Using PC Theme Songs to Showcase Your Heroes

So today's blog post is about giving the PCs of your rpg campaign theme songs. Obviously, this isn't for every game but if your running a game where the PCs are supposed to be badasses, reminiscent of action hero movies and the like this may be the perfect fit. Especially if music is important at your table.

Juan Giménez

The setup would be quite simple. During your session zero have each of the players choose a song they think represents their character well. This might work better for a modern or cyberpunk setting so that the players can choose recognizable songs that wouldn't clash with your playlist. Add these songs to your playlist. Now you can decide how long you want your playlist to be. If you only play music during combat then you'll probably want it shorter, but if you play music the whole session you'll want it longer, maybe around 6 hours. When a PC's song comes up give that PC some sort of bonus. 

A few ideas may be:

• Give them a static bonus to their next turn (IE a +3 bonus to all rolls in D&D 5e)
• Let them auto-succeed on their next action
• My favorite, let them describe how the party gets some sort of edge in the scene they're in because of the PC's badassery (IE letting the PC describe how they use their stealthy skills to sneak past a security system, how they smooth talk with a crime boss, etc, etc)

Finally, my favorite use of this mechanic is what I call "The Blaze of Glory". At any time the player can either ask the GM to play their song or pull out their phone and begin playing their theme. When a player does this they take control of the scene and describe how they overcome the obstacles, defeat the villain, whatever. But at the end of the scene or song, that PC dies in a blaze or glory. This can create super impactful moments where a PC makes the ultimate sacrifice, all the while the song that highlighted so many of their achievements plays in the background.

Let me know if you use this in your own games or one-shots, and how you would modify it for your own use. Until next time, this is Drew of the Travelling Alchemist. 

Custom Frostgrave Scenario: Gorepin's Manor

Recently I was back home for the holidays. While I was home I got my friends into Frostgrave and we had a bit of a mini narrative over 4 gaming sessions total. This all culminated in the 4 warbands finding the destroyed ruins of the legendary wizard Gorepin's manor. While his house was chock full of treasure, the ghost of Gorepin himself was there to protect it! Well at least he was supposed too... due to some unfortunate die rolls Gorepin only made himself known twice in our game. You may want to adjust the summoning target number if you run this scenario with your group. Below is the pdf scenario.

 Here's some photos of some of the warbands I painted and the ruins of Gorepins manor!

The Final Battle

My Warband, led by Marieth the Ancient

A Friends Warband, led by Steve Craftmine

Another Friends Warband, led by Tombra

A final warband, pictured partially painted, led by Magus

Randomly Generating Backgrounds and the "Your Storied Past" Table

 Recently I've just had a session 0 for a campaign I am running in Savage Worlds where I decided to take inspiration from Cyberpunk RED, which I had ran the previous summer. In RED you go through what is called lifepath generation, where you roll for or choose various aspects of your character background, until you have a fleshed out Edgerunner of your own. My favorite part of the lifepath system is rolling for friends, enemies, and tragic love stories. With just these 3 things I was able to run my summer Cyberpunk campaign with little to no prep, and it was a blast. It also forced the players to work within limits, which as many of us know, limitation breeds creativity.

So while prepping this campaign I knew I wanted to do something similar. But, as I was now running a dark fantasy setting, not all the options would translate. So I took this as an opportunity to innovate on Cyberpunks lifepath system.

After a few hours I created the Your Storied Past table. with only 2d20 you can easily generate an invocative story from the past that frames your characters motivation. I have included this table below.

I tried to include vague but distinct prompts that would spark imagination when rolled together. For example, Signature Weapon could obviously mean your character has a cool axe, but it could also mean they've developed a technique as their signature weapon.

My table used this to great success, I'm happy to say. And all the player agreed afterward, most had never used random character generation, that it had led to very interesting characters which were slightly out of their comfort zone (in a good way of course).

In addition to this table we also used a slightly modified version of cyberpunks friends, enemies, and tragic love stories, as well as the relationships page from "This is Totally Not another D&D Fiasco" by Dyson Logos. Between the three resources, we are starting off our game with a lot of player cohesion and useful background details.

This table can be found here, on my google drive. It is Licensed under Creative a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 BY NC SA International License

The Travelling Alchemist

Throughout all time and all realities, there is one constant. Tucked away on some back street, inside the walls of an unassuming wooden building, there is a tavern that exists everywhere. It is called the Travelling Alchemist, and throughout time it has had many owners. From Leymond the Legendary to Bornis Bhaghis to Kyap the Wise, the keys to this multidimensional speakeasy have passed through many hands.

So, who am I? My name is Drew and I am the current owner and manager of the Travelling Alchemist, at least in my time. I have been into tabletop gaming since January 2020. I know, quite a short time, but I learn alittle bit every day. Since then I've done a variety of projects in the ttrpg space that I am very excited to share with the world.

While you are here, please, take a seat and have a drink. If you wish to stay allow me to tell you my tales and imbibe you with my findings as I continue my various RPG and Wargaming projects.

Thank you, and enjoy your time at The Travelling Alchemist!