal" etc. and these are changing during play.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

Castlin, if you'd like, check out this thread from about three years ago: [Metal Opera] That's with an umlaut, ja baby!. The game isn't much like what you're describing, but it shares some motifs, and I think I make some points in the thread about player-generated adversity that might be useful for your design thoughts.

Best, Ron

[rekyl]

Oh dear God, not Eurovision... I mean... I can't even describe the feelings of pure anxiety and dread I get from that genre of music (seriously you make a form of music that isn't listened too much at all outside one specific time of the year when there is a contest for songs within that genre and contains music writers like this guy... http://goreng.blogg.se/images/bert438_1155843052.jpg)

Aaaaaaanyway...
I read a game a while back that was based on punk-rock where all the players wrote up songs that represented specific moods for their character. Then you made a mixtape or a playlist with those songs and just put it on. When the song came up, all the actions for that character in the specific mood he or she chose had a greater chance of success. Maybe that could work as some form of add on to a power-metal fantasy game

Maybe that could also help to create the characters in a quick fashion and also forcing the players to stay with-in the mood of the game? (so no one makes some form of interesting farmer with a fascinating back story that has to be squeezed into a crew of dragon slaying, elf-molesting, sword-slinging, mega heroes)

/Jens

[Castlin]

There are a lot of suggestions to integrate the music into the game, which I guess means that is what people want to see? My original concept was that the tie to the music was higher level. In a lot of "epic metal", particularly when a story is being told, the band is not referenced directly. Though, again, sometimes they are. Can anyone provide some examples where the characters in the songs use music instead of swords?

A sort of corollary thought was to make the game even MORE meta, and it has two stages: one when you play as a members of a metal band in the real world, and another where you play as the characters in their songs which they've written about the experiences they've had (or wished they had) in their real lives.

I'm not sure how the existence of GWAR impacts this game.

[Vulpinoid]

Can anyone provide some examples where the characters in the songs use music instead of swords?

Tribute by Tenacious D.

V