Solar Powered Laser Beam Guitar

[pyat]

So, I've been thinking of an RPG in which the players portray a rock and roll band in space! This idea has been expressed before, but I think it would work especially well in “The ‘Verse,” the setting of Firefly and Serenity.

The characters wander from gig to gig in a beat up tramp freighter/tour bus, one step ahead of Consortium cool hunters. These slick customers want to ensnare the players, in an effort to commodify their sound or hook them up with a major label. All they have to do is clean up their image and lyrics, and maybe sound a little more like Kenny G, and they’ll be assured of huge contracts in the Core Worlds. Except the cool hunters are also government agents, social engineers looking to subvert the counter culture by encouraging the underground to sell out.

And of course there are rival bands to deal with, and crooked bar owners, drug dealers, gun runners, and religious fanatics. While ostensibly acting as entertainers, the players will naturally also be drawn into local revolutions, kidnapping plots, and the like. And no doubt some of them have a “secret past.” Naturally, there is room for supporting characters, like the rockumentary maker who is following the band, the sleazy agent/face man who makes their bookings, and the roadie who doubles as the ship’s engineer. If you want maximum coverage, try and find your way to Mr. Universe and his broadcast tower, and send your video out across the 'Verse!

Then there is the challenge of odd gigs. For some reason, I’m imagining a guy with a guitar holding off a thousand Reavers by playing the opening chords of Metallica’s “One,” with the blood-thirsty lunatics temporarily transfixed by music.

This concept could cover anything from treasonous balladeers and folk-rockers, bringing the message of revolution to the people, to over-the-top glam rockers in a rocket-powered tour bus, wielding Solar-Powered Laserbeam Guitars!



Yeah, this one would be at the "cheesy glam rock" end of the spectrum.

But, hey, this one has cars... in space!

And again with the cars in space!

Oooh... Spacecthulhu! Okay, these are getting sillier...

Comments

[nottheterritory.livejournal.com]

I'm totally claiming credit for chatting with you while you came up with this idea!

[pyat.livejournal.com]

And I'll credit you for wanting to play Yellow Dancer, and for saying:

" As soon as possible! I'm ready for Transgendered Rock'n'Roll Western in Space action!"

[lee-in-limbo.livejournal.com]

That first tune by Prism has a keyboard riff in it just like the one my old band's first keyboard player came up with for a tune we were working on. I wonder if she had any idea that it had been used before.

I was a huge fan of the Heavy Metal movie and the soundtrack. Huge. I even concocted an RPG setting called TAB Tales (Trans Atmospheric Biosphere), that involved a group of silly heroes trying to move an entire space colony to another galaxy for colonisation.

I loved Rough Boy. Easily my favourite ZZ Top song. The video was fun, if entirely archaic now. Billy Gibbons rarely sounded more eloquent on guitar.

And that last video... I think I've seen that artist somewhere before. Very glam. Very kitsch. Very amusing. Reminds me of an RPG group we had back in school in the Teenagers From Outerspace universe, where I played a four armed Eddie Van Halen acolyte called Dude.

Lee.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

I figured this post would get your attention. And TAB sounds cool!

[curtana.livejournal.com]

Excellent concept! Do you know about Sugarshock (http://www.sugarshockfans.com/) (the Joss Whedon webcomic about the rock band in space) or is this completely coincidental? :)

[pyat.livejournal.com]

I did not know. That bastard stole my idea by having it first!

Though, I had this idea earlier for a Shatterzone game, and even toyed with it for a Star Wars game.

And of course... there is always "Limozeen... IN SPACE!" from Homestarrunner.

[etherlad.livejournal.com]

Limozeen: "but they're in space!" (http://www.hrwiki.org/index.php/Limozeen:_%22but_they%27re_in_space%21%22)

[curtana.livejournal.com]

I think it would make an awesome game :) Sugarshock isn't really anything like Firefly's 'verse, anyway! :)

[undeadmuse.livejournal.com]

I LOVE YELLOW DANCER!!!

Go Genesis Climber Mospeada (iirc)! (a.k.a. Robotech New Generation in USA)

I had the Robotech BGM album and it had a recording of Lonely Soldier Boy on it...

Ah, good times, good times...

And yeah, I'd totally play that RPG.

[warphammer.livejournal.com]

Long live Disaster Area!

[nottheterritory.livejournal.com]

Yep - I've been waiting to play a Yellow Dancer rip-off for 20 years. I had that album too. I think I still do somewhere...

*blushes *

[madmanofprague.livejournal.com]

The Reavers would totally just be a band.

[paka.livejournal.com]

And now, Pyat stays up late, brainstorming campaigns while reading the Chanur series and playing Rock and Rule for background noise.

Seriously, "rockers going to gigs" is such a good setup for a game. You have a vehicle which you can modify or keep stuff in. You've got an official reason to go to plenty of places, different local governments which might or might not like the bigger government, and characters who are probably going to espouse political causes anyways. I think the only reason you don't see this one more often - maybe I'm being bitter? - is that players would have to sink character stuff into musical skills instead of using those points to make them better at stealth or fighting.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Just so!

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Nerds.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Basically, they'd be Insane Clown Posse.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

*nods* The idea gets kicked around a lot, but the only game I've seen that makes explicit use of the idea (Starchildren) is not so much with the goodness.

[madmanofprague.livejournal.com]

I always wondered how the Reavers flew their ships... (http://www.theonion.com/content/node/29421)

[thebitterguy]

I figured they'd be GWAR.

And stop talking like you watched Firefly.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

I'll watch it as soon as I finish watching that new Buffy vs. Dracula show all you kids like.

[anidada.livejournal.com]

Ooo. I like this. *tingly*

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Muahahahaha... we have you now!

[undeadmuse.livejournal.com]

I think I must *friend* you now.

[thebitterguy]

That was actually the premiere episode for season 5.

And the game you described actually sounds like a kickass board game.

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

Plus you can easily rip off the premise of Cheech and Chong's Up In Smoke for the campaign. I may haveta act on that.

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

I can just picture an episode where the bassist plugs his instrument into the hyperdrive by mistake and turns it up to eleven.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

It's ludicrously loud! No, it's LUDICROUS LOUD! *Rick Moranis' eyes take up his whole face as the lever is pushed all the way*

[doc-mystery.livejournal.com]

There's an old and fun Jack Vance SF novel called "Space Opera" which used the similar theme, albeit with a travelling opera company and not a rock band.

::B::

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Finally! I would have a chance to use my old Warhammer 40K Chaos Noise Marines. Basically, imagine Space Marines with mohawks on their helmets, and with weapons that look like a cross between an electric guitar and an AK-47, complete with curved clip. I've wanted an excuse to use one of those minis as a PC for YEARS. (It'd be easier to do so if I weren't the GM, and if anytime someone else GM'ed, we'd play something other than D&D or Call of Cthulhu.) I've sometimes found an excuse in sci-fi campaigns to have them in the background as NPCs, but that's about it.

Anyway, I love the concept. Now I find myself imagining a way to incorporate the Rock Band video game as a game tool. As in, "Okay, everybody, grab your instruments. We're doing 'Don't Fear the Reaper.'" And then somehow the final score would be used to determine what bonuses they got on their "Perform" checks, or whatever the mechanic is for the particular game system. I'd have everybody set it to "Easy," probably; it's more about the fun of interaction than it is about trying to make it genuinely DIFFICULT for the players, after all.

[sassy-fae.livejournal.com]

That.
That would be AWESOME!!

[sassy-fae.livejournal.com]

That last video by The Darkness was the first thing I thought of when I read the text of your post. Battling giant crabs and space squid!

[anidada.livejournal.com]

Yes, please!

[pyat.livejournal.com]

That's the stuff!

[pyat.livejournal.com]

That sounds a bit like a Star Wars game I ran, in which the players disguised themselves as a troupe of musicians and carnies to infiltrate an Imperial prison.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

As always, sir, you turn my game ideas up to Eleven. :)

[pyat.livejournal.com]

It could very well happen! We'll talk about it, next time we're all together.

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Well, one of my players actually has Rock Band. Now that I've had a chance to think about it, I think it might actually be something doable. The thing is, I'd just have to figure out a decent campaign plan where success/failure would hinge heavily on the performance of the PCs at playing in a band versus the usual business of duking it out in a traditional fight.

Of course, they COULD have laser beam guitars and sonic wave drums and all that, and it COULD be that their performance at a rock song is actually required to drive off an invasion of Solarian Bat Fiends, or that the Evil Emperor Zing Zero has forced them to have a lethal Battle of the Bands against his Robotic Glam Metal Champions, performing on anti-grav platforms suspended above a lava pit teeming with voracious Mercurian Plasmavores....

Ooo. More crazy ideas. I've got to write this all up as a Savage Worlds scenario.

[noondaypaisley.livejournal.com]

The band in the last video is "The Darkness", setting music back thirty years.

[noondaypaisley.livejournal.com]

So not so much with the "Hong Kong Caviliers" type band then? That's what I'd want to do.

[lee-in-limbo.livejournal.com]

LOL! Yeah, I thought I'd heard of them.

Lee.