The Gaming Den

Prak_Anima wrote:Just to be clear, I'm talking about the Bard taking an ass kicking pose, and basically playing the intro chords here, and causing visible destruction. Not standing there singing Brave Sir Robin for the entire fight and enemies occasionally just dropping for no visible reason.

So basically like the fight scenes in Scott Pilgrim where he and one of the exes has a bass battle and the shockwaves from the guitar blast each other away?

A bit... one dimensional.

I always thought bard types would do better with many of their abilities being used in downtime so as to provide bonuses in combat or skill situations. It's somewhat reminiscent of those shoddy studies where students who study while listening to baroque music do better on tests. Not only does it give an in-game reason to carouse in the tavern in between adventures, it makes the bard class closer to Gurney Halleck, which strikes me as far less niche than 'mage focused on sonic damage'. In combat they could use flourish based attacks combined with simple charms/distractions.

As far as gith for the transhuman character, while I like Charlie Stross getting props I wonder if that's more exposition than necessary. I stand by my earlier suggestion of a phrenic human barbarian type, because not only does that get to muddy the waters by contrasting the Enkidu-style corruption of the noble savage by civilization with the benefits of a pro-transhumanism outlook, it allows loin cloth-based fan service, which I gather the kids are into these days. Make their features more angular as a result of enslavement/experimentation or whatever, but getting into monasteries on Limbo/Lich Queen sillyness is excessive.

I understand you want something like this or maybe this. and even to a lesser extent this.

Actually as I post stuff I am more and more into this idea. Guitars and swords go well together, and are almost always badass.

Essentially, Krusk, yes.

I've been thinking on it too. Inspire competence is pretty silly, but fascinate, countersong, maybe inspire courage, and some other abilities can work ok, so perhaps in the character notes I'll just say that he uses a class substitution, or something

Okay, before this goes into stupid insular bronie territory:

1.) People keep bringing up how awesome things would be if there was 'guitars' and shit. Are you not aware how much of an anachronism electric or even bass guitars are for D&D? A traveling troubadour character would be using something like a flute or a lyre or a shamisen if we're being exotic.

2.) This isn't the friggin' 80s. Unless you're using the musical number for absurdist humor like in Family Guy or deliberately going for hipster kitsch cred like in Buffy, music in of itself does not entertain the audience anymore -- at least in situations where the music isn't the point like in Dr. Horrible or Glee. For non-musicals, you can have it be once-a-season thing for the novelty value, any more than that grates on the audience's nerves. There's a reason why musical interludes are rare as hell these days in modern entertainment.

3.) Most importantly, a musical number takes up time. You have 22 minutes per episode to tell a story. You do not have the time to fart around with stupid Star Wars Holiday Special bullshit for 2-3 minutes an episode. Whenever Teen Titans did an episode which had a musical sequence in it (which tended to be the worse ones: see Mad Mod) they had to put the plot on hold and for a show that's hurting for time as much as that one it meant that it couldn't be a serious episode anymore. One of the major reasons why post-Batman: TAS cartoons are better than 60s-early 90s crap is that they're a lot more tightly plotted.

4.) People will barely accept a musical character putting someone to sleep or hypnotizing them because there's a literary tradition for that, but countersong? Inspire courage? Dude, were you paying any attention to 4E D&D or even 3E D&D for that matter? People find that shit laughable, not cool. The only reason why no one complained was out of pure pity for the class. In 4E D&D, when the Warlord (who does not need player pity) does the same collection of crap people whine their fool head off about a Warlord being able to shout at an enemy into making an attack or shout at an ally into making them feel better.

Nebuchadnezzar wrote: As far as gith for the transhuman character, while I like Charlie Stross getting props I wonder if that's more exposition than necessary.

The transhuman character has to be a human or at least pass for one, or the moral won't become generalizable and thus become blunted. It's like the 'peasant discovers how awesome it is to be an immortal vampire once they take care of the sunlight/blood thirst' problem: it's too fantastical and people will just accept that as a work-specific moral such as 'don't use Void magic' rather than something that they can apply to the real world.

Yes, for sensitive topics like racism and torture and historical revisionism it's best to use a substrate (and often times is unavoidable), but I think it'd be better to do this issue head on since it does have a real world analog and it's very easy to do this issue in such a way that people will just forget about when the show isn't playing.

I agree, which is why I'm thinking proto-gith, i.e. victim of illithid experimentation producing the phrenic template. Or vague psychic powers, what have you. It beats the hell out of vampire/werewolf. Something similar insofar as promoting product identity, if perhaps more disconcerting, would be implantation of beholder eyes.

You apparently don't agree, because every part of what you said is completely fantastical and has no real-world analog.

You want human beings and you want things that could actually happen in the real world to human beings. Such as enhanced memory, disease resistance, enhanced longetivity, soforth. Not psychic powers grafted on by alien experimentation to a completely fictional race.

Everything so far suggested has no real-world analog, so relax, buddy. Vaccinations and the like aren't really that engaging in a fantasy cartoon marketed towards children, and arguably more importantly, have no precedent in the source material. If one's putting the D&D name on a show, it needs to positively drip with references, and fantasy scientists curing the magiflu, with incidental superhuman benefits, just doesn't cut it. It's ultimately WAY more about selling toys than humoring some writer's soapbox dreams.

There are only a few methods of enhancement generally available in a genre like this. I got the impression anything mechanical was dismissed out of hand pages ago. It seems appropriate to limit to at least some degree magical experimentation to chimeric creation, so as to introduce the random owlbear more easily. That would leave things like non magical experimentation via aberrant races.

Alternatively, by what method would you suggest someone become transhuman in a show like this, while keeping in mind limiting required exposition to a minimum and including copyrighted material as much as possible?

Lago PARANOIA wrote:

Nebuchadnezzar wrote: As far as gith for the transhuman character, while I like Charlie Stross getting props I wonder if that's more exposition than necessary.

The transhuman character has to be a human or at least pass for one, or the moral won't become generalizable and thus become blunted. It's like the 'peasant discovers how awesome it is to be an immortal vampire once they take care of the sunlight/blood thirst' problem: it's too fantastical and people will just accept that as a work-specific moral such as 'don't use Void magic' rather than something that they can apply to the real world.

Your basic point stands, but your example is fucking crazy talk made out of poop. Yes, the transhuman character has to be human or pass for one. But vampires totally pass for human, that is the entire fucking point! The fact that the transhuman character has to look human is a point in favor of vampires, not against them.

-Username17

Krusk wrote:I understand you want something like this or maybe this. and even to a lesser extent this.

Prak_Anima wrote:Essentially, Krusk, yes.

What the hell? The second two have absolutely nothing to do with a bard character and none of the three have music interacting with fighting in any way.

Prak, do you actually want the musical ability of the bard to matter in a fight scene? How do you want it to contribute that would be different to someone who can shoot bolts of force with their mind?

FrankTrollman wrote:But vampires totally pass for human, that is the entire fucking point! The fact that the transhuman character has to look human is a point in favor of vampires, not against them.

Looking like a human being isn't supposed to be an upside in of itself, it's supposed to be a form of affinity fraud used to put at ease the minds of the fraidy-cat, myopic audience.

Vampires are a no-go from the very start. The method of making new vampires is not only not generalizable to the real world, it's actually quite negative--strangers exploit other sapient strangers for their own selfish ends and probably leave them to die or force them to join the circle of exploitation. Even if you do yet another slate of vampire dodges, the fact is that the vampire myth has a lot of memetic staying power beyond this entertainment piece and vampire transhuman = killing, exploitation, and being an evil dick. It's a great wish fulfillment fantasy and vehicle for gothic storytelling, but as an example of policy advocation?

Dude, you might as well make an anti-torture movie where the ticking time bomb went off but state that even if torture would've stopped it in this instance in general it would've caused more bombs to go off than it prevented; so the heroes were right for sticking to their anti-torture guns despite the great temptation. While that is completely true, you audience will generally not be sophisticated enough to see the nuances and the entire thing actually accomplishes the opposite of what you intended.

Hence why I'm vehemently against using vampires for this experience. You do not want to connect these two things in peoples' minds. You don't even want to inch in that direction. You're up against fucking Brave New World and Gattaca and your only literary ally is a character from Deep Space Nine whom the series admits is irrationally hated and feared and provided several other counterexamples of Transhumanism Gone Bad.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:

Okay, before this goes into stupid insular bronie territory:

1.) People keep bringing up how awesome things would be if there was 'guitars' and shit. Are you not aware how much of an anachronism electric or even bass guitars are for D&D? A traveling troubadour character would be using something like a flute or a lyre or a shamisen if we're being exotic.

Right, because a psuedomedieval setting with gender equality and racial relations that are anything more than "he's a different colour and we laugh at his backwards cultural traditions" isn't anachronistic at all.

2.) This isn't the friggin' 80s. Unless you're using the musical number for absurdist humor like in Family Guy or deliberately going for hipster kitsch cred like in Buffy, music in of itself does not entertain the audience anymore -- at least in situations where the music isn't the point like in Dr. Horrible or Glee. For non-musicals, you can have it be once-a-season thing for the novelty value, any more than that grates on the audience's nerves. There's a reason why musical interludes are rare as hell these days in modern entertainment.

Which is why I didn't say a damned thing about musical interludes or full blown musical numbers. I've been talking more about short snippets that imply the background music for the scene is being played by the bard character, similar to how you might choose to imply the background music for a gritty cop drama is playing on radios. It doesn't mean that you stop the entirety of the flow of the movie to play Dirty Harry by Gorillaz, it means it just plays, and there's a radio, and maybe you have a stray bullet hit the radio to immediately change the scene and it's tone to one of eerie silence.

3.) Most importantly, a musical number takes up time. You have 22 minutes per episode to tell a story. You do not have the time to fart around with stupid Star Wars Holiday Special bullshit for 2-3 minutes an episode. Whenever Teen Titans did an episode which had a musical sequence in it (which tended to be the worse ones: see Mad Mod) they had to put the plot on hold and for a show that's hurting for time as much as that one it meant that it couldn't be a serious episode anymore. One of the major reasons why post-Batman: TAS cartoons are better than 60s-early 90s crap is that they're a lot more tightly plotted.

see above response. Also I'm currently talking about a movie, not a cartoon. yes, I know, but it seemed more sensible than starting a new thread to rehash shit mentioned here.

4.) People will barely accept a musical character putting someone to sleep or hypnotizing them because there's a literary tradition for that, but countersong? Inspire courage? Dude, were you paying any attention to 4E D&D or even 3E D&D for that matter? People find that shit laughable, not cool. The only reason why no one complained was out of pure pity for the class. In 4E D&D, when the Warlord (who does not need player pity) does the same collection of crap people whine their fool head off about a Warlord being able to shout at an enemy into making an attack or shout at an ally into making them feel better.

So a rousing speech has never gotten men to put aside fear or despair and fight on?

Henry V, Braveheart, Independence Day

on contersong, what you're actually tapping into is "I know you're in there somewhere" and "get a hold of yourself" type stuff, as well as more general magic music stuff. Because a bard isn't just a guy who randomly starts singing in battle, they're a caster whose magic works through song.

Prak Anima wrote:Right, because a psuedomedieval setting with gender equality and racial relations that are anything more than "he's a different colour and we laugh at his backwards cultural traditions" isn't anachronistic at all.

There's a difference between 'anachronistic because you want the audience to root for the heroes rather than change the channel out of disgust the first time you see the main hero indulge in rape in pillage along side troops' and 'anachronistic just because I think guitars are cool'.

If you're going to use the latter to justify your stupid guitar sequence, why stop there? Why not have oil rigs and rubber tires and comic book stores and sneakers and shit?

Prak Anima wrote:So a rousing speech has never gotten men to put aside fear or despair and fight on?

Not a magical song. Or a magical song to accomplish mundane things at any rate. Song does not equal speech. There's a reason why the rhyme-master character is a sidekick or comic relief. And you want to go further down the path of absurdity than that?

as well as more general magic music stuff.

General magic music stuff. How delightfully vague.

Prak Anima wrote:Because a bard isn't just a guy who randomly starts singing in battle, they're a caster whose magic works through song.

Which is stupid. People who sing when other people are not singing sound dissonant and out-of-place. It's seriously like having a character talk like Jar-Jar Binks or another one talk like Snidely Whiplash for no reason.

@Parthenon: I meant tone and style wise. Should have been more specific. I'll detail why below.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:

Prak Anima wrote:Right, because a psuedomedieval setting with gender equality and racial relations that are anything more than "he's a different colour and we laugh at his backwards cultural traditions" isn't anachronistic at all.

There's a difference between 'anachronistic because you want the audience to root for the heroes rather than change the channel out of disgust the first time you see the main hero indulge in rape in pillage along side troops' and 'anachronistic just because I think guitars are cool'.

If you're going to use the latter to justify your stupid guitar sequence, why stop there? Why not have oil rigs and rubber tires and comic book stores and sneakers and shit?

Well for one thing, I'd say it has something to do with the fact that there isnt really a direct analogue to any of those things, where as there's relatively little difference between a mandolin and a guitar, and the what difference there is gets into hairsplitting, pedantic arguments, and can be covered with curiosity and magic, where as oil rigs require a lot of technological background that just doesn't really exist in a typical D&D world.

But moreover, a D&D property can't, in my mind, see itself as straight serious fantasy. It needs to be bold and bombastic, in the genre equivalent of refuge in audacity. Even if Dungeons and Dragons the movie, or its sequel had been written, directed and acted with anything approaching competence, they wouldn't have been taken seriously. They also wouldn't have been D&D for a large number of current players. You can't just right a bog standard fantasy flick, shove a mindflayer and some beholders in, staple the Dungeons and Dragons name on it and get a D&D movie. If that were the case, you could say Lord of the Rings was a Dungeons and Dragons movie that focused on an escort mission, and simply didn't have any product identity creatures for whatever reason.

But they weren't, were they? Maybe one could consider them 1st or 2nd edition D&D movies, but that's not my D&D, nor my generation's. Our D&D is anachronistic, over the top, self referential and references pop culture. Our D&D has guitar playing bards that strum power chords and produce scenes that better resemble a high budget heavy metal music video than medieval troubadour stories.

Also, have you considered that perhaps part of the reason that bards are laughed at is more because they are all too often exemplified by Brave Sir Robin's minstrel than Dethklok, or an episode of Kamin Rider?

Prak Anima wrote:So a rousing speech has never gotten men to put aside fear or despair and fight on?

Not a magical song. Or a magical song to accomplish mundane things at any rate. Song does not equal speech. There's a reason why the rhyme-master character is a sidekick or comic relief. And you want to go further down the path of absurdity than that?

Then might I reference Shawshank Redemption, Beauty and the Beast, and a regimental piper in WW2?

as well as more general magic music stuff.

General magic music stuff. How delightfully vague.

sorry, Magic Music
(yes I'm referencing tv tropes. Get over yourself, it's expedient)

Prak Anima wrote:Because a bard isn't just a guy who randomly starts singing in battle, they're a caster whose magic works through song.

Which is stupid. People who sing when other people are not singing sound dissonant and out-of-place. It's seriously like having a character talk like Jar-Jar Binks or another one talk like Snidely Whiplash for no reason.

or speaking latin, praying, or mixing strange substances/drawing complex diagrams

A hurdy gurdy man, that's what bards should play.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6Oy8FaBirQ
It's like electronica made of wood


Or just use a traditional instrument but with a modern presentation:

Here's Gackt playing the Shamisen in concert
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpqNuaZD080

I was asked to give here some input on a Bard with Druid spells, sorta based on Väinämöinen from Finnish folklore / mythology. I'll edit this post when I'm not half-way unconscious from sleep deprivation and can actually give a proper post with whatever I was asked to speak of in the first place.

Parthenon wrote: What the hell? The second two have absolutely nothing to do with a bard character and none of the three have music interacting with fighting in any way.

Wild zero has guitar wolf. They use guitars to strike awesome poses and cut spaceships in half (with guitar swords) while their music plays. Watch the source material before you say it doesnt apply.

Metaloclypse was, as i said, to a lesser extent. They are a metal band that goes on adventures and does cool stuff while occasionally playing music.

So basically the idea is that one character is a bard, and writes awesome music. It shouts a line from the song and then music plays while he katanas everyone. He also keeps his guitar slung on his back all of every combat unless he uses it mid combat to strike a badass pose. Thats really all i want.

Krusk wrote: So basically the idea is that one character is a bard, and writes awesome music. It shouts a line from the song and then music plays while he katanas everyone. He also keeps his guitar slung on his back all of every combat unless he uses it mid combat to strike a badass pose. Thats really all i want.

Have you ever watched the movie Six-String Samurai? That description sounds like it was ripped from that movie.

It's a post-apocalyptic Las Vegas setting where the son of Elvis is traveling around katana-ing up people. Pretty neat for an indie flick made in the late '90s

Why not have the Bard as a narrator? That could allow for some Deadpool style exposition, convenient scene shifting, background music and lietmotif, as well as providing a tool for hanging a lampshade on inconsistancies that may arise during the plot.

That way you can have the Bard making other characters more awesome, simply by the retelling of the tale. Such a narrative style need not be consistant throughout a story arc, just feature in episodes where the Bard is not the main character (or is the main character if the Bard has a high opinion of themselves).

I just realised I am totally ripping off DA2...damn.

Prak_Anima wrote:where as there's relatively little difference between a mandolin and a guitar, and the what difference there is gets into hairsplitting, pedantic arguments, and can be covered with curiosity and magic, where as oil rigs require a lot of technological background that just doesn't really exist in a typical D&D world.

1.) Oil rigs (I should have said derricks, rigs is too broad) are about as old as the modern acoustic guitar and are much older than electric guitars. The only reason why anyone would think that fantasy oil rigs are less plausible than fantasy guitars is pluralistic ignorance.

2.) The faux-badass songs that you have in mind for playing on precursors to guitars were not played on precursors to guitars. Just because skateboards were plausible inventions to make in fantasy worlds does not make skateboarders not anachronistic.

Prak_Anima wrote: But moreover, a D&D property can't, in my mind, see itself as straight serious fantasy.

But they weren't, were they? Maybe one could consider them 1st or 2nd edition D&D movies, but that's not my D&D, nor my generation's. Our D&D is anachronistic, over the top, self referential and references pop culture. Our D&D has guitar playing bards that strum power chords and produce scenes that better resemble a high budget heavy metal music video than medieval troubadour stories.

Are you kidding? Modern speculative fiction has lifted itself out of the insular nerd ghetto because it takes itself seriously and plays itself more-or-less straight. The original Batman movie and the Dark Knight Trilogy are massively successful, the over-the-top Batman is a flop. People hate it when horror movies and action movies try to be hip and sly and with it. No one enjoyed 'I'm the Juggernaut Bitch!' or Transformer nut-shots.

I know you love kitsch and I enjoy kitsch, too. But the audience at large does not enjoy it. You're grating on their nerves and embarrassing ancillary fans by parading your self-aggrandizing hipster audacity. Which is something a D&D cartoon does not need.

Prak_Anima wrote:Then might I reference

No, you may not. You're just slinging around references without understanding why or why they didn't work.

Shawshank Redemption did not have a character whose job it was to go around inserting badass musical numbers.

Beauty and the Beast is a musical.

I don't even know what that WW2 crap is supposed to be. It seems to me like you're just throwing shit against the wall and hoping it will stick.

Prak_Anima wrote: or speaking latin, praying, or mixing strange substances/drawing complex diagrams

How are you not getting that speech is not singing?

Just because a phrase spoken in Latin or a faux-magical language or whatever the fuck goes over well doesn't mean that a 45+ second song will. And as much as you try to keep throwing unrelated TvTrope links at me without explaining why the previous examples worked and how the good examples are applicable to your cartoon it's just going to make me think you don't know what you're talking about. It's the cargo cult method of writing stories. This one cool thing worked in this one cool story, therefore it will work in this story!

Fuck it, Lago. You're deadset against bards being something that can be taken seriously, I think it could work. Not like a D&D cartoon, or a good movie will ever happen anyway.

As for TV Tropes, it's not "this one thing worked here, it'll work again!" it's "this is a recognizable reoccurring theme that pops up again and again, here are examples of it's strength, and this page explains how to use it."

K wrote:Have you ever watched the movie Six-String Samurai? That description sounds like it was ripped from that movie.

Yeah its pretty cool. I linked it in one of my previous posts this thread as an example. Probably why my description of what I want is basically that.

Dream plot - Main character is a human bard with an enchanted guitar that gives it this wicked noise (the only electric guitar). He sneaks onto a elemental bound train and is hiding in the back strumming away. Cut away shot shows the train going across some huge vast-ness. Back inside we see elven paladin chick talking with her party. A warforged unarmed barbarian, a reformed vampiric wizard, and a [small thing] druid with a bird/rat/small thing companion. They are exposition-ing about how they are supposed to meet the chosen one who will save the world on this train. Tran explodes as villain comes in to mess them up. Only survivors are the party and the bard. They go and [adventure] together, but the bard is a loner badass about it.

Paladin doesn't slay vampire because he is bound to her family ala helsing. They make him do good stuff and don't let him eat people, but if she isn't around he probably would. Girl is stereotypical good person, maybe even on the border of naive.

Why are people shitty on Lago because his vision has a semi-serious tone? Magic Music Bards just don't work in fiction with an even semi-serious tone(ala TLA).