So I've talked before about my interest in jazz, and I've also talked about anime before. Nujabes and Shoji Meguro, the Sega Sound Team, and the anime and videogames they've worked on such as Samurai Champloo, Persona, and Jet Set Radio, have influenced me creatively, on an aesthetic level and also a deeper thematic level. I don't know when I'll actually post this, but I watched this video on youtube "recently" (as of drafting this post), of the J-Music Ensemble, and found Patrick Bartley to be a really interesting and insightful person, in addition to an excellent musician, although unfortunately I don't know a whole lot about music or music theory. I look forward to exploring his music and learning more about his music theories in the future.
Some of my ideas that I've posted about or intend to post about that have the strongest musical influences are below:
From my old micro-settings post:
- Phantasmos has some jazzy elements that I'll discuss below
- Cold War Under a Rising Sun is an alternate history setting largely about the development of Japanese culture in the 20th century, including the music
- Kwik & Kantankerous is inspired by Mario Kart crossed with Fast & Furious, so like a hip-hop meets chiptune vibe
- Quantumverse is heavily inspired by old Japanese videogames such as Super Mario (as well as early 20th century pulp such as Flash Gordon), so chiptune influences
- Starcrossed Sentai is inspired by Power Rangers and its Japanese origins, and in a more roundabout way inspired by the videogame Earthbound, which has an excellent, funky soundtrack. The Japanese musical genre City Pop is also a big theme in this setting.
From Phantasmos (digging up several old and shoddy posts here...):
- My SHIELDBREAKER campaign included an event inspired by a moment in Earthbound. While the music involved was more electronic than jazz, but is a demonstration of how music affects me creatively
- Deep Time City, and the dada-DA more generally, have a strong art and music influence. In terms of music, some of the bigger influences are electroswing, trip-hop, lounge jazz, and the soundtrack from the videogame Transistor
- The Zoomer and Necromancer classes in Phantasmos both have musical influences. The zoomer class is heavily inspired by the videogame Jet Set Radio, with its funky hip-hop vibe, and the Necromancers in phantasmos have a blend of 60's flower power and 70's disco and funk. The Necromancer Nina Soulchild also plays into this theme
Also, while I haven't posted much about them yet, the faction Le Fauves in Aquarian Dawn also has an art and music influence, currently I'm thinking more so EDM but that may change as I flesh them out more
I feel like I'm probably missing a bunch more music references (well... "Heavy Metal" comes up a lot but I'm usually referring more to the comic magazine and aesthetic than the music per se, although the two do generally go together).
Ooh, on someone else's table turf there was talk of music's heavy influence in game design and direction. Umm... I think it was the Disco Elysium people. There's like an interview at a tech show somewhere. Oh, and the Mothership rpg people have also taken time to both pay tribute to and to discuss at length The Mountain Goats and other musical references. And there's some pixelart shoot-them-up whose whole selling point is it plays exactly like a heavy metal album cover.
ReplyDeleteIt's definitely a rewarding topic to explore with both yourself (reflecting on your process) and with others (orchestrating world-creation -- al a computer servers, chain emails, /r/onewordonly, etc). When i built karaoke mechanics for a campaign, they were an invitation for players to tell me what music they felt close to that day, what notation paths they'd like to connect with, what instrumental wells to draw inspiration from.
Dialect rpg has a gorgeous sister game in the music scene, started in 2010 (or around there) by Billy Mays, called Mouth Council. 5-15 people sit in a circle, pass a mic and vocalize at it for a measure or two. This is added to a loop petal GM who has captured the sample, mixed it into the track and brought the motifs together.
(This is the first post of yours i've read. I'm pumped to check out some in the coming weeks. It's nice to meet you.)
Oh wow, what a random post for you to have stumbled upon lol. I'm glad you like it though! This is a little different than my usual posts so I hope you find other stuff you like. I haven't been able to write as much lately as I used to but I'm trying to stay somewhat regular.
DeleteAlso thank you for sharing about those other RPGs. I haven't played Disco Elysium yet but I've heard it's very tabletop-esque and with disco in the name I was hopeful about that aspect.