Music of Ericha Zann and Finish Death Metal Bards

Prince of Nothing at Age of Dusk has a review of the Music of Ericha Zann (Lotfp). Prince of Nothing says it is loosely based on a Lovecraft musician. That's fine and good but it seems to be a big missed opportunity. I mean James Raggi III wrote about metal music prior to writing LotFP which seems a natural base to build your Bard from.

Imagine the Finish Death Metal Bard. Who's music can put you into a trance or drive you away screaming. Who causes prime and proper adults to want to chase them from town, but who draws the teens and young adults in to do their bidding. Who has panty-dropping solos that act as powerful charm spells for the ladies who will follow them dutifully. Maybe if you get three Finish Death Metal Bards together their playing gains the power to melt your face. One drawback is they can drink nearly anything without it effecting them so potions are reduced in potency, but poisons just don't work at all.

Take the idea and inject it with specifics based on Song titles and more specific Finish Death Metal ideas and you might have had a great, memorable class. Anyway Mr Raggi, the idea is all yours if you want it. Maybe it's an on-line freebee-level idea, maybe its trash I don't know but the new Spinal Tap movie shuffled into theaters to day so goofy music is on my mind.

I had originally written up this idea on Prince of Nothing's site but wordpress gave me crap and then dumped the post in its effort to get me to sign up so. Sad move wordpress, sad move.

Public Opinion

This idea comes from a scene in one of my favorite movies and the quote that has been bandied around my table for decades. "There's no food for you here..." Of course its from American Werewolf in London where the Americans stumble into a bar on a bad night and get a nasty response from the locals. 

If you think about it a bunch of blood covered adventurers are probably not gonna be welcomed right away and the normal reaction rolls take the charm of the party into account the way they should when used in a civilized area. Plus, any chance to make CHA useful... 

Dungeon Foraging

I was thinking about foraging from the previous post and thought Shadowdark is designed for a lot of gaming spent in the Shadowdark, so foraging rules for a dungeon environment might be nice. I really liked the last one, how different levels of success gave better results and figure I'll keep that format for any other rules that pop to mind. Perhaps I'll end up with enough 1-page rules someday that I'll bundle them for easy use. Anyway, since light is such a big factor I decided to add some desperate light options for success.

Living Off The Land

I ran across a news story about quick quartering, that's how hunters up in Wyoming quickly dice up their game to pack out the meat, being far from your truck and hunting solo, you've got to do it fast before bears catch the scent.  

That made me think about surviving off the land in RPGs and I've never really found a mechanic that handles thing that I was happy with. I particularly like the idea that a better roll means more rations and less offal to draw in hungry beasts. I included foraging rules as well because in my game Elves are herbivores and followers of the Goddess Gede are vegetarians. The rules are for Shadowdark but obviously adaptable to any system.

Weregild & Wampum

I was watching a video on Youtube and they mentioned weregild which lead to a rabbit whole of Chatgpt and Wikipeda on the subject. I played a lot of RuneQuest back in the day and don't remember them ever covering the topic but apparently they did at some point.

I think more RPG settings should have some kind of Weregild. I know I'm gonna write up something at some point specific to my setting, until then I'll drop a few notes here. I particularly like that they added an extra 100 shillings for killing a low ranking cleric during mass. Can't have that.

Act / Victim Type	Wergild / Compensation
Severed foot	~50 shillings
Eye loss	50 shillings
Ear loss	6–12 shillings
Nose pierce / mutilation	~9 shillings
Finger / Nail injuries	1–9 shillings
Freeman killed	~100–200 shillings
Nobleman / Thegn	300 (Kent) to 1,200 (Mercia)
Cleric (low-ranking)	300 shillings; 400 if during mass
Duke / Archbishop	~600 shillings (Lex Alamannorum)
Archbishop / Nobleman (Cnut-era)	15,000 thrymsas
King	30,000 thrymsas
Missi dominici (Charlemagne)	3× regular wergild

I imagine a weregild arrangement with local Goblin tribes to prevent all-out war. Something PCs may know little about. Since PCs tend to be wanderers and somewhat outside the system they could be forced to pay or be handed over to the Goblins to satisfy the weregild for their raids into Goblin caves, etc. This could balance out the treasure gained and might encourage PCs to determine the status of a tribe before going berserk on them.