Right about now I should be knee deep in killing zombies.
Or at least running a group through Castle Ravenloft.
The thing I like best about Gen Con isn't just the games, or the hall to buy new games, it's meeting up with old friends and meeting new ones. Basically these are my people.
Professor Elemental has been featured here before. "All In Together" is an ode to being with your tribe.
One of my kids' favorite songs is Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song". They pretty much demand this song every time we play D&D and drive to Gen Con.
Another song that reminds me of drive to Gen Con is Fastball's "The Way". Seemed like I listened to this song a dozen times on my first drive to Gen Con.
Welcome back to Friday Night Videos! Vacation / Gen Con edition.
Tonight the songs are less overtly about gaming or my relationship with gaming and more about my vacation in Gen Con.
Summer meant a lot of thing to me over the years. Going out with friends, picnics, drinking, teaching while in college, working two jobs for college! But for a shinning moment there for a while in the early 80s before discovering girls, beer, or the crushing responsibility of being an adult(!). Summer was also about vacations and playing some RPGs.
So here is my ode to that time and to Gen Con next week.
The Go-Gos. Was there ever a band LESS like D&D? Who cares. This is a fun song.
While I followed Stevie Nick's solo career with the obsessiveness than only a teenage can manage, I never was that interested in Lindsay Buckingham's. I did want this album at one point I recall.
Wednesday was my 20th Wedding Anniversary. We got married in Jamaica and you could not go twn minutes and not hear Shaggy. This whole album is a ton of summer time vacation fun. This song NEVER fails to put me into mood.
Let's get to some more D&D/RPG-ish songs. Going to California by Led Zeppelin is another great one. Why? Because no one has written a "Going to Indiana" song.
Ok. Let's pay homage to Indiana's favorite son, John Mellencamp. I know a lot of my audience might not get this, but John "Cougar" Mellencamp is a pretty big deal here in the midwest. And nothing captured the feel of living in the Midwest in the 80s better than his 1985 album Scarecrow. Believe it or not but it was a huge influence on my gaming. I wanted my Chill games to capture the same feeling of hopelessness as "Rain on the Scarecrow" and joy as "Lonely Ol' Night" (yeah, listen to the song it is an ode to summer nights in the midwest where everyone feels like they are on their own). I may live in the Chicago greater area now, but I did grow up in a small town.
Welcome back to Friday Night Videos! Urban Horror edition.
D&D is metal. But the gritty Urban Horror I enjoy is Rap with Metal. Two great tastes that go great together.
Make sense to me really. I was getting into more urban horror in the 90s when rap and hip hop were huge and nu Metal was on the rise.
Personally I believe that Metal and Rap/Hip-Hop have far more in common than they differ.
So how about we start where it started. More or less.
Anthrax and Public Enemy are as about as different as you can imagine. That is till you dig beneath the surface and realize they are saying the same things to their audiences. Public Enemy is more politically charged than Anthrax is.
Judgement Night. Not just a sub-par Emilio Estevez film, it is also a great urban battle song. Personally I always felt this was a better soundtrack for an apocalyptic battle scene between humans and demons.
Ozzy + Trick Daddy. Ok, Ozzy is only sampled in this. But this was one of the songs I had on repeat when working on the Ghosts of Albion game. My understanding is that Ozzy rather liked this.
I won't lie. I listened to Linkin Park's "Hybrid Theory" on pretty much repeat all throughout my time working the Buffy game. When I began work on Ghosts of Albion I switched over to "Meteora".
Linkin Park is pretty much the archetypical Nu-Metal band. An alchemy of rock, rap with bits of punk and grunge. Absolutely part of my soundtrack of the Apocalypse.
For shear oddness you can't beat the Gorillaz. One part Blur, one part LSD trip and a bunch of Del Tha Funkee Homosapien. This doesn't really fit in the "hard rock" mode, but the trippy video is pure "All Flesh Must Be Eaten" crossed over with "Terra Primate".
Tonight we do a little self-celebrating and mark 2,000,000 hits to the Other Side blog. Yeah I know, a little self-aggrandizing, but hey. I pay the bills here.
I have talked about the history of this place before, so no real need to do that again. Let's just get to the videos.
I am not 100% sure, but it is likely that the name "The Other Side" came from this Moody Blues song. I had a newspaper article in my school newspaper back in 86-87 named "The Other Side of Life". My first web site was then called The Other Side. Kinda anti-climatic isn't it. But still I like the Blues and this was a good album for 1986.
Like the song, thought the video was a little lame.
Interestingly enough the next Other Side, my website, came out a little after this Areosmith song did. It was from 1994, the same year I moved to Chicago to work on my Ph.D.
I have been a fan of the Red Hot Chili Peppers since "Mother's Milk". The Otherside came out at a very, very weird time for me. I might talk about it sometime. or not. Have not decided yet.
Here is a new one for me. Sirenia. I know nothing about Norwegian symphonic metal, but I like the sound of this. It certainly has all the elements of things I like. This video is kinda cool.
If I had to be honest. Really honest. Well then I would have to stick with the Moody Blues story above. But I was rewriting my personal story then this is the song that really motivated me to name my lexical outlet to the world then I would have to choose The Doors and "Break on Through (to the Other Side)". Total cheat on the title too.
Red Sun Rising is another new band for me. They have this Alice in Chains feel about them that I really enjoy. I heard this one on the radio the other day when trying to come up with tonight's theme.
Hope you are all with me for the next 1,000,000 hits.
It is my pleasure to bring you another Guest VJ. Tonight we are honored to have Paul "Wiggy" Wade-Williams. He will be playing videos that relate to his newest RPG book "Leagues of Gothic Horror".
So here is Wiggy.
--
Hi! My name’s Wiggy (also known as Paul Wade-Williams) and I’m the creative director and a partner at Triple Ace Games. Tim has invited me to guest VJ and talk a little about the music I listened to while designing and writing LEAGUES OF GOTHIC HORROR, which launched on Kickstarter this week.
Truth be told, I’ve mainly been watching movies and listening to Gothic audio dramas while pounding away at the keyboard and watching the shadows for werewolves and vampires, but there is always time for music in the creative process. Maybe I’m a little anal, but I often create a playlist to match the product I’m working on, rather than accept whatever random tune my player throws up. Here are some of the tracks in that list.
Blue Oyster Cult — Magna of Illusion
This track is from my all-time favourite album—Imaginos. The lyrics are laden with layers of hidden meaning and weird significance—ancient prophecies, magic mirrors, alchemy, astrology, witches, magical ships! I’ve always had an interest in the occult(not to be confused with Satanism) and the entire album was essential listening—I never tire of listening to it! I love it so much there are references to it scattered throughout LEAGUES OF GOTHIC HORROR.
Sheelanigig — Lost in Transitvania
My music tastes are quite eclectic. Most of my playlist is heavy metal or rock, but nestled among the albums are 80s pop, folk, movie soundtracks, and Mongolian throat-singing. I came across this band at the Shetland Folk Festival only a few months ago and immediately fell in love with their stuff. Writing can be a boring process, even if you love what you write, and this song gave me an excuse to chair dance while absorbing the Eastern European folk vibe that transported me at least part way to Transylvania.
Ozzy Osbourne — Bark at the Moon
It’s Ozzy, the Prince of Darkness himself! This song met all the criteria when writing a book on Gothic Horror—the heavy metal I love and an atmospheric (if occasionally camp) video replete with elements of the genre. I’ve listened to Ozzy for many years, and regardless of my mood there’s always a song to suit.
The Unguided — Deathwalker
Remember I said my tastes were eclectic? Well, here’s some Swedish melodic death metal for you! I admit I am not without bias in choosing this track—the band based it on my Hellfrost fantasy setting and I was lucky enough to collaborate on the lyrics. Despite its fantasy origin, the track concerns the rising of a powerful lich and his gathering support from the undead, an apt enough topic for Gothic Horror.
Iron Maiden — The Number of the Beast
Iron Maiden, the first heavy metal I ever listened to. This track, from their third album, always reminds me of one of my favorite horror film—The Devil Rides Out. The beat is fast, hardly fitting for the creeping terror of Gothic Horror, but the content, Satanism, was perfect for writing the magic section. The track also reminds me of school (I was 12 when it came out), especially since 1982 was the date The Warlock of Firetop Mountain was published, the book that got me into gaming.
Dalibor Krigovský — Moriens Spiritum
Conveying mood to the reader is an essential part of writing. Gothic Horror isn’t slash and gore. It’s dark and moody. It reeks of decadence and decay. Capturing that unique flavour so GMs can convey it to their players in words was essential. Often I can get into the right mood without much thought—it is part of the job being a full-time author working on varied projects—but there are times when I need a boost. This track is heavy and brooding, perfect for immersing myself in Gothic atmosphere.
J. S. Bach — Toccata and Fugue in D Minor
More mood music! I’ve always loved this piece of music. Maybe I’m odd, but it immediately conjures up images of the lonely figure of Dracula (or Strahd von Zarovich) seated in front of an organ in his desolate castle or the Phantom of the Opera. It’s a very powerful and emotive piece that ebbs and flows, never failing to drag my mood along as it does so.
Tonight I want to focus on just one band, but one that I really identify with the entire OSR and nostalgia D&D movement.
The Sword hit my awareness in 2008 or so with their album "Gods of this Earth". Right around the same time this blog got going.
Like the retro-D&D/OSR/Nostalgia movement The Sword was a new thing that sounded like an old thing from the 70s. In this case a band that had a similar vibe to Slayer to sound like Black Sabbath. In any case it worked.
Fire Lances of the Ancient Hyperzephyrians was the first single from "Gods of the Earth". It sounds old school and the video is something right out of Ralph Bakshi. The biggest influence is obviously Bakshi's Wizards. Confession time. I am not a fan of Wizards. Never saw the appeal. I also don't care for rotoscoping.
If any song captures this retro-feel of The Sword the best it's How Heavy This Axe. The video even looks like something filmed the same day Black Sabbath filmed Paranoid or Iron Man. Plus this was also the theme song to +Zak Smith and gang's "I Hit it with My Axe". That gives it OSR street cred right there. Or it gave them cred. Not sure which.
What can I honestly say about Maiden Mother Crone?
Well for starters it is easily my favorite song from The Sword. Plus there are great allusions to Pagan myths and witchcraft. In true heavy metal cliche fashion it has a "mystical orb" at the end (3:30 mark). I am sure that was done completely tongue in cheek. But still it's pretty awesome.
I listened to this a lot when working on The Witch.
Tres Brujas or "Three Witches" came along later. It mixes in elements of Westerns, sci-fi, witchcraft (again) and Kung-fu (the TV show). So yeah...sounds a bit like the AD&D DMG.
Veil of Isis is a newer song. The video reminds me a bit of some of the videos of the later 80s, before Grunge took over. Still it's a pretty cool song.
You can find The Sword on the web at http://theswordofficial.com/
Ah Summer. When you are a kid there is nothing better.
I remember spending my summers playing outside, running around and of course playing D&D on the weekends all night long.
It was an innocent time really before we all discovered girls, drinking (drugs) and other ways to pass the time. I don't regret and would not change a single moment of those times.
Let's start this right with Rush's "Time Stand Still" I think it sums up what I want to say rather well.
Plus "Solstice" means "Sun stand still" so yeah. Perfect song.
And Aimee Mann was damn cute here.
Let's keep going with Rush for a bit. They are afterall the most "D&D" band I know.
"Subdivisions" spoke to everyone in my gaming group in a why that is difficult to quantify really. I didn't grow up in the suburbs (though I live there now) but the feelings are the same. Replace the video games in this video with RPGs and the message is the same.
Ok. So Canada in the Winter does not invoke images of Summer, but the video aside no song reminds me of playing D&D quite as much as Rush's "Tom Sawyer". This was my DM's favorite song. I think I have heard it 1000 times. One more time would be good too.
Ok I lied. "Fly By Night" reminds me of D&D maybe just a little bit more than Tom Sawyer. I remember one of the first big "D&D Parties" we had in Jr. High. My friend and DM Jon put a copy of Rush's Fly By Night into my hands and told me I had to listen to it. He did that a lot. It did change my life.
"Freewill" came to me at a very interesting time in my life. The song was something of an anthem for me, but not one I could shout out loud. 1980, I was 10 and just learning to play D&D. I was also becoming what I would later know to be called an atheist. D&D was my way to explore religious spaces; which is why I tend to play clerics, paladins and witches.
Fast forward to a little over 10 years later Rush releases a new album, Roll the Bones. I remember that some of the hard core Rush fans in college didn't care for it, but I loved it. I know some people hated the rapping in the song, but fuck them.
Isn't that what we do? Roll the Bones.
It's the night before my birthday!
So tonight I want to focus on one artist and what his music has done for my gaming.
Interesting tidbit. I have never bought a Rob Zombie or White Zombie album or CD. I have always gotten them for my birthday.
Weird I know, but hey there must be something to that.
I was introduced to White Zombie while in college but I didn't really get into them till after grad school when I dug up a copy of La Sexorcisto: Devil Music Volume One that had gotten for my birthday back in 94 or so. I listened to Thunder Kiss '65 and wrote the first version of Halfway.
I have mentioned this one before, but the original FNV used to show repeats too. More Human Than Human and it's album Astro Creep: 2000 was a huge influence on all the material I wrote for the Buffy RPG and the games I was playing at the time. I think I even had an adventure called More Human Than Human at one point.
Hellbilly Deluxe ranks as one of my favorite albums of all time. Rob Zombie's first solo album he described it as an homage to the feel of the horror movies of the 70s. So it's not really a surprise I like it so much. Dragula is an ode to the car from the TV show The Munsters. But it is also a great song.
Like More Human than Human, Living Dead Girl was practically a soundtrack to my Buffy/WitchCraft games. Listening to it now I can't help wanting to pull out my Unisystem books and getting back to some old friends. ...What are you thinking about?...
Hell on Earth...This is the song that always gets me pumped up and psyched. Strawberry Switchblade is the bastard daughter of this song.
One of my favorite movies and books (for different reasons) is "A Clockwork Orange". The are a lot of reasons I like it. The commentary on violence and how society treats youths. Stanley Kibrick's direction. But mostly I think it is the performance of Malcolm McDowell who also has a birthday tomorrow. So in honor of that here is another favorite Rob Zombie song, Never Gonna Stop (The Red Red Kroovy).
One of a couple of songs that came out while I was working on the early drafts of The Witch. The American Witch is one of my favorite songs period. There are two versions of the video, but this one is the animated version by David Hartman. This song's videos fits in with the "mythos" you see in a lot of Rob Zombie's work, that the monsters are the heroes. Look for the guest appearance of the Living Dead Girl.
Lords of Salem is the "prequel" song and video to American Witch. There is a solid Solomon Kane feel to this. But like American Witch, the humans are the real monsters here. Our heroine the American Witch appears here, but is captured. The Lords of Salem went on to inspire my own "Lord Salem", the Big Bad for Season 2 of the Hex Girls.
Tonight I want to welcome guest VJ Chrys Fey!
Chrys is the author a number of books including the her most recent The Witch of Death and the Ghost of Death.
I asked Chrys to come by tonight and share some songs whe was listening too or were inspiring while she worked on her books.
So without further ado, take it away Chrys. Witchy Woman by Eagles
This song was done ten years (1972) before Liberty Sawyer was born, but it could be about her: “raven hair and ruby lips, sparks fly from her fingertips-” Although there’s the mention of the devil, which Libby doesn’t like, she can’t help but dance to this fun song in her living room.
Jillian (I’d Give My Heart) by Within Temptation
This is the song that really gets me, my muse, and Libby pumped up. Ever since we stumbled across it ten years ago, Within Temptation has been our favorite band. They are a Dutch rock/metal band. The combination of Sharon Den Adel’s angelic voice and the dark, beautiful music is spellbinding. And if you’re a fan of Serenity/Firefly, you’ll enjoy the video.
A Witches Song by Ordo Funebris
The odd thing about this song is that no one can find lyrics to it but because it’s so beautiful, eerie, and mysterious, Libby loves it. On top of that, the video features work by her favorite artist Victoria Francis.
Detective Reid Sanders doesn’t believe in the supernatural, but when he’s faced with a crime scene that defies the laws of nature, he has no other choice but to start believing. And solving a magical murder involves working with a witch.
Liberty Sawyer embodies the look of your classic evil witch, so, it’s no surprise when she uncovers the murderer is a witch that she becomes Reid’s number one suspect. If she can’t convince him otherwise, more people could lose their lives to dark magic, including her.
Jolie Montgomery, a twenty-one-year-old woman, wakes up in an alley next to her corpse. She has no memories of her murder or the night she died. She didn’t even see the killer’s face before he or she took her life. Wanting justice, Jolie seeks answers in the only way a ghost can...by stalking the lead detective on the case.
Avrianna Heavenborn is determined to find the person responsible for a young woman’s death. She gets closer to the killer’s identity with every clue she uncovers, and Jolie is with her every step of the way.
But if they don’t solve her murder soon, Jolie will be an earth-bound spirit forever.
Chrys Fey is the author of Hurricane Crimes and 30 Seconds. She is currently working on the sequel to Hurricane Crimes that’ll serve as book two in the Disaster Crimes series.
When Fey was six years old, she realized her dream of being a writer by watching her mother pursue publication. At the age of twelve, she started writing her first novel, which flourished into a series she later rewrote at seventeen. Fey lives in Florida where she is waiting for the next hurricane to come her way.
You can connect with her on Facebook and her blog, Write with Fey. She loves to get to know her readers!
Tonight I want to pay homage to the years that really got me going D&D wise. 1980, 1981 and 1982!
So this morning I was reading Arlee Bird's blog Tossing it Out.
Lee is the brains behind so many great blog challenges including the April A to Z challenge.
This morning he was talking about music and it's relationship to people. For me though music has always been about the times it was in or what was going on when I heard it. The cue for me to switch gears tonight and focus on 1982 was his use of the fantastic Alan Parson's Project, Eye in the Sky. The meaning of the song of the same name is debated; is it about 1984, security cameras or something else. For me this song will ALWAYS be about the module B3 Palace of the Silver Princess. The "Eye in the Sky" in this case is the evil creature/god Arik and his ruby eye. This song was on constant rotation the entire time I bought and first ran this adventure.
From the same album is a song my younger brother and I loved, "Psychobable". To me the song was more about horror and nightmares and that certainly had a huge effect on the style of game I ran even back then. This was only compounded when I got my first copy of Chill.
This video is an odd one but I really like it. The creator re-edited an old Orson Welles student film to go with the song. For me it just fits.
Few albums are more "D&D" than Blue Öyster Cult's Fire of Unkown Origin and few songs more so than "Veteran of the Psychic Wars". Let's look at the song's pedigree for a moment. It was co-written by Micheal Moorcock, author of the Eternal Champion series. It is about the greatest, or at least the most popular of all the Eternal Champions Elric of Melniboné. The song also appeared in the movie Heavy Metal. On the releases I saw this was during the Taarna sequences. The song is an ode to any D&D character ever. It is practically a Grognard anthem. I would revisit the imagery myself during the years I was running my "Willow & Tara" game, Episode 5: Veteran of the Psychic Wars.
Last week I talked about how much Stevie Nicks influenced, well, pretty much everything I have ever written. "Leather and Lace" was another song from Bella Donna that I loved. This one I also connect to B3. In particular the love story of the Princess and the White Drake. In the original version of the adventure (written by Jean Welles) he was the bad guy. In the revised version (by Tom Moldvay, the hero of 1981!) they became lovers instead. I have to admit I like his version better than hers.
In the opposite direction of the sentiment of Leather and Lace we have Greg Kihn, whom I always associate with the start of the "video age". "The Breakup Song" was from Kihn's album Rockihnroll. The truth is, just like the song says, they just don't write 'em like that anymore.
This is one is kind of a cheat. I loved this song back in the day, but never associated it with gaming till much, much later. Donnie Iris' "Ah! Leah!" from Back on the Streets. Though it was out in 1980 I am sure I never heard it till 81. Like Veteran of the Psychic Wars this song became part of the "soundtrack" of music I listened to when working on the Buffy RPG and then later Ghosts of Albion. "Leah" was immortalized in my game universe as the name of the woman that married Tara's brother Donny in "Strange Sort of Homecoming" (which itself is named for a Sting song).
"Let me be the one to say when I've had enough..."
Sum songs capture an age perfectly. Others only capture the feeling, and in retrospect are perfect. Santana's "Hold On" is that sort of song. It's too Latin sounding to be really part of the early 80s. But yet here we are and this song is perfect at describing the time. The first track released from 1981's Shangó.
Got to concentrate, file away Every last detail Don't want to lose what's going down I want to remember everything I'm feeling Should time try fading or stealing something away.
What are your favorite memories from 1981 and 1982?
Welcome back to Friday Night Videos, where we wish a happy birthday to the White Witch herself, Stevie Nicks!
You don't have to know a lot about me to know that I LOVE Stevie Nicks. Tuesday May 26 is her birthday and we are going to celebrate here this weekend.
Whether with Fleetwood Mac or on her own no single artist has ever influenced my writing more. To this day if I am going to write something new about witches I put Stevie and let the words flow.
We first hear of Stevie Nicks in the 1975 self title Fleetwood Mac album. Stevie and then boyfriend Lindsey Buckingham had joined the band bringing Rhianon with them. Stevie had heard the story of Rhianon from a book, and only later heard of the Welsh Goddess. She would often introduce the song as "This is a song about an old Welsh witch..."
Stevie went on to record her first solo album. The enchanting Bella Donna. While many of us were already in love with her from Rumours and Tusk, this solidified her hold as the Queen of Rock.
"The Edge of Seventeen" came about because Stevie could not understand Tom Petty's wife's thick southern accent. Either way it gave us one of the enduring Stevie Nicks images, the White Winged Dove.
Fleetwood Mac was at their height when 1982's Mirage was released. The album had a number of hits but the most Stevie of all the songs was "Gypsy". Mirage my have been the swan song of the Fleetwood Mac that was, but Stevie never rose higher.
Shortly after the Mirage tour came to an end Stevie threw herself right into the recording of what would become, in my humble opinion, her greatest album to date. This is the album I had playing on cassette when I wrote the first draft of the witch class. This is the album I listened to on CD when I made my 2nd Ed. Netbook. And this is the album I listened to on MP3 when I wrote The Witch. The Wild Heart is one of the best albums ever. My memory of this album is I got it for my 13th birthday just as soon as it was out.
Featuring keyboards by none other than the Purple One himself, Prince, "Stand Back" is not very witchy, but I love it all the same.
"Nightbird" the song that launched a 100 characters. I wanted my witch character to be as awesome as this song and to look like Stevie. It was 1983, but it is still just as true today 32 years later.
This version from "Solid Gold" is still one of my favorites. In an age when artists were just lip-syncing their own songs Stevie was singing hers. She is joined here by her longtime back up singer, best friend and sister-in-law Lori Nicks singing the parts that Stevie over-dubbed on the album.
Stevie has spent years trying to escape the image of the "Witchy Woman" only to embrace it full on in season 3 of "American Horror Story". The finale for "Coven" was an episode featuring what can only be called a Stevie Nicks video. The song and the episode was called "The Seven Wonders". The album was Tango in the Night from 1987. The last Fleetwood Mac album I ever bought on tape. Yeah. We used to buy tapes.
You can watch the American Horror Story: Coven version below.
There are so many more of course. But that is good for tonight.
Welcome back to Friday Night Videos and tonight we celebrate the best of what happens when Wisconsin and Scotland get together. Garbage!
Garbage is like the penultimate 90s band really. And perfect for the games I was planning and playing at the time.
I have mentioned before that by the mid 90s I was really burned out on D&D and wanted something new. That new ended up being various World of Darkness games like Vampire and Mage, but most of all WitchCraft. I made more than one witch that looked like Shirley Manson.
"I'm Only Happy When Rains" is exactly the sort of song that I had in mind when I was playing then. Alternative, hard, and a great lead singer. From their debut self titled album.
"Stupid Girl" showed that this band was no one hit wonder.
"#1 Crush" appeared on the Romeo + Juliet Soundrack, but that is not where I know it best. It would go on to later be the theme music to the British witchcraft serial "HƎX". I still consider it a "witch" song.
Garbage 2.0 was another breakthrough album for the band. Getting them quite a bit of critical acclaim and giving them their high chart topping songs in the UK.
"Push It" adds more electronica than their previous outings. The video has a nice homage to Village of the Damned.
"I Think I'm Paranoid" is pretty much the theme song for any Mage game I have ever played.
What is better than hearing your favorite band? Hearing your favorite band cover a great song.
"Because the Night" has been covered and recovered by Bruce Springsteen and Patti Smith (they wrote it), 10,000 Manics and Garbage with Screaming Females. The song is a passionate ode not just to a love but to the night itself. As a nyctophiliac myself, I can relate.
Welcome back to Friday Night Videos! Sci-Fi Edition.
All week I have talking about Sci-Fi games and sci-fi themes. All of this has sent me back to the late 70s / early 80s when I was hard core into scifi and playing Traveller.
I had so many ideas back then for games. Most I'd never use or even admit to today. But back then they were awesome. You just have to take my word on that!
Again. This time was ripe for ideas in gaming. Anything seemed possible. I was already associating D&D and Star Wars together so when the 80s dawned, I threw MTV into the mix.
No one (except one other artist on my list tonight) looked more like a futuristic alien than Mike Score of A Flock of Seagulls. "Space Age Love Song" was a lesser know, or at least lesser charting, song from their self titled album. But I always thought it was a great ode for the classic space age hero like Flash Gordon or John Carter.
Who was my idea of a Space Hero? It varied, but I knew his name. Major Tom.
Here is the other Alien artist on my list, David Bowie, in his Ziggy Stardust best, singing about our hero Major Tom in his "Space Oddity". This song appeared on his 1969 album of the same name. It was written as an homage to both Apollo 11 and 2001 A Space Oddity.
German born artist Peter Schilling heard "tell my wife I love her very much" and took his own stab at the story of Major Tom in "Major Tom (Coming Home)".
Major Tom finally made it into my games, but not till much, much later and as a riff on the movie "Lifeforce". Major Tom comes home but he is carrying a virus that starts a zombie plague in All Flesh Must Be Eaten.
You can also here/watch the original German version, Völlig Losgelöst and the really-cool-even-though-it-is-a-commercial version by Shiny Toy Guns.
Back to Bowie for bit. The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars just BEGS to have a game made from it. Ziggy played guitar...
Call me crazy. But I always wanted to write a game called "Space Truckers". It would be the unholy fusion of late 70s sci-fi and late 70s "trucker chic". It has not been an easy sell. Regardless of how the game comes out in needs to play like Deep Purple sounds.
Few rock acts can speak credibly on matters of scifi, let alone science. Few acts are Queen.
Brian May, the lead guitarist, writer and sometimes singer of Queen is also Dr. Brian May. He has a Ph.D. is astrophysics. "'39" from 1975's A Night at the Opera is song that grabbed me from the first time I ever heard it. The story of the song is that a man and 19 other astronauts leave on a spaceship to discover a new world. They return with good news of a new world. For them it's only been one year, for the Earth and his family it has been much longer. His wife is dead, his daughter is an old woman and his own grand children are there to meet him. "Ne'er look back, never fear and never cry."
Welcome back to Friday Night Videos! Supers Edition.
I have been thinking a lot about supers this last week or so. I have a big "deep dive" I want to do this summer with supers and of course the Summer movie season starts tonight with The Avengers.
This got me thinking about 2003-2005 (well that and a post at Age of Ravens that I will get too later) when I was working on a big Supers/Supernatural crossover. Not Supernatural the show, but rather a world, or two worlds, that were "light" and "dark". The dark world was my regular WitchCraft/Buffy/Ghosts of Albion game. The light world was a world populated by Super Heroes. Characters in one world had a counterpart in the other.
It is from this effort that I began working up a number of different versions of Willow and Tara and it gave birth to Justice. Of course I had a soundtrack.
"Heroes" was not just the centerpiece of this time period, it became the name of the first adventure. Honestly, there is very, very little about David Bowie's singing and song writing that doesn't inspire me.
Heroes always reminds me of the 1977 movie "Heroes" that starred Henry Winkler, Sally Field and Harrison Ford. The movie was not about supers, but about a soldier from Vietnam and the loss of his dream. I remember seeing this movie dozens of times. But what always, always got me in the end was when the credits closed in on a broken Henry Winkler (he came to the reality that his friend was dead) and a crying Sally Field was "Carry on Wayward Son" by Kansas from their prog-rock classic Leftoverture. I put this in my top 20 of all time favorite songs. Like the movie I always felt that this song was what the characters and situations I were working on were about; Noble, but deeply flawed heroes. The fact that it is use every year for Supernatural only cements it's credibility for my games.
What I wanted to say about my next song was "Fuck you P!nk is my jam!" but you all deserve much better and more than that. P!nk is freaking fantastic. I bought Missundaztood for my wife and I promptly left it in my car where I listened to it everyday. "Just Like A Pill" is not about supers. But it did give me an idea on an old comic/cartoon trope, the drug-addiction episode. Plus if I am going to mix supernaturals with supers then drugs seem like a no brainer.
What became something of a theme song to my later Buffy games, this also captured something I wanted to capture in my own games. These characters, these supers are as removed from humanity as the monsters they fight. I wanted to capture what is was to be human.
Rob Zombie may not have the answer, but in "More Human than Human" from White Zombie's Astro-Creep: 2000 he knows what question to ask.
It's a wicked world we live in. It's cruel and unforgiving. No one raps it better than The Transplants in "Diamonds and Guns".
If you need a theme song for an end of the world Armageddon event then you can do worse than Disturbed and their cover of Genesis' "Land of Confusion" from Ten Thousand Fists. The video was animated by Spawn creator Todd McFarlane, so it also has "street cred". If I need to write an adventure about destroying the world I put Disturbed on first.
Mixing Supers and Supernaturals is the Reese's Peanut Buttercup of campaigns for me; mixing two different things together to get something that is better than either on their own. Or at least something new and exciting.
EXACTLY like "Bring the Noise" by Public Enemy and Anthrax. Rap meets speed metal. This gets me pumped. Just like Chuck D says "these lines are dope".
In truth I could do an entire night of rock/rap crossovers and talk about how they influenced my horror writing.
Welcome back to Friday Night Videos as we continue the Vampire theme for Vampire Month here at the Other Side.
For this last FNV of Vampire Month I wanted to do something special.
Rarely does a movie come around that captures the feeling of the times quite like 1987's. My DM had moved to Chicago, I was in the middle of my world changing campaign that would later become part of The Dragon and The Phoenix and I was getting ready for college. I came up to visit and we went and saw this film. It was full of cool vampires, great music and fantastic ride of a movie. Yes it was taking advantage of the Anne Rice craze of the time, but it did more than that. It took the stock 80s teen movie and turned it into something else.
Given I was on the edge of my Ravenloft years this was the final push I needed.
The soundtrack to this movie fueled many nights of my early college days. To this day it still holds a special place in my heart. No one song is fantastic, but as a collective they are more than the sum of their parts.
The movie opens up with the Echo and the Bunnymen covering the Doors "People are Strange". I like this version and it is a worthy version, but you just can't beat the original in my mind.
Another song that helped make this soundtrack so iconic was Roger Daltery's cover of Elton John's "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me". I have a confession. I don't care for Elton John much, but I have always liked this song. Hearing it sung by one of my favorite front men made it an entirely new song. Is it better than Elton's version? Probably not. But I can't hear this song and not flashback to a time between 1987 and 1991, holding a beer and watching the sun set.
"I Still Believe" by Tim Cappello is an interesting choice. I am not really a fan of the song per se, only the memories it brings up. Though it is also the only song where the performer appears in the movie. Tim Cappello was known at the time for being a really big and cut guy. So oil him up and stick him into the movie.
Looking back nearly 30 years later, "Cry Little Sister" is not a great song. It's even a touch melodramaic, overwrought and a little over produced. So the perfect theme for 1987.
Welcome back to Friday Night Videos as we continue the Vampire theme for Vampire Month here at the Other Side.
The early 90s were a great time for Vampires. Think it is good now? Back then in the RPG scene we had White Wolf's Vampire the Masquerade, Chill 2nd edition, Ravenloft and plenty of other games. We even had one of my most favorite Rifts books ever, Vampire Kingdoms.
We also had singers like Suzanne Vega with her "Blood Makes Noise". Suzanne Vega also kinda looks like a vampire.
That the one song that always got me in the mood to do some writing or run a game was Faith No More's The Morning After from their epic album The Real Thing.
Sinéad O'Connor's second album I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got was without a doubt the most anticipated album of 1990. Well. At least by me. In 1988 I discovered Sinéad and The Lion and The Cobra. My best friend at the time and I blew off class to pick it up. I later bought her a copy of the EP of I Am Stretched on Your Grave. It became one of my favorite songs on the album.
Was the woman singing the vampire in this? Or was the grave she was lying on? (yeah I know it a song about a woman talking to her dead mother, but vampires worked better for me).
That best friend? Yeah I ended up marrying her five years later.
Another artist that isn't normally associated with vampire or the 90s is Thomas Dolby. Many remember Dolby from "She Blinded Me With Science", but he had a number of later released that were critically praised but not great sellers. One was 1989's Aliens Ate My Buick with the haunting "Budapest By Blimp" a song I always thought was about a vampire returning to his ancestral home to only be sad by how much it had changed.
Dolby does have street cred when it comes to Gothic Horror. He worked on the soundtrack for the movie Gothic which recounts the tale of Lord Byron, John Polidori, Percy and Mary Shelly. A weird little movie from the guy that gave us Lair of the White Worm, starring the Warlock, Wormtail., the guy who almost survived Keyser Söze, and the Handmaid.
In the early 90s nothing was bigger than Concrete Blonde. I remember seeing them opening up for Sting on the last leg of his Soul Cages tour. "Tomorrow Wendy" might not be a song about vampires, but it oozes pathos and thanatos. Frankly it captured those early days of Vampire the Masquerade perfectly.
Welcome back to Friday Night Videos as we continue the Vampire theme for Vampire Month here at the Other Side.
These songs are ones we used in our games for the few times I used music. I do sometimes like to set a tone with some music before playing, especially when I am doing horror.
Back in the day I wrote an adventure for my group called "Ravenloft III: The Necropolis". Yeah, it was not originally named, but some of the things in the adventure later appeared in other adventures and games including what would later become the biggest "vampire game" in my life: Buffy.
The Who's Behind Blue Eyes was the "theme song" for the main anti-hero of the tale. A vampire that you were supposed to feel sorry for and help.
Queen has cemented their legacy as one of the best rock bands ever. But there was a time when this was not the case. Undaunted Freddie and crew still took risks with this song, "Who Wants to Live Forever", from the album A Kind of Magic which also served as the soundtrack to the movie Highlander. Of course a different kind of immortal was featured in the movie, but the song works for either. If you have not listened to this album I suggest you do so.
Yes it is cheese pure and simple, but Meatloaf's Bat out of Hell is one of the very, very few albums I can play D&D too. In fact my Freshman year in college I ran Ravenloft I6 while playing this album.
Also Meatloaf should get special mention here since the video for Bat Out of Hell premiered on Friday Night Videos before it did on MTV.
Not much else on this album is D&D-ish or even Vampire-ish, but this song still has a special place in my black heart.
The 90s began with me playing AD&D2nd ed and mostly Ravenloft. The 90s ended with me, presumably searing off D&D forever in favor of C.J. Carella's WitchCraft RPG.
In between those two times I played Chill 2nd Ed, Mage the Ascension and of course the most 90s of all 90s angst filled games,
Vampire the Masquerade.
If there ever was a "vampire band" it was Bauhaus. No band was Gothier and Bela Lugosi's Dead is almost self-parody. I am sure there were tons of Vampire the Masquerade that looked just like Peter Murphy.
No else one "got" the whole vampire vibe better than Concrete Blonde.
From the album of the same name Bloodletting was a bloody valentine to Anne Rice.
Another love letter to Anne Rice is Sting's Moon Over Bourbon Street.
Blue Öyster Cult was a huge influence on I think a lot of people's early gaming.
No angsty vampire or Victorian sex symbol. This is Nosferatu.
And let us not easily forget "Anne Rice's Dracula", I mean Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula from 1992.
Inspiration will sometimes come from the oddest places.
Take for example the case of Eric Burdon, The Animals and War.
I "discovered" Eric Burdon while going through a stack of old 45s back in my teens. The Animals' song "House of the Rising Sun" painted such an evocative picture for me that I was obsessed with it for years.
Fast forward to the late 90s early 2000s. I began listening to more of Eric Burdon's "new" band, War. "Spill the Wine" was pretty much on constant rotation for me for the longest time. Combine these two and a vista was painted for me in sharp relief. Eric Burdon has the distinction of being the only living person I have stated up as an Occult Poet, he is also the only character I have used both in my Willow & Tara based Buffy game and my lighter tone Hex Girls game.
House of the Rising Sun is a haunting song. It is no surprise to me that it was used in the teaser trailers for American Horror Story Coven last year. For me the House was a house of ill-repute, but it became something more; something much darker. In my games Burdon found the house and uses his occult powers to keep others away.
Don't let me be Misunderstood also had a similar effect on my writing. You could almost construe it as an adventurers lament and not just a man to his lover.
We Got to Get Out of This Place. Vietnam or "Subterranean Fantasy Fucking Vietnam".
Bloggers have spent thousands of pages of text on analyzing the pulp writings of old and their effects on the genesis of D&D, but what about the music? I saw just like the late 70s and 80s captured the mood of the time and D&D, the 60s are what influenced the authors of the games.
Have you ever played a gnome? I have played one and that was during the start of D&D 3.0. Jassic Goodwalker. Jassic was a long haired overfed leaping gnome with a fondness for wine, song, and women. Spill the Wine was the song that gave birth to Jassic. Never played a gnome after Jassic, but I would dust of his sheet in heartbeat.
Welcome to a special Friday the 13th Friday Night Videos!
Let's talk about superstitions, bad luck and bad mojo tonight!
Writing about witches and magic I like to include superstitions in my games and have my characters follow them. Gives a little color to the character and separates them from the other characters a bit more.
First up is the one and only Stevie Wonder.
I will be honest, I LOVE Stevie Wonder. For Once in My Life, My Cherie Amour, Talking Book, Songs in the Key of Life, these are some of my favorite albums. One of the best songs from Talking Book is Superstition.
If you can find a harder case than Mike Ness then you are likely talking about Johnny Cash. Sometimes I think he wallows in self-pity but Social Distortion's Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell is still a hell of an album. And it gave us this song, Bad Luck.
Cream is a group that really had a influence on my writing. I don't know why, it's just something about their blues infused rock and psychedelica that really spoke to me in the 80s. Plus Eric Clapton is God. Let's just all be honest here. This is one of their bluesier recordings, Albert King's Born Under a Bad Sign.
Pete Yorn's Ever Fallen In Love Someone was part of my Sojourn in Hell soundtrack and thus was on constant play while I was working on Buffy and Ghosts of Albion. It also struck me as a "bad luck" song.
Here is something. I LOVE the Police. Really. I have seen them in concert, seen Sting something like 6-7 times. Yeah I am weird like that. But what is weirder is how much some of my own writing from the 80s has obvious and fairly overt influences from the Police.
Here is an older one, from Reggata d'Blanc and written by drummer Stewart Copeland, On Any Other Day. This was my favorite album for the longest time.
Expect a Police night one night.
Another really influential album on my formative years was Who's Next. Here is John Entwistle having a really bad day in My Wife.
Another influence on my writing (but not so much on my playing) was Frank Zappa. I might do a Frank Zappa night, but until then here is his son Dweezil (who is really cool, met him years ago) and the title track to the most under rated album from 1986, Having a Bad Day.
