I'm curious to hear some opinions on music in TTRPG's. Does your table use music, do you like it?
My own table does use music and it's probably one of the best parts of the experience for the players. They've gone on record to say multiple times that the game is better with music and that it helps them get immersed and invested in what's happening. It's gone so far that I have basically put together an entire soundtrack for the campaign they're running and I'm including things like leitmotifs and genre mixes to represent certain locations or characters. It's added a huge amount of depth to the experience I think but it's definitely not for everyone-- it's hard to find music that fits, loops well, and doesn't get in the way. However it's probably one of the most fun parts of DM'ing for me.
This is fascinating drama. I don't know a lot of the background, so here is what I could piece together.
City State of the Invincible Overlord is the first RPG city from the 70s. I have a copy I picked up second hand for the gorgeous maps, and it is absolutely wild. Think ogre bouncers in the bars and pirates on the river surrounding the city wild. It is massive, with hundreds of locations described across a labyrinthine city, rules for trials, rules for picking up women, random encounter charts with rakshasha and high level fighters on them. It is a great mess, and I only wish I had it when I was 12, because it would have been the coolest thing ever. Fuck, it is probably still the coolest thing ever.
Goodman Games was set to produce a remake (there was an earlier one in 2004 from Necromancer Games), they were contracted to do so, then the rights owner, Bob Bledsaw II was outed as an antisemite. Goodman cut links and put the project on the back burner, but the contract was still in play, so now they have to produce the books or face the consequences. Obviously, their announcement went down as well as you might think, and the redditors started screaming bloody murder. This puts Joe Goodman between a rock and a hard place. He is trying to do damage control while the mobs are closing in and people who would have bought the book are also getting turned off. Where it now seems to stand is that they bent the knee, and are only going to do a limited print run, just enough to cover the minimum that Bledsaw II could use to refund the backers of a previous, failed Kickstarter project. Goodman will eat a massive loss and suffer the reputational damage, and it is still not enough. People on Reddit, ENWorld and RPGNet are still attacking him over it, and swearing never to forgive him. They are seriously trying to drag his name through the mud. Because of course that happens EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. you cuck to the mob.
That'd be horrifying to watch if it happened to some random guy who made a misstep. But let's just remember what Joe Goodman has done. He bent the knee to BLM. He said there were too many old white men in gaming, and removed panellists from a seminar to add dangerhairs. He hired and showcased hideous troons in his company. He removed elements of his game Reddit didn't like. He kept blathering about how the hobby needs more diversity and fewer people like him. You wanted this audience, Joe, andyou fought hard for it. Enjoy the consequences. You lived like a coward and you will die as one. This is not actually horrifying. This is fucking funny.
From what I read, a lot of it was facebook boomer stuff with a dash of antisemitism. It’s unfortunate that I can’t find the posts right now, because I found them a couple days ago. They were cringe, but not “cut off all ties” bad.
From what I read, a lot of it was facebook boomer stuff with a dash of antisemitism. It’s unfortunate that I can’t find the posts right now, because I found them a couple days ago. They were cringe, but not “cut off all ties” bad.
He called the news media the "Jewsmedia" and claimed Truman and Eisenhower were Jews. Also he bitched about Israel, you know, that thing nearly all far-left extremists do, often with genocidal slogans like "from the river to the sea," right before mobbing up ten on one to beat up an elderly Jew for wearing a MAGA hat.
Sadly I didn't. I bought a sale special starter bundle right before they went full woke. I'm not sure what to do with it, because I'll never run the game but it is the "pre-cucking" printing with the original foreward before thye threw the OG names under the bus as *ISTs and so I don't want to just chuck it in the trash.
I'm not sure what to do with it, because I'll never run the game but it is the "pre-cucking" printing with the original foreward before thye threw the OG names under the bus as *ISTs and so I don't want to just chuck it in the trash.
Assuming they're illiterate, you could teach them to read over the course of about a week by retraining one of their ranks in stealth, or three weeks using bonus language rules.
I'm curious to hear some opinions on music in TTRPG's. Does your table use music, do you like it?
My own table does use music and it's probably one of the best parts of the experience for the players. They've gone on record to say multiple times that the game is better with music and that it helps them get immersed and invested in what's happening. It's gone so far that I have basically put together an entire soundtrack for the campaign they're running and I'm including things like leitmotifs and genre mixes to represent certain locations or characters. It's added a huge amount of depth to the experience I think but it's definitely not for everyone-- it's hard to find music that fits, loops well, and doesn't get in the way. However it's probably one of the most fun parts of DM'ing for me.
I prefer just having ambient sound effects when out of combat because it just feels more close to life. I play music if they're in a place with a band or it's fight (fights can be seriously tedious so music atleast makes it less awkward between turns and hurries the players abit).
City State of the Invincible Overlord is the first RPG city from the 70s. I have a copy I picked up second hand for the gorgeous maps, and it is absolutely wild. Think ogre bouncers in the bars and pirates on the river surrounding the city wild. It is massive, with hundreds of locations described across a labyrinthine city, rules for trials, rules for picking up women, random encounter charts with rakshasha and high level fighters on them. It is a great mess, and I only wish I had it when I was 12, because it would have been the coolest thing ever. Fuck, it is probably still the coolest thing ever.
I think I can agree with this, and at my table I try to use a variety of ambience and music. It's about the tone. The more peaceful and calm a place is, the more necessary it is to simply have ambience. The blowing of wind, the gentle flowing of a stream, the slow echoing tones of a dank dungeon. However, some dungeons-- like the one I'm running now necessitate a far more tense atmosphere. Right now the current track I'm using is; https://youtu.be/sbj2fxeMpgE
Naturally, it's a cyber-den of terror and extreme levels of heat. The PC's are going around being hunted by otherworldly beings and every corner risks being a deathtrap. Places like this I feel are more deserving of the very proactive soundscape, versus more eerie horror or peaceful oasis type locations that they might find elsewhere. Variety is key here
The biggest risk with combat music is choosing stuff that's too fast and aggressive, or hyperactive. It risks cramping player focus, but at the same time, a good beat with a nice rhythm can really up their game and actually make them better at the game. If they're feeling themselves and they're feeling the music, they tend to get overconfident, but (at least in my game) that is supplemented with an attitude of proficient play, which can be seen in some contexts. However at the same time, that overconfidence can lead to a dismal event, if they push it too far.
I'm personally pretty lenient when it comes to swapping skills for another.
I've allowed players to swap out weapon proficiency as long as they dumped the gold involved with the new weapon + roll on the learning tables.
My brother tier fighter refuses to do so and rocked Hand axe since creation.
I'm going to let much more shit slide if you give me a heads up its coming. Even if I'm going to reject it, if I have time I'm likely to turn "No" into a "No, But..."
When it comes to giving a pet or summon a skill, I'm not lenient at all. If there's RAW - meaning RAW for training pets, not RAW for retraining a PC skill - have at it. Additionally, when it comes to ambiguity in RAW, I always remind my players that they may be rules lawyers, but the DM is the rules jury, the rules judge, and the rules executioner.
Yeah, I was reiterating that the isitoqs cannot actually read them via that method any more than a scrying sensor can. I don't think you can intentionally set your own off by reading them from the spell description.
I'm curious to hear some opinions on music in TTRPG's. Does your table use music, do you like it?
My own table does use music and it's probably one of the best parts of the experience for the players. They've gone on record to say multiple times that the game is better with music and that it helps them get immersed and invested in what's happening. It's gone so far that I have basically put together an entire soundtrack for the campaign they're running and I'm including things like leitmotifs and genre mixes to represent certain locations or characters. It's added a huge amount of depth to the experience I think but it's definitely not for everyone-- it's hard to find music that fits, loops well, and doesn't get in the way. However it's probably one of the most fun parts of DM'ing for me.
For me i love to incorperate music and sound cues where I can. Sadly dont have the capacity to run games in real life so i run online games with a few close friends of mine and was doing so up till around a year or two ago. The choice of music if your good at setting a scene or describing your enviroment will always add to a situation. Theres a few exceptions and also you have to be somewhat competent at picking out music to, otherwise people are gonna feel tonal whiplash. Depending on if your using a virtual tabletop or some other good software, alot of times programs will let you set music for maps or even if a characters token interacts or runs into a object/item. Roll20 (the program I use because my group refused to use anything else) was pretty good when it came to their own jukeboxes and just uploading music to the game if you had the storage space.
I've had it where sometimes I'll even let players send in music suggestions for traveling since my group did account for traveling to and from destinations and so i let them have some freedom. Oftentimes if you just give them a abstract theme or style you want they'll get some half decent stuff you'll keep. I still remember one song a friend of mine sent a suggestion for a horror mission when they were exploring a abandoned haunted village in my campaign I liked the song so much I saved it for another situation I thought they were likely gonna encounter, the players were traveling through my version of the far north from game of thrones after having rescued a princess that was kidnapped by wild tribals that were trying to force a peace deal and secure land and slaves from said kingdom, and as they were ambushed by a large warband trying to catch them and take back the princess and the fight went on, the tribals started to realize the sun was setting, and besides that their war-shaman started freaking the fuck out and called for them to retreat. Alot of them threw down their weapons and just fled, and the players heard me throw in some horror shit. Naturally they start scanning the woods and wondering what the hell spooked what was close to 30 of these hardened warriors, two of the leaders of which they knew were on par with them level wise. When their perception failed them two of the spellcasters started casting detection spells. There was nothing there, they eventually started their traveling again back south but I didnt cut the music. I had hinted over the past 2-3 sessions that these tribes believed in what was essentially a wendigo, that went around and was actively hunting people. They were treading through its land when they were already on the borders of it and the whole night they were being stalked and actively hunted and some of the party members impersonated when some went away from camp or out of sight. Overall was told it was a really good session and two of the players actually felt freaked out because they didnt know what was going on till they figured out afterwards what the creature was.
Great music is always good for any story, only thing i'd reccomend avoiding personally is things with lyrics unless a npc or character is singing, and dont have it be loud or something that will steal the thunder of the scene your going for. If your fighting goblins or bandits theres no need to play some over the top orchestral shit.
The biggest risk with combat music is choosing stuff that's too fast and aggressive, or hyperactive. It risks cramping player focus, but at the same time, a good beat with a nice rhythm can really up their game and actually make them better at the game. If they're feeling themselves and they're feeling the music, they tend to get overconfident, but (at least in my game) that is supplemented with an attitude of proficient play, which can be seen in some contexts. However at the same time, that overconfidence can lead to a dismal event, if they push it too far.
It's also worth noting that it was in the middle of the Era of Floyd when the Bledsaw Jr. controversy happened, and GG was in the process of republishing other Judges Guild material, specifically Caverns of Thracia and Dark Tower. These were both written by Paul Jacquays, a man who later trooned out, adandoned his wife and kids, and started using the pseudonym "Jennell", so Goodman was able to leverage the author's status as a mutant to give the company some cover. He also likely did some arm twisting behind the scenes and forced Bledsaw to "donate" his royalties to the ADL and GLAAD, two organizations which conduct harassment campaigns against people who disagree with them.
The problem with City-State is that it was written by Bob Bledsaw Sr. and was based on his home campaign, so there's no connection to freaks for Goodman to exploit this time around, and it seems that Jr was not willing to sell CS for whatever reason (he had no problem selling the copyrights of anything written by the tranny). Neither party has been open about their exact legal arrangement, so people are speculating that Goodman has a contractural obligation to publish City-State.
And to give people some more details about what's in your post, this is going to be the second Kickstarter campaign to republish CS. The first one (link) was in 2014 and was going to be compatible with 1e Pathfinder, and Bledsaw Jr frittered away the $85k that he raised, which caused a great deal of assblastedness because, unlike Joseph Goodman, he wasn't under any obligation to produce anything thanks to Kickstarter's TOS.
Goodman's plan is to print a limited run which is priced to produce enough JG royalties to pay everyone back while not producing any profit for Bledsaw (his royalties will be placed into an escrow account). This lends some credence to the idea that Goodman is being forced to do this, but you can bet that he will pay very close attention to how many and how quickly non-faggots in the OSR community anonymously reserve their own copies, which will be a far better indicator of what the playerbase feels about this than hysterical condemnations from the lunatics on Reddit and rpg.net. Will he have a change of heart if the campaign exceeds his expectations? His statement about the "controversy" says that GG had been in the process of producing more JG material, and he also talks about it a bit in his hilarious video:
Goodman claims that his parents were "communist labor activists" who fought segregation, and his father was also a professor at a black college before becoming a paralegal with a four day workweek who used his spare weekday to go to protests:
All of the family lore bullshit makes him seem like a pathological liar. The only part I believe is that he has a non-white wife, and I am going to guess that she is Chinese or Filipina.
Also, he chokes back tears a few times in the video:
Who knows what those other things were? I wouldn't be surprised if one of them was Dave Arneson's The First Fantasy Campaign, which I could understand being kept on the backburner while Goodman started off with JG content that is actually playable as-is. Probably also the other Wilderlands adventures (if those aren't included as stretch goals), or maybe the Portals series. If Goodman's on the hook for them, too, then there will be more Kickstarters in the near future. If he's not on the hook, though, and City-State hits the right metrics, then you can expect more Kickstarters anyway.
Note that I'm not saying that this conversion is going to be good. Apparently GG's conversion of Dark Tower has been well-recieved, but City-State is a different kind of publication, so, again, who knows? There was talk about making it "modern", which is a bad sign as that usually means any depiction of a human will either be a nigger, a tranny, or a white woman who is kissing one of them. Material like this is definitely going to be cut:
I'm curious to hear some opinions on music in TTRPG's. Does your table use music, do you like it?
My own table does use music and it's probably one of the best parts of the experience for the players. They've gone on record to say multiple times that the game is better with music and that it helps them get immersed and invested in what's happening. It's gone so far that I have basically put together an entire soundtrack for the campaign they're running and I'm including things like leitmotifs and genre mixes to represent certain locations or characters. It's added a huge amount of depth to the experience I think but it's definitely not for everyone-- it's hard to find music that fits, loops well, and doesn't get in the way. However it's probably one of the most fun parts of DM'ing for me.
In the two GURPS campaigns I'm playing we have playlists we feed into the Discord bot. Nothing super curated, through. In the one campaign we're a squad of Waffen SS who were sent through a magic portal in Antarctica as a pretense for playing a D&D module with guns, and we listen to German marching songs and fashwave while we're murdering Drow in the Underdark. The other is a space pirate campaign, and one of out players is playing as an alien who is obsessed with 'ancient' human culture as a pretense to listen to rock music. Our theme song is Edguy's King Of Fools (our most resounding defeat was last night's session where we got party wiped in a barfight because everyone was too drunk to fight, lol)
