What music inspired your game or favorite character concept?

[Fumble Jack]

Hello all fellow forumites, as the title suggests, what music inspired a favorite game you ran, played in or favorite character concept? Both if you happen to be both Dm/St/Keeper (other variation) and a player. Please list the game and/or template/class/(other variation).

As for me:
D&D 3.0 - Rob Zombie Dragula
Gave me a strange concept for a Resident Evil themed game, which went pretty well. Our group went through 3 full games based on it.

Mage the Awakening - Question by System of a Down
Really cool investivgative game came out of it.

D&D 2nd edition Dark Sun
Rom Mul Fighter - 2pac Nothing to lose (I know odd choice but for some reason it just fit the mentality of the character and grittiness of the setting at least to me.)

D&D 4.0 - Excalibur (O Fortuna remix. I think that was the name)

Rho Kharsh Dragonborn Fighter and in another game Paladin.

[Mr.Sandman]

Enter Sandman by Metallica inspired both the game and character my username is based on. Mutants and Masterminds 2E. At the end of WWI a meteor shower carries alien thought entiities to earth, and they randomly bond to people by way of objects giving them the abilities of mythological figures, from Johnny Appleseed to Zeus. My character is, of course, the Sandman, a soldier from the war turned PI in Chicago.

[comicshorse]

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds 'Red Right Hand'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrxePKps87k

Inspired the Gentry that was one of the major villains in my Changeling campaign

[Fumble Jack]

Mr.Sandman
Re: What music inspired your game or favorite character concept?

Enter Sandman by Metallica inspired both the game and character my username is based on. Mutants and Masterminds 2E. At the end of WWI a meteor shower carries alien thought entiities to earth, and they randomly bond to people by way of objects giving them the abilities of mythological figures, from Johnny Appleseed to Zeus. My character is, of course, the Sandman, a soldier from the war turned PI in Chicago.

That is awesome.

comicshorse
Re: What music inspired your game or favorite character concept?

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds 'Red Right Hand'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrxePKps87k

Inspired the Gentry that was one of the major villains in my Changeling campaign

After listening to it I could kind of see that, has that creepy vibe to it too but it's kind of catchy in a way.

[Kid Jake]

This song inspired a Barbarian/Rogue Joker-styled villain in a campaign I ran once. One of the PCs had escaped his wholesale slaughter years ago and the killer returned for him as a matter of pride once he found out. Sadly, their final confrontation ended the same way as the song and the guy never got his Inigo Montoya moment because the murderer beat his head in with a chair leg.


This one inspired a barbarian warlord that I played for a while that was losing his hard-earned tribe to disease and famine. The line 'It'll take a lot more than rage and muscle.' kept making me picture a Conanesque guy that has to learn humility to solve a problem and that seemed like a cool concept, so he eventually left his tribe and position to beg for help in the outside world.

[TheFamilarRaven]

No One Lives Forever by Oingo Boingo inspired Drexel K'Ortev. The classic, coy, Drow vampire Martial Artist/Assassin. True to style, the final battle with him was in a grand ballroom, in an abandoned castle, while a spectral orchestra played in the background. Ah the memories ...

He wasn't the big bad but he was probably the strongest (in terms of personality) villain character.

[sktarq]

Billy Joel's Code of Silence was the basis for a very fun character

and

Billy Idol's Rebel Yell was the lead off for GF's character in the same game.

it was an oWoD Vampire game.

[Fumble Jack]

I came across a semi old character(4th ed) sheet last night. Good memories though and it was a good game. Balram Shardmind Invoker. Inspired by the song- Leave out all the rest by Linkin Park.

[Segev]

By Rammstein:

• Spieluhr inspired an antagonist and a setting wherein humans were extinct, except this antagonist was trying to revive them and had found a music box which could let him do it. (Humans were bogey-men to the rest of the world)
• Sonne inspired a scene from the past wherein a human leader of a party slew the Elven God of Day to prevent the elves from weaponizing their deity against mankind.
• Links 2,3,4 inspired one of the two major human cities, and
• Ich Will inspired the leader thereof
• Mein Herz Brent inspires the eventual consequences of the revival of humanity and the presence of the slain sun god in an artifact humanity built to trap his power and convert it to psi energy.

"Honour" by VNV Nation inspired the forms the human citidels would take towards the end of their war.

[Tengu_temp]

One of my characters was a metal knight. And I mean metal in more ways than one - the guy literally played power metal songs in the middle of combat, both to inspire his allies and to fight campaign-specific enemies who could only be harmed when they're subjected to loud noise.

Instead of a horse, he drove around on a motorcycle with spiked wheels. Later the bike was possessed by the spirit of a pegasus-like creature, which gave it the ability to fly by turning its exhaust into a jet engine.

The guy's most memorable battle was probably fighting a group of enemies on top of a large, slow-falling bomb, at the same time desperately trying to disarm it before it reaches the ground and blows up the city below.

[TandemChelipeds]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUhVCoTsBaM JoJo's Bizarre Adventure 2012 Part 2: Battle Tendency- Awaken
Inspired a Mesopotamian-themed Bronze Age setting I have on the backburner right now. The sheer arrogance of it really spoke to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuzvQW_gxkk Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey- Area 1
Didn't inspire a character or a setting, per se, but right now I have a post-apocalyptic grimdark setting in my head that I was thinking of homebrewing classes for, and this song is setting the tone for all the spellcasting classes. I'm trying to keep them all around Tier 3, so I figure magic should have horrible drawbacks and consequences, somehow. Still ironing that out.
http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs32/f/20...aelkutsche.jpg The visual inspiration for that setting. At first I merely imagined it as a world where asteroids struck the earth in the midst of the Great War, destroying the infrastructure of industrial society and improbably throwing Europe into a state uncannily similar to its medieval past, with industrial technology held precious and considered sacred relics of a bygone age while feudal lords engaged in petty wars, adhering to the doctrines of trench warfare. But I decided there had to be more interesting things to fight than other people, so I threw in some Lovecraftian hitchhikers on the asteroids and now it's grimmer and darker. The seas are infested and impassable, the land is assailed on all sides by beasts with altogether too many appendages, the battlefields are choked out with alien weeds that raise the dead as mindless killing machines, and the horrors of feudal trench warfare still rage on. Now I'm thinking of dropping the alternate history aspect altogether(it was never prominent anyway) and just calling it a fantasy setting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNU9oQWe7cc Bathory- Hammerheart- Shores in Flames
Inspired a viking-themed game I ran a few years back. It didn't get very far, though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zSrdqkiks4 Song To Hall Up High
Inspired my vision of the afterlife in the viking game's setting. Not Valhalla, but an impossibly long, rock-sheltered cove with just enough extra room to row a longboat through, deep enough for an ocean-going vessel but somehow only ankle-deep on the dead, who stood silent and dreaming of a warrior's paradise amid waters that shone in spite of the rocks that shaded them from the sun. My plan was that in order to resurrect someone, you would have to physically sail to this realm, find the one you wanted to revive, and awaken them.

[Silus]

Game:
Holding Out For A Hero by Bonnie Tyler: The perfect chase music I feel. Here's the scenario: The PCs have been tasked by the local head of state to bust into the local Engineering guild to retrieve a recently-sentient golem that is in the process of being disassembled. Another faction, an anti-construct group similar to PETA, wants the "abomination" destroyed. So the PCs break in and rescue the golem. They get into a waiting wagon and take off. They are immediately set upon by the anti-construct group, who are intent on seeing the golem scrapped.

Cue a high speed chase through the city streets while taking potshots at each other from the backs of speeding wagons pulled by tireless clockwork horses. Bonus points of the group's fighter leaps off the back of the wagon and stonewalls the enemy wagon with a Tower Shield.

Ready to Die by Andrew W.K.: Demogorgon's layer of the abyss, everything is "peaceful". Suddenly, massive gates open up in the sky and water begins pouring in. Holy water. The gates are directly connected to the oceans of Celestis/Heaven and are dumping hundreds of thousands of gallons of holy water into the Abyssal sea. More gates open and in float armies of angels flanking massive airships bristling with cannons and layered in armor and spells. They beeline it to Demogorgon's citadel and open fire with all guns, gouging great holes in the twisted architecture. The citadel crumbled and Demogorgon emerges, only to be cut down by the airship's cannons. As the life bleeds out of him, he looks up to see a smaller ship docking at the ruined citadel. Off steps the party who managed to not only fund this invasion, but orchestrate it as well.

Bonus points if all the characters are some variety of Tiefling, Aasimar or elemental race.

[Fumble Jack]

I asked some of my players what had inspired some their characters and got interesting responses. I'll list a few:

Changeling the Lost
Oni
Hunterheart Assassin http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXu6ZYy2WLg

4th ed
Gerth
Githzerai Monk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djAoIFM1lcc

Mage the Awakening
Maiko
a skateboarding star. The inspiration was more for the look of the character rather than the song, as I was told. I'll link the song anyway though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5L4e...c_3NonqsyC3Haw

Now there were a few others of mine.

Spoiler: Nwod Game: Life is Beautiful

Show

Ok now this one was interesting. This song and video actually inspired this incredible idea for a massive cross splat game in which the world was ending. However the Pc's were the dream entities of a dying deity. When they were able to discover this, they could take portions of the deity and work together to make their own worlds. Morbid in a way, but interesting. Here's the link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSRohpppsnE

This inspired an idea for an Nwod Geist game. Unfortunately I have yet to run it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKk1u5RMTn4.

In another 3.5 D&D game I had a bard character, who went by the moniker of Grim. In his background he had died to save someone he cared for but was pulled back to the mortal coil sometime later only to discover, the person whom he saved had completely forgotten of him. Anyway he was inspired by Van Canto - In the Bard's Forest.

[Silus]

Really any setting could work, but Mordred's Lullaby is a pretty good song to inspire character creation.

[Fumble Jack]

Really any setting could work, but Mordred's Lullaby is a pretty good song to inspire character creation.

I always liked that song, surprising I never made anything to it. A player in one of my games made a character to this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1rLoXdGNv4 was a changeling game. A fairest called Pix

[Gracht Grabmaw]

I think almost every fighter or barbarian I ever made owes in some way to this song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5lIdetzgl8

Not that they were all depressed people who yearned for death, more of the opposite. A healthy disdain for death is a good thing if your job boils down to killing people in some way, it stops you from going numb to the fact that ou are snuffing out life.

[Krazzman]

Terminus(where death is most alive) - Dark Tranquility
Inspired a campaign starter where the party meets in the afterlife after being slain by the BBEG or his henchmen and they should focus on their revival and get revenge.

Never even got to start.

White Noise/Black Silence - Dark Tranquility
Character concept (again never got to the sweet spot) where using a Dagger enchanted with silence and innate abilities to see in the dark and create darkness.
Never came to play the concept after reaching level 2 with him.

All Nightmare Long - Metallica
Inspired two whole All Flesh Must Be Eaten One-shots where I tried out the system. Never got to run the follow up campaign... also lost all notes on it.

Then some other stuff was inspired by music but I can't remember them anymore (the downsides of playing one-shots every weekend with new characters for 5 years).

[GPuzzle]

Soldier of Three Armies by Sabaton.

We were playing a homebrew game system, and I made a soldier with three souls inside him, which had been soldiers before - one Finnish, one German and one American.

It was pretty hilarious, he'd speak in Finnish (which I only knew "perkele" and "Mannerheim"), German (it was quite awesome, the GM ruled that whenever he was speaking German he'd gain a bonus to Intimidation) and English.

[Sartharina]

One of my current characters in a PbP game over here is the gay furry lovechild of Swedish House Mafia, The Village People, and Bon Jovi

[Fumble Jack]

I had a recent character I was able to play in a friend's Hunter game. They were inspired by the song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYg-A8x-y74

[Mono Vertigo]

Franz Ferdinand's Evil Eye inspired me a M&M3e villainous PC; a young woman who was cursed with the Evil Eye as a kid (which mostly made her see everything as evil abominations to wildly varying degrees; she's interpreted that as "being able to see the evil in people's souls", but has never been able to determine if we're talking about past evil, future evil, potential evil, or whatever).
After roughly 10 years of living with the evil-o-vision (accompanied by the occasional accidental hexing, of course, but that is honestly a detail compared to the main effect), unable to get rid of it or turn it off, use it for good, or share her experience meaningfully, she lost her sanity.
Having accumulated lots of knowledge about dark magic when she was still trying to deal with it in a good way, she's got other tricks beside her powers revolving around her Evil Eye.
Right now she's with a band of villains and antiheroes, mostly gunning down whoever she feels like gunning down - as long as she's allowed to - under the pretense their souls look disgustingly evil. Amusingly, her teammates' souls look comparatively less horrible than many others she's encountered - but that fact speaks volumes more about her curse than the alignment of her allies, since most are nasty pieces of work.

[Unseenmal]

Disturbed's "Pain Redefined" had inspired the entire campaign that I was DMing until recently. It was the title that got me thinking and that led to a BBEG and a plot.

[Fumble Jack]

Rather recently there was a scene I ran in a D&D game, ironically inspired by the Jaws theme. However instead of using a shark, it was a young white dragon with the pc's afloat on a large flat sheet of ice amidst an even larger body of water. It was a challenging yet fun encounter.

[Yora]

The music of Conan the Barbarian, Warcraft 3, and Star Wars, with a dose of God of War. That's the style of my setting.

[Silus]

Gotta Go Fast (Sonic X Theme) helped sorta inspire a legendary NPC for my PF setting named Regina Red-Rook. Basically the Chuck Norris of harpies who not only can fly at the speed of sound, but has also weaponized movement speed (Granted via homebrew stuff, but still).

[ILM]

Not characters, but I've designed two fairly successful encounters around 2 songs by the Paper Melody (a small band that regrettably disbanded in 2013). You can listen to the songs here (titles underlined below).

The Transparent: "I need something to call my own."
The players were tasked with finding a missing girl. Fast forward and they trace her to a mysterious person's manor, who obviously turns out to be a wizard with an enthusiasm for experiments. They make their way to his laboratory, build deep inside his home, and manage to open the sealed door. Inside, they find tables covered with arcane doodads, vials, components, books and various scribblings; walls covered with schematics and notes; and lying lifeless on the ground, the blueish face-down corpse of the wizard, hands at his throat. A closer look reveals he has no nose.

Sitting on a chair in the middle of the room, back to the entrance and with arcane marks scribbled in circles on the ground, is a naked girl that looks like she might well be the missing one. Upon investigation, players discover that she has no face: no eyes, no ears, no mouth - nothing except a nose. Roll initiative!

I've got her full stats somewhere in my old notes but basically this is how the fight went: first, she used her Scent ability (nose!) to locate a PC and try to hit it in melee. A successful touch attack and a failed save later and she stole the PC's eyes - the PC's eyes irremediably closed shut while a pair opened in her previously featureless face (PC became blind, and she gained sight, losing the 50% chance to miss in melee).

Another touch attack and failed save, and she stole a PC's ears, inflicting deafness (20% spell failure) and gaining hearing (not much of a benefit, but oh well). Another one and she stole a PC's mouth, rendering him mute and gaining spellcasting. Fortunately/unfortunately the PCs killed her at that point, but the last step was for her to do a final touch attack and steal a PC's soul, rendering him comatose until the end of the fight (at which point I planned for him to either be restored upon her death, or dead in case of TPK).

After she was cleaved open by the party palading, I described how they could see into the gaping wound and inside her body, which was completely empty. She was basically a void wrapped in skin, held together by foul magic and an overwhelming desire to exist.


Then the Sky Opened Up...: "I'll show you empty..."
If you listen to the song you'll see that this actually has little to do with the title (but the chorus works well).

PCs are called to investigate a strangely local drought affecting a region. While rain continues to fall as everywhere else, the crops and plants are dead and dry as parchment, and the wells are drying up.

All the wells? No, of course not. In a minor town, there's a fountain, and in spite of everything the water keeps flowing, clear and pure. People flock to the town for water and luck, since this is obviously a blessing of the gods.

Except of course the water elemental that took residence in the fountain, after being called by a random magic mishap in the area, is at its limit. It was bad enough that after he arrived, he realized people were taking water from him, forcing him to use his powers to draw water from the surrounding area to sustain itself; but the more he did so, the drier the region became, and the more people came to the fountain, taking even more water... Shortly after the PCs arrived to investigate, the elemental decided that he had enough of people drinking him and instead decided to murder everyone. The fountain exploded, water spraying everywhere only to slow in mid-air and coalesce into a vaguely humanoid but definitely angry form. Roll initiative!

[Ettina]

My brother has a homebrew class Wild Dancer (a bard/druid hybrid powered by dance). I suspect it may have been inspired by this song, but he says it's just coincidence that he was listening to it around the same time he came up with this class.

[Imaginos]

Elezar Savorn of Elredd from an old AD&D 2nd edition game. Human fighter who longed to be a paladin like his father before him. Was inspired by "Defender" by Manowar.

[DigoDragon]

My (somewhat?) known Shadowrun Game with the Majestic 12 was first inspired by the song So Cold by Breaking Benjamin.
It became the theme song of the campaign, music I played at the beginning of most sessions to get the players into the mood.

[Fumble Jack]

My (somewhat?) known Shadowrun Game with the Majestic 12 was first inspired by the song So Cold by Breaking Benjamin.
It became the theme song of the campaign, music I played at the beginning of most sessions to get the players into the mood.

That's awesome.

A player in an old Vampire the Masquerade game I ran, used that song to describe a vamp elder, who was the main antagonist of that game, after a scene in which he was convinced by the Elder to join sides. It altered the player's plan to now breaking the Elders power structure from within. It made the game even more fun for everyone that way.

Also I used to commit entire track lists to a disc, back in the Cd/r times to envision whole story arcs for games.