Players Orthogonal to Plane (Or, D&D 3.5e, Band Simulator edition.)

[Logosv]

A bit of background, first.

After a fair bit of discussion on how a D&D game might be interesting, I volunteered to run one for a group of new-ish players, under 3.5 since I actually knew those rules. In preparation for it, I've been preparing a fairly large world for them to explore and get used to the system. Thus far, they've been reading the books (good), checking around for guides (also good), and talking with each other to coordinate their characters (very good). Basically, a wonderful group, which I'm happy to DM for.

There is only one problem. The players have managed to surprise me with their concept, fitting neatly into a niche I have no preparation for; that is, they are putting together a band of warforged bards.

I have no idea how a band is managed. I have no idea how to realistically write a band on tour. I'm not sure if there are existing rules I could appropriate, beyond the rules in DMG II for running a business.

Would anyone happen to have any advice on how to proceed, here?

[JyP]

they are putting together a band of warforged bards.
What a great idea :smallcool: I guess this is in Eberron then ? It could be wandering gypsies in any medieval setting otherwise.


I have no idea how a band is managed. I have no idea how to realistically write a band on tour. I'm not sure if there are existing rules I could appropriate, beyond the rules in DMG II for running a business.
Well, we don't have any idea on how to organize great trips & explorations to unknown kingdoms, how to sustain a caravan or to make profit with a mercenary company either - it's because D&D does not focus on such minutiae, even though you need to be able to sustain your mercenary band economically.

throwing some ideas there :

- from players point of view I see the skill mechanics on perform, obviously, to gain some silver during performances. But you need a diplomat to discuss with authorities, someone to handle cash & food, someone to handle mounts, someone to attract public, and so on - so a nice roundup of skills there. It can be sufficient from player's point of view.

- being able to perform in front of hostiles creatures and change them to friendly is a way to overcome them - and gain experience.

- Leadership is used to gain followers & cohorts. What would be better for a band ? :smallbiggrin:

- The biggest problem is that D&D 3 rules focus heavily on combat & magic... So if you want to mix this with a rock band , you can have a "Battle of the Bands" or "Space Channel 5" vibe if you decide that combat is to subjugate opponents with music & dance, like some hardcore punk moshing. And if your band is more and more badass, it can even perform for troll audience (anyway normal crowds will not want to assist to your jig anymore as it get a reputation for mayhem) :smallbiggrin:

[Darrin]

"This is Spinal Tap." With Robots.

SQUEEEE!

Ok, here's what I'd start with:

Band's manager, "Dodgy Sam" (or whatever you prefer) tells them they have a gig, such as:


Wedding
Harvest Festival
Masquerade Ball
Monument Dedication
Noble's Birthday
Warship Christening


The band has to travel to the gig's location, so there's at least one travel encounter:


Troll blocking bridge, challenges band to rap battle (or something similar).
Merchant wagon attacked, all his goods stolen by {x}, thieves flew off to cave over there, could band of heroes please go get his stuff back? (small dungeon crawl)
While being ferried across a river, ferry attacked by merfolk/nixies/etc. Ferryman has stolen a magic item from them, and they want it back.
Exotic animal hunter with empty cage and a couple dead trainers, hires band to help him track down escaped animal (turns out animal is Awakened and begs band to let him go free)
Shepherdess has lost her sheep, begs the band to help find them (local hedge wizard stole them to test a new potion formula, sheep now breath fire but are otherwise normal)
Young girl caught in snare trap, apparently her grandmother's cauldron has escaped and she needs to get it back into the hut before grandmother gets home or she'll be turned into a frog (because that's when the polymorph spell expires). Cauldron is an animated object with max ranks in Craft: Trapmaking because reasons.
Goblin paladin sleeping in the middle of the road. He was attacked by pixies, who stole his pony. Pony now looks/acts like a nightmare, but this is an illusion.


When the band arrives at the gig, for some reason the gig cannot proceed as planned for various reasons:


Bride has been kidnapped by an infamous rake. Father didn't like the marriage arrangement anyway, tells the band to sod off. Groom hires the band to locate her and convince her to come back. Rake has taken the bride to his mother's place (witch's tower) or a ruined castle (how romantic!). Was the bride charmed or did she go willingly? Is the groom sincere or does he have a shady past?
At the festival, several people fall ill/attack each other/turn into badgers. Someone has poisoned the food with a magical substance, and the local lord has shut down the festival until the perpetrator is found and brought to justice. Band is immune to poison. Clues lead down into sewer (dungeon crawl).
At the ball, important noble is murdered, and band is framed as accomplices. Baron Sourface is willing to vouch for the band's innocence, but he needs something from them in return (steal some loveletters from a desk upstairs). Turns out the murder was a distraction to allow a thief to steal an artifact, band winds up chasing thief into the family crypts underneath the mansion (dungeon crawl).
At the monument dedication, statue animates and attacks the crowd. The monument has accidentally been built over a long-forgotten evil shrine dedicated to a demonic gawd of poor decisionmaking. Local politician discovered the shrine when laying the foundation for the monument, but thought a couple protection spells would be sufficient (they weren't). One of the workers broke into the shrine, found some pretty kewl items, and now thinks bringing back the demon gawd will make him a powerful sorcerer. Local politician asks the band, hey you did a really nice job with that statue, maybe you could take care of this shrine thing?
Noble's birthday is canceled due to sudden illness. His son suspects his uncle is poisoning his father so he can seduce his mother and get at the family fortune. Oh, and the son has discovered these mushrooms that make him really, really depressed or really, really excited. Would they like to try some?
As the warship is launched, captain and entire crew are suddenly enchanted with a geas, but the band is unaffected (they accidentally countersonged the effect on themselves). The crew sets sail for a mysterious island fortress that just rose up out of the waves. Fortress is covered with creepy carvings and strange statues of unspeakable monsters with lots of tentacles. Can the band break the spell on the crew and get them out of the Fortress before it sinks beneath the waves?


Somewhere in all of that, I'd throw in some Zelda/Ocarina of Time stuff: the PCs discover some ancient song fragments, pages torn out of a "Lost Folio" of music. The song fragments can be used to unlock several temples. You can do the typical "Temples dedicated to the Four Elements" thing or the environmental theme: Forest/Mountain/Desert/Ocean/Shadow/etc. Each temple holds an artifact or another song fragment. There is, of course, an evil band of changeling musicians who are working for a BBEG, trying to track down the ancient song fragments to unlock the final temple where the Big Bad World Devourer can be summoned.

Climax: Band is betrayed, someone they trusted stole all the song fragments and delivered them to BBEG. Band shows up to stop ritual, but they are too late, World Devourer is already summoned and chowing down on innocent civilians.

Except! Here's this clue about the Temple of Sunshine and Warm Fuzzy Kittens, we thought it had been destroyed but maybe it still exists, maybe you can head over there really quick and find the Countersong to Banish Naughtyevilpants.

[Hiro Quester]

It's a good concept for an adventuring group. There are lots of ways to play a bard, and a well crafted bard or bard multi class can occupy just about any group niche (melee, healer, caster, ranged).

So in many ways this can be just like any other adventuring party. Except they can also play music together. And some of their reasons for traveling, or cover stories for entering a city/palace etc involve performances.

[Flickerdart]

A fun plot arc idea could be a warlord hiring the band to play inspiring music for his army during a battle with a rival warlord (who has his own bards). Think "flamethrower guitar dude from Mad Max" except with four robots, and then they get into a bard-off with the enemy bards.

[Red Fel]

If you don't do an homage to the Beelzeboss scene from Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny, I will be personally disappoint.

Seriously, though, go look at some classic cartoons for inspiration. A lot of the Scooby Doo-style series back in the day involved a traveling band. See, for example, Jabberjaw, which was about a traveling underwater teen rock band and their talking shark mascot; Josie and the Pussycats, about the titular band and their mystery-solving adventures (also, sequel IN SPAAAAAACE); and so forth. Episodic adventures from one gig to the next can totally be a thing.

[Segev]

I would ask them, directly, if this is meant to be a main focus of the campaign, or if they intend it to be a framing device to justify them traveling around to get from adventure to adventure. If the latter, I'd run it more or less as you'd planned, just using "being on tour" as the excuse for getting them to any particular site. Drop the hooks in front of them, and use their performance schedule as a complicating factor to add time-pressures where you think they're needed (or interesting).

If they want the performing aspect to be a major focus, then I would start "small" by planning a primarily social session or few in their first on-screen venue. Have your plot hooks available, and see what they bite on. Work things in as complications to their performances. Again, if the performing is to be a major focus, make hooks and even plots around the kinds of things that performers care about: scheduling, housing, getting paid, networking, building fame, etc. You can do a lot of world-building from letting them be "tourists" who live in it. Whether they bite onto the traditional adventuring stuff will depend on their interest.

It could be a most unusual game, or it could be fairly typical with this as a framing device. Discuss with them their expectations and hopes.

I know that, in X-Crawl, I tend to enjoy the out-of-crawl politicking and celebrity RP more than the in-Crawl dungeon-delving, personally. So that kind of thing CAN work.

[DarkSoul]

I feel like this is "Brütal Legend (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Br%C3%BCtal_Legend): D20" for some reason.

You should definitely find out what kind of game they're hoping for with a party theme like this. If they're hoping for the episodic cartoony feel, I guess you'd better brush up on your "...and I'd have gotten away with it too, if it were for you meddling robots!" delivery.

[SimonMoon6]

Here's what I would do with this concept:

Battle of the Bands

There is a musical competition coming up. (Because of the wonkiness of the d20 system, your bards will be terrible at 1st level, but assume that the bands that compete against each other are separated into various categories: novices, amateurs, professionals, superstars, etc.)

The PCs meet the various bands that they will be competing against. The trophy prize happens to be (or contain) a certain MacGuffin that they *need* to win for some reason, even though it has little monetary value (or it has an unrecognized monetary value). The other bands are very serious in trying to win... just for bragging rights mostly, but maybe one of the other bands needs the MacGuffin as well?

And then people start dying. It's up to the PCs to do some investigation to discover what's going on. (And naturally, as often happens in tawdry mysteries, it was the first person to die who was actually behind it all, as he faked his own death.) And that's in addition to having serious competitive moments where they might have non-traditional musical competitions; in other words, instead of just rolling Perform and that's it, maybe they are competing simultaneously with another band? I don't know, that part needs work.

[nedz]

Why has no one mentioned the Blues Brothers ?

There, done that - now watch it.

It will give you some ideas at least.

[Flickerdart]

(Because of the wonkiness of the d20 system, your bards will be terrible at 1st level, but assume that the bands that compete against each other are separated into various categories: novices, amateurs, professionals, superstars, etc.)
Taking 10:
Typical bard: 15 CHA (Elite array), +4 ranks = Enjoyable Performance
Serious bard: 18 CHA (Point buy), +4 ranks, +3 Skill Focus = Great Performance, regional reputation.
Maximum Overbard: 22 CHA (Point buy + race + age), +4 ranks, +3 Skill Focus, +2 masterwork instrument = Memorable Performance, national reputation.
Maximum Overband: +15 from above, 3 Aid Anothers from his band mates for +6 = Extraordinary Performance, draw attention from distant patrons and otherplanar beings.

Whoops, we're all out of chart for how good a performance can be, and all we used were 1st level bards.

[Alex12]

Taking 10:
Typical bard: 15 CHA (Elite array), +4 ranks = Enjoyable Performance
Serious bard: 18 CHA (Point buy), +4 ranks, +3 Skill Focus = Great Performance, regional reputation.
Maximum Overbard: 22 CHA (Point buy + race + age), +4 ranks, +3 Skill Focus, +2 masterwork instrument = Memorable Performance, national reputation.
Maximum Overband: +15 from above, 3 Aid Anothers from his band mates for +6 = Extraordinary Performance, draw attention from distant patrons and otherplanar beings.

Whoops, we're all out of chart for how good a performance can be, and all we used were 1st level bards.

You forgot about the -2 Cha penalty Warforged get.

As for the actual band stuff, there's a couple of things.
First off, Races of Stone has rules for Appraising a performance, heckling performers and resisting said heckling (Bluff and Concentration, respectively) and Crafting songs and suchlike. The relevant section starts on page 129.

For running a specific performance, you might consider adapting the rules from the play that's in Pathfinder's Council of Thieves AP (Part 2, the Sixfold Trial). Basically, the PCs get Popularity points based on how well they're doing (with the performance being a series of Perform checks, with one person doing the performance and the rest doing Aid Another), and the reward being based on how many Popularity points they have. Other things can also affect Popularity points, including how they act in town prior to the concert and suchlike. The Perform DC for the AP's play is 20 (famous play, major city that loves theater, but the PCs are not actors, likely didn't invest in Perform), but you could adjust that based on local conditions (so as their fame grows, the DCs get higher, for example). Also, if they fail a Perform check, you roll a d20 to determine what bad thing happens that affects either their Popularity, the Perform DC for one or more subsequent checks

[Logosv]

Thank you all! This gives quite a few ideas I can use.

[Flickerdart]

You forgot about the -2 Cha penalty Warforged get.

There are a bunch of other things you can add to boost Perform, too. The point stands - level 1 bards are absolutely not terrible.