Bardic competition

[The Mad GM]

I don't know about you, but I wasn't born under a rhyming planet. But it seems unfair to allow such a ripe opportunity for roleplaying to default to dice rolls, however.

 

Any idea how this might be made more playable? I was thinking something more along the lines of "Who's line is it anyway?" No need to get epic, and frankly the tastes of most medieval fairs would have been more the bawd than the bard (at least judging by SCA revels, which may be dangerous).

[Vanguard00]

Re: Bardic competition

 

Originally posted by The Mad GM

I don't know about you, but I wasn't born under a rhyming planet. But it seems unfair to allow such a ripe opportunity for roleplaying to default to dice rolls, however.

 

Any idea how this might be made more playable? I was thinking something more along the lines of "Who's line is it anyway?" No need to get epic, and frankly the tastes of most medieval fairs would have been more the bawd than the bard (at least judging by SCA revels, which may be dangerous).

 

 

Well, if you're asking how you should a bardic competition and actually RP it...hrm...okay, so I don't have a lot of suggestions.

 

Here's one, though. Give your players time to sit down and write something. Give them suggestions on the theme, and tell them the easiest way to do this is to rewrite the words to a song they know. They don't even have to tell you what song it is. For example, if you know "Turn the Page" by Bob Seger, with a little imagination it wasn't hard for me to turn that into "Comes The King" for a game I was in way back when...

 

Perhaps make them come up with a single stanza/verse but assume the bard PC finished it. That sort of thing...

 

G'luck

[GamePhil]

I still have fond memories of Porkules, Pig of Power, asking a Boon of his Father, Seuss, King of the Gods. It want on in Catinthehat Pentameter.

 

Ah, good times.

 

If your players are enthusastic about it, this scene will probably write itself. You might consider allowing a Skill Roll to give the *player* more time (and possibly advice) to come up with a poetic masterpiece, or indicate you're going to do this to characters with the appropriate Skills long ahead of time.

 

Of course, what do I know: the one time I tried something similar, enough of my players through fits of hissy to make it painful. "I didn't come to the game for an English class", indeed.

[tkdguy]

If you're looking for bardic music you could do a search (over the web or in a library) for old songs and stories. There are CDs of medieval music out there; I have a small collection. There's a lot good stuff there. Of course, it helps if you like classical music. Alternatively, you can play traditional music instead.

 

If you can find the 2nd Edition AD&D book The Complete Bard's Handbook, you'll find a few traditional songs, as well as a lot of instruments there, more complete than Song and Silence. I haven't seen Mongoose Publishing's The Quintessential Bard, so I can't comment on it. I don't even know if it's out; I think it is, though.

 

Your bards don't have to be musicians. They can be historians, poets, storytellers, or playwrights. You can always borrow liberally from Shakespeare or Marlowe. Since this is a fantasy campaign, you can even let one of the PCs becoming your world's counterpart to Shakespeare, if one doesn't exist already.

[The Mad GM]

Originally posted by tkdguy

If you're looking for bardic music you could do a search (over the web or in a library) for old songs and stories. There are CDs of medieval music out there; I have a small collection. There's a lot good stuff there. Of course, it helps if you like classical music. Alternatively, you can play traditional music instead.

 

If you can find the 2nd Edition AD&D book The Complete Bard's Handbook, you'll find a few traditional songs, as well as a lot of instruments there, more complete than Song and Silence. I haven't seen Mongoose Publishing's The Quintessential Bard, so I can't comment on it. I don't even know if it's out; I think it is, though.

 

Your bards don't have to be musicians. They can be historians, poets, storytellers, or playwrights. You can always borrow liberally from Shakespeare or Marlowe. Since this is a fantasy campaign, you can even let one of the PCs becoming your world's counterpart to Shakespeare, if one doesn't exist already.

 

Actually, I'm trying to think of ways for players who may or may not have any bardic talent themselves come up with something. I like the idea of filking a known song (for those who don't know, filking is a term from Fantasy/Sci-fi conventions for making parodies of popular songs, re-writing the lyrics to fit the genre in a humorous way). Then letting any bardic skill the character has polish off the edges.

 

My group is old enough (all in our thirties+) that I doubt a comparison to English class will come up. But we are all really busy, so having them write up something ahead of time sounds impractical. I think what I would do is assign the task to the bard character (allowing kibitzing with other players if asked for), run the other competitions, then have the bard recite the piece.

[AnotherSkip]

you suggestion above is probably a decent way to do it. I would still bring it up directly to the would be performer beforehand, JIC an idea pop's into their head and they have a chance to scriblle it down. the best time to do this is to suggest it before a campaign climax event and point out that a bard would just love to write _that_ down and mention the upcoming event....

 

Other options would be to suggest Weird Al Yankovitch as a source of inspiration....

 

ill think of more later.

[Nuke]

Originally posted by The Mad GM

Actually, I'm trying to think of ways for players who may or may not have any bardic talent themselves come up with something. I like the idea of filking a known song (for those who don't know, filking is a term from Fantasy/Sci-fi conventions for making parodies of popular songs, re-writing the lyrics to fit the genre in a humorous way). Then letting any bardic skill the character has polish off the edges.

 

My group is old enough (all in our thirties+) that I doubt a comparison to English class will come up. But we are all really busy, so having them write up something ahead of time sounds impractical. I think what I would do is assign the task to the bard character (allowing kibitzing with other players if asked for), run the other competitions, then have the bard recite the piece.

 

One of the quests in our campaign for a priest (bardic like) was to write a song and perform it. The GM cared little about the quality of the song and more about the effort of the player. It was done to the tune of "YMCA", and it was for the deity of air. So naturally the song was "WIND".

 

All the players got involved in some fashion or another, the GM (as well as many of the players' wives) laughed hysterically, and the priest got his quest.

[Markdoc]

The most important thing is not "how can you do it" but "are your players into it".

 

If they are, it could be pretty fun.

 

If not, the results will be horrible - both in terms of gameplaying and in terms of personal angst. I've played in a (short lived) game where the GM liked people to act out what their characters were doing. With the exception of myself (who as a GM and collector of medieval music had a big store of rhymes, songs, riddles etc to draw on), the players HATED it.

 

Either way - don't expect high art :-)

 

As for the SCA, learning to compose musice in the medieval style is a lot of work and extempore composition is an almost lost art. Most people in the SCA have full time jobs, putting the sort of effort needed to acquire those skills out of reach for all but a talented few. Most I've heard would get driven off with clods of earth and horse dung from even provincial fairs :-)

 

A wonderful thing I heard a few years ago however was competition between musicians from medieval heritage in the UK. Most of them were historians or muscians, a fair number were both, and so they do this sort of thing for a living.

 

They would do things like compose an impromptu song on a topic suggested by the audience in just a few minutes and do a virtuoso job of it: or start a song and then pass it off to another muscian who would pick it up at exactly the point left off- going around and around the circle, or (most impressive of all) a pair of couples (one singer, one fiddler) who made beautiful totally impromptu songs. The fiddler would start a tune - and often change to another one partway through - the singer had to compose lyrics on the spot and sing them in time and harmony, so she was composing and singing at the same time.... egad!

 

cheers, Mark